#but if im serious about being an illustrator (which I am) then I need to practice anyway even if I don't have those things :')

[fineanddang]

hhhhhhhhhhhhere is an unfinished photo study i did of my cat Raven

(im gonna try doing a 1hr study like this every saturday night from here on out 👍)

#art study #wip #digital illustration #digital painting #pet portrait #my art #artists on tumblr #original art #keyword 'try' #ive never had the time energy or money as an adult to sit down and practice painting #but if im serious about being an illustrator (which I am) then I need to practice anyway even if I don't have those things :') #hopefully i'll actually start improving cuz i feel like ive hit a wall dawg

[sabertoothwalrus]

eep sorry if youve been asked this, but when u go abt drawing bgs for ur comics, do u look up references or use imagination, and how do u practice drawing bgs for storyboards rather than illustrations? im rlly not sure where to start, and i feel like a lot of advice focuses on rendering bgs rather than it feeling ~lived in~ or actively being used or augh not sure how to say!!

hhhh ok this is something I am also still in the process of trying to figure out, and I am not a professional storyboard artist so I will attempt to answer to the best of my ability.

when it comes to storyboards, the amount of detail bgs will have during the boards phase will depend largely on both the studio AND the specific production. some 3D shows will have a render of a commonly used room the board artists can angle around for their shots. Adventure Time boards tended to be pretty loose, while the Owl House boards are EXCEPTIONALLY clean. DTVA seems to have bgs created in a several step process, and I'm not exactly sure of the timeline, but I know they have vis dev artists that do more illustrative, conceptual drawings to get the vibe, then the board artists draw out what general angles will actually be used, then layout artists/bg designers who actually go in and DRAW those bgs and add in all the little details, and THEN the colorist comes in and...colors it. I don't think every studio distributes the work in this same way. Not every studio is going to want board artists to draw clean backgrounds, but MOST will get pissed if you refuse to draw them at all djfhgdjf

If you want some tips about adding small details, this has some really useful advice.

I don't add lighting or grayscale values to my comics unless it's important to the tone/clarity, and I think that's generally the case with boards too (at least for TV, I don't know as much about boarding for feature). Here's some advice about adding lighting.

^ here's a bg I put a little more effort into than usual. I referenced some images of thrift shops I pulled up on duck duck go, some of my own memories of thrift shops I've been to, and even went on the shiftythrifting tumblr. This was just a silly comic I knew I'd be posting on tumblr rather than a serious board, so it didn't matter to me if it was perfectly clean or not. some of the shapes are... vague. and loose. but who cares sdjhfjd I think (?) it conveys the concept that this is a thrift shop.

^ for THIS comic I wanted imply hunter crowded them in the bathroom to "talk in private" which felt like a very 16 year old thing to do + there were already some nifty references of the Noceda's bathroom. and listen I know it's not perfect. I didn't draw ANY perspective guides, did more trial and error than I probably needed to, the cabinet is WAY too high. (even in the original, why is this bathroom so spacious???? why is the toilet so far from the wall where the toilet paper is???) but even with all the mistakes, it doesn't matter! no one probably noticed while watching. you see it so briefly, and your attention is still focused on the characters.

I'd say the main thing when drawing bgs for storyboarding & comics is to focus on Perspective and Composition above all else. It's ok to be loose, but make sure you still have Clarity. Be mindful of proportion ("how big is this character in comparison to the objects around them?") and angles ("if this is a low angle, shouldn't I be seeing the ceiling/sky?") etc etc because even if you know you won't be drawing it perfectly, it helps to still have it in mind.

#art help #perspective #backgrounds #comics #storyboarding #photos

[adoptsomecookies]

Im curious, are energy drink cookies still able to get baked? Are their ingredients still in production?

My roommate (we're close friends) and I were hoping to either adopt one or bake one, and I'm curious on their availability-

* I have been putting off this ask in attempts to not act biased but I feel sad and had an extremely stressful day yesterday so I am answering an ask about one of my favorite cookies.

* To answer your question, Energy Drink Cookies were an discontinued Cookie Type, however, due to the public creating more and more of the mother ingredent for an Energy Drink Cookie, Cookie Corporations silently brought back the Energy Drink Cookie recipe for the public to enjoy, but I should note that Energy Drink Cookies look completely different when first baked, both eyes intact, reclusive, and most importantly, not wearing their iconic gear.

* It's when we move to the black market that things get extremely serious, and where the Energy Drink Cookie you and your roommate are likely most familiar with comes into play. The Black Marketers, ever the absolutely delightful bunch (I am using sarcasm, dear Anon), have figured out that mixing Jam with dust contained in specific mineral deposits formed in meteorites, then dousing normal jellies to create a horrifying disease that affects only us Cookies, also known as Jellying.

* This disease, dear anon, is what is used to create the Energy Drink Cookie you likely know of. The disease in the cookie is allowed to progress into the second stage before being nullified with the use of wasabi paste mixed with water, making the Energy Drink Cookie more capable of surviving the toxic bear jelly and equipment needed to convert them into a 'true' Energy Drink Cookie. They lose their ability to see out of one eye (and sometimes even both eyes) and lose most if not all of their memories prior to the jellification process, making it extremely hard to find who exactly has been doing all of this, they thankfully can still breathe normal levels of oxygen like most cookies, they just prefer to inhale the toxic fumes to maintain their cookiemanity(?) in the fear that if they don't they will be thrown back into the process. They seem to be immune to the toxins and it acts moreso as normal fresh air for them, which is already quite anomalous.

* Anyways, usually, once the humans have their fun, they dispose of the Energy Drink Cookie in landfills, abandoned alleyways, abandoned towns/cities or isolated islands where they are left to fend for their own. This means the majority of the cookie type is extremely distrustful towards humans, I have only one or two of these Energy Drink Cookies, and they hardily leave their rooms these days....

* I know they're alive of course, seeing all futures and all, but that does not mean that the behavior does not concern me. If you are concidering on taking in an Energy Drink Cookie who has went through the Jellyfication process, I highly suggest bringing gas masks, the toxic fumes that Energy Drink Cookies produce is no joke and can seriously kill you in notime if you are not prepared! If not, a normal Energy Drink Cookie can be baked or adopted in your local centers and ingredient stores.

(I will link back to this post when I manage to create some illustrations of both variants of energy drink cookie)

#energy drink cookie #cookie run #cookie run au #roommates au #cookie factoids #would this count as experimentation? #I'll just tag it just in case. #experimentation tw #experimentation cw #tw experimentation #cw experimentation

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: May 15th Part 1

It’s been longer than usual since our last answer session, so I’m answering a ton of questions today! It’s so big I split it into two parts. Thank you for the patience on getting a response to these.

Thanks for reaching out to us with your questions and kind words ^^!

Sorry if this has been asked before or isn't something you can say but is there anyway for Cove to confess in step 4? I wanted him to confess in step 3 and followed all the steps to make him do it but ended up texting my family instead of Cove at the end.

Yeah, Cove can confess in Step 4!

Hello! I heard that Cove is on the spectrum, albeit undiagnosed. As someone who is ND, this makes me UNBELIEVABLY happy. I literally was brought to tears! Thank you for that!

Out of curiosity, will Cove be diagnosed in Step 4? I have a strong feeling y’all won’t make it a HUGE deal/make it out to be negative, so I’m not worried about that whatsoever! I’m just curious just he’ll off handedly mention it? Or will it just not be touched upon at all (which is ok!)?

Either way is ok, I’m just curious!

I’m happy it made you happy! Admittedly, Cove simply being someone with autism that grew up not being diagnosed was something I included for myself. I didn’t really think anyone would notice or ask about it, aha. But players did start to have questions about his traits, so I started to talk about it outside of the game. It’s great to see it get such a positive response and now I do feel like having it be a non-topic may have been the wrong choice and bringing it up would’ve been good in terms of having positive representation for that. I don’t know if I’ll find a way to mention it in Step 4 now, with how far along the game is, but I am at least thinking about it when originally it wasn’t something I really even considered.

Hey!  Just wanted to say thank you for Our Life.  It's been a bright spot and a needed escape in what's otherwise been a crummy year.  I know you just did a Q&A post but I figured I'd ask anyway.  Was just curious about Step 4.  Will it be similar to the other Steps in that it consists of several different moments or will it just be one long sequence?

Step 4 is shorter than the prior Steps because it’s just an epilogue rather than a full arc of a story. It’ll consist of scenes that all happen in a set row one after the other. There won’t be a collection of Moments to choose from. But it’ll still be very sweet and fun.

¡hola!, you see, first I want to say that I love Our Life! (°◡°♡) and I have 2 important questions, would Cove cry watching titanic? and what is the saddest part according to him? (sorry for my english) 

Titanic would make him cry. He’d probably think the parts showing people who aren’t able to make it to the life boats/are choosing to stay and go down with the ship were the saddest.

Hello, I wanted to ask how much you earn with creating games? Like is it possible to make a living? Thank you >< <3 

How much I earn varies a lot month to month based on Steam sales, Patreon backers, and how many projects are in full production at the time. It’s also hard to say how much I make historically, since that also changes dramatically year by year. But I do earn enough to work on these games full time! I really appreciate all the support that allows me to do that.

Hey!! I was wondering for the 18+ Our Life moment, will there be an emphasis on safety/comfort for all involved? I feel like there  would be just going off of what the rest of the game is like, but I wanted to ask 

Yes! Cove is a nervous boy himself and also super cautious about doing anything the MC doesn’t like, so clear consent from both is absolutely needed for anything to happen. It’s a conversational sexy times Moment with stops/starts so the two can talk about how they’re feeling, rather than a heat of the moment just going for it kind of thing.

Hey!! I was wondering how long the wedding dlc would be? Will it be broken up into moments, or just one big event? 

It’s one long series of scenes all in a row rather than a collection of Moments to pick from. It’s the shortest and the least expensive of all the DLCs. It’s not super crucial to get and those who aren’t into big weddings can totally skip it without worry.

HELLO AMAZING DEVS 👋 i am hopelessly in love with the worst guy ever (jeremy king) and because of this i have a really stupid question: does he really hate people who are nice to him? TvT he’s too cute to be mean to istg it’s a miracle JB held the urge to be consistently nice to him bc just look at his FACE he is so cute! thank you for jeremy’s route it’s so lovely (and awful bc he’s scum 11/10) it gave me so much laughs LMAO i hope you guys have a good day!! 

Haha, thank you. He doesn’t hate them but he’s certainly not pleased with them. Jeremy is either uncomfortable with or annoyed by people being sweet on him, depending on how they approach it. He’s far more comfortable with jerkiness. It lets him relax and he can be himself without it being a problem, since he’s also a jerk. He feels a level of guilt being such a little punk to kind people, not enough to be a better person but still.

Has Cove dated or been interested in someone other than MC? 

Nope! He stays single over the course of the game if he’s not with the MC.

Is Step 4 more mature? Or it's gonna be set in similar atmosphere as Step 3? 

Step 4 is a similar atmosphere as Step 3. Though, it’s actually kind of less mature-topic heavy than Step 3 since it’s just a ‘hey, let’s check in on the gang to see what they’re up to’ style epilogue rather than a story arc with serious issues.

will there be new music for now and forever?? or will the old our life music be reused? 

It’s gonna be a brand new soundtrack. We’ll be opening up a job position for that soon.

Hi, is it okay if we use the assets in Our Life (like the sprites) for fanworks or fan content content, like edits? 

Sure! Just as long as you don’t use the assets made by those artists to make money.

Quick clarification on Step 3 choices: I hope I didn't come off rude (because I LOVE the game, really!!), I was just curious because the intro threw me off at times. For example, you could choose how you felt about Elizabeth in Step 2 (Dinner), but during the Step 3 intro, it says that you got closer to Liz and I didn't get a choice in it. 

For the example, it can’t be helped that you’re closer to Liz in Step 3 than you were in Step 2 because she’s inherently closer to the MC regardless of whether you liked her or not in Step 2. Her feelings are out of your control and the game isn’t so dramatic that you can push her affection away and not let her bond with you, haha. But ‘being closer’ can still be relative. For some people maybe that means you’re best buds now and for others it might just mean you’re not fighting all the time any more. If there’s other parts you want to mention, feel free to let us know.

Did the illustrator for Our Life change? 

We have many OL artists! The main artists who set the game’s style haven’t changed, but there’s multiple other artists who help finish assets.

So Miranda's type is confident and outgoing, huh? So...does that mean Terri's her type?? 👀 

Haha, sorry for the late reply on this. As you might’ve seen in our post yesterday- yeah that is her type.

Hey! First, I just want to say I've really enjoyed how detailed OL got with gender identity and sexuality and how respectful the topics were handled! It's been so wonderful to play since the experiences could be close to my own (I'd be lying if I said I didn't tear up at parts). Second, I was wondering, would future games explore the topic of polyamory? I'd love to see more visual novels allow room for that and I saw you've explored the topic before.

Keep up the amazing work! ♡

Thank you! We do want to include polyamory in at least some of our future projects. Floret Bond, which might be what you’re referring to when mentioning how we’ve explored the topic before, is on hold unfortunately. So right now I’m not sure when something might release or what will be the first game of ours to come out with poly relationships (we might do something else before FB is done). We’ll have see how things ends up coming together.

Hey um. I feel like im not allowed to ask this on the private discord cuz people will yell at me but why is there so much focus on OL2 and not finishing OL1 stuff? I like the new people but i kind of want to finish cove's story and get derek and baxter stuff first. didn't people pay for it? 

I’m sorry, I don’t understand entirely what’s making that situation a concern. There’s a channel in the discord for critique where no one is allowed to comment back. People can voice things they’re worried about without any way for others to push back on it. And the two teams working on the OL games are different. We try to post pretty often about how we’re hiring brand new people to start on Our Life: Now & Forever. The OL1 team is all still working on OL1 like normal. There’s only more updates on the Patreon for OL2 because the expansions to the first game are mostly script-based at this point while OL2 is just starting to get all its art, which means there’s a lot more to show off as previews.

Also, there was a Kickstarter for the first Our Life, if that’s what you mean by people paying for it. But one of the stretch goals was to start Our Life 2 early, before fully completing Our Life 1, so that the new game could be out sooner. It wouldn’t make sense to stop doing OL2 work because that would be going against what backers were promised. Maybe you didn’t get the full story before and hopefully this clears it up!

Hello! I know it's up to every player but.. What is your recommendation for playing order? Did you ever had any timeline  events planned? 

I didn’t make the events with a planned timeline. The events got made simply as I had ideas for them and then I just kind of organized them from left to right on the screen in an order to space out more dramatic ones between more lighthearted ones. Any order the player wants to go with is totally valid!

Hi! It's Step 4 a paid dlc or update? And how long it's planned to be? Ps. Love the game! 

The Step 4 epilogue is free! The Cove Wedding DLC does cost money, though. Those are planned to be shorter than the usual Steps/DLCs.

Will we have options for what sort of job the MC might have by the time step 4 takes place? 

Yeah, you can. It’s not super exact or detailed, but there are options about it.

Is there a pandemic in Our Life world, or is it just in a better timeline with no pestilence? 

Our Life is pandemic-free! That didn’t exist when we began working on the project and it’s not something we’d like to feature in this story now that it has unfortunately come along, aha.

Hi, you said that you can play tic-tac-toe or hangman with Cove in Boating if you're sick/scared but I keep getting tic-tac-toe. Am I doing something wrong?

After being sick/scared you have to continue to be upset/unwell. If you calm down and decide to just chill you’ll end up playing tic-tac-toe.

Hi, GB Patch! Since Lee was initially commissioned to only appear in two Steps does this mean she won't appear in the Wedding DLC? I really like her character so it'll be a little weird to not have our cousin at our wedding, aha.

She is gonna be in Step 4/the wedding DLC after all! We’re still working with her creator to make sure it fits with what they wanted.

Is Sunset Bird based on a real place? Asking for a friend, not trying to move there or anything. 👀

It’s based on small beach towns in So-Cal, but not one specific town you could go see in real life, I’m afraid. It’d be nice if it was real, though.

—– —– —– —–

We released a new FAQ! It answers common questions and we’ll keep adding more to it. Please check there before sending an ask. FAQ   Also, if you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Blog

#our life #Our Life Beginnings & Always #Our Life: Now & Forever #ask #gb patch #gb patch games #xoxo droplets

[chasseuses]

reasons why i love jade leech part 3

I don't know why I'm doing this again I am a big fool goodbye ☠️ but ahhahahwhahjwhsjfhfjfnfkbdsjbdkdbjd im a doormat for him so. haha. I'll just. fukcignvkjgknv everyone pls look away this is the last post i swear 🤩

Part 1, 2

So.... 🤡 Hi I'm back again with another simp post I'm your local Jade simp and I'm here to point out reasons why I'm an absolute doormat for this eel and why I'm staying as one.

I'M FUCKIFNCGD. SCRVEN AMWIANAJWBAJVWKQVWKAGAKAVDKFBYKDGSKEIANSJAMEINSLENDKEBEKSBEKSHEKDJEKSJRKDJRKDHSKDHKEHSKEBSKEJDLDHDKDBDKHRKDBEKSHEKSUSMS

Ok so, URGFKFHDKDUDKSJSKFHDKGDKDHD if you've been here long enough or something i think i posted something about his initial birthday suit up illustration here which i wrote while i was sobbing and being overly emotional over him.

BUT BASICALLY. IT WAS ABOUT HIS SMILE. I MEAN RTHGJKHJGK JADE LEECH..... SMILING.............N N .VJV.JV. WITHOUT ANY ULTERIOR MOTIVES...... IM FUCKFING DEAD YO!!!!!

HEAR ME OUT. I JUST GJVKJGKVNGKV ... dont u think there's just something about someone as shady as jade who looks shady 90% of the time look like he's not shady for the first time ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ

idk if that made sense but yeah.

ALSO IDK IF ANYONE WAS SIMPING HARD ENOUGH TO NOTICE BUT LIKE 😭 IF U COMPARE HIS HANDS TO FLOYD'S THERE'S A DIFFERENCE.

and now if you've known me long enough to know that i am a big fan of his hands, you'll know that i went absolutely crazy over this detail!!!!!! THEY WERE ROUGHER THAN FLOYD'S AND THAT WAS JUSTHGJJGKGKFNKFKGNGKGNFKDDJFKGNGKFJF A DIRECT HIT TO THE GUT WHAT THE FUCK DISPLEX YOU CANT DO THIS TO US 😭😭😭😭😭

do u see the fork he's holding?

yeah

i wanna be that fork so bad

im not even kidding

i legit want to be that fork.

why?

.

haha.

you dont need to know

ANYWAYS. ONTO THE STORY 🥰

we got a lot of lore for the twins this time around and i am tHRIVING :BIBBEK:

"However, and this is unusual for me, but so many people wishing me ‘Happy birthday’ has made me rather embarrassed." HELP?????????&(&!4(£;#(-__8-##(-_(£+£(£ I II I I I I HUCHJWNWISHEJDHWOHSKWGSKSYAKGSKA HI KAUAKSGKAGSKSGSJAYJAGSJAGAJSYSIGSJGSJSHSJAHsks

Their mother!!! Uses!!! -san!!!! At the end of their names!!!!!!! Which got me going 🧐 that is not usual at all!!!!! wtf is going on in the leech household

a lot of ppl theorized mafia stuff and all of that which honestly makes sense imo and also because i find that hella hot HAHSMDGSKDHKSJS mr leech...... 😳 mafia.... HELPGKFJKGJFKF

wait. won't that mean he's rich.

bonus points eyy /j GFJFHFJDHJFNF

"Well, they do say that married couples take after each other… It’s good that they get along well." MR LEECH YOUR HAND IN MARRIAGE RFNJVJKHKGKGKOGJGKVJKFCKIJGKTJKFFJKDHDKXHFFHFJ

guys im losing it

if that wasn't already obvious RHUFHGUF

HELLO????????? ONE OF THE REASONS WHY HE LIKES TERRARIUMS??1?"!"!'! HELPFKVKV CONTROL IT'S CONTROL

"Whether they live or die is also up to me…" i just think.

no i dont think but you get what i mean why the fuck is that line lowkey hot lmfao something is wrong with me

i dont knwo why the fuck but the fact that he likes unpredictability is also kinda????? lmao how boring was ur life that everything u did went exactly your way 😭 how does that bring u amusement i cant relate gomen mr leech

or am i completely wrong idk 🗿 mr leech tell me more about you onegai

Ok honestly, before the birthday card came out, I thought their earrings were like,,, from their parents or something. like heirlooms!! i thought they were precious in that aspect but what i rlly didn't expect is for them to fckinghgkgngknfkf FIGHT A DAMN STURGEON FOR ITS SCALES 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

deadass why would a sturgeon challenge them anyways 🧐 and the twins were just like, "ok sure but can we have your scales if we win" and they rlly did 😭 just how strong were you guys before middle school wtf!!!!

and they turned the scales into earrings 🧐 which is now what they wear!! p cute

they're apparently popular to use as amulets in the coral sea so i. i fucking rotted over this AHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA hrufhfigjofhckfbcjc should i delve deeper into this? no. but perhaps you can find out what my rot is about just by reading this single bullet

"Floyd and I have gone near beaches on nights with fireworks as well." HELEPEHLEPDFKLEGSLDOSODB EGHFKCNDKMCURLDHLDGSMX

WATCHIFNFG FIREOEKSKF WITHHF JADE AJFNJFVJFHKDHF

ohmigod this is getting way longer than intended 🤡 should i continue

yeah fucj it HFJVHFJHCJFHJCJ everybody pls ignore my rot 😌

as all of you know, jade wears purple eyeliner. that's right.

Purple eyeliner.

Why does this matter, you ask? Oh sweet summer child, it may not matter to you but to me—eyeliner is super fucking hot I kid you not I started crying at night when I thought about this and wrote a mini essay about it like a fool so I'm just going to.

I am legitimately losing my shit over this like-?? Who allowed you to fucking put on eyeliner? You're already deadly without them and more so with them.

It honestly makes me wonder if he puts this on his own or not but seeing how deft he is with his hands, it's not a stretch to assume that he puts it on his own.

And I find that really hot since look at those clean strokes..!! He's better at applying them than me. I have this desire to let him do my makeup but when I think about it I start making incomprehensible noises and bury my face into my pillow. Purple eyeliner just-? Looks so good on him?

It should be illegal at this rate he looks so tempting I hate it. Sometimes I just have this urge to ruin in, I don t care how I just want to smudge it for some reason. Like deadass, I just want you all to appreciate how good his eyes look!

HELP HIS EYESDHFHTKHEKFHDKFHDMFHKDHFKSGDK IM FUCKFINDG LSOING IT

WHY DO I LOVE HIS EYES SO MUCH I DONT FUCKING KNOW I'VE NEVER BEEN A FAN OF CHARACTERS WITH MISMATCHED EYES BUT WITH HIM IM JUSTHGJJFJG KG NVM

His eyes are fucking beautiful, man. 🤡💞 Could stare at them for hours and never get tired!!!!

Need I say more?

BRO IM FUVKGIGNVJKGVKNGKFHFKFFJF HIS TEETH IM CRYIGGN WHAT THE ACTUALLY FUCK I KNEW THEY WERE SHARP BUTJGKVJGKGJFKGJCKFJKCFJKFFHKCJFKGJDOFHKDHFKDHDKDHDJ BARKBARKBARKBARK

I mean what 🗿

guys displex is insane because they literally made jade have two ssrs in a row with banners that were available at the same time do you know how painful that was for me

when jamil bday card dropped all i lost ebg because i panicked over the thought of a jade bday card and started saving!!! and i did!!!! i managed to save up 100 pulls and i was so fucking chill after that but then,

abema stream happened

i was asleep when that happened so when i woke up i had like 283628 pings in discord telling me that he has an ssr for the halloween event and i was just 🗿 yo say sike his bday is soon displex must be joking

haha nope! they were dead serious.

that shit was painful i started crying 🤡 what the fuck because i didn't have enough gems for both ssrs and his halloween card was just absolutely beautiful.

so i went insane and saved 200 copies of the same jade card in attempt to make him come home before pity so i dont have to whale

I mean,

Black nails.

The bandages.

The harness.

The hat is kinda ugly but that's ok.

THE BELTS AT HIS WAISTFJTKDJRKFBFKFHOFHDKDHDKSGDKSHSKXHSKJS

SO I WAS REALLY DESPERATE AHHSHDHFJFGHJFJF THANKFULLY THEY BOTH CAME HOME BEFORE PITY SO TYSM JADE I LOVE U FOR THAT AHAHJAHDJ

oh shit this got long so imma just end this here 🐬 if you read this far, congrats HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

#reasons why i love jade leech #twisted wonderland #twst #twst meme #disney #jade leech #octavinelle #twst jade #twisted wonderland jade #simp post #HELP IM CRYINGJGJFKFK I JUST #I DONT KNOW WHAT CAME OVER ME I JUST HAD THE NEED TO MAKE THIS #🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿 PLEASKEKDKD I JUST LOVE HIM #bRO I #stan jade leech #o shit o fuck 🤡 #i just realized what i wrote in this whole post #i am not thirsty i swear

[dreamingabouthendery]

Soarin’ (m)

pairing: jaemin x reader

au: disneyland worker!jaemin and reader

genre: fluff, smut

word count: 6.4k

warnings: smut, swearing, mentions of drugs (you’ll see), descriptions of sick? slight tainting of childhood (not enough to scar), controversial opinions (but not literally), unfunny humour

specific smut warnings (in case you dont want spoilers): fingering, blowjob, unprotected sex (but assume character is on the pill), semi-public sex?

summary: You have worked at Disneyland since the first year of uni, which has all but destroyed your ideals of magic. But when a new boy becomes the Mickey to your Minnie, you can’t help but find yourself intrigued by the bright-eyed newbie. Maybe Disneyland is magic, afterall. (this sucks im so sorry)

very, very heavily inspired by this thread on reddit. also, i hope you enjoy! any feedback will be much appreciated (this is my first fic as im sure youll be able to tell)

Ah, Disneyland, ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’. If you’re a child, that is. Not only can you meet your favorite characters who are probably doing lines in the back between rounds, but you have the honour of being able to watch them dangle helplessly from a wire during the firework display and narrowly avoid death. It’s no wonder you’ve been working there since your first year of uni.

‘Johnny told me there’s a new Mickey coming today.’ Eva, Princess Tiana and, quite frankly, the only decent princess in the whole park, says. She’s currently struggling to pull the long, white gloves over her own blue plastic pair of gloves she puts on for ‘safety reasons’ - her words, not yours. Though, it’s not like you can blame her when the outfits only get washed...well, never.

The two of you are currently the only two in the spacious dressing room which is permanently accompanied by the stench of sweat clinging to the walls, especially since it’s summer.

‘Oh, really?’ You ask from in front of her on the worn wooden bench, pulling your clunky yellow shoes on that dwarf your feet in their enormous size. It took you months to be able to walk in them without constantly tripping. Thankfully, it seems they at least got a wash after being puked on a few days ago.

She nods, moving towards the vanity and smoothing down a stray hair. ‘I know, it didn't take them long. Poor Jeremy, though.’

You hum in agreement. Jeremy ran into some trouble whilst covering a shift for the Donald Duck regular, resulting in a few broken ribs, a black eye and a dislocated shoulder. Or so the NDA requires you to say, anyway. Needless to say he quit on the spot.

‘____?’ You turn and see Johnny, your manager, making his way over to you with a cute guy in tow. ‘This is Jaemin. Jaemin, this is ____. He’s the new weekend Mickey regular. I need you to show him around Toontown discreetly,’ He gives you a pointed look to remind you that your characters aren’t supposed to talk. ‘And then you can camp out in Mickey’s House until the attractions close.’

You smile at Jaemin and he smiles back sheepishly as Johnny walks away without another word. Jaemin has arguably the prettiest smile you’ve ever seen, accompanied by the prettiest lips and the prettiest - is that too many ‘pretty’s? -  twinkling eyes and you can wholeheartedly say you have no problem showing him around ‘discreetly’.

‘Hi, Jaemin.’ You say, suddenly aware of your current state of half-dress with your suit still unzipped and bunched around your waist. You catch him glancing at your exposed top-half and quickly zip up the back before clearing your throat and gesturing towards the locker opposite yours. ‘Mickey’s suit is usually kept in there.’

‘Uh, thanks.’ He turns quickly before looking back at you, clearly not wanting to ask you to leave but not wanting to change in front of you.

‘Meet you outside?’ You take the hint and stand up, grabbing Minnie’s head and placing it over your own.

He nods gratefully and you leave.

‘You’ll have to get used to that, you know.’ You say quietly as he joins you. For a late Saturday afternoon in the summer, the park isn’t as busy as usual; only the occasional family loiters in Toontown, though in the distance you can see the beginnings of a crowd forming in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle in preparation for the fireworks as the sun begins to set.

‘Used to what?’

‘To seeing other cast members undressed and to them seeing you undressed.’ You say simply, waving to a child with a short brown bob and bucket hat that’s walking towards you as you head slowly from the staff area towards Goofy’s Playhouse. The child stops and asks both of you for your autographs, something that every Disney cast member has to perfect before they get to wear their suit.

‘Right,’ He mutters when she leaves. ‘What happened to the guy before me?’

You glance at him from the corner of your eye, momentarily forgetting you can’t see his face. ‘What’ve you heard?’

‘Nothing, why?’

You sigh. ‘He was jumped by some asshole teenagers. You don’t need to worry, though,’ You add quickly at his sharp intake of breath. ‘You aren’t dressed as Donald Duck so you should be fine.’ You joke.

He laughs slightly at that. ‘Who thought dressing up as a kids’ character could be so dangerous?’

‘Oh, you have no idea.’ You laugh, a little too loudly, drawing more attention to yourself than usual but automatically correct your pitch to match Minnie Mouse’s. You wave at the kids that turn to look at you and they hurry over, asking to take pictures. After they run back to their parents, you turn to Jaemin and ask, ‘So, why did you apply for the job?’

‘Wow, it’s like a second interview.’ You shake your head, mumbling a quick apology. ‘I’ve never actually been to Disneyland before, and you know,’ He gestures his hand aimlessly. ‘This is supposed to be The Most Magical Place on Earth’ - he quotes - ‘so, I guess I wanted to experience the magic firsthand.’

‘That’s Magic Kingdom.’ You correct automatically.

‘Huh?’

‘That’s Magic Kingdom’s motto. Ours is ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’.’

‘Huh. I guess there is a difference, then.’

‘Of course there’s a difference. Magic Kingdom isn’t nearly as good as Disneyland.’ You say simply.

Jaemin snorts. ‘I’m sorry I offended you.’

‘Anyway,’ You say, ‘If you’re looking for a magical experience, you’re coming at it from the wrong angle.’

‘Exactly how bad is it to work here?’ He questions, though you can hear a hint of amusement in his tone.

‘The best I can give you is unforgettable.’ You would explain to him the number of times you’ve caught both members of the public and workers having sex in various places including on various rides, and how Haunted Mansion is notorious for having people leave their loved one’s ashes in it despite the fact they just get vaccumed up, but it’s only his first day and you don’t want to scare him off.

‘Gotcha.’ He merely says and you continue on to show him the Chip ‘n’ Dale Treehouse, your favorite place in Toontown. At night, the treehouse is lit in such a way as to make it whimsical, the ragged branches no longer menacing as they are during the daytime. You can’t complain at the fact that it’s quiet due to the fact that most people overlook it, either, instead mistaking it as decoration and not an actual attraction that you can go in.

This makes it the perfect place to hide out in the nighttime, when people are busy with the most popular attractions and has made it sort of an escape to you. Well, that and it’s given you a bad back.

You pause in front of Mickey’s House. ‘This is your crib,’ you joke. ‘Are you ready for your first official shift?’ You say, feigning drama in your tone.

‘Oh, gee, Minnie, I sure am!’ He replies in Mickey’s tone, emulating it perfectly and making both of you crack up.

‘I have to warn you, though, expect your arm to go dead within the first few minutes from all the waving.’

‘Noted. This job isn’t going to give me carpal tunnel syndrome, is it?’ He asks, only half serious.

‘No, but it may make you hate kids.’

He chokes, but before he can say anything in reply, a small boy who looks about four illustrates your point by pulling down his denim shorts and taking a dump right on the tarmac next to the hideous grey mouse-shaped letterbox.

You can read Jaemin’s horror in his speechlessness as you merely sigh and pull out your radio to call in, ‘We have a code Pooh outside Mickey’s House, over.’

As you walk in your front door to your shared apartment with your roommate, Ailee, you catch her and her boyfriend, Sam, making out on the couch in the living room. You two met in the first week of uni when you both ended up at some frat party that you hated and hit it off.

‘Ew, gross, guys. You have a bedroom, you know.’ You say, throwing your bag on the coffee table and slumping down on the couch next to them, sinking into the plush white cushions.

Ailee merely throws her head back and laughs before saying, ‘Tell me all about it.’

You frown. ‘About what?’

She tuts at you impatiently. ‘Work, duh. Everyday you come home it’s been a bad day,’ She plays with a few strands of your hair comfortingly. ‘So, tell me about it.’

You scrunch your nose up. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary happened.’ You say simply, looking at your nails.

Sam laughs. ‘Even I know you look at your nails when you’re lying, ____.’

Your mouth falls open in shock, offended. ‘I do not.’ You insist and scowl internally.

‘You do,’ Ailee agrees. ‘But it’s okay, that doesn’t matter right now. What’s the juicy story for today?’

You roll your eyes. ‘I’m glad my misery is so entertaining. The only thing that’s different is that there’s a new weekend Mickey regular.’

Ailee and Sam share a pointed look. ‘And?’ She asks, drawing out the syllable.

‘And he’s cute. I guess.’ You add as an afterthought.

Ailee snorts. ‘You guess?’

You groan. ‘Okay, he’s cute, period.’ You concede.

‘So, ask him out.’

‘Can’t. It’s against the rules.’ You mumble.

She gives you an exasperated look. ‘____, sweetie, you’re the most lax person with a job still in the whole park. What’s one date to you that nobody knows about?’

You bite your lip. She does have a point. You think about how cute Jaemin was when he was nervous to greet the kids at the House and hide your grin.

‘She’d have to actually see him again, though, right?’ Sam interjects, interrupting your daydream.

‘Sam, don’t be such a Debby downer.’ Ailee whines.

Whilst it’s true that cast members in a couple usually split up, you doubt they would make Jaemin do his second shift on his own. Resolving to pluck up the courage to ask him out, you go to bed that night apprehensive about the following day.

Apparently God is punishing you for some unknown reason, because you don’t see Jaemin at all that day, or the week after. In fact, you don’t even catch a glimpse of him or the big round ears that are telling of Mickey’s character.

Eve informs you that Johnny teamed him up with Goofy for ‘variety’, meanwhile you’re being sent over to Soarin’ in Grizzly Peak, the most boring area in the whole park due to its unpopularity. You can’t help but worry slightly about Jaemin, though, thinking of the previous time you saw Daniel, Goofy’s actor, when he pulled a flask from seemingly nowhere inside his costume and took a long, deep drink before heading back out, slightly stumbling.

Before you step out, Bella, the girl who plays Cinderella (no, the irony is not lost on you), stops you and says, ‘Oh, ____, I heard the new Mickey Mouse arrived yesterday. Fingers crossed you don’t scare him into quitting, too.’ Ever since you auditioned for the part of Cinderella and lost it to her, Bella has taken to rubbing your inferiority in your face every chance she gets.

You roll your eyes and Eve says back, ‘Oh, fuck off, Bella,’ She turns to you. ‘She’s just jealous ‘cause she thinks he’s cute and he hasn’t even acknowledged her yet.’

You snort as Bella narrows her eyes and stomps away as best she can in her flimsy costume heels.

‘He was asking after you when he came in earlier, you know.’ Eve says.

‘Jaemin was?’

She hums before saying, ‘He looked so disappointed to be paired up with Goofy.’

You feel the blood rushing to your face as you smile. ‘Really?’

Eve looks at you knowingly. ‘Yep, said he wanted to thank you for being so understanding yesterday since no one wants to babysit the newbee.’

‘I’d happily babysit the newbee anytime if they looked like that.’ You say and Eve laughs.

Whilst you’re at the most boring attraction in the park, the day is still no less than eventful. You encounter a child stuck in a tree trying to skip the line for Anna and Elsa’s Royal Welcome on your way to the bathroom due to the nearest one being blocked off. After you manage to actually use the bathroom, you’re surprised to see Elsa herself there, half-dressed at the sink and you can’t help but wonder if that’s the reason the line is so long. To top it all off, one of the only times you manage to fill the ride at Soarin’, you notice a couple getting on while holding a backpack that’s moving and alert the ride operators. When they finally report back to you that there was a six-month-old baby in there, they have to convince you not to ring child protective services.

After you slam your locker closed in the deserted dressing room, you sink down on the rigid bench, putting your head in your hands and massaging your growing headache.

‘____,’ A voice starts and you jump, looking up to see Johnny standing above you, clipboard in hand. He barely gives you a second glance when he startles you, instead pretending not to notice and continuing, ‘I need you next Friday for a grad night.’

You groan. Grad nights are the worst events Disneyland continuously puts on, in the past coming second only to Nights of Joy, the annual Christian festival, before it was cancelled for good. Even the managers rejoiced in the abolition of Nights of Joy. ‘Can’t you find someone else to be Minnie? Everyone knows how bad grad nights are.’

Johnny sighs. ‘Fine, then. I’ll put you on watching the cameras for Star Tours with Jaemin.’

You ignore the way you want to immediately jump on the chance for some one-on-one time with Jaemin and raise an eyebrow. ‘Aren’t you not supposed to do that? You know, because he’s new and I’m not trained in…’ You trail off at the glare he’s giving you and purse your lips, nodding your head in acceptance.

‘Great, thanks.’ He says sarcastically and walks out.

At least the next time you return to Hell on Earth it won’t be in a Minnie costume.

You feel strange as you unlock and push open the door to the CCTV monitor room. If you had to put money on it, you would say it’s because this isn’t your job and you technically shouldn’t be here, but you’re not much of a gambler.

The heavy metal door gives way, opening to a small room with roughly fifty monitors, each displaying the Star Tours ride, the attraction itself as a whole and the surrounding area. You note the odd statue opposite the entrance that you don’t remember the name of - the satellites surrounding a distinct shape that is rocket-like. You shake your head internally at the sight. Why are the only pretty decorations reserved for Fantasyland?

You also note the dim red lighting and frown in confusion as your eyes land on Jaemin, sitting in an office chair in front of the wall of screens, wearing the same uniform consisting of a pale blue shirt and black trousers as you, except wearing it a hundred times better.

He turns upon your entrance, smiling as he takes in your attire. ‘I thought I’d set the mood with some lighting.’ He grins cheekily.

‘Oh?’ You say, stepping into the room, locking the door behind you. ‘What mood is that exactly?’

His smile grows wider as he says, ‘Adventure. We’re in for a night, so I hear.’

You groan, ‘You’ll wish you never agreed to doing this.’ You make your way to the chair next to his, sitting down on the flat cushion and leaning back.

‘How bad can it really be? These are literally a bunch of eighteen-year-olds who aren’t of legal drinking age yet and they’re supervised.’

You shook your head in mock sympathy. ‘Sweet, sweet, naive boy,’ You say. ‘Now you’ve jinxed it.’ You eye his coffee cup and wrinkle your nose in distaste at the black liquid. It looks like you’re staring into the pits of Hell. ‘What is that atrocity?’

He follows your gaze and laughs. ‘It’s coffee. Wanna try some?’ He maintains eye contact as he takes a sip and then offers it to you.

‘God, no. I have self-respect.’

He places it back down next to an intimidating set of controls, a hint of amusement in his eyes. ‘Also, I wanted to say thank you for the other week. For showing me around and stuff.’ He looks down shyly.

‘Oh, it’s, um, no problem. How have you been coping?’ You ask slightly awkwardly, not knowing what to do at his sudden personality flip-flop.

‘It’s a lot harder than I imagined it to be, honestly. I thought the worst that could happen would be screaming children and impatient parents.’ He admits.

You nod. ‘I thought the same when I first started last year. Little did I know the Karens were the least of my problems.’

He laughs breathily. ‘Tell me about it. I don’t know how you’ve managed to last so long.’

You shrug, embarrassed. ‘I just like making the kids’ day I guess.’

He coos and you push him lightly, smiling. ‘Why don’t we play a game?’ He asks, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

You narrow your own eyes. ‘What kind of game?’

‘Hmm,’ He pretends to think, tapping his chin. ‘How about twenty-one questions?’

‘Okay,’ You say slowly. ‘What are our rules going to be?’

He smirks. ‘You only get one get-out-of-jail card. And if you use it, you have to do what the other person says.’

You sigh. ‘Fine. Then, follow-up questions to your answers don’t count.’

‘Deal. I’ll go first,’ At your mildly worried look, he says, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you. What are you studying in uni?’

‘Business and management.’ You say instantly, and he looks intrigued. ‘It was either that or English lit, and my parents weren’t too keen on me studying that.’

He frowns. ‘Why not?’

You avoid eye contact as you answer. ‘They’re both doctors,’ You clear your throat. ‘Are you in uni?’ You love your parents with all your heart but sometimes you wish they would just be happy with you being happy.

He takes the hint and moves on. ‘Yeah, I’m actually doing photography.’ He says, scratching the back of his neck.

Your head perks up. ‘Really? That’s so cool. My roommate is studying photography, too. Is that what you want to do after you graduate?’

His face relaxes. ‘I’m not really sure, to be honest. I just know it’s something I’m passionate about, you know?’ At your nod of encouragement, he continues, ‘There’s just something so amazing about capturing a moment forever in a way that really brings out its true beauty.’

You give him a small smile. ‘That sounds really special.’

He shrugs, though you can tell he appreciates it. ‘Anyway, it’s your turn to answer. Do you have a boyfriend?’

If you were drinking something, you’re sure you would have choked. ‘I-no?’

He looks slightly put out. ‘Is it complicated?’

You shake your head, maybe a little too hard. ‘No, sorry, you just caught me off guard. No, I don’t have a boyfriend.’ He looks instantly brighter. ‘Why, are you asking me out?’ You tease.

He blushes. ‘I mean, uh, I, um-’

‘Oh my God,’ You laugh, though you feel disappointed. ‘It’s okay, I was only joking. Ouch.’ You’re almost glad you didn’t get a chance to ask him out and make things awkward between the two of you. Maybe not seeing him for two weeks was a sign from the universe not to fuck up.

‘I didn’t mean it like that, oh God, I’m sorry.’ He groans and buries his face in his hands.

You tap him playfully on the shoulder. ‘It’s fine,’ You can’t help but feel hurt. Why did he ask you if he doesn’t care whether you have one or not? Maybe you’re just reading too much into it. ‘My turn, anyway. What’s traumatized you the most since working here?’

‘Learning that when cast members say ‘have a Disney day’ they really mean ‘fuck you’.’

You throw your head back and laugh. ‘That’s my favorite. Although as far as things go, that’s pretty vanilla.’

‘Maybe I’m a vanilla guy.’ He teases, and you can’t help but let your mind wander to an image of him hovering over you, reaching up to intertwine your hands together as he moans sweetly in your ear and you feel your face heat up.

‘So you’re admitting you’re boring.’ You joke halfheartedly, almost off-beat.

He places his hand over his heart in mock hurt. ‘That was uncalled for. Alright then, little miss kinky, where’s the most daring place you’ve had sex?’

Your eyes widen comically. ‘I-’ You glance at the monitors and see two figures in the back row of the mostly deserted ride, one hunched over with their head in the lap of what you make out to be a guy judging by the other figure’s movements. ‘Oh my God, no!’ You cry and fumble for the microphone.

‘What? What is it?’ Jaemin asks, his eyes searching. You can tell the moment he sees what you’re seeing, because he instantly cracks up laughing.

‘It’s not funny,’ You whine, pressing the red button on the microphone and saying as firmly as you can as monotonous as you can, ‘This is a family-friendly ride. Please refrain from scarring’ - you hiss and the figure has the decency to bolt upright and you see that they’re a girl - ‘the camera operators and fellow riders. Thank you.’ The others on the ride look around in confusion, and you can see the girl turn to say something to the boy. Judging by the way she gestures, it’s safe to assume it’s something biting.

‘I thought you said this happens all the time.’ Jaemin says once he’s calmed down enough to make the words out.

‘It does,’ You keep your eye on the couple, the guy wearing a smug grin as he zips up his trousers and the girl looking meek and embarrassed. Good. Public indecency is no joke. ‘But that doesn’t make it any less gross. This is a kids’ park for goodness sake.’

‘But there aren’t any kids around.’

You give him an exasperated look. ‘Well, I would never be okay with doing it on a ride in public.’

He licks his lips and you follow the movement only slightly too closely. ‘So when I asked where the most risky place you’ve had sex is…’ He trails off, smirking.

‘You can cross a literal children’s park from the list of possibilities, and proudly so.’ You say stubbornly. ‘Please don’t tell me you have.’ You rush to say upon seeing his face.

‘I haven’t.’ He says slowly, crossing his arms over his chest and sitting back in his chair, spreading his legs. You wish they didn’t look so inviting. You wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t.

‘But?’ You probe.

‘But nothing,’ He says simply. ‘So, are you gonna answer my question or are you gonna forfeit?’

You scowl at him. ‘What do you want if I do?’ You can feel your pulse racing in both excitement and fear but you keep your face blank.

His eyes shine as he leans forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs. ‘I don’t know yet.’

You swallow at his suggestive tone. ‘Fine, I’ll tell you,’ You concede, and he seems to not know whether to be pleased or disappointed. ‘My ex was a bit of an exhibitionist. He, um, you know, touched me when we went to see a movie.’

Jaemin raises an eyebrow, but you miss the glint in his gaze. ‘I thought you weren’t down for doing it in kids’ places.’

‘We were watching Paranormal Activity.’ You say flatly.

‘And?’

‘And it’s rated eighteen plus!’ You defend.

‘Is that the furthest you’ve gone in public? No compromising positions? No p in the-’

You cut him off hurriedly before he can go any further. ‘I’ve just never done it anywhere risky,’ You sigh dramatically. ‘I think I’m vanilla, too.’

He laughs loudly. ‘You don’t have to say it like it’s a bad thing. Anyway, I never said I was vanilla.’

You frown. ‘Earlier, you did.’

‘Did I? Maybe I was just saying it to tease you.’ He smiles a wide, boyish smile, completely contradicting what he’s implying with his words.

‘Oh?’ You say breathlessly. ‘Well, okay then.’

‘Don’t believe me?’

‘I-what? I never said-’

‘Would you rather I show you?’ He offers and your breath hitches as you meet his intense eyes. The warm brown seems darker and he glances at your chest as you breathe deeply. You can’t believe he said that. In the short time you’ve known him, you’re taken aback at how quickly he can switch between shyness and confidence.

When you merely stare back at him, not knowing what to say, he stands up and closes the short distance between the two of you so that his knee grazes your own as he stands above you. ‘____,’ He says, a slight rasp in his voice. ‘I need you to say it if you want this.’

You swallow and whisper, ‘Yes.’

He cups your face with his hand, his thumb softly stroking your cheek as he brings his lips down upon yours. You lift your own hand to hold his wrist which is currently beside your face and use the other one to grip onto the arm of the chair to ground yourself in the moment.

You let loose a small whimper as he glides his tongue across your bottom lip, and you part your lips to allow it in. He grips you tighter before he pulls away from your mouth to trail wet kisses across your jaw. ‘Guess you ended up tasting my coffee, anyway, hm?’ He whispers lowly into your ear before pecking it and you shudder, with both pleasure and laughter.

‘I guess so.’ You look into his eyes and see the pure hunger that makes you squeeze your thighs together.

Jaemin notices and pulls you up gently, pushing your hips into the desk with the monitors above it. Taking the hint, you spread your legs to give him room to stand between them, and he praises a quick, ‘Atta girl’, before leaning back down to reconnect your lips. You now take note of the slight hint of coffee on his tongue this time but you don’t care as you impatiently and desperately kiss him back and wrap your arms around his neck, bringing him closer. His hand ghosts up your thigh, making you shiver in his arms. He slowly moves to unbutton your bottoms, giving you time to stop him.

In response, however, you whine at what feels like his teasing and unbutton and unzip them yourself, causing him to chuckle as he pulls away. ‘Are you impatient, baby?’ You swoon internally at the pet name and nod, biting your lip.

‘Please,’ You manage. ‘Want you to touch me.’

He moans and slides his fingers into your underwear, not wanting to tease you over them after you asked so nicely. He grins as his fingers slide in your arousal and says, ‘You’re so wet already. Do you want me to make you come all over my fingers?’

‘Fuck, yes.’ You breathe.

His eyes drink in your rapidly rising chest and the utter desire written all over your face as he gently slides a finger inside you. ‘So tight and wet. How are you gonna take my cock if you’re this tight, hm?’ You whine and he eases a second finger in and starts thrusting at a pace that makes you arch your back. 

Your hand flies to his bicep, feeling the way it flexes under your fingertips as he scissors his fingers inside of you. His thumb finds your clit and rubs hard circles into it, the pressure being just enough to make your toes curl. You lean into him and rest your head on his shoulder, pressing a swift kiss to the juncture between it and his neck. You marvel at the way goosebumps rise upon your touch and the way your breaths feel huffing against his rapidly heating skin. You can smell the faint scent of earthiness and wood from his cologne, which you take a deep breath of and breathe in his aroma as your hand winds itself in his hair and tugs when a particular deep surge of his fingers hits a spot that makes your brain go fuzzy.

‘Jaemin.’ You moan and he all but growls.    

‘That’s it, baby, say my name. Are you close? Wanna see your face when I make you cum.’ His words weigh down your lower stomach like a ton of bricks, furthering you along in your chase to find your release. He nudges your clit deliciously, teasing you by rubbing around it every now and then, pulling you away only to bring you back with ten times the sensitivity and it’s enough to push you closer to the edge faster than when you touch yourself.

You feel the coil in your stomach tightening as you nod to answer his question and unbutton your top enough to fit your hand into your bra, your fingers finding your nipple and rolling it between them. You lift your face from his shoulder and stare into the seemingly pitless black of his eyes as they’re stuck to your face and the changes in your expression as he brings you to the edge. ‘Yes, don’t stop, please.’ You manage. His features are hard to make out in the dim lighting, but you notice the way his eyes zero in on your hand stuffed into your bra and it’s when he picks up the pace, fucking his fingers into you harder that you finally let go. Your eyes roll back and your grip on his arm tightens as you moan his name like a mantra.

He takes his fingers out after riding you through your high and makes eye contact as he sucks his fingers clean. ‘Mm, sweet.’ He teases.

You hide behind your hands in embarrassment and he laughs as he pries them away from your face. ‘You gonna let me bend you over this desk, now?’ He grins.

You nod meekly, your legs trembling as you stand up to your full height. Jaemin unbuttons your blouse as you return the gesture on him, pushing his shirt open to run your fingers down the ridges in his stomach. You teasingly flick your thumbs over his nipples and he gasps, to which you smirk and repeat the motion, causing him to moan and you bite your lip at the sound. ‘Sensitive, are you?’

He slaps your ass playfully in response, pulling your trousers and underwear down in one go. You reach behind you and unclip your bra as you step out of the pool of clothing at your feet, pulling it down your arms slowly. He opens his mouth to make a remark, but decides against it as your breasts come into view. He sucks in a breath and reaches up, tugging your left nipple that’s standing to attention. ‘You’re perfect.’ He says, taking in your figure.

You smile, hearing the sincerity in his voice. ‘I want to see you, too.’ You pout, pulling on his belt loops so that he’s even closer and then reaching down to undo them.

He helps you by unbuckling his belt and letting his trousers drop to the floor. You reach into his underwear and run your fingers down his length before wrapping your hand around it and moving it up and down. He throws his head back and you kiss down his neck, tasting the bittersweet salt of his sweat and the natural flavour of his skin. You pull him out of his underwear and begin to pick up the pace but all too soon he puts his hand over yours, halting you.

‘I want to come inside you.’ He phrases it like a question and you nod, turning around and bending over the desk. His hands smooth over the flesh of your ass as he says, ‘You look so good like this.’ Jaemin runs his length between your lips to lube himself and then situates himself so that he’s pressing against your entrance. ‘Ready?’

‘Yes. Please, Jaemin.’ You push your hips back so he gets the hint.

‘That never gets old,’ He pushes himself in steadily and you gasp at the stretch and how satisfying it feels. ‘Been wanting to hear you moan my name since the first day.’

You moan as he thrusts into you, hard and fast. His pace is almost bruising, the way he grips your hips assures you that you’ll feel a smattering of fingertip-shaped soreness tomorrow when you run your fingers over the area. ‘Me too.’ You say in between breaths. He reaches up to roll your bud between his fingers and you whine; your hand travels between your legs to rub your clit. It jumps a little from sensitivity but you keep at it until you just feel pure, white-hot pleasure.

‘Fuck!’ He shouts as you clench around him once he hits a spot that has you grasping his wrist. ‘You feel so fucking good,’ He praises, kissing up your back until he’s whispering in your ear, ‘So. Fucking. Good.’ In between thrusts. You shudder and turn your head, capturing his lips in yours. The kiss is messy but neither of you can bring yourselves to care, too lost in the feeling and taste of each other to pay it any mind. The sound of your hips connecting fills the small room, echoing as it bounces off the walls until your head is filled with his moans and his skin on yours and just Jaemin, Jaemin, Jaemin.

You feel yourself hovering over the edge almost embarrassingly quick and you cry out, ‘I’m so close.’

‘Yeah? Gonna come all over my cock like a good girl?’ He says huskily and you bite your lip and nod. You never would’ve guessed the timid boy you met on the first day who looked so innocent as the new guy had such a dirty mouth. It makes you shiver all over, loving the way his words caress your skin and make your nipples stand to an impossible hardness.

‘Yeah. Wanna be good for you.’

He groans. ‘You are, baby, you’re so good for me.’ At his words, you feel yourself come undone and your legs shake from the effort of holding you up. Jaemin whines as you clench around him sporadically, your breaths coming out in ragged puffs. You swear the sound pushes you harder for longer, wanting to do everything you can to hear him make such a pretty noise again.

‘Wait,’ You say, and he stops immediately. ‘I’m too sensitive. I can’t-’ Your voice cracks.

‘Can’t what, ____? Do you want me to stop?’ You can hear the genuine concern laced in his words.

‘No, well, yes,’ You huff and turn around, letting him slide out of you and you internally cringe at the feeling of him brushing against your sensitive walls. ‘Come here.’ You reach for his hands and pull him back over to you, closing the distance he put between you after you turned around. He looks confused as you smile lazily and kiss him sloppily, your hand moving between his legs to grab him at the base and squeezing him.

He moans and breaks off the kiss. ‘____, if you want to stop-’ You shush him as you drop to your knees and his eyes light up as you lean in to kiss the tip of him lovingly.

You trail your tongue from base to tip and take him in your mouth, suckling the head.

He curses. ‘Please don’t tease, I’m so close already.’

You relent, opening your mouth as wide as you can and sinking down to fit as much of him as you can. What doesn’t fit, you stroke with your hand. You can just about fit your hand around his girth and you can taste yourself on him, something you never thought you’d like but in that moment nothing could be hotter. He fists his hands in your hair, tugging slightly to make you look up at him. When you do, you moan around him at the sight - teeth tugging on his lower lip as he lets out moans here and there when you pay extra attention to the tip and his head thrown back, baring the honey-colored skin of his neck to your hungry eyes. He finally looks down at you and you’re close enough to hear his breath hitch as he watches you take him in and out of your mouth in a trance. You twist and tug him in a way that has his thigh twitching next to your head and so you place your hands on them and take him into your throat.

It’s when you simultaneously fondle his balls that he lets out a quiet ‘fuck’, followed by an ‘I’m coming’ and thrusts shallowly, causing tears to spring in your eyes. He releases into your mouth and you swallow it down and clean him off, earning that whimper that makes your clit throb.

Jaemin pulls you to your feet and into a kiss that you both commit to; one that’s passionate and slow as you calm both of your racing hearts and come down from the high of intimacy. You know he can taste himself on you, but he doesn’t hesitate to give his all. When he breaks away, he leans his forehead against yours, leaving wet kisses all over your face and you giggle. He runs his hands up your arms and says, ‘So, can I take you on a date now?’

You look into his eyes and nod, feeling suddenly shy at his vulnerable stare. ‘Yeah, I’d like that.’

‘So,’ He says casually, pulling you in closer by wrapping his arms around your shoulders. ‘Is this officially the weirdest place you’ve had sex?’

You gasp and slap his chest lightly but he just cackles in return, pulling you back into him.

#first #five #tags #dont #work #na jaemin #na jaemin smut #na jaemin fluff #nct dream smut #nct dream fluff #nct smut #nct fluff #nct scenarios #nct dream scenarios #jaemin smut #jaemin fluff

[la5t-res0rt]

i was just sent a post from the blog who must not be named it was a post reblogged from someone who ive added to my list of really bad people but one of the things that struck me was a tag i saw in the post

antis seek therapy

we do

we do seek therapy often to combat the trauma some of us have endured through being groomed and being abused we spend time on ourselves to heal we find ways to cope and enjoy life again after it feels like parts of ourselves have been ripped from us and broken and tainted and violated

we work to be comfortable again we work to feel like ourselves again we find things we love again we allow ourselves to enjoy media again

we are taught to stand up for our own levels of comfort and to take control of the space around us we are taught mechanisms to move forward and we are encouraged to help others and support others at least thats what my therapist of multiple decades told me

we all seek shelter in our own ways and many people seek it in media its literally what so many beetlebabes shippers claim to be doing like they’re quote reclaiming some lost childhood thing unquote and yeah i think youre going about it in a terrible way that continues the cycle of pedophila and is normalizing it but thats not even what this is about right now this is about the blatant disrespect and inability to open your eyes to someone elses experience and story

so many antis are so uncomfortable with the content created by beetlebabe shippers myself included since its so similar to the material used to character veil up abuse me character veil down

we try to curate our spaces for that we say beetlebabes dni dont reblog dont put yourself in this space im making for myself but then people come in and call it gatekeeping and try to illustrate how someone is a bad person for not wanting exposure so pedophilic content like its absolutely baffling to me that people can state such a clear and simple rule and then people will whine and moan about it as if its oppression newsflash its not fucking oppression you whining slime mold being asked to not interact on the ground of pedophilia isnt fucking oppression read a book go outside and learn something anyway

people are entitled to have control over the space in which they occupy people have the control to remove people from their spaces its like ok weird metaphor but this whole ordeal with wearing masks in public spaces yes you may have the right to refuse to wear a mask and you have the right technically to harass service industry workers but the businesses that employ these workers also have the full right to not allow you in and to even remove you from the property free speech also comes with consequences this is such a simple principle like talk shit get hit metaphorically is basically the same principle

coming into someones space after they specified that that your content is something that makes them uncomfortable makes you a major asshole and also makes me think youre dumb and maybe cant read

all of that is bad enough

but to continuously berate someone and belittle their very real trauma all in the sake of you wanting to ship and post pedophilia is simply abhorrent it is truly vile behavior to come back multiple times is truly a disdainful act in my eyes and im sure im not the first person to feel this way

if youre close to people in the field of psychiatric medicine you should know better than to belittle someones trauma and as a csa survivor yourself you should have the compassion to respect someones boundaries

have you discussed this behavior with this psychiatrist husband of yours not the pedophilic stuff but this blatant disrespect and dismissal of someone elses trauma and the growth theyve achieved thanks to their therapy and counseling have you addressed this narcissistic holier than thou approach you have to discussing such serious issues with people because thats something that should be addressed along with your acceptance and tolerance and even romanticization of pedophilia in media

this is harassment and gaslighting in action folks nether receipts I hope youre taking notes because you clearly dont know what either term means and the fact that youve gone out of your way to promote this abusive behavior is yet another reason why people dislike you i can’t tag you because youve finally taken the hint and blocked me so I see no point but you know who you are also people don’t hate you because youre a woman they hate you because youre a pedophile anyway this isnt about you

back to the person im actually addressing

trauma is not an experience that is easy to read and apply to every person you yourself sourced years of trying to deal with what you went through who are you to dictate how long someone can feel pain for what theyve gone through who are you exactly to say whether or not if has been too long of a time for someones trauma to effect them you of all people should know that this shit doesnt go away it lingers and it grips you forever it doesnt matter if you’ve been apart from it for ten days or ten years

in one sentence you belittled a person for still being effected by their trauma and then in the next stated that the battle is life long which is it which statement do you actually beleive because it seems to me you only seem to care about your own horrible self without taking this other person into account at all because their response to their trauma was to break the cycle and work to make his space safer for himself and i beleive that takes more courage and more strength to actively oppose what hurt you rather than let it become how you cope and it becomes something you reintroduce into the cycle by keeping the its all okay attitude alive

i do not usually do direct posts its not exactly my style but i am so disgusted by what i have seen and what has been shared with me that it would be a disservice to not alert as many people as i can about your behavior

for a closing statement i will quote you

quote i hope you find your way to it instead of wasting all of your time being afraid of pictures and words on a screen, and picking fights with people who harm nobody unquote

what the fuck so you think youre doing by coming back over and over to belittle trauma denounce treatment and all around be unpleasant and high and mighty thats fucking harming people you narcissistic fool

im sorry you were hurt that fucking sucks but that doesnt give your the right for one fucking second to come into someones space where it was specified that you were not allowed and proceed to harass them and belittle them like you have done

@soeur-tiame you should be ashamed of yourself

dont bother responding as ive shown before with that transmed guy i dont like to waste any more of my time on filth than i need to

#ill be blocking you as soon as i know that youve seen this

[monimmortal]

My Immortal is the quintessential piece of bad fanfiction, a story so notorious that the very concept of badfic immediately brings up mention of it in virtually any circle. Much like a discussion about bad movies inevitably breaks down into someone screaming quotes from The Room into the middle distance in a terrible impression of an even worse accent, My Immortal is a guarantee whenever bad fanfiction comes up. It’s risen above the entry-level masterworks like My Inner Life and “the Goku/Anne Frank” fic, and with its sheer fame completely obscured the deep cuts of a 4 AM fanfiction.net binge where you learn things about yourself that you were much better off not knowing. Regardless of a person’s fandom or even how into fanfic they are, they understand the story to be the utter distillation of everything terrible about fanfic. There is something for everyone, whether the dark specter of a writer’s own teenage shames or something to cackle quotes from and spiral off into dramatic readings of. No fanfic has ever united people across barriers of fandom so easily.

And it’s all a lie.

Several months ago, I wrote a rather long-winded explanation of how My Immortal is not the creation of a teenage girl embodying the very worst in fanfic writers, but in fact the most masterfully-constructed piece of troll fiction ever conceived, which has, for going on nine years, managed to fool the internet at large into believing it completely genuine. But I was left unsatisfied with the initial result, which didn’t delve as deep as I would have liked into the points it raised, and missed quite a few important parts. So I’m making a second pass on the, hopefully concisely enough that I don’t need to make a third, because after writing a second essay about My Immortal, heaven knows I’m miserable now.

Special thanks to oisiflaneur for proofreading this 14,000+ word monster.

Preamble: People Who Are Young And Alive

For the purposes of best understanding everything I’m about to talk about, I suggest going and reading My Immortal first. ‘Context’ might not be the best way to explain what you’ll get by knowing what I’m referring to, but familiarity with the source material will make this a much easier read. Due to it having been long-since purged from fanfiction.net, you can find it reposted across the internet, in particular here. It is quite a read and I greatly reccomend it, although I do so as somebody who has read through countless times and liked it enough to write thousands upon thousands of words about it.

However, it’s certainly not an easy read for some people due to its clusterfuck of misspellings and incomprehensibility, so in addition to the quotes and excerpts I will provide to illustrate my points, I will briefly give a quick rundown of the major players in our tale.

Our heroine, Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way’s own words sum up her existence better than I ever could:

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

This paragraph is the first of the story, and it is also the longest of the story, saying so much and yet so little about our protagonist. We know almost nothing of the personality that she is alleged to possess, but we do know that she wishes to be familially related to Gerard Way because she finds him attractive, and presumably has an incest kink that will never be touched upon again in the story. The rest of this thesis will touch on all of the other woeful elements of this monstrous violation of ‘show, don’t tell’, but now you have the definitive look at who and what Ebony is.

Ebony is in love with Draco Malfoy, who save for a few minor elements remains largely unchanged in My Immortal. The same cannot be said for Harry “Vampire” Potter;

In the Great Hall, I ate some Count Chocula cereal with blood instead of milk, and a glass of red blood. Suddenly someone bumped into me. All the blood spilled over my top.

“Bastard!” I shouted angrily. I regretted saying it when I looked up cause I was looking into the pale white face of a gothic boy with spiky black hair with red streaks in it. He was wearing so much eyeliner that I was going down his face and he was wearing black lipstick. He didn’t have glasses anymore and now he was wearing red contact lenses just like Draco’s and there was no scar on his forhead anymore. He had a manly stubble on his chin. He had a sexy English accent. He looked exactly like Joel Madden. He was so sexy that my body went all hot when I saw him kind of like an erection only I’m a girl so I didn’t get one you sicko.

If nothing else, it’s certainly a nice change from the usual traits about his mother’s eyes and taped-up glasses. In this story, Harry goes by ‘Vampire’; he used to date Draco Malfoy and they got tattoos with each others’ names, he is gothic and now part of Slytherin for reasons never elaborated upon – these two traits go hand-in-hand for every character in the story– and resembles the lead singer of Good Charlotte for some reason. Thankfully, our author also notes that the character who was born, raised, and lives his entire life in Great Britain happens to have a “sexy English accent”.

“Satan” is the name that Tom Riddle went by when he was a Hogwarts student. In the 1980s. And gothic. We’ll touch on him a little later. There’s a lot of trainwreck going on here, in case you haven’t noticed.

The two meta players to what is one of the greatest internet performance art pieces ever created are our author Tara Gilesbie, and her best friend/beta reader Raven, noted in the story by her own self-insert Willow. I have a lot to say about these two, who are characters in their own ways and who the understanding of is vital to seeing My Immortal as something greater than it appears to be. Tara is a budding teenage writer, Harry Potter, and goth, who doesn’t like that people keep ‘flassing’ her story and threatens self-mutilation as retribution for it, because if there is one thing the mid-2000s internet was, it was caring and serious about such issues. She plays it rather loose with things like literary devices or the English language, as we shall see.

Part 1: Bigmouth Strikes Again – Matters of “Da Story and Spelling”

Upon reading My Immortal for the first time, one of the most egregious and clear issues with the story lies within the spelling and grammar: they’re fucking abysmal. You can see it in the author’s notes right away, and it slowly trickles into the story itself. It starts with ridiculous run-on sentences that seem more like lists than the placement of words into a coherent and complete thought, delivered in a halting and completely jarring cadence. Allegedly, Tara’s friend Raven is editing the story until chapter 15 – more on her later – but even under her tenure as beta, little slips become more frequent. The job of trying to edit something so terrible would certainly be taxing and likely require intensive rewrites of whole chapters at a time, and it’s understandable that perhaps someone would simply be past the point of being able to handle this, and would get sloppier in their job. Chapter eleven, where the author’s note explicitly stated Raven helped, contains of the most infamous and brilliant mistakes in the entire work; ‘Loopin’ 'masticating’.

Once Raven leaves as Tara’s editor, the story nosedives even further into a death spiral of spelling and grammar. Typos become common and any lip service paid to writing words out fully is discarded. Without a beta, we see the depths of Tara’s unfettered lack of shits given for her story to come off as anything resembling presentable. And it needs to be this way, because one of the hallmarks of bad fanfiction is being incomprehensible. Not quite as much as it once was in the days before My Immortal shook the scene up, but it’s a clear indicator of the writer being unprincipled and very young, which are all vital to the character of Tara. The story needs to be poorly written, because if it isn’t, a site like fanfiction.net which, let’s be honest, doesn’t have very high standards–or really any at all–won’t react with all the venom and vitriol the story is meant to induce. It would merely fly under the radar as another mediocre story in the ever-swelling Harry Potter section, which even years after the fandom has cooled off, still moves faster than any person can possibly read through completely. That’s why the author’s notes are so terribly formatted; the very first thing a reader will see upon opening the story is, “Special fangz (get it, coz Im goffik)”.

And it is that word 'goffik’, my darlings, that marks the first place in My Immortal where Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

Everyone who types regularly can see certain little flubs and bad habits develop in their words; muscle memory kicking them in the ass and accidentally writing an incredibly similar word, or having some consistent errors that come through very clearly. And she does have a few, such as “jacket” as “jackson” (chapters 26, 37, 41, 42) and “converse” as “congress shoes” (chapters 24, 39, 41, 42), but they are few and far between in a dizzying array of random misspellings as chaotic as the story itself. They’re just layered beneath what is already a no-shits-given typing style that was back then incredibly commonplace within the subculture presented in the story, but they can be made out clearly if looked for beyond using Z in place of S or 'da’ for 'the’.

The easiest case to make in this regard is with names. Nobody has their names consistently spelled correctly, but they aren’t even consistent in their incorrectness. Our main character, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, is referred to as Enoby, Enony, Egogy, TaEbory, Ebony, and Evony, among others. Hagrid’s name is spelled correctly a grand total of zero times, but can be noticed as Hargrid, Hairgird, HAHRID, Hargirid, etc. Is her boyfriend Draco, or is he Drako, Darko, or Drago? Voldemort has almost as many misspellings as he does appearances; Volfemort, Vlodemort, Volxemort, Voldemint, Volremot, and Darth Valer, to name a few. Sirius Black becomes Serifs, Series, Sodomize, Socrates, and my personal favorite, Spartacus. Professor Slutgorn, Cornelia Fuck, Dumblewhore, Preacher McGongal are also highlights.

But there’s  perhaps too much convenience in how words become other words so easily. From Loopin’s mastication and the pointing of his womb, to being sent not to Azkaban but to Azerbaijan, to recording a sex tape on a caramel, to Dracon being hung like a Stallone, the story is littered with mistakes that seem almost too good to be true. Not all of this can be explained away as just a stray finger. Some of them defy keyboard logic in how they came to be, and somebody who could be that sloppy with a keyboard would be incapable of making sentences that could even be pieced together by someone intent on understanding what was meant by them, which as it stands is already how much of My Immortal is written. Sort of like Finnegan’s Wake, except the analysis of it is performed by significantly sadder people.

Matters like Azerbaijan and caramel might be explained away by spellcheck, if there was even the slightest evidence that Tara spellchecked any of this. It’s very, very apparent that she didn’t, because these passages are surrounded by misspellings that have gone unedited and unfixed, which means that she had to type out these words to the full extent manually.

Could it be some kind of celestial alignment that leads to there being so many absolutely perfect typos? It could be. But I believe that the typos not in fact  the meanderings of someone who doesn’t care, but in fact a labour of love from someone who cares far, far too much. Poor typing habits and a lack of care for what’s being put down are hallmarks of bad writing, and My Immortal strives to push it to heights that become almost impossible for an actual human being to accidentally make. Words are put into the story that aren’t even in the same neighborhood as the ones they’re supposed to be, and names steadily spin out of control in ever-escalating insanity like a Fibonacci sequence from hell.

In the chapter 4 author’s note, Tara notes “her name is ENOBY nut mary su ok!” In chapter 12, hot off the heels of Loopin masticating is the line, “Who MASTABATED (c is dat speld rong) to it he added silently.” What are the odds that she misspells the words on the two occasions where it matters most? In particular the latter one, where you’d think she would bother looking the word back over first to make sure it wasn’t, in fact, misspelled. Raven doesn’t pick up on it either, even though as we’ll see later she is most certainly capable of spelling words properly. It highlights the character of Tara’s hubris and incompetence, that she points out that she spelled a word correctly when she in fact had not. Someone who cares enough to show up the haters mid-story, but not enough to make sure they’re actually doing so.

Accompanying the more clearly intentional mistakes is the steady clumsiness that grows with the word count. Misspellings become more prevalent and less attention is put into trying to look like words, and while the tipping point is certainly Raven rescinding her service as an editor, it’s also a measured and slow degradation. We’ll go over this in more detail in part eight, but it is rather damning that the story doesn’t just plummet right through the floor once Raven isn’t working on making it presentable, as it reasonably should. Instead, it s a careful and measured breakdown. For comparison’s sake, let’s take the opening of chapter 15, which is the final Raven-edited chapter before the breakup:

“Ebony Ebony!” shouted Draco sadly. “No, please, come back!”

But I was too mad.

“Whatever! Now u can go anh have sex with Vampire!” I shouted. I stormed into my room and closed my black door with my blood-red key. It had a picture of Marylin Manson on it. He looked so sexy in a way that reminded me of Draco and Vampire. I started to cry and weep. I took a razor and started to slit my wrists. I drank the blood all depressed. Then I looked at my black GC watch and noticed it was time to go to Biology class.

And chapter 16, where their relationship reaches its peak and Raven has left as editor:

We ran happily to Hogsmede. There we saw the stage where GC had played. We ran in happly. MCR were there playing ‘Helena’. I was so fucking happy! Gerard looked even sexier than he did in da pictures. Even Draco thought so, I could totally see him getting an erection but it didn’t matter cuz I knew know that we were da only true ones for eachother. I was wearing a black leather minidress and black leather platinum boots with red ripped fishnets. Draco was wearing a black baggy MCR t-shirt and black baggy pants. Anyway, we stated moshing to Helena. We frenched. We ran up 2 the front of the band to stage-dive. Suddenly, Gerard pulled off his mask. So did the others. We gasped. It wasn’t them at all. It was.,……………………….. Volsemort and da Death Dealers

There are certainly a few more typos in this sample, and we see 'da’ and 'cuz’ slip through without Raven’s guidance, but overall they don’t seem too far apart. 'Volsemort’ is the only thing that is clearly down to a typo rather than laziness. But let’s jump into Morty McFli’s “tim machine” and see how chapter 26 opens:

A few mutates later Vampire came 2 da tree. He was wearing a blak leather jackson, black leather pants and a Good Chralotte t-shirt.

“Hi Vampire.” I said flirtily as I started to sob. Draco hugged me sexily tryont to comfrot me. I started to cry tears of blood and then told them what happened.

“Oh fuck it!” Vampire shouted angrily. He4 started to cry sadly. “What fucking dick did that!”

“I don’t know.” I said. “Now come on we have 2 tell Dumbledor.”

We ran out of the tree and in2 da castle. Dumblydor was sitting in his office.

“Sire are dads have been shot!” Draco said while we wipped sum tears from his white face. “Enoby had a vision in a dreem.”

Dubleodre started to cockle. “Hahahaha! And How due u aspect me to know Ebony’s not divisional?

It’s night and fucking day. Raven’s presence was clearly not the only thing keeping Tara’s spelling in check, because she started off just fine without her, but somewhere along the next ten chapters clearly lost her way. But hey, just for comparison’s sake, let’s see if ten more chapters supports my claim. Chapter 36:

I loked around in a depresed way. Suddenly I saw Profesor Sinister. B’lody Mary, Socrates and Draco, Vampire and Willow were their to.

“OMFG Sorius I saw u nd Samaro and Snip nd everyone!11111 I kant beleev Snap uzd 2 b goffik!111111”

“Yah I no.” Serious said sadly.

“Oh hey there bitch.” Profesor Trevolry said in an emo voice dirnking some Volxemortserom.

Hi fuker.” I said. “Lizzen, Satan asked me out to a gottik cornet and a movie so I need a sexah new outfit for da date. Also I’m playng in a gothic band so I need an ootfit for that too.”

“Oh my satan!1” (geddit lolz koz shes gofik) gasped B’lody Mary. “Want 2 go to Hot Topik to shop 4 ur outfit?”

“OMFS, letz have a groop kutting session!11” said Profesor Trevolry.

“I can’t fucking wait 4 dat but we need 2 get sum stuff first.” said Willow.

“Yah we need sum portions for Profesor Trevolry so she wont be adikted 2 Volxemortserum anymore nd also………….sum luv potion 4 Enoby.” Darko said resultantly.

It’s almost difficult to believe they’re from the same story we saw twenty chapters ago, and it’s sure as hell not because Tara has improved her craft. Within the confines of the story itself, it seems so gradual that you might not even realize it, but laid out in chunks like that, can you really say it’s not someone trying their best to destroy as many words as they possibly can?

Part 2: It’s Gruesome That Someone So Handsome Should Care – Matters of Identity and “Goffikness”

At the very core of My Immortal is what Tara believes being a goth to be. From the very first sentence of the first author’s note we learn this fact, and the first paragraph in the story, which is also the longest, is devoted to showing that Ebony is as well. Whether or not one is a goth becomes the most important character trait for the entire cast and defines their relationships with one another. Throughout the story, we are regaled with all the evidence of band fandom and other ultimately superficial traits that assure us that these characters are indeed true goths. The only things that receive anything approaching description are the clothes Ebony wears, all black and leather and band t-shirts. Nothing matters more than being a goth.

In this strange world, Ebony’s lifestyle is supported in ways that are beyond belief. Merchandising is so invasively ever-present that you can buy just about anything branded with her interests. In chapter 38, Satan smokes a Nightmare Before Christmas cigar (over a decade before The Nightmare Before Christmas came out), capes can bear Avril Lavigne’s face on them without anyone raising an eyebrow, and cars have pentagram decals all over them. Although band t-shirts are perfectly normal – and if I’m anything to go by, having pretty much nothing but band shirts isn’t unheard of – Ebony also has a wide range of band-branded everything, like skirts that have 'Simple Plan’ written across her ass.

Ebony looks like Amy Lee, and any boy she thinks is attractive will invariably be compared to the lead members of bands she likes, because those positive associations are marks of her dedication.

In the world of My Immortal, being a goth or a prep is not down to musical choices and circles of friends, but instead a sweeping statement about where you fall in matters of good and evil. Everyone she approves of fits her lifestyle whether it makes sense for the character to or not, radically changing their personalities to fall into the box she wants them to. The Golden Trio, alongside Ginny and Neville all goth up and convert to Slytherin, because as the 'dark’ house it is the only logical place for goths to go be. She does not have any friends who aren’t goths, because to not be a goth is to a prep, and preps are evil. Preps have middle fingers put up at them when they do nothing wrong, because on mere principle they must be hated and despised.

Which forms one of the many problems with the plot, but one that is not specific to the madness of Tara Gilesbie. At almost no point do characters coded as preps actually do anything wrong. Britney is consistently insulted and called a 'fucking prep’ in every appearance she has as though 'prep’ is an earth-shattering slur. Her presence consists entirely of being in a room, sometimes with middle fingers put up at her, and in one case, singled out by Professor Trevolry to do extra homework, because Trevolry is a goff teacher, which means she punishes preps for being preps. The only time Britney does anything wrong is in the final chapter, when it’s revealed that she released Snap and Loopin from Azerbaijan.

Britney is also the only actually preppy character in the story. We know this because she wears pink and little else, due to the lack of dialogue or character shown. But other people are referred to as preps constantly, including Snoop, Lumpkin, and Valmont. As are everyone who criticizes the story. We receive no indication for these, and often they are completely baffling for how decidedly un-preppy these characters truly are, but it’s vital to the narrative and the division of the cast that everyone Ebony does not approve of is a prep.

It’s not an uncommon attitude among teenagers, especially those with interest or belonging to subcultures out of the approved mainstream, to draw lines and assume everyone who falls into divisions other than them are inherently opposed to them. The idea that anyone who isn’t different must assume that difference is bad is so pervasive that it often comes to define works of fiction taking place in high school, even when written by grown-ass adults, because it provides cheap and easy conflict. Most teenagers grow fairly quickly out of this, but because of its convenience as a device, it persists. Tara is far from the only person to ever believe this, but the degree to which she takes it is a little further than most do, lumping the world into only two categories, but defining 'them’ as a one-dimensional army of preps even when they’re the opposite of preppy.

Which makes it an incredibly mockable and therefore desirable  angle to write her plot through, doesn’t it?

Once again setting herself up for incredible failure is the fact that she’s completely off the fucking mark about what a goth is. With favorite bands ranging from My Chemical Romance, Evanessence, and Linkin Park, to a bizarre interest in pop punk through Simple Plan and Good Charlotte, her taste in goth music is a lot like her taste in klezmer; it doesn’t fucking exist. This is not the musical taste of a broody, dark goth, it’s the stock standard taste of a teenaged rock fan in 2006, which is exactly what it’s supposed to be. To believe this is all to be pure, gothic music is to be so disconnected from the entire concept of the goth subculture that Tara would have to have not even given it a cursory Googling to discover what sort of music goths listened to.

This 2006; 'emo’ was already a word so pervasive that it was insufferable, but had TaEbory identified as emo, she would have lost one vital piece of the puzzle. Merely being wrong or incredibly forward about one’s identity isn’t enough; she had to be both simultaneously. Her fervid defense of what it is to be a goth, paired with being so off the mark, turns her into a hypocrite and a fool, a strawman whose every word is only making worse her whole case. It makes her stand out as a special and egregious case, an author so wrong about everything and whose self-insert only looks worse off for it. And this is how My Immortal rose to the top of an ocean of mediocre, bad, and downright terrible fanfiction.

Dubious musical categorizations aside, another element of the gothicness that pervades the story is authenticity. Among the more snobbish and elitist of any subculture since the beginning of time, the desire to be seen as authentic and real is an incredibly pervasive element that My Immortal predictably lingers on quite heavily. “Poser” is a word loaded with as much venom as prep is, because in the false dichotomy Tara instills upon the world, to have airs of goffikness while not truly being a goff is just as evil as wearing pink is. Perhaps even more so, because these fakers are infiltrating her circles. When Tara and Raven cease being friends, Raven’s stand-in Willow is referred to as a poser. When Draco feels betrayed upon discovering that Voldemort has tasked Ebony with killing Vampire, he refers to her as a “poser muggle bitch”.

While we can’t hold My Immortal to a rigid understanding of proper Harry Potter canon, it does explain a lot about Tara’s worldview. Draco Malfoy has spent his whole life of privilege being taught about the importance of blood purity by his parents, who — we’re all adults here, right? We can accept this? — are fucking wizard nazis. A lot of his early character is specifically centered around his beliefs on blood purity and his use of slurs like 'mudblood’ toward Hermione and dismissals of families like the Weasleys as blood traitors. Such traits are so surface level and blatant that even someone like Tara could pick up on them, which makes the inclusion of 'poser’ in his insult, a triple threat along with fantastical racism and straight-up sexism, into something very telling about just how important it is in her version of the Harry Potter universe to be seen as genuine.

You can’t simply become a goth, you have to already be one. You have to shop at the 'real goth stores’, which are known only to goths. Any attempt to learn of them is met with derision, because goffikness is not something you can attain, except for all the characters who are noted in their new backstories to have become goffs in their transfers over to Slytherin.

Simmering underneath this obsession with being seen as authentic, with a narrative that constantly asserts with very insecure undertones just how much Tara wants to be seen as a real goth, is how shallow her interests really are. She prattles off lists of the clothing she and her friends wear like she’s Patrick Bateman, a laundry list whose obsessive detail forms the only proper description anything in the story receives. And much like in American Psycho, the narrator’s obsession with clothes comes off as remarkably phony, a desire to fit in with a group they desire to be a part of through a series of checklist points, although while Patrick Bateman is deranged within the narrative, you must go one level of abstraction away from the character’s portrayal in the universe, to look on a metafictional level into the delusions of Tara to see where she gets it all so wrong.

We’re told in the narrative that Ebony is depressed and suicidal time and again, but despite slitting her wrists in lieu of an afternoon snack, we never truly see actual depression. She uses 'depressed’ in ways that don’t really make sense, such as to describe the movie Corpse Bride, coloured contact lenses, and makeout sessions. Chapter three even contains the passage, “'Hi Draco!’ I said in a depressed voice.” Given how wonderfully the entire world caters to Ebony and the fact Tara seems to not really understand what it means, it comes off not like Ebony is a character that actually has depression, but instead that since depression is gothic, she must therefore possess it. She isn’t somebody who wears black on the outside because black is how she feels on the inside, she just says she’s depressed because it’s all a part of the goth package.

As is Satanism, which Ebony is apparently an adherent of. Much like being depressed, a vampire, listening to Simple Plan, and being a Slytherin, it is vital to the gothic identity that you are a Satanist, even if you don’t know what Satanism is. That you sometimes refuse to acknowledge the words 'cross’ and 'god’. It’s so casually mentioned and without even the slightest bit of conviction that it feels thrown in by someone who doesn’t really care, but, once again, wants to fit in.

The end result is an all-encompassing, story ruining obsession with ensuring the reader know and believe that Ebony–and by extension the author she is an avatar of–is the most true and devout goth in the world. Setting herself up to be so very, very wrong on this account is an easy way to discredit Tara and add another layer of pure mockability to the story. She is truly the greatest poser of all, and her entire worldview comes crumbling down around her under the slightest scrutiny, all by design.

Part 3: Just a Miserable Lie – The Impossible Mistakes

This news may shock and surprise you, so make sure you are very securely strapped your seat.

My Immortal is not entirely consistent.

Certain little things creep out of the woodwork in both the narrative and off to the side, hidden amid all of the craziness around them, that I believe are little winks at the camera on the part of the author. Hints meant to clue you in as to the fact that this whole thing is, in fact, one big joke. A lot of them have gone rather unnoticed, it seems, but let’s start with the most noticeable of all.

In chapter 31, we meet Tom Bombadil. I’m not fucking with you, here, it really does happen.

Suddenly I was in fornt of teh School. In front of me wuz one of da sexiest goth guyz I had ever seen. He was wering long blak hair, kinda like Mikey Way only black. He had gren eyes like Billie Joe Amstrung and pale whit skin. He wuz wearing a blak ripped up suit wif Vans. It was…………………….Tom Bombodil!1

Now, some of you may be asking who the balls Tom Bombadil is, and that is my point entirely. Deep in the first half of Fellowship of the Ring is god of the forest and walking filler arc Tom Bombadil, whose three-chapter appearance leaves most readers wishing for a violent end to existence for how long it all drags. For the express reason that his appearance is so incredibly pointless, he appears in no major adaptations of the series, which means for Tara to know about him, she’d have to read Fellowship of the Ring, a book that is done no favours by Tolkein’s incredibly dry and long writing style, not to mention an entire chapter chronicling the genealogy of Hobbiton.

To be a teenager at a reading level high enough to tackle Tolkein precludes you from being capable of doing something like My Immortal genuinely. Tara would know how words are spelled and that, hey, stories are considerably better when you give a quarter of a crap about typing them properly. The levels of literacy involved in Tom Bombadil and writing My Immortal are so far removed that these two traits are mutually exclusive, impossible for Tara to possess if she’s genuine. After all,

I dntn red all da boox! dis is frum da movie ok so itz nut my folt if dumbeldor swers!

But wait.

Among the many baffling changes Tara makes to the canon, one of the weirdest and most damning to me is Professor Sinister/Trevolry/Sinatra/Siniater/Relory. This bizarre composite of professors Sinistra and Trelawny is a half-vampire, half-Japanese goff, and the only teacher in the school Ebony likes, because she dresses like her and assigns the preps extra homework, complete with a pun about doing an 'exorcise’ in the book. Her presence is bizarre, for being the only positive authority figure in the story, and for the utter perplexity involved in picking the two professors as a composite goth character at the expense of more conventional fanfic fodder like Snape and Lupin, who are both obviously villainous preps in this story.

Professor Trelawny is a strange choice whose incongruity I feel is another one of those expectation-defying twists meant to seem strange as an indicator to the audience where a more mainstream and believable choice would have been to romanticize Snape as so much of the fandom has, but the real headscratcher is Professor Sinistra. Her presence in the canon is entirely off-screen, mentioned by Hermione as a teacher for a course that Ron and Harry don’t take; she has no lines or purpose anywhere, and even in the movies is only a background character identified by virtue of there being an actress credited as her. Her absolute lack of lines makes her presence here troubling, because if Ebony’s reference base for this is the movies, where this dialogueless character coming from?

Of course, there’s also the aspect of how fluidly she switches between names bastardized off of the two professors which, unlike the matter of Hagrid being Cedric but not really, is so consistent and ever-present that it again seems like a level of sloppiness entirely beyond human capability. Two completely disparate names that are way too far removed to be keyboard fuckery, with bastardizations of both used in each scene she appears as though there is a quota on how many of each get used in a chapter for full effect. Because there absolutely is; here’s the introduction of the professor in chapter 24:

Well we had Deviation next so I got to ask Proffessor Trevolry about the visions.

“Konnichiwa everybody come in.” said Proffesor Sinister in Japanese. She smelled at me with her gothic black lipstick. She’s da coolest fucking teacher ever. She had long dead black hair with blood red tips and red eyes. (hr mom woz a vampire. She’s also haf Japanese so she speaks it and everyfing. she n b’loody mry get along grate) She’s really young for a teacher. 2day she was wearing a black leather top with red lace and a long goffik black ripped dress. We went inside the black classroom with pastors of Emily the Strong. I raced my hand. I was wearing some black naie Polish with red pentagrams on it.

In the tweet-sized morcel from “well” to “Japanese”, Tara has already methodically sank this character’s introduction, making someone paying even the slightest attention to what’s in front of them look back up to that previous line to see if they lost something somewhere. Trevolry is used to refer to her next, and then Sinister again, which are the only four mentions of this character in the chapter. Tara’s handle on the chaos of her own story is perfect, and the entire existence of the professor in this chapter serves as a massive wink to the camera.

Also a strange decision is to note that Professor Sinister and B'loody Mary “get along grate”. They don’t interact, as is expected from a narrative that marginalizes everybody except for Ebony and her love interests, relegating all of the friends to satellite roles where they interact only with her, but it’s perplexing for the way it’s made note of out of nowhere. I feel it goes beyond a strange decision to include more female friendships in the background of her story, and serves as a one-two punch of running afoul of “show, don’t tell” and of the canon itself, as in the original series the teacher that Hermione clashes with the most, to the point of dropping the class altogether, is Professor Trelawny. And yet here they are, besties in gothhood. Another subtle note that indicates how carefully woven this entire mess is.

For someone with the reading comprehension of a microwave-made baked potato though, she has an oddly prescient view on the series endgame in chapter 42’s author’s note.

AN: omg da new book iz kumming out rlly soon I kant wait!!!1111. I fink dat snap will be really the same person as Volximort koz dey are both haff-blood so dat will explain y he kild dumblydore and he hated hairy!!!!!1111 nd den hairy wil have 2 kommit suicide so voldimort will die koz he will rilly be a horcrox!!!!!111

On one hand, the idea that Snap and Volximort are the same person is so unfounded and bizarre that you kind of dismiss what comes next, but despite retaining nothing beyond the most surface-level details about the canon, she somehow managed to make the connection of Harry’s abilities and scar as evidence of him being a horcrux. It’s not a massive leap, and many in the fandom saw it coming, but for someone whose grasp on the canon simply doesn’t exist, it’s suspect.

I’ve unfortunately already blown the “big deal of a revelation that is fairly obvious” joke, so I won’t bother setting it up again, but this revelation is genuinely a noteworthy one. Contained within My Immortal is one reference that is unambiguously and inarguably gothic. Not one of the borderline cases like Marilyn Manson where it depends on who you ask, but a genuine reference to a piece of gothic music. From chapter 28,

We went in2 a blak room. The wallz were blak with portraits of gothic bands lik MCR, GC and Marlin Mason all over them. A big black coffin was in the middle. Red vevlet lined da blak box. There were three chairs made of bones with real skullz in dem. I wuz wearing a blak corset bar wif purple stuff on it, fishnet suckings and a blak leather thong underneath.

It’s so subtle and unexpected a reference that even if you know what it’s from, you may not pick it up. “Red velvet lines the black box” is a lyric from Bauhau’s 1979 song Bela Lugosi’s Dead, which is generally considered to be the very first gothic rock song ever written, thus making it the only genuinely gothic sentence in this entire tale. However, devoid of teenage angst or guyliner, it makes no sense that such a reference would be in the repertoire of somebody who believes that Marilyn Manson was a band from the '80s. In fact, it is impossible to believe that a Tara taken at face value would have ever so much as encountered the song, because the collision of matter and anti-matter annihilates both. However, it would be the fodder of somebody who, baffled at how easily people have accepted their work as a genuine offering, got bored and decided to throw a wink to the camera that couldn’t have possibly slipped under the radar.

Littered among the litany of showy, “look at how goffik” I am references to things, as though My Immortal were a PSA about the goth cred of Tara Gilesbie, are a few rather suspect notes. Tara is somebody who can’t mention certain names without indicating her undying hatred toward them, and yet,

“I love you!” I said and then we started to kiss just like Hilary Duff (i fukin h8 dat bitch) and CMM in a Cinderella Story.

We are apparently to believe that Tara, somebody who is so slavishly devoted to her identity and to a dichotomy that has coloured the entirety of a fictional universe, not only watched A Cinderella Story in spite of her hatred of Hilary Duff, but then drew a comparison to it in how she and Draco kissed? Drawing comparisons to things the author is interested in is a rather frequent amateur move for young fanfic writers who merely draw the blunt comparison to something rather than learning to describe the individual features themselves. Tara is not a good enough writer to describe the facial features of her favorite band leads, so she just mentions that people look like Gerard to indicate that the absolute pinnacle of human attractiveness is this.

The only comparisons she ever draws are to her favorite things, because it’s a way to prove that her life is so goffik that everything around her draws its existence from her interests. And yet she cites a Hilary Duff movie that she quite frankly should not have even seen, if she is so diametrically opposed to being perceived as a prep, which veering so far off of the beaten goff path and into would most certainly indicate. Something doesn’t add up about this.

On what I believe to be the intentional cliffhanger that chapter 42 ends on, we hear another mention of goffik cinema right before the very end of the story.

“Save us Ebony!” Dumbledark cried.

I cried sexily I just wanted 2 go 2 the commen room and slit my wrists with mi friends while we watched Shark Attak 3 and Saw 2 and do it with Draco but I knew I had 2 do somefing more impotent.

“ABRA KEDABRA!!!!!!!!!!!11111” I shooted.

For those not in the know, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon is a phenomenally bad direct-to-video monster movie whose sole claim to fame is in being so laughably bad that it’s found an audience in bad movie circles. And while one could make the fairly weak argument that on the basis of some super edgy “I love watching people dying” attitude, a movie like Shark Attack might appeal to Tara the same way slashers and gorn like Saw and “Hoes of Wax” appeal to her, it’s so bizarre in its sudden presence at the very end that I believe it yet another wink, but this time a more final one. The second-to-last sentence in the story makes mention to a notorious bad movie to draw the connection to the story, a final and overt declaration of a joke that you’re supposed to be in on. The last punchline before the music hits and Porky Pig bursts from out of the big drum to say, “That’s all folks.”

Part 4. What Difference Does it Make? - The Desecration of Canon

Calling out My Immortal for distorting and twisting the Harry Potter universe into something unrecognizable and monstrous is like calling out a bear for shitting in the woods, but it’s impossible to explain how carefully crafted a piece of perfect trollfic it is without examining just how many 'liberties’ Tara took with the canon.

All of the characters that Tara seeks to lionize convert to Slytherin, because apparently people can just do that if they decide they really like black lipstick. But that’s not enough to make them more 'like her’. Backstories are revised to include a quite frankly startling volume of sexual abuse backstories and characters secretly adopted by abusive parents. Vampirism is not a trait anybody received through the narrative, but instead a species inherited by birth that somehow, people don’t know they have, showing no signs or hunger, until they learn about their parentage. Characters all receive new, gothic nicknames like B'loody Mary, Vampire, and Diabolo.

What Tara has done is remove everything about the characters one may think noticeable about them in the slightest. Everyone now resembles Tara’s favorite artists. Harry’s iconic lightning bolt scar, a symbol of the series, has been changed by makeup and magic to instead be a pentagram, because that is a design change of her choice, visually reclaiming the character from Rowling. The only character whose visual traits at all line up with the canon is Voldemort.

Then all of a suddenly, an horrible man with red eyes and no nose and everything started flying towards me on a broomstick! He didn’t have a nose (basically like Voldemort in the movie) and he was wearing all black but it was obvious he wasn’t gothic.

But then it gets stranger. Hagrid becomes a member of Ebony’s band Bloody Gothic Rose 666 and a “little Hogwarts student” (chapter 11). Although she appears to retcon that in chapter 12 with,

AN: stop f,aing ok hargrid is a pedo 2 a lot of ppl in amerikan skoolz r lik dat I wunted 2 adres da ishu! how du u no snap iant kristian plus hargrid isn’t really in luv wif ebony dat was sedric ok!

Although she seems to take a strange “whatever I want” approach to her own retcons like the most hackish of comic book writers, since we get in that very chapter,

Anyway I was in the school nurse’s office now recovering from my slit wrists. Snap and Loopin and HAHRID were there too. They were going to St. Mango’s after they recovered cause they were pedofiles and you can’t have those fucking pervs teaching in a school with lots of hot gurlz. Dumbledore had constipated the cideo camera they took of me naked. I put up my middle finger at them.

Anyway Hargrid came into my hospital bed holding a bouquet of pink roses.

“Enoby I need to tell u somethnig.” he said in a v. serious voice, giving me the roses.

“Fuck off.” I told him. “You know I fucking hate the color pink anyway, and I don’t like fucked up preps like you.” I snapped. Hargrid had been mean to me before for being gottik.

Hagrid is in this canon simultaneously a pedophile and presumably grown-ass adult, but also a Hogwarts student who may or may not be Cedric Diggory, who not only survived the events of Goblet of Fire, but also managed to fail two years at Hogwarts to join Harry as a seventh-year. He is also a poser who is mean to Ebony for being 'gottik’, but is also in her gothic rock band which sounds like “a cross between GC, Slipknot and MCR”, which as we all know would make it the most authentic gothic rock band since Mungo Jerry.

Except in chapter 14 a Death Eater is referred to as “the fat guy who killed Cedric” so maybe HAHrid really is Hagrid after all?

Then there is the odd decision to align Lupin and Snape as pedophilic voyeurs in the service of Voldemort while bizarrely championing Professor Trelawny, in stark contrast to a fandom that especially in the golden days of Harry Potter fandom, where people would dick ride Severus Snape all the way to the moon on the weight of how 'misunderstood’ he was. A pale man who seems conventionally 'dark’ in his interests and mannerisms is the perfect place to begin projecting on when you’re telling a story about how you’re the exact same things, but it seems almost too obvious a decision. Like the rest of Professor Siniater’s composite existence, she’s so odd a choice that it startles you, and I believe within that shock value is the decision to buck expectations.

A trip to the past begins to paint an even more bizarre picture, as apparently the parents of our heroes all went to school in the 1980s, alongside Voldemort and Hedwig. They were also all Slytherin goffs who at some point seem to have just turned into poser preps whose children had to re-convert out of Gryffindor and into gothhood. This timeline yet again causes a great many headscratching tears in the fabric of space and time, but the most vital and important of all is Hedwig.

In the canon, Hedwig is Harry’s owl, female and not much of a doer, speaker, or goth. But in the horrible alternate universe that My Immortal takes place in, Hedwig is a bisexual human male who is very much a goth, the ex-boyfriend of Tom Riddle, whose dumping of the boy starts his descent into becoming Volxemort. It is a change that is so wrong, so removed from not only the canon but from the possibility of anything ever being accurate to the canon, that it can’t be accidental. One cannot fuck up that badly by accident.

Voldemort himself is a great many things. In the past, he is Tom Riddle, gothic musician at Hogwarts and love interest to Ebony, but also Tom Bombadil, the master of wood, water, and hill. But in the present time, he is both the Bark Lord, as one may expect, but also potentially a young, thoroughly goffik employee at a “punkgoff” store in Hogsmeade, Tom Rid. Tom Rid is described as “OMG HOTTER THAN GERARD EXCEPT NOT CAUSE THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE“ and, like every other guy in the story, is “bisezual”. Tom Rid is never the setup for Voldemort’s secret infiltration of the goth subculture, but nonetheless seems to be a template earlier in the story for the later time travel storyline and Tom Riddle as a love interest. It’s another nonsensical “mistake” thatjust doesn’t mesh with any fathomable stupidity. It would be like introducing a character called Harry Pot and having him be completely disconnected from Harry Potter in any way.

Littered with iPods and anachronistic pop culture that manages to miss its mark in two different time periods, the only reason we know that this is the same world and not just one with suspiciously similar names is the fact that it’s fanfiction. Not a deep AU that interestingly adapts elements into a different world to see how they work out, or which shows characters and how they might develop under different circumstances. This is a mangled mess where muggle bands play concerts in Hogsmeade, seemingly well aware of wizards’ existence. There must be panic on the streets of London.

The big question is “why”. Why would somebody do this bad a number of canon, accidental or not? And the reason is simple.

Part 5. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want – Wish Fulfillment

By changing the context of everything except for the most basic connections of who the characters are 'supposed’ to be, they cease to be J.K. Rowling’s. They instead become Tara’s playthings. The canon is so distorted that it may as well not be fanfiction for how few things that remain intact, and yet it is vital that the world be the world of Harry Potter, at least nominally. Tara needs to turn a world that she loves, as off the mark as she may be, into a wonderland in which to self-insert, to mold into a countercultural paradise that centers completely around her.

We can’t speculate on the life of Tara – who this entire paper of course serves as a document meant to disprove the very existence of – but we can very clearly see the desires of this alleged person. Ebony is the single most important person in My Immortal, supplanting Harry as the only one who can kill Voldemort, whom every attractive character and even many unattractive ones profess their love to and fight for without provocation. Her interests are catered to on an unrealistic level and divine karmic justice makes those who sit culturally opposed to her suffer undeserved retribution solely for existing.

Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is, even by those who see her as an entirely genuine creation, often held up as the ultimate self-insert. On top of very clearly existing as an author avatar who holds the exact same interests as her creator, her very presence distorts and twists the canon around her like an eldritch abomination tearing the very fabric of the reality she occupies. One of the more criticized elements of self-inserts in fanfiction is of course the ease with which a narrative becomes wish fulfillment for the author, and My Immortal has this in droves. Ebony is the most important character in the world not because she’s the protagonist or the narrator, but because she has supplanted Harry as the only person who can stop Voldemort, and whom everybody’s 'motivations’ center around.

Ebony is loud, angry, and has access to a time machine. When Ebony isn’t on-screen, all of the other characters ask, “Where’s Ebony?”

The love triangle between Ebony, Draco, and Vampire begins with Vampire solely wanting to reconnect with his ex-boyfriend Draco, but as the story goes on that element is lost and replaced with him instead lusting after Ebony, as evidenced by the time they had sex right in the middle of Hair of Magical Creatures. One of the only connections that two different characters had with each other is slowly replaced with an attraction to Ebony that they fight over, because everyone in My Immortal is defined by how Ebony perceives them. Their own attractions to one another take a backseat to their lust for Ebony, save for occasions where she permits them to have sex for her enjoyment, at which point it is presented as titillation for her.

Also among the characters with stated romantic interest in Ebony are Tom Rid, Hairgird, Snope, Lumpin, Tom Riddle, and Snaketail.

Everybody who has things in common with Ebony is Ebony, essentially. Every character is so interchangeable due to the pre-packaged identity she assumes is the only authentic way to be gothic that nobody feels like an actual character. Willow and B'loody Mary both occupy the role of female best friend for Ebony, save for a brief period where Willow is killed and Lupin has sex with her corpse before her resurrection one chapter later. In fact, the only time a character Ebony isn’t sexually attracted to is complimented is when she tries to lay on really thick her attempt to suck up to Raven in the hopes she’ll return to editing. The only difference between Vampire and Draco is how many times Ebony has sex with them, and that’s not getting into the masses of other goff guys who may as well be nameless, such as Diabolo (Ron), “Crab”, Goyle, and “Dracola” (Navel). In the past, Tom “Satan” Riddle proves to be just as generic a love interest as the other two, and then more faceless characters in Hades (“Serious Blak”), Lucian Malfoy, James “Samoro” Potter, and Hedwig.

Nobody has any character, save for Ebony, because they’re not meant to be characters, they’re meant to be imaginary friends for Ebony to play with, to fawn over her and have everything in common with her. If we buy into the belief that Tara is a rather lonely teenage girl who has apparently pushed away her only friend over a My Chemical Romance poster, then her decision to basically strip away everything that makes the Harry Potter world what it is so that she could rebuild it from the ground up into her gothic paradise makes a lot of sense.

Of course, she isn’t that at all, but first we need to look at all the other things that Tara is and isn’t.

Part 6. Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before – Raven

Fifteen-year-old Eternity Demen'tia Johnson warily took a seat on the Hogwarts Express. As she did so, she heard many giggles in the air. Ugh. Stupid preps. Eternity had hoped she wouldn’t see any when she came to Hogwarts. They had made her life in Los Angeles High School miserable. Now she was supposed to put up with them here? She sighed sadly, and stared out of the window. In her mistery, she took her iPod out of her Emily the Strange bag and blared on some My Chemical Romance (A/N: Don’t they rock?). Oh great. Now even more preps were giving her dirty looks. Eternity tried her best to ignore them. It wasn’t because Eternity was dirty or deformed or anything. Maybe it was something to do with her black leather corset, or her ripped black miniskirt or her black combat boots or the metal music she was listening to. Eternity hated how people judged her like that just because she was a goth.

The above is a snippet from I’m Not Okay, written by Tara’s friend Raven. And in it, you can see a lot of the same themes present in My Immortal. Anachronistic technology, a misunderstanding of what the goth subculture is, preps hating her on mere principle, authors notes spliced in mid-sentence to herald the glory of her taste, and more description offered up for her clothes than for anything else. Throughout I’m Not Okay, we see Draco Malfoy as the gothic love interest, comparisons of characters to members of bands the author likes, and canon Harry Potter characters becoming gothic and taking on nicknames like Dracula, Sea, and Darren.

Good sense and suburban decency run screaming at the sight of a dark name like “Darren”.

Rather than shit all over preps of her own design, Luna Lovegood and Hermione Granger, two characters so far removed from the stereotype of an American high school “popular kid” that it’s almost infuriating, are turned into the superpreps to be hated. Slytherin is still so gothic a house that their common room password is “bleeding kisses” and the portrait is a woman described as the “splitting image” of the lead singer of Sisters of Mercy, an actual goth band whose frontman Andrew Eldritch is most certainly not a woman and not even particularly androgynous.

The same out-of-place theme of sexually abusive adopted parents that plagues My Immortal’s side characters returns in Eternity’s backstory. She sticks her middle finger up at preps unprovoked and veers off course to call out the shittiness of preps. Really, Eternity is in every imaginable way just Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way with a marginally better writer, as is to be expected from the editor of Tara’s disasterpiece.

The authenticity of Raven’s works isn’t in doubt, in my mind. It predates the memetic nature of My Immortal by a great deal, they co-wrote a story entitled Ghost of You that, again, features the exact same terrible tropes and bad ideas, albeit this time with Hermione Granger as the parentally abused goth hated by preps and now in love with Draco Malfoy, And, the fifth and final chapter of I’m Not Okay has,

a/n: TARA IS DA BIGGEST FUCKING BITCH EVERY AND BY THE WAY I’M A BIGGER MCR FAN AND GERARD IS MINE 4EVA SO FUCK U

Eternity was so happy. She went to class with the other fifth-years, Sea, Draco, Shadow, Darren, and Satan. That fucking retard Elvira (whose real name was Lindsay like that fucking ho Lindsay Loan) had gone all the way back to first-year and they put her in Gryffindor where all the retarde4d preps were because she couldn’t even write properly and she had to get her friends 2 do it for her.

Hot damn. That’s a far more scorching burn than being the offscreen victim of Lumpkin the necphilak.

Raven’s stories being the template for My Immortal is no coincidence. Tara aped everything she saw with gusto, imitating her friend who, while not a very good writer, could write sentences properly and gave description to things. Hell, as far as fifteen-year-old fanfic writers go, Raven is actually pretty decent, just entrenched in some terrible themes–again, pretty typical for teenagers–and does things like describe Eternity 'sadly putting her hair up’. On some level, Tara is trying to be as good a writer as Raven is. She looks up to her and, immediately after in a fit of anger killing off the character meant to be Raven, brings her back and guiltily sucks up to her with as many compliments as she can give.

Whether she is the same person as 'Tara’ or a friend in on the joke, I believe that Raven exists as sort of a proto-Tara, a precursor to the real juicy fun. Her story isn’t very good and she writes the exact same things Tara does with marginally more writing ability. They’re identical in every possible way, with the same interests, attitudes, and bizarre writing sensibilities. Almost no differences in the presented persona emerge, but as much as their obsessions with clothing and iconography bordering on disingenuous poserliness would imply that the pre-packaged nature of their identities is to blame, I believe it was all meant to deepen the character, provide a more grounded contrast to her and help make her seem more real.

Rather than existing as a nebulous beta reader who also has no prior internet history, existing solely through the character of Willow and authors notes that let their ongoing drama spill through into the story for us to see in what I feel is a brilliant piece of meta performance art, she has her own stories that make her very much a real presence in the extended saga of My Immortal. I believe that in the long term, she was meant to continue onward as a developing foil for Tara, someone whose existence helped back up her own. But, as evidenced by the way I’m Not Okay stops at chapter 5, which on the timeline of My Immortal would place it somewhere around chapter 16, this didn’t go as planned.

If “Raven” were a co-conspirator to “Tara”, it’s possible they got bored, didn’t have the insane devotion to a multi-layered and quite frankly absurdly deep prank. If Raven and Tara are one and the same, then perhaps the pressure of developing two 'different’ personas proved too much work, and decided to focus on the big one. After all, Raven’s stories are only notable through her association to Tara, the Art Garfunkel to Tara’s Paul Simon. Mediocre but ultimately harmless stories that by and large flew under the radar and aren’t even well known by people who know My Immortal. I’m Not Okay was never going to draw the same level of interest or vitriol that My Immortal did, thus making it a joke with far less payoff, even if by virtue of not being as poorly written, it was likely easier to write. This is helped by the immense disparity in productivity between the two; whether the primary actor or personality, Tara is more prolific, something that ties directly into the return on investment when it comes to how people reacted to either story.

And as it turned out, she wasn’t needed. The My Immortal Extended Universe has long since been forgotten, and yet people fell for the joke without it. People bought very easily into My Immortal as a genuine piece of work, or at least were so willing to enjoy it as a mockable distraction that nobody ever really asked. Raven became a redundant cog in the machine, and removing her freed up the effort to focus full time on making My Immortal something even more incredible than it began as.

More evidence of this lies in the fact that even once Raven allegedly returns to her role as editor, the spelling only gets increasingly worse; she’s credited as helping in many chapters, but her former sensibilities are gone, and no edits are ever made, as illustrated in the snippets detailing the degeneration in part one. It’s possible that this was meant to convey that Raven wasn’t actually helping; that she quit writing fanfic due to her fallout with Tara, and Tara merely went on pretending she still had a friend in Raven as she sank deeper and deeper into her wish fulfillment paradise. Raven never managed to gain the established foothold that Tara did, so nobody ever questioned it, and everyone was too busy having a good time to wonder how the chapters ever qualified as being 'edited’.

Curious is the fact that even though they made up, Raven never came back. She didn’t continue writing her own stories, the drama between them never resurged, and aside from her supposed beta services to Tara, is absent from the bulk of the saga in its entirety. This is in spite of the fact that in all apparent ways, Raven is not only the more skilled writer, but the one with a clearer passion for it. Her prose may be nothing special, but the bar should not be set too high for what is allegedly a teenage girl writing Harry Potter fanfic. She falls into a lot of the common holes, but her style is that of someone who loves stories and wants to write their own, and for her to so quickly vanish and never return is, to me, evidence that she was always a character too, and that her place in the 'real life’ layer of My Immortal was simply deemed irrelevant.

Part 7. Girlfriend in a Coma – That Time Tara Got Hacked

In chapter 38, a time-displaced Tara opens for Marilyn Manson in Hogsment, which is what Hogsmeade was called before they changed it in 2000. In Hogsmint, a store called Hot Ishoo will change its name to Hot Topic in the year 1998. Tom Riddle possesses future knowledge of both of these events, as well as the certainty that because amnesia potions haven’t been invented yet, he will not be affected by the one being used on his cigar branded with a movie that hasn’t come out yet, which is a shame because he wanted to use the potion on Ebony so that the time-traveling girl he loves will forget about her old life and her romantic entanglements in her own timeline with the sons of two of his bandmates sothat only her love for him will remain. His prescient, almost accepting knowledge of seemingly everything about his future up until his fall is almost tragic; he must know that Ebony’s involvement in his life is going to ruin it

On top of being the Dark Lord and Tom Bombadil, Tom Riddle may also be Doctor Manhattan. But that’s not the point of this part.

After xBlakXTearX performs its first big gig, the band immediately falls apart as, due to Lucian Malfoy playing the wrong song by mistake, Samaro Potter decides to shoot his arm off with a knife. Those of you attempting to follow the bizarre, Ebony-centric take on the universe may be surprised to learn that she is not the Yoko Ono of the band in what may be the only important conflict in the story that isn’t about her. However, since everything has to be about our goffik darling, Ebony jumps in front of the bullet–that, again, has been shot from a knife, like this is the second-worst Final Fantasy game ever made–and enters a coma.

Bear in mind, she does this knowing that Lucian survives this attack, going on to find love, have Draco, and despite two stints as a wizard nazi manages to avoid jail time and lead a life of incredible luxury and comfort. This also requires her to ignore her very important mission to prevent Tom from ever becoming Voldemort and the insane repercussions of dying in a timeline that isn’t her own, leaving behind all of her possessions that are even more anachronistic in the 80s, including a time machine that anyone could suddenly begin misusing.

All in all, an incredibly stupid decision with no purpose other than to insert Ebony and her useless ass selfless heart into conflicts that she has nothing to do with, because she’s the 'hero’ of our story.

Before we could see the resolution of that nail-biting cliffhanger, Tara’s account was allegedly hacked by a 'guest writer’, who claimed to have been able to crack her password with incredible ease. While there, the password cracker gives her own take on My Immortal, involving the death of Ebony, which undoes all of Tara’s damage upon the universe and returns everybody to their proper states, while sentencing Ebony to a terrifying ironic hell where she is doomed to an eternity of wearing infinite layers of preppy clothing brands.

While there, the hacker also shares with us the real chapter 39 as an act of kindness to those of us who were clinging onto the saga for dear life and wanted to know how Ebony was going to survive jumping in front of the knife-propelled bullet. Allegedly, this chapter was already written and waiting to be posted in the document area. It ends up being such a bizarre element of time travel that even the Terminator franchise never went there.

“What the fuk happened?” I asked dem. “Oh my satan!11 Am I lik dead now?” I gosped.

“Enoby u were almost shot!11” said Serious. “But da ballet could not kill u since u were form anodder time.”

“But fangz anyway!1” said Lucian holding oot his arm. I gasped. He had two arms!

Which opens up a lot of questions, then shoves them aside so I could wonder for a second if Lucius Malfoy was missing an arm in the canon. He wasn’t, making this another perplexing note of Tara’s that rewards a familiarity with the source material by highlighting all the ways in which it’s wrong. But then, after being told that Snap was Death Dealer, despite being the classmate of a Tom Riddle who hadn’t yet gone dark, Ebony comes across Snape raping Draco, and is so distraught by her boyfriend’s betrayal in this act that she runs to her room, takes out a steak, and uses it to slit her wrists.

Neither steaks nor stakes work like that.

The next chapter begins with her “back in Tim” due to her suicide, but the endgame plot batshit of My Immortal isn’t something we can even tackle in full yet.

There is a lot about the hacker that’s peculiar, and that’s because I believe that the hacker is Tara herself. A lot of minor elements of the breach of her account actually betray this secret, and it’s one of the few things in My Immortal I’m unsure about in regards to its intent.

The way that fanfiction.net handles posting a story involves uploading the story file to a document area, and then from the story menu selecting the relevant document. I always found it kind of clumsy personally, but what stands out about it is the fact that the chapter was allegedly written and left online for an indeterminate amount of time. There aren’t many reasons to upload a completed chapter to the website and then not post it. For someone like Tara, who does no editing and is clearly no longer sending the story off to Raven to be edited, there seems to be absolutely no reason for the story to be sitting idly in the documents area. I imagine Tara finished each chapter and immediately shoved it online in a frantic hurry to get it out there, as opposed to leaving it online to age like a fine vintage of toilet moonshine.

The original posting of the chapter was actually from the original document being copy/pasted into the one that contained the fake chapter nine. However, chapter 40 is then posted some time later as, “Chapter 40. LOL! Someone has taken my account over” by what seems to be the hacker. Which is odd, since they already pasted it into chapter 39, and posting it again from the document area seems rather pointless. It even includes an addition of, “THE IDIOT’S NOTE: Well… this was in the doc area… might as well let the whole world see what the real Tara wanted to show us… Have a nice day!” that the chapter 39 version lacks, meaning this hacker allegedly went into the doc, copy/pasted it into a new file with her chapter and Tara’s, but then edited the original document and posted it too. It’s an odd thing to do, like someone went in with very little idea of what the plan actually was and stumbled redundantly over ideas as they went.

But particularly odd about this whole thing is that Tara does nothing about it. She doesn’t delete the insulting notes or remove the fake chapter, she leaves them both there even though the author’s note of chapter 41 makes it clear that she’s very aware of her account being compromised, not only letting the mockery of herself remain, but even letting it effect the numbering of subsequent chapters. Which may seem like just Tara not caring enough and going with the chapter numbers listed by fanfiction.net, until you look back at chapter 10.

Chapter 10 was posted twice, and Tara never removed the second, identical version of it. It remained on the site up until the day the story was purged by site moderators. And yet, Tara always remained consistent in her renumbering of the chapters, always subtracting one from the chapter count when she posted it; what the site claimed was chapter 12 was really chapter 11. For a story with only the barest minimum of shits given, to properly compensate for this numbering accident for almost thirty chapters is a surprising amount of misplaced effort, but it establishes that she does care about the chapter numbers, and makes the sudden slip a lot more suspect. Why only go halfway in on her effort by continuing to count her double-posted chapter, but not this fake one that she’s allowed to remain as a part of the saga?

Part 8. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore – Bringing it all together

I’ve prattled on for well over ten thousand words now about a myriad of My Immortal’s issues, but you could look at each individual flaw of the story and say that on their own, they hardly form evidence of trollery afoot, even if some of the more glaring issues are harder to explain away. But surely I’m going to show how they connected to form the cohesive peak of my argument, right? “How soon are you going to get to that?” you shout into your screen, not knowing how computers work.

Well how soon is now?

Tara Gilesbie wrote a story that set her up as the ultimate caricature of a teenaged fanfic writer who is just the worst in all of the best ways. All of the elements of bad writing on every level came into a perfect storm that only grew more powerful over time as it sank further and further into its own madness until it didn’t even resemble what it had started out as. From the self-inserted wish fulfillment to a startlingly creative use of the English language, it hits every hallmark of a bad fanfic one would think to roll up into one neat and tidy little ball, save for perhaps a massive panfandom crossover of everything the author has ever liked.

There is a clear story arc in My Immortal, but it isn’t Ebony’s tale of romance and destiny, it’s Tara’s slow descent into gibbering madness, like the story she had created was an eldritch being that she was unable to comprehend the sight of. As I went over in part one, the writing style breaks down steadily over time, becoming more typo-ridden, filled with more and more casual abbreviations and chatspeak until it’s become apparent that she simply doesn’t care, and while the decline in writing 'quality’ certainly begins with Raven’s absence, it is a steady drop for many chapters afterward. Tara’s character is not one that seems like she has a grasp on subtlety or moving slowly, but that’s the pace with which the boundaries are pushed.

Let’s look at the plot in a rather brief rundown. The story starts out fairly simply, with Ebony and Draco falling in love and having poorly written sex in the forest. Vampire comes in to complicate things in a love triangle that is surprising for leading to attraction angst in all possible directions. Voldemort’s introduction adds to the melodrama of the story, and it weaves in and out of slice of life romance angst and the Voldemort subplot rather strangely. Then, in chapter 17, my favorite part of the story occurs, and it signifies the moment where My Immortal jumps the shark in a way nobody would have ever dreamt of.

Gerard was da sexiest guy eva! He locked even sexier den he did in pix. He had long raven blak hair n piercing blue eyes. He wuz really skinny and he had n amazing ethnic voice. We moshed 2 Helena and sum odder songz. Sudenly Gerard polled of his mask. So did the other membez. I gasped. It wasn’t Gerard at all! It was an ugly preppy man wif no nose and red eyes… Every1 ran away but me and Draco. Draco and I came. It was…….Vlodemort and da Death Deelers!

“U moronic idiots!” he shooted angstily. “Enoby, I told u to kill Vampire. Thou have failed. And now……….I shall kill thou and Draco!”

“No no please!” We begged sadly but he took out his knife.

Sudenly a gothic old man flu in on his broomstick. He had lung black hair and a looong black bread. He wus werring a blak robe dat sed ‘avril lavigne’ on da back. He shotted a spel and Vlodemort ran away. It was…………………………………DUMBLYDORE

It’s important here to note that this is very soon after Raven left the story. and remember that this is around when the story began to stop caring about spelling and typing. After this point, everything in the plot goes off the rails. The melodrama ramps up, Ebony is revealed as the only one who can stop Voldemort, time travel is introduced, despite supplanting Harry as the chosen one who can defeat the Dark Lord she instead tries to seduce a teenaged Tom Riddle… Everything goes completely off the rails.

And that’s the plan all along. The angle of Raven and Tara’s feud never went anywhere, probably because nobody really cared much about two teenagers yelling at each other on the internet. At least, not until 2015 when some asshole would examine the shit out of it for very little discernable reason or gain. I believe that when it was scrapped, the brain trust behind My Immortal decided to go in a different direction. Readers may not have took the bait of their public dispute, but they were buying the troll hook, line, and sinker. People genuinely believe, or at least want to believe, that the story was written in earnest. Even a lot of the people who have doubts about it have them on the grounds that they don’t want to accept that someone could write a story so terrible. The unexpected appeal of the trainwreck that was My Immortal itself, rather than the meta saga of Tara Gilesbie, terrible writer and object of mockery, drove the project into a different direction.

The story and spelling both degrade at the same time, steadily creeping further and further into the most ludicrous things the author thinks they can get away with. As the readers continue to accept what they see as genuine, the author pushes further, which is why we see new elements constantly introduced into the story where they make no sense. It’s not Tara throwing the kitchen sink into her story in a misguided belief that a lot of everything will make her story good, it’s Tara setting the narrative on a trajectory of the most ludicrous thing she can think of, and watching as people believe it. Because they do, completely.

Sex is introduced into the story, because of course it is, through the most unappealing of ways possible. Genitalia are referred to by 'thingy’ as though using the word penis is too embarrassing for her to handle, even though later she refers to Snap’s 'clook’ without issue. To further the wish fulfillment, she must be having sex with her love interests, and it must be terrible.

We went on the bed and started making out naked and then he put his boy’s thingy in mine and we HAD SEX. (c is dat stupid?)

I believe they call that docking.

I’ve already explained how I believe Tara Gilesbie to be just as much a fictional character as Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, and what I feel that character is meant to be is the most mockable and stereotypical fanfic writer one could ever dream of. A teenage emo girl delusionally believing she’s a goth, who’s into boys kissing but has no problem throwing homophobic slurs around, who violates the Harry Potter canon in every way possible for the sake of creating her world of wish fulfillment where everything centers around her. Every bad writing trope wrapped up into sensibilities that set themselves up for mockery. Throw on a tragic lack of self-awareness that opens her up to be laughed at as she smugly highlights her mistakes, and all the pieces fall into place.

Tara Gislebie is a parody of fanfic writers.

Before My Immortal hit the scene, bad fanfiction was not as popular a fandom passtime as it is now, owing largely to new forms of media allowing us to better share the stories and our mockery of them than we had access to in mid-2006, but also because it was always rather contained within fandoms or specific LJ groups meant to deride them. But My Immortal crossed boundaries and spread far outside the reaches of the Harry Potter fandom, to become more than just a story. It was a sensation, a fic so notorious that even people who weren’t around back then have still at least heard of it, even if they haven’t gone out looking for it. While bad writers are nothing new to fandom, My Immortal set off a slew of imitators and tributes, fake sequels, adaptations using its basic setups in different fandoms to produce interesting results, and with more attention suddenly on badfic with the intent to mock it, troll writers came out in droves to try and reproduce the magic.

Some succeeded. Many failed, and I believe one of the main reasons is that people continue to take My Immortal at its word. They just whip some typo-heavy dreck up in their word processor, and ignore all of the subtler elements of My Immortal. It gets so much wrong from the very beginning, but it had to slowly stew in its own crazy long enough to become the poorly written train wreck we’ve come to love. For a story so over the top, that combines all of the elements of a bad story into one perfect package, it does it cleverly enough that it continues to fool people almost ten years later.

You may believe that this is all way too much work for anyone to put into a stupid fanfic. That if it’s meant to be a joke, that it’s a long way to go. Developping characters, faked account compromises, and an active effort put into writing as terribly as possible. And it is a lot of effort, which is meant to throw you off, because it’s the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.

Haha. Wondering why this post isn’t where it’s normally found?

Well, my friends, ask no more!

On a dark lonely evening, sweat drips through your hair

Warm smell of your butthurt, rising up through the air

Up ahead in the distance, see the laptop’s blue light

Your head grows  heavy and your sight grows dim

Gotta stop for the night

There my posts on the display

Rang the warning bell

And you were thinking to your self

Give it a week and I’d surely quell

Then I flamed all the posters and I showed you her name

There were voices ringing in your head

Swear you’d heard them say

Welcome to the Hotel Tarafornia

Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)

Such a normal place

Plenty of room at the Hotel Tarafornia

Any time of year (Any of time of year)

I can smell your fear

Her mind is Tumblr-addicted

She got them means behind ends

She got a lotta commie, commie kids

That she calls friends

How they dance in the Discord

Sweet doxxing rush

Some post to remember

Some troll to forget

So I called up the admin

“Please bring my ban”

And he said

We haven’t had that spirit here since GC toured Japan

And still those voices are ringing from far away

But still those posts are comin’ from far away

Wake you up in the middle of the night

Just to hear me say

Welcome to the Hotel Tarafornia

Such a lovely place  (Such a lovely place)

Such a horrid face

Living it up in the Hotel Tarafornia

What an awful lie (What an awful lie)

What an alibi

Mirrors behind mirrors

Men behind the man

And she said: “We are all just copycats here

Of a copy of a fake

Among the moderators

They gathered for a feast

They stab it with their steely knives

But they just can’t kill the beast

Last thing you remember, you were

Grasping for your mouse

You had to find the permaban

To restore what was before

“Relax”, said your bete-noire

“I am

Programmed to deceive

You can ban me any time you like,

But I will never leave!”

[samwebsteruniblog]

Zine pages

-Pact Coffee

I have been very cautious with time for this project so I decided to make the last pages all together and to really try and make them link especially as due to the unique way this zine will be folded these pages will all line up. So to do this the first thing I did was page planning, before starting these page sketches I knew that the last pages have to include some information on their brazilian farms and also a bit about the nature while making it artsy as that's the whole idea behind the zine. I also wanted to get the zine complete so I could then work on the poster and other products for Pact.

Just more page plans before starting to create it, from this i realised I wanted three page to flow together and be connected with illustrations, These illustrations will link with the main theme of the zine and the other page before this will be a bit about the farmers.

Before I can begin any art work or designing I have to do some more research into the farmers of brazil that work for pact and then also the animals and vegetation that brazil is known for.

The animals I looked at to maybe use where; Jaguarundi, Rhea, Tapir, Capuchin, capybara, Bush Dog, Pink Dolphin, yellow armadillo, maned wolf, and toco toucan. I looked at more of these animals than I needed to because Im not sure which ones I will use yet so will have to look more into them and what photos of them are available to use as references.

Using some information on Pacts website and free photos from Pexels I was able to start creating the other pages. I also wanted to mess around with typography. 

This the design I started with, I didn't like how the text was displayed I also found it quite boring and not very visually pleasing so I started experimenting and creating some graphic art for a toucan. 

 I really liked this however I wanted to make it work vertically so redesigned it and also added leafs to it to make it fit in with other designs on the zine. I used this along with a mix of digital and analogue drawing of a toucan.

I originally made this not knowing if it will be included as I wasn't 100% positive on how it looked as a piece but I then played around more and added it to this new page design along with other illustrations and vectors.

This is the final piece I came up with to include in the zine I also designed with intentions of being a poster or other product for pact on its own.

This is how the page spread ended, I did try to use more professional and modern fonts but I personally felt it didn't really fit the playfulness of the zine.

Looking back these two pages I realised I wasn't pleased With how they looked. I didn't feel confident with the way I had left them so resisted my page plans and decided I wanted to make the design more clean and smooth. I really disliked The pink and it works on the left side but with the text its quite distracting and the hand written marker font doesn't really portray the information as serious so I decided to try and be more experimental.

My first change was toning down the colour on the toucan mini poster/art page. I was playing around with the saturation and hue however couldn't really dim the original colours to a nice shade that I felt comfortable with. So i decided to completely change it all and have some of the colours bleed through I really liked the earthy tones and it reminded me of coffee colours so I felt it was very fitting.

I then worked on creating the next page I found that it was much easier to do now that they weren't a double page. I decided to get rid of the coffee stain because I didn't want to lean back into the more messy side and I wanted the text to be much clearer. I got all of my text from Pacts website along with other sources for information about the bird, along with my own script.

Im very pleased with the changes and development of these two pages and feel much more confident with the final design. I am critical of the fact I trimmed the centre headings font however it is only there for aesthetic and doesn't really take away attention from the rest of the zine.

[pure-bakusass]

Kiribaku AU Month: Day 8: 🐲 HTTYD AU 🐲

Today I did some sketches that serve as illustrations to the drabble I wrote (killing it with the writing! 💚 they say practice makes perfect).

Basically Kirishima is Hiccup based and Bakugou is Astrid based 💙 Bakugou meets Kirishima when he's still an insecure mess, but he falls in love with him and believes in him. Together they hunt down the Night Fury, but it escapes and Kirishima finds it on his own later and tries to befriend it. Kirishima is the sunshine boy that wants to befriend dragons. Bakugou despises them and wants to kill them, but his love for Kirishima makes him slowly change his approach. There are situations I pictured with them that I couldn't include in the drabble so there they are, here:

Kiri trains the dragon in Bakugou's presence, and Bakugou is standing in the safe distance angrily like "Iook im not going to tell the rest but keep that disgusting thing away from me" while he eventually slowly grows to love the dragon as much as Kiri does.

Kirishima: Look, this is Bakugou. I know both of you started off pretty badly but Bakugou means no harm. There is no need to be afraid of Bakugou. See? Bakugou put the knife down.

One day the dragon licks Bakugou's face and it's hilarious.

Kirishima: See? He loves you!

Bakugou: *grumpily wipes his face* It's a fucking one-sided love then.

Remember the moment when Hiccup took Astrid to that wild ride on Toothless? Kirishima does the same to Bakugou to prove a point. Bakugou just stubbornly refuses to accept the concept of riding dragons and Kirishima had no other choice than to get to him like this.

Kirishima: Let me just show you something, that's all! And then I'll put you down!

Bakugou: *clinging to dragon's tail for life and screaming* Fuck no, you better put me the fuck down now!

Bakugou ends up enjoying the ride, but he's lowkey scared being this high for the first time in his life, so he clinged to Kirishima's back and held him tight.

Bakugou: *hits Kirishima* That's for forcing me to ride the fucking dragon.

Bakugou: *kisses Kirishima* And that's for...the rest.

@kiribakumonth2019

Now for the ✨drabble✨ You can read it under the cut!

"Fuck!"

Bakugou's scream suddenly broke the peaceful, calm silence of the forest. Both him and Kirishima were wandering around the place for quite a time, and while it was completely understandable for Bakugou to get frustrated, Kirishima genuinly enjoyed it. If it wasn't for the reason why they were here, he would consider it just a nice walk, a date even. But Kirishima knew that today they meant business, and he shouldn't let his thoughts get away from it too much. If he wanted Bakugou not to be angry with him, that is.

"That shitty dragon really couldn't have found itself a better place than a fucking forest to crash, huh?" Bakugou snarled as he vented his frustration by kicking the nearest rock. Kirishima smiled at him. At this point he was so used to Bakugou's outbursts that he found them amusing, in a way.

"Dude, there's hardly even anything else here apart from forests, what did you expect? Hey, c'mon. Don't worry so much about that. I'm sure we'll find it."

Bakugou didn't feel like calming down at all, although he did have to admit that Kirishima's warm smile was probably the only thing in the entire world that would ever come this near to soothing his nerves. He rolled his eyes in response, but the tone of his voice did calm significantly.

"I'm not worried, idiot. I'm sure we'll find it, because I am not leaving the damn place without a dragon. I will tear down every fucking tree if that's what it takes to bring the bastard to the village."

"Yeah, right, that's what I'm talking about! I can't wait to see their faces when we show them that we actually DID take a real Night Fury down! I'm so excited just thinking about it. Aren't you excited Katsuki?"

Bakugou laughed. He couldn't help it that Kirishima's excitement was getting through to him.

"Fuck, you bet I am. Those idiots kept laughing at me for saying I shot this stupid Night Fury bullshit down with my own hands. But now that you're going to kill it, we'll make them all choke on those words."

"Oh damn right we- wait, what? Me?"

Kirishima stopped and blinked in surprise, not quite believing what he has just heard. All of a sudden, his enthusiasm faded away, leaving him visibly nervous.

"Since when it's me who is supposed to kill the dragon, Katsuki? I mean it was you who shot it so wouldn't it be fair for you to, uh, finish the work you started?

Bakugou raised his eyebrow. Such a sudden change in Kirishima's behavior seemed suspicious and unusual for him. He didn't like it.

"What are you even saying, shithead? Of course the fuck not! We're a team. I did my part of the job which means now is your turn. That is what I call fair. Besides, I already killed my first dragon, and you didn't. If this keeps up those idiots out there in the village will eat you alive."

"Are you saying that they still talk about me behind my back...? About the not-killing-a-dragon thing?"

Bakugou sighed. Now he understood exactly what the sudden change of attitude was about. How could he not get it before? He knew too well about Kirishima's biggest insecurity and mentioning the villagers was one fast way to trigger it even more. Bakugou felt like he was the actual idiot here and he hated that. He looked Kirishima in the eyes, dead serious.

"Not when i beat the goddamn shit out of them when they do so. Listen, you don't deserve to be put down like that. You're strong and manly, and totally capable of killing dragons. I'm sure of that. And you know it too. It's just the rest that don't know. Wouldn't it be thrilling to prove them wrong?"

Kirishima didn't look convinced. In fact he looked like he was having a hard time processing the situation. Bakugou reflected on his words and tried again with different approach.

"...Look, I-

...I may have used the wrong words for it. It doesn't fucking matter at all what others think about you, as long as you yourself know your own worth. But what matters is that killing a dragon is a powerful experience. It really makes you feel like you have enormous strenght, like you're some kind of a god. I want you to be able to experience it and be as satisfied and fulfilled as me. Only a fool would reject the opportunity to kill a dragon that is basically served to him on a silver plate. Listen, if you don't want to kill the dragon for yourself, do it for me. Do it for us, Ei."

The thing was that no matter how bad Kirishima's doubts were, he couldn't deny that he was madly in love with Bakugou, and therefore extremely weak for all those moments when he spoke to him in [that] voice he was using on him right now. The soft, loving, encouraging, lower toned kind of voice Bakugou wouldn't use on anyone else except Kirishima.

"I guess you do have a point here Katsuki."

Bakugou responded with a satisfied, fierce smile, one of those that Kirishima really enjoyed seeing. He gave in completely as Bakugou pulled him closer for a nice, deep kiss.

"There you go... There's my brave, unbreakable Eijirou. I think I might have something just for the occasion."

Bakugou reached to his belt and grabbed a knife he then gave to Kirishima. But that was no ordinary knife. Kirishima's eyes went open wide as he realised what he was holding. It was Katsuki's lucky knife, the exact one he killed his first dragon with. Kirishima was still amazed everytime he remembered that fight. To take down a dragon having only a knife on you for many seemed impossible. But for Katsuki, there was no such thing as impossible. That's why he admired him so much and still found it hard to believe that someone like Bakugou would consider someone like him his equal.

"What, why so surprised? You need it more than I do. Keep it. Make a good use of it and make me proud. No, make yourself proud."

Now that Kirishima thought about it, he has never actually seen Bakugou allowing anyone to touch it, ever, let alone make any use of it. The fact he was gifted such a meaningful thing filled Kirishima's heart with sudden wave of courage and will to act. Will to be strong and to prove himself that there is no such thing he's not capable of. The big, bright smile came back to Kirishima's face.

"Thank you, Katsuki. Thank you so much."

As they continued to search through the woods, Kirishima's excitement was in the right place. Even though he still felt nervous, he decided not to let it control him. At some point he reached for another kiss but Bakugou pushed him away and pointed to the ground with visible satisfaction.

"Ei, look! You see those traces here? I bet that's where the dragon fell. It was too weak to fly away, it's most probably very near. Fuck, we've found it!"

Next thing they saw when they looked around the place was a familiar net, and under it, a big, black pile of something that was most probably their dragon. Sparks of excitement appeared in Bakugou's eyes as he gave Kirishima a push forward.

"Go get it."

"Right!"

Kirishima took a deep breath as he began carefully approaching the dragon. He could do it. He totally could. "I have Katsu's lucky knife and a taste of his lips on mine, what could possibly go wrong?" he mumbled to himself as he was getting close to the infamous Night Fury. Bakugou decided to watch him from the distance.

First thing that Kirishima did as soon as he reached the dragon was to kneel down beside it and gently place his hand on it, then move it across its smooth, black scales. For a brief second he thought that maybe the dragon was already dead? That would certainly spare him a lot of trouble. But then he felt his hand being gently lifted as the dragon inhaled. He gasped in surprise and quickly took his hand back. The dragon was very much alive. Kirishima felt absolutely terrified, yet absolutely amazed at the same time. Not only it was his first time seing a dragon this close, but also seeing a dragon that nobody has ever seen before at all. This felt like enough of a thrilling experience for Kirishima. When he remembered what he was supposed to do, it brought up a weird feeling of sadness in him. The dragon was so...beautiful. It looked so peaceful and vulnerable while it was asleep like this. Kirishima sighed heavily.

"How am I supposed to take your life away while you can't even fight me back...?"

"What the fuck is taking you so long, shitty hair?!"

Kirishima twitched. Bakugou's yelling brought him down to earth yet once again.

"Katsu, I-...I don't think I can do it!"

That was most probably the worst possible way to express what he was feeling right now. He regretted those words the moment he spoke. Bakugou approached him quickly and angrily.

"What the fuck is your problem again?! You want to back away now that we're so close? After I gave you the knife and did my fucking best to make you feel better about yourself, even though I can't comfort others for shit and you know it? Listen here, you-"

"No, no, I'm not going to back away, please let me explain!" Kirishima interrupted Bakugou halfway through his outburst, hoping it wouldn't last. "I mean just look at him. He seems so vulnerable lying helplessly like this on the ground like he's already defeated. All I'm saying is that...you know, is there really a pride to be taken in butchering an unconcious dragon? I mean, it's no effort, there's not even a fight. That's not very manly nor thrilling if you ask me."

For a second Bakugou looked like he was about to lose his shit and explode again, but as soon as Kirishima spoke, his face expression changed. Now he was smiling, and it was one of those sly, fierce grins of his that always meant trouble.

"Right, sure. Of course you want a fight. That's understandable. Should have just said exactly that, babe. Let's rile the beast up then."

Bakugou got down on his knees and started cutting the strings of the net that was tangled around the dragon's limbs.

"Wait, no, that's not what I-"

Before Kirishima could say anything more, he was interrupted with the sound of a loud hit of Bakugou's hand on the dragon's hard scaled back. The Night Fury's eyes opened up right away and its pupils narrowed in a sign of hostility.

"this is bad-"

The dragon stood up on all fours, spreading its wings and roaring loudly and terrifyingly right in Bakugou and Kirishima's face. Kirishima's heart stopped, but Bakugou? Bakugou yelled back.

"That's right, that's more like it! Bring it on, fucker! They don't call you the Night Fury for no fucking reason, do they?!"

That's when it all went down to shit.

***

what a terrible way to finish a drabble XDDDD but thats all, thank you for attention <3

#KiriBakuAUMonth #kiribakumonth2019 #day 8 #kiribaku #bakushima #httyd au #bakugou katsuki #kirishima eijirou #hiccup kirishima #astrid bakugou #ally art #ally draws #digit-ally #my art #bnha #mha #ally writes #ally's drabble #third one! #killin it! #no angst this time! #THIS IS BAD #kirishima's panic face is my face when i look at anything i created X D #mood #the creator struggle #AND IT ALL WENT DOWN TO SHIT #my life in a nutshell #today's artwork and writing is sponsored by memes #also depression #i tried a new brush

[pluralthey]

hey uh. as an artist with depression, how do you sorta. make your brain have the capacity to acutally devote energy to doing art/coming up with ideas/being creative in general. my dumbass brain isnt even able to like. devote energy to typing sentences when its really bad ya know. if this is an odd question then uhhh yea you dont have to respond yeet

depression is not my biggest problem so i’m not sure i’d have good advice.first of all probably address HALT protocol to make sure all of the basics are taken care of and not making it worse.

coffee can be a good pick-me-up but you’ll develop something of a tolerance over time so it can’t be a perfect every day solution. probably divorce from your mind that you need to draw every day to be a good artist too. i hate hearing this from other people though because it feels like they’re not getting that i’m trying to say NOT drawing every day is usually making me feel worse cuz i like Want to draw every day so… grain of salt.coffee doesn’t even last long enough to do a whole illustration in one day so aim low, draw things that are fun and easy for you at first to build up Artist Confidence. also, drawing shit about being depressed might be easier to draw since it’s like you’re already in the mood anyway, very prepared, committed method acting.exercise also helps clear the fog or make me feel the emotional weight just bearing down on me feel a little lighter, but it’s just as hard to get motivated to exercise when depressed. i’m not talking like a jog or hard exercise, just a brisk walk for 10 minutes. this one gets easier once you’ve figured out it helps you feel better, if it does, ime. it also gets my appetite working sometimes which goes away when i’m depressed and it obviously gets worse from not eating enough or not enjoying the food enough.

try being nice to yourself also. i often have serious issues with repressing happy emotions out of fear that i’ll get hurt, so this is a huge one for me. human brains r really programmed to live with freedom or to just not want to live at all…find some good friends who know your immediate happiness and sense of security is more important than what they find Cringe and stay in contact w/them so you have some reinforcement when you finally do something you wanted to and go like “HOLY FUCKBALLS I HAVEN’T DRAWN IN 8 MONTHS AND I JUST MADE SOMETHING AND I THINK I MIGHT BE GOD NOW??” add some intentionally goofy voice to it or like a ton of exclamation points and 1′s to make it sound more satirical if it’s too embarrassing. don’t undercut it with “but this is bad” or “but i gave up here” internally in the moment, it’s okay to think critically about ur art but there are appropriate times and places and “when art is really hard to do AT ALL” is not one of those times.this one has been really important to me cuz it helps art feel like something that helps me feel better, it can be something i crave like less productive things such as video games if i let the actual mental reward happen.

all this shit has been just basic depression advice tho. my one thing that i never see anybody mention and one thing that really helps me buckle down on some days when it’s the worst is i will literally just livestream my canvas while a trusted loved one watches me work on it (or not work on it). when it’s really hard i just choose a more private site to stream on.disclaimer that i have SO many meltdowns and i cry and i yell at myself and i angrily scribble all over the canvas, it’s embarrassing and stupid but it’s become a reliable way to do something when i am REALLY desperate as long as i’ve taken care of myself otherwise. this is stuff my brain is usually trying to keep me from doing by just shutting down when staring at the canvas so it has to happen either way or just go months without confronting it, basically. this might be just a thing i experience because of a different disorder though.at all times aim to make sure you don’t have to handle this alone, even if it’s only for a few minutes while somebody helps w/a small thing by offering input, whatever.

that’s really all the advice i have from personal experience. sorry if it doesn’t help, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you personally

#i had an ex who was too depressed to draw and i managed to help them do a few new pieces before we broke up #but they got really... upset at me about it #it was like since i had helped motivate them to draw something #it was my fault when they didn't draw more b/c i didn't want to make them feel like it's all i wanted #even though the original piece that broke the streak was fanart and i didn't know who they even were at the time #so sorry i'm pretty skittish about the topic now #not art #ask #asks #theoreoarmy

[tessacxstello]

hello im (F, 24) an idiot and forgot to post tessa’s (F, 22, fictional) intro!

pls bare in mind most of this was written 5+ years ago n i haven’t written tessa since 2015...... but lets get this show (LOCKWOODRP) on the road (DASHBOARD). 

tw school shooting, tw bipolar disorder

art hoe. always covered in paint. why?? she bad at painting

the mark rothko jackson pollock kind of bad tho wher people are like.... omg.... revolutionary..... its a badly drawn vagina

fuckin loves astrology, but cant take it that seriously bcos one of her bfs was a gemini so there’s some lenience there. but she WILL blame her hormones and mood swings on the positon of mars

embodies pure sunshine. 

one of those really annoying people that can go through the most traumatic shit and still find a positive spin. 

cares so much for others but does not really care for herself n it’s meant she just bottles up all this shit n when someone asks her how her day has gone she just falls on the ground like tht bit in midsommar when florence does that loud wheezy noise and sits down 

has never really had much money at all. learns to make-do with what she has. loves upcycling!! her bookshelf is made from cardboard which she’s reinforced by pappering it over with pages ripped out of thrifted books. her sofa is an old car boot which she’s repainted, put on wheels and stuffed w cushions so that it’s actually bearable to sit on.

her knitted cardigan? its made out of wife material.

knits all the time. will crochet you a christmas scarf. if ur lucky you might get a knitted jumper with a penis in a santa hat

still sleeps with cuddly toys n then wonders why ppl dont think she’s mature enough for a serious relationship

very passionate about Sister Doing It For THemselves!! raised by a single mom who worked her ass off so that tessa could do fun activities after school, have lelli kelly shoes, and go to college (not necessarily in tht order of importance)

tessa was born out of wedlock as the result of an affair between her mom (a journalism intern in her early 20s) and a new york times editor. 

the editor offered to pay tessa’s mom off to have an abortion, but she was like fuck u and told the papers he’d done that and used the money to cover the cost of her internship which they refused to pay her for

and because of the scandal, he ended up going through a pretty messy divorce with his wife, and losing custody of his kids. so as a child  tessa was seen as the cause of a divorce and received mutliple letters from the editors wife (to tessa personally!) and his kids saying how she had ruined everything, but her mom moved them to another town so tessa didn’t have to deal with that crap. 

her mom worked 3 jobs to put her through school, so in return tessa pushes herself incredibly hard to succeed. needs a break and a hug and to get laid to be honest. 

an old soul. likes old films, old music, old people. only recently got an iphone 5s so not really with this century yet

very sweet and soft and kind but also a fucking mess and won’t listen to anyone else’s opinion. she’ll take comfort, but not advice. 

feminist buddhist bisexual vegetarian for human rights and animal welfare. standing on a soapbox shouting about the climate in the quad, shoving flyers into your hands. flyers everwhere. she turns up at your grandmas funeral and shoves one into her mouth. she’s stolen the mic from the vicar to talk about pandas.

says “mother of pearl” and “heavens to betsy”.

had an affair with her married piano teacher and he’s now facing a custody battle and his wife is leaving him and tessa has completely internalised that guilt despite her being the victim in the scenario

aesthetics: paint splattered jeans, loose curls spilling from a scrunchie, thrifted blouses in bright yellow, guzzling coffee in the library at three am when a term paper’s due, shoddily illustrated campaign posters to save endangered species, polaroids plastered to your bedroom walls with scribbled dates on the frames, jumping into a stack of autumn leaves, jumping off piers in the summer months and stripping off your wet clothes on the beach, digging your thumbs into peaches to leave a bruise, smoking with the extractor fan on to hide the smell, bath bombs, letting the girls at lush rub samples all over your skin, cacti with knitted bobble hats, decorative pillows and sun and moon blanket throws, basic bitch fairy lights hanging from every single window, painting the name of the boys you’ve loved inside your wardrobe door.

studies fine art and philosophy, and wants to become either a lecturer or the first woman president. vibe wise, very similar to leslie knope, missy from big mouth, and basically the naive everygirl with a high opinion of themselves trope

gets drunk off like one double vodka lemonade because she’s small and she’s a pretty messy wild drunk. it’s when slutty tessa comes out, and the next day she’ll thoroughly regret every choice made and decide she’s never drinking again and cutting out all men and starting daily sudoko

on the cheerleading team and is a flyer, which she sees as a HUGE responsibility and she works really hard to make sure she’s on it for her team. one of those get up at 7am and go to the gym before school types its sickening

she had a really traumatic time at high school because there was a shooting in her school. she was in the next classroom when it happened, and she lost one of her friends in the shooting. she had to take two months off school, was diagnosed with depression and put on anti-depressants because of it. in her 2nd year of uni she was rediagnosed with bipolar disorder and anxiety, which she’s now on medication for. she can be really good for several months at a time and feel super creative and determined (she actually finds manic periods helpful for her creativity n art, n sadly sometimes doesn’t take her meds in these periods to push herself more which is obvs super bad.....). but when the bad periods come they can also last months n she had to take a semester out of school last year because of her mood, so she should be a senior by now but she’s retaking junior year

she attends weekly stress-management sessions prescribed by her doctor which she finds pointless.

very childish in the sense that she can only see her own point of view and kind of views herself as the “protagonist” and thinks her ideas are super important and life changing and she IS Destined for Greatness! despite being pretty much average af

pinterest board.

STATS

age: 22

height: 5'2"

positive traits: kind-hearted, gregarious, selfless, philosophical, open minded, idealistic, courageous, feisty, charismatic, loyal, adventurous.

negative traits: stubborn, hot-headed, reticent, escapist, self-destructive, easily led, naive, troubled, complicated, stepford smiler, envious, overdramatic, explosive.

distinguishing Marks: heart-shaped birthmark on the right of her chest, splattering of freckles across the cheeks during summer months, full lips, large eyes, porcelain features, long wavy hair, tattoo of a bird and a cage on her ankles and a basic bitch arrow tat on her wrist (srry to anyone with an arrow tat).

skills: jack-of-all-trades, talented pianist, perceptive, knows the correct way to throw a punch, good survival instinct, is able to remain calm in stressful situations, endures, artistic, excels in academic studies, hard-working and self-motivated, expert liar and talented actress.

likes: wolves, vintage thrift store fashion, old leather-bound books, left-wing democratic politics, cigarettes, poetry, John Hughes movies, cold coffee, hot tea, the sound of laughter, staying up til 4am having deep conversations, Tchaikovsky, having deep conversations about life, stationary, DC Comics, horoscopes, winged eyeliner, cats, knee-high socks, house music, abandoned buildings, studio ghibli, the smell of the earth after rain, Wes Anderson films, herbal tea, old people, solitude, esoteric things, the smell of freshly baked bread, Charles Bukowski, the moon.

fears: death, oblivion, global warming, losing those she loves, isolation, clowns, guns, enclosed spaces.

nicknames: Tess, T-Dog, Tessie, Socrates, Princess, Sunshine Girl, Florence Nightingale.

alignment: Neutral Good

MBTI type: INFP

BIOGRAPHY

tw school shooting

Her story begins with Cordelia Costello, a twenty-three year old college drop-out, turned beautician, turned columnist, turned intern at a local publishing company. She was a youthful, beautiful, siren of a women, always surrounded by an aura of enigma and an entourage of men. It was no surprise to the gossips in the office that within six months working at the company, Cordelia had added to her list another title – mistress to Franklin Hozier, the Editor of the New York Times. After two blissful months and three hundred and twenty seven orgasms, Cordelia decided she wanted a baby. Franklin laughed in her face. Feeling isolated and used, Cordelia continued her affair with her boss’ boss for another month, before deciding to take matters into her own hands.

It started with a turkey baster.

Soon the infant cries of a baby girl graced the world, her wrinkled skin puckered and pink as her mother held her in her arms, glancing upon the most beautiful thing in her life. Once Tessa, named after Cordelia’s favourite literary heroine, entered the world, Franklin left her life and things took a turn for the better. Despite living in a rented one-bedroom apartment in Staten Island, on what little money Cordelia had saved, Tessa’s childhood years were filled with nothing but the happiest of memories. Times were tough, but what they lacked in money, the Costello’s made up in love. While Tessa was at school, Cordelia did odd jobs cleaning, child-minding, working in local nurseries, in order to save up enough money to give her daughter the best start in life.

Despite what she had been led to believe by television shows and teen movies, the first few years of High School were some of the best years of her life. Tessa threw herself into a multitude of activities that High School offered her, including the drama club, the orchestra, choir, badminton and the school newspaper. While she certainly wasn’t considered ‘popular’ at school, Tess had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. In fact, High School was a place where she made some of the greatest memories of her life, but come her final year, it was also a place where she was haunted by some of her worst.

On the January 17th of Tessa’s senior year of high school, a shooting took place in Westville High School. For two hours Tessa locked herself in a supply cupboard, her head between her knees as she tried to stay silent despite the screams of horror from the corridor. Eighteen students were caught in the crossfire, two of which were Tessa’s best friends. Bouquets of flowers, laminated photographs, Teddy Bears in cling-film bags attached to balloons littered the streets as families and friends came to pay tribute to the eighteen students withered before they had a chance to bloom.

It took two months of therapy before Tessa could return to school. Some of the survivors could never return due to the horrors that their eyes had laid witness to. Sometimes Tessa felt like a part of her had died with the friends that were stolen from her too soon, but one thought kept her going through: she had survived, she was alive and breathing, and she could not afford to loose a second of the precious time she had been granted on this earth. Despite the nightmares that continued to haunt her each night, Tessa found in the aftermath of the disaster a new sense of motivation. She began applying for scholarships for colleges without her mother’s knowledge, in the hope that her academic success would be enough to carry her through further education. Thankfully, it was, and after three torturous months of waiting Tess was offered an arts scholarship to her dream school, Lockwood University, where she hoped she could finally start to rebuild her life.

THE PRESENT:

Life at university was like a separate world. Students came and went like moths among the whisperings and the tequila and the stars. In this new world, Tessa was exposed for the first time in her life to alcohol, drugs, and the sexual appetites of other students her age – though she politely declined all three. Instead, Tessa threw herself into the vast array of activities in the hope that by distracting herself she could escape the terrible flashbacks that continued to haunt her. Tessa joined the lacrosse team, despite never having played before, and took up cheerleading discovering a new talent; she joined the musical theatre group, and the film club, and even set up her own acapella singing society. But despite how much she tried to throw herself into student life, her past hung around her like a bad smell, and with the added pressure of the Sinking Ships zine, Tess began to feel the weight of her secret tying her down like a pair of shackles around her wrists.

PERSONALITY:

If someone was to describe Tessa in a single word, it would most likely be ‘bubbly’, ‘open-minded’ or ‘sweet’. But they would be wrong – Tessa is not bubbly, or sweet, or stubborn, or hotheaded, or fiesty, or infectious, or any of the things the world see her as, but merely a numb and lonely echo of the gregarious, halcyon girl she once was. Tessa Costello was one of life’s enigmas. No one knew who she was, for to each person she met she wore a different mask – she dripped confidence, or was painfully shy; she was an exhibitionist, or a brooding wallflower; she took things too seriously, or not seriously at all. She was an actress and the world was her stage, each person she met a different member of the audience in the performance of her life. In truth, Tessa no longer even recognised herself. Insecure, and self-destructive, she tried to hang on to the extroverted, mischievous pieces of herself that everyone had once loved, but day by day it got harder to know what lay in the vacant holes blown through her mind. While she was stubborn and hot-headed, Tessa always saw the best in people, which meant that she was easily led astray. While she had grown up learning to be street smart and astute, she was idealistic and allowed silly fantasies to cloud her mind. By nature, she was passionate, which lead her to misimagine and romanticise those she met. Despite the hell she had witnessed, and the anxiety that feasted upon her, she believed that people were innately good and that to have courage and be kind could cure anyone of their sadness – yet she was unable to cure herself.

TWITTER:

@500daysoftessa: i blame disney films and musicals for my high expectations of men

@500daysoftessa: i am in love with the boy who works at starbucks. today i asked for a double latte and he gave me a tripple, which i think is proof that my love is requited. our children will be smart and talented and beautiful.

@500daysoftessa: little known historical fact: pharaohs were burried with their hands crossed over their chests because it was a popular belief there would be countless water slides in the after life.

#huntingtonintro #pounce on me for plots #tw school shooting #tw bipolar disorder #tw depression

[comicteaparty]

February 17th-February 23rd, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from February 17th, 2020 to February 23rd, 2020.  The chat focused on Crossed Wires by Iris Jay.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Crossed Wires by Iris Jay~! (http://crossedwires.irisjay.net/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until February 23rd, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic!

Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Alex_makes_comics

Just started on this comic. It's highly addictive. The art is super expressive ( I am always really jealous of people who can use dot shading effectively), and the story is fast paced. It keeps you turning pages. I did not see the twist of the vr helmet coming at all and I love that. I love thinking I am reading one thing and then finding out I am reading something else. It suddenly made the character design choice of having a dragon samurai as the MC so much more understandable. This choice was fun to begin with, but it so much more perfect when you realise it's an avatar. I'm only on page 25 and I have to get back to work,so it's early days yet for a favourite character. So far, I'm just annoyed at all the characters for talking in class

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I made it through the comic, and it was a really fun read! I like how the mechanics of the universe embellish the concept of hacking without... making it "unrealistic"? Like, I often see hacking portrayed in media as just typing gibberish code and saying "i'm in", which is generally pretty silly. What Crossed Wires does is turns hacking into essentially real-world heists, where you need disguises and acting and people watching your back. Sword fights aside, that's actually way closer to how hacking actually works (like, it's easier to get someone to tell you their password than to crack the password database). My absolute favorite example of this is the ending of Chapter 02 (which is also my favorite scene of the comic). Michael has been built up as this absolute dirtbag, and the number of creeps he somehow has following him has made him nigh-unbeatable. I'm not going to spoil exactly how the gang gets to him in the end, but watching him get beaten down was one of the most satisfying things I've ever seen in a comic.

RebelVampire

I agree that story wise, the way it handles hacking is really unique. Which tbf to TV, real hacking is generally actually very boring. And as @snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) says, there's actually easier ways like just getting someone to tell you their password that are way easier. In real life, even, the first thing companies who are hired to test another company's security do is just show up in person and try to trick their way past people. People are really the worst enemy of all security. But anyway, even though it's a bit weird, I definitely think turning hacking into this real life VR experience is unique while capturing the real life flaws that humans create for security ventures. I also like that the beginning really just starts right up with this premise without taking like 20 pages to exposition. Just gotta accept a fighting dragon, which works really well in this case.(edited)

My favorite moment in the comic so far is actually probably the one morning chat between Cass and VRRMN where they have a serious talk about their relationship and the future. I actually like that their relationship is built on the point that sorry isn't enough, and that while you can see VRRMN's sincerity, you can also justifiably see why Cass isn't going to forgive so easily. And it was just a very real and heart breaking scene since no matter the direction,, nobody was going to be happy. Which tbf, I also like this scene because Cass is my favorite character. I like that Cass is a smidgen more down to earth than some of the other characters so far, and I really like this dilemma where Cass wants to leave hacking, but keeps coming back. Plus Cass is cool and badass, so there's that too.

Ironically, though, I think I like seeing Cass and Alan interact the most. I like this kind of...brother sister relationship they have going on where Cass just wants to protect Alan who is way too eager to get over his head. So all their interactions are super cute

But lets chat about art for a second. I really like that the art style in this is like this interesting mix between modern and cyberpunk. When it comes to stories where you have VR or similar involved, there's a lot of directions to go. Some just use the same art style throughout, some drastically change it, etc. It all depends on what is being sold to the reader in terms of setting. What I like about the art, though, is that despite it really doesn't change much, I'm sold on both the modern real world and the cyberpunk sort of feel I get from the world of the hackers. I always feel like both aspects are unique and have a lot of character, which I don't find in a lot of other similar comics

Iris Jay

Iris Jay here, author of Crossed Wires! Thanks for the rad comments so far, it means a lot that y'all are reading my weird queer hacker comic. <3

And I'm glad you dig the worldbuilding!! XW originally started as a Hackers fan comic, and I wanted to capture the same general feeling of it-- a cyberpunk story that wasn't happening in some neon-lit future, but now, the present, albeit with slightly better graphics capabilities. (Of course, with VR technology rapidly catching up, it's probably going to be historical fiction by the time I'm done with the series, buuuuut what're ya gonna do...)

Cass gets a LOT of cool stuff coming up very soon in the comic. I'm super excited to show y'all where the story goes next!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Oh, one other thing I love - I really like how both of the main protagonists are trans. Like I really think it adds some interesting parallels and theming to the story - these are both characters who felt rejected by the world, they went into VR for escapism and for avatars that portrayed who they really were. And I'm interested to see how the theme of a person's VR avatar being very closely tied to their identity is explored further in this chapter (I'm guessing it will be, particularly with regards to Cass).

sagaholmgaard

Im only about 30 pages in but I dig the style difference between the digital world and the dots for shading, and the real world with the greyscale shading. It's really cool. And the use of big areas that are colored black!! Love that kinda stuff, want to get better at using that myself!

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. What exactly is the Amphisbaena Project and how does it work in a way that it physically affects a person? What is the goal of the people who revived it, and who revived the project in the first place?

10. Do you think Cass will ever forgive Vrrmn/Theresa for the events that happened between them in the past? Can their relationship be repaired, and how will their soured relationship affect their separate relationships with Alan?

11. Do you personally believe in the hackers’ mission in exposing wrongdoing despite it being illegal? In general, what do you think the story has to teach us about standing up for both ourselves and for society?

12. Overall, how do you think the events of the story will change Alan, his relationships with others, and his pursuits of hacking? How will the other characters change and grow as people over the course of their adventures?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

I feel like the Amphisbaena Project maybe started as like an anti-hacker measure. Since it's not like hackers are doing legal things, so it walks that ethical grey line of what is and isn't ok to do to law breakers. Like, if someone is invading your home, is it fine to shoot them. But now I think the people who revived it (which I have no guesses as to who yet), are using it to eliminate business rivals. Cause that sounds like something a corporation would do. As for how it works, I think it's just a simple matter of information overload to the brain, just on like...a brain-breaking level. Which this leads me into the moral quandry of, do I believe in the hackers mission. The short answer is no, because personally speaking I don't believe breaking the law is good in most cases, and often wrongdoing taints the results. However, I also emotionally understand why people would do this. The characters have made their personal mission sort of clear, and that makes me empathize with their plight. So all in all, I feel the story teaches us that standing up for yourself and society isn't easy. Whether it's an emotional or physical hardship, there are sacrifices and sometimes, you just gotta be ok with that.

Let me move onto character growth. I don't feel Cass will ever forgive Vrrmn, but I do think Cass will move past it to the level of being cordial. And I think Alan will be a big part of that, since both seem nice enough to not want to put Alan in the middle of their personal issues. So while the relationship will never be what it was, they'll probably be able to say How are you without Cass sneering. XD As for Alan, I kind of feel that the story will teach Alan more humility. We've already seen quite a bit of this, but I think his overwhelming confidence could still be more tempered as the story goes on. Not just because Alan will face strong people, but with more experience comes more wisdom. So at the end, Alan will be able to recognize that those boasted skills in the past weren't so great. As for other characters, I feel like I need to know them more before I can say.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

What I'm most looking forward to in the comic is probably just seeing more of Cass. I'm interested to see where Cass goes both emotional and physically as the hacking world begins to change somewhat do to the events of the story. Overall, this is a stylistically interesting comic that covers a lot of ground with lots of interesting visuals that complement the story well.

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Crossed Wires this week! Please also give a special thank you to Iris Jay for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Crossed Wires, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://crossedwires.irisjay.net/

Iris’ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/irisjay

Iris’ Shop: https://shop.itsnero.com/

Iris’ Twitter: https://twitter.com/irisjaycomics

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic book club #webcomic bookclub #comic tea party #ctp #crossed wires #iris jay

[spekulative]

starting anew!

hi! if by the odd chance you knew me from my old blog, i realized that i was restricted from carrying out a lot of functions i might want to in the future if i were to grow my blog (it was a sideblog to an old, 2013 blog i had and when i replied to comments or respond to asks it’d be as my primary). so instead i decided to create a new account so that lycho could be my primary blog! since i did have a few posts that i wanted to keep for history sake, this is just going to be a mega post of my past few posts: 

apr 6, 2020 - the beginning

day 1 of my journey with ux!

frankly, i’ve been on this journey for the past two years (ever since discovering it) but i feel as though i haven’t made any real progress. i’ve always claimed i wanted to grow and learn more about the field, yet those goals never showed in my day-to-day actions.

this blog is a collection of my progress on this journey to keep myself accountable. the goal is facebook in a year, baby!

i know it’s super idealistic and quite tough for a second year like me who’s not even in a design program (business, actually). but i still want to try. i want to do something for myself for once.

that is why i am committing 4 hours everyday to honing my craft. whether that is learning about ux through watching youtube tutorials, skillshare course, or reading medium articles, or actually practicing the craft by making redesigns or wireframes, i will dedicate this time strictly to advancing my expertise within the field. and this blog exists to keep up with my every step of the way :)

apr 8, 2020 - website overhaul

today I worked on cleaning up the modularity of my existing website a bit, making use of consistent classes instead of hard-coding like i used to! oh how i love modularity!

small win: making a navbar that breaks out of the standard bounding box of the site’s content --> next goal is to make it a sticky navbar with js!

other than my website, yesterday I finished a skillshare course on user-centred design, albeit short, it was really valuable and it only motivates me to continue learning. I’m starting to realize how much I actually like doing this stuff and think it is something that really clicks and not just something im doing for the looks.

slowly but surely getting the hang of dedicated 4 hour time chunks to my craft - i failed yesterday and the day before (woke up around 9/10 instead of starting at 8:30) but today i did pretty well! took a short 20 min nap inbetween haha but I’m still proud of myself overall :)

it’s been pretty depressing and lonely lately with the quarantine (when the sun is shining so bright, teasing me grr..) but I want to get back into a routine and be productive although i do have my lazy days. it just overall makes me feel better because who knows how long we’ll have to live like this. might as well get used to it.

apr 9, 2020 - website overhaul

hi! so today i wanted to be very candid and share that i feel like i did fail today in terms of the goals i had set out for myself, though I reached 1/2 goals so that’s good! the first was to finish refining my website and publish it (check!), while the other was to finish the financial statements for my business assignment but alas that did not end up happening haha, but i forgive myself for it and know that tomorrow will be a new day!

I actually woke up early today (around 7:30, earlier than usual) and felt awake, yet mentally I just wanted to go back to sleep so I ended up getting up at 9:30. I then regretted it and beat myself up for it briefly for doing that, but I realized that I should let myself off in these strange times we’re all living in right now.

so, i think i really am going to get serious about my design journey! my only concern is that i feel like im stretching myself too thin - i have a full time design internship offer for this summer for a startup, as well as 2 leadership positions on clubs where I lead/work on the branding and design, but also at the same time I”m always at home so not sure what is reasonable and what is not. Because when I’m not doing that, I want to be self-learning, but I recently a discovered a mentorship program where I could be mentored by a startup founder to help scale her business, but again I feel like I’m stretching myself thin. though it’s a really good opportunity.

anywho, updates on my website like this post was supposed to be about is that i finally published it again after not liking how it looked before, and i think this revamp is a lot cleaner! proud of it. i try not to reveal many of my personal details on here bc i’m not sure who would actually be reading it, but this blog is just a way for me to track, myself, how i’m doing and to keep myself accountable :) i just didn’t want to set it to private cause it’s a hassle for me to always enter the password if i want to look at my blog.

lastly, i want to start consistently workout - and in the long term actually start a real blog where I write about my experiences, in actual coherent sentences! amazing. creative-wise i really want to start learning 3d illustration and blender, even though i’m an aspiring product designer but i just love 3d and motion, so idk might be stretching myself too thin again but i feel like I need to stretch my creative muscles this way and push myself as a creator. also starting the daily ui challenge again tomorrow after giving up a few months ago - haha!

let’s see how this one pans out :)

apr 10, 2020 - learning + starting anew

today i started two new things !!

restarted daily ui challenge after quitting a week in last year

started to learn blender ! !

i still feel like i failed today because i mostly sat around doing nothing OTHER than design, which just affirms to me that im truly passionate about this stuff for only having motivation to do it (or just a strong will against my homework for uni still....either way im taking it)

although i’m not that great at blender yet and felt frustrated during the process, when i got the end result i realized i like how it turned out despite it not being perfect, and it’s inspiration for me to keep learning and expanding on my skills :)

same with daily ui - i found that my approach this time compared when i literally knew NOTHING about ux was very different.

for example, something I already notice I'm doing differently from the last time is focusing less on decoration and more on practicality, actually naming/grouping layers and leveraging design systems, and injecting personality to make the experience delightful. I'm also limiting myself to two hours now (though this one took about an hour) so I have more time to do some research, sketch and wireframe before styling.

looking forward to a better day tomorrow! i might do a little less design (maybe just a daily ui shot) so i can focus on actually tackling the report i’m supposed to finish as well as study for an upcoming exam, so we will see! feeling good :))

[lolamonaghanportfolio]

How have I got here

Feelings about:

Drawing:

Really missed drawing over the initial projects I was doing, but on the campaign project and the book project I incorporated more illustrated elements which made me feel better and more involved in the projects.

Animation:

I only ventured into animation during the 'change it now' project but I really liked it and found the whole process really rewarding from creating the story to the physical set and figure, down to the editing.

Words/Language:

I don't really enjoy working with words in my work, I prefer visuals unless the words are extremely necessary I find them usually not needed.

Group Work:

The first time I did group work was in the 'blind date' project and that was one of my favourite projects. However the second time I did group work was during the 'we the planet' project and I disliked our outcome. This shows me I work better in smaller groups than bigger ones - being in a duo was much better to establish a connection and bounce ideas of off each other.

3D:

Im not that into large scale 3D but I liked making the houses and figures for my animation.

Print:

I have a strong interest in print, I have only really explored using the screen print facilities in Camberwell but I really liked the process of it and the possibilities of it - I feel it really allowed me to experiment because whatever I wanted to try - I could always go back to the print. In my recent campaign project I made a lenticular print for the outcome and that was really interesting too.

Campaigns:

I found the campaign project challenging because I chose a topic that I was really interested in but it was a hard idea to actually get a grips on myself (digital fashion) and therefore thinking of a concept was tough - so in this project I'm going to explore something closer to home.

Exploring processes:

When exploring processes, I tend to gravitate to materials and processes I have used before because I know what works well for me. In the FMP I want to push myself of of this creative comfort zone.

Photography:

I find photography fun in a recreational aspect as I've never focused on it in college apart form the blind date project. Its not one of my strengths but in that project it worked well for me because I added colour and collage on top of the photos to add a little more substance.

Typography:

I love finding typography from other designs or on the street but I'm not that passionate in applying it to my own practice. The typography project was one of the most challenging for me as I felt that I didn't get as much out of the typeface as I could have. so in the FMP I will make sure I research my topic enough that I can create the best responses.

Interaction:

Talking to other people really helps me to grow my ideas - definitely essential to FMP.

1-day projects:

I like one day projects because the time frame means there's no time to procrastinate - as I'm quite bad at time management. One day projects also remove a lot of pressure because of how short they are, and are therefore generally more fun to work on.

Film:

I like film and have only really explored it when creating my animation. I like it but think I prefer the editing side to film than the filming ideas part.

Book/ zines:

One of my favourite things I made in part 1 (diagnostic) was the zine I made. I like the idea of book and zine making and think its much more applicable to this period of time in the FMP to create something visually stunning and complicated - which I quite like.

Research:

I personally always see this as the 'boring part', but I am aware its essential to a successful project, so for the FMP I will try to research in a way that keeps me engaged like watching documentaries or going to exhibitions - because I'm much more of a visual learner.

2 - week projects:

I like 2 week projects because what is daunting to me about the FMP is that such a long time period makes me nervous about what I need to produce, whereas in 2 week projects there isn't as much pressure and I feel I work better when creating something fun and light.

Reflection:

Across my time in graphics, my favourite project was the 'we the planet' project. I liked the whole process of creating my animation; making the set, figures, filming and editing. It was a really rewarding process to see all sections come together in the final film. On the other hand, I didn't enjoy the typography project because its an area I felt disconnected from and couldn't really get into.

I have realised I have a bad approach to briefs as I get hung up on what I want to create so it becomes an unachievable idea to manifest outside of my head. For the FMP I need to get rid of this mindset and just get on with the project and this will allow more time for the initial stages of the project where I test out ideas. Some of the best ways I've developed my initial ideas are by going through and developing a few at first and then developing my favourite one.

I definitely want to go in a direction of exploring something I experience and is personal to me as I feel this will ensure I'm engaged in the project. I also know I want to go in a more fun fun route because that's what I've enjoyed most in previous projects - like during the 'we the planet' project, despite it being a serious brief about climate change I wanted to make it more lighthearted.

[fireeaglespirit]

@fireeaglespirit @viviane-lefay i do worry sometimes with the stories I write if things might be too much for you. To be fair I dont think in any fanfic Ive ever written anything too explicit but now Im so conscious of other people’s viewpoints and being inclusive that it is a concern. Ultimately I write what I want to/need to but I am aware it might not be for all tastes hence always trying to follow ratings etc.

Replying here so it doesn’t cause any problems with OP, etc..

Ohh. I’m sorry if this worried you.. tbh this was very random and I wasn’t even thinking about fiction when I rb this. This one reminded me of a few times I went out with friends and colleagues and I just felt starkly asexual, lmao

About my tolerance regarding sex and explicitly in fiction, I’ll be honest with you…

There’s hardly anything I could say I wouldn’t read about. I just don’t feel ‘triggers’ or anything of the sort, no hard feelings when it gets to fiction and I value your will to be conscious of other viewpoints but its practically impossible to cater to all tastes like you said, so don’t worry about it much… there’s always someone out there who will feel offended and others who will fiercely love it.

As for myself, I’m very tolerant to sexual content in fiction, idk? I don’t seek it out particularly but its not a deal breaker either.

I know some asexual people are less tolerant, I usually just get a ‘meh’ feeling whenever those subjects are touched in much detail, idk some works do get nasty and bothersome because of much detail involving sexual practices so I just give up on them or put them aside when they bring me no joy but I gladly consume material with sex on it as long as I like some aspects of it. Also, I’m good at ignoring or glossing over things I don’t like in fiction… when I read explicit scenes with intercourse it does nothing to me and my eyes focuses on the sentences I loved such as regarding the feelings between the characters and subtle interactions instead of the physical/carnal aspects of it, and this makes it all worthy it.

Even so, some works might become overwhelmingly depressive or repulsive so I might put them aside even if I enjoyed an aspect of it or I might just skip through them and this happened recently to a series of fantasy books I tried to read which were actually really good but they were so overwhelmingly and unnecessarily dark and had an horrid oppressive atmosphere towards women an sex so I just felt no joy reading them? Its not like I was traumatized by its tone but it felt like a chore and I couldn’t care about it further and no character inspired me whatsoever that the world could change for the better, so I dropped them.

But its not like I’m judging it, I just feel weirded out to some things and I just imagine the kind of mind that takes upon themselves the chore to write a whole series of book which has nothing but suffering and misery in them, especially concerning women, lol. We already had this shit in history and still have in some places in the world so I kinda feel like its not interesting for me to read about it in a fictional setting, especially if I don’t feel like the writer is going to challenge the setting.

But I’m aware most people are much more sensitive… these things can be horrid for those who are more sensitive, and perhaps my own asexuality protects me from feeling it fully as I don’t even think of myself as a being capable of partaking in this (weird, I know), so I have problem even projecting.

But I did felt really strongly for the way women were oppressed absurdly and had their agency completely obliterated, so that sparked a sort of empathy or kinship in me which made progress in such book a chore…

You got my point and this just illustrates a bit my relationship to fiction and things that irk me since you were interested in my opinion… I have another example of fantasy book with lots of sex in it:

I read asoiaf even thought its full of sexual stuff but I don’t feel joy at these parts, yet the work is so good on other themes that I ignore it for the most part… but even so, recently I’ve read F&B and it was kinda overwhelming on the sexist aspect with myriads of female characters turned into child brides and raped and dying at their childbirth repeatedly it just got very tiresome and repetitive near the end, because there where almost no counterpoints to it, unlike in the main series where the situation is dire for women but we have characters challenging it more often and idk. F&B just lacked on that front.

So, this shows a bit my sensitivity towards sex is more related to sexism and the feeling that women are confined to their reproductive aspects: motherhood, childbearing, marriage, sensuality, etc.. I don’t have a problem with sexual intercourse per se as you can see, but that’s from my unique point of view and I know some asexuals are more repulsed towards it, but you asked my opinion…

So, if its consensual sex: its not my cup of tea but I don’t feel like its a deal breaker…

Just to give you a positive sex example: when I see an OTP of mine getting to the point of having sex I think its pretty sweet, like when Jon and Dany consummated their love on that boat… I was happy for them, for all that it means, the symbolism between the union of ice and fire and just two characters which I love dearly, finding happiness and comfort in each other. What’s not to love about it??

This is a rare stance I can say I saw a pair I ship get to that point xD

I love shipping as you know, but its more about the psychological aspects and potential for character development and even when I’m reading fanfic about my OTPs I enjoy more the angst and symbolism than the ‘hot’ parts which usually just makes me go ‘meh’ (again).

So this makes me say: when sex is the focus of works I could feel like I’m too asexual for this, even if it regards an OTP, it just doesn’t have a very exciting effect on me or I’m not explicitly interested in this part of a relationship, when so many other things caught my eye… sometimes subtle interactions and dialogue and and gentle approximation (touches, caresses, kissing, etc..) is so much more exciting for me to read about than the ‘thing’ itself, lol.

To sum it up: when its there just for p*rn or even worse, shock value it just makes me go ‘meh’ or ‘ugh’ or ‘uhh why am I even reading this?’

This reminds me of Vivi’s take on the ‘hiero gamos’, in this case I just say I might even enjoy the theme as long as the scenes involving sex are meaningful and passionate and the aspect I value the most about them are sublime and platonic instead of carnal but I’m aware the carnal aspects are very important for the characters and the audience so I also worry when I get to show my stories people will think they lack sexual content ^^  I get you.

Now that you know my feelings towards sex in fiction, to a broader sense I just wanted to say..

There’s no way to guess people’s sensitives but it doesn’t mean you need to walk on eggshells afraid to trigger people all the time, hell no! I’m all for freedom of creation. At least around me there are no metaphorical ‘eggshells’.

Everyone has their own set of opinions which makes them unique, not just me, I mean…  even so I will let my snowflake syndrome show but I’m quite peculiar if you could say, so I sort of grew a strong ‘carapace’ towards the world as I deal with people with completely different views and values on a daily basis which might make me have inflamed political opinions while at the same time, I’m very flexible and forgiving when it comes to fiction in general.

I don’t expect much of the population to be like this so I’m also self conscious when it gets to writing my own stuff because I know people can feel very strongly about it and you’ve seen the way fandom reacts to minor things and bash creators when they perceive flaws in their work… I’m just not a judgmental person, its not in my nature. I just ignore things in fiction if I don’t like and I became even more relaxed over time in regards to this all, lol I nearly reached a ‘nirvana’ as I don’t even feel strongly negative feelings in regard to this.

Snarky and bitter comments from time to time? Yes… but no hard feelings. RL needs my hatred, lol so I don’t have it to spare with fiction any longer.

Anyway, on an unrelated sub note… as you might have noticed, I don’t feel comfortable about current fandom trends and specially policing, and with reason as this gets very serious and quick with literally ‘wave chain reactions’ of hatred sparked apparently from nowhere. I hope people could create more freely instead of the political correct police and restraining of creativity we have now. It was good for a while and I’m all for diversity and change in status quo (for the better), but I think this has gone too far and I perceive a lot of rigidity in fiction right now due to fear of fandom backlash we have creators afraid to make their thing and afraid it isn’t ‘inclusive or progressive’ enough… so they bend themselves endlessly until fandom ‘approves’ them, but even so someone is bound to scream and say the work is offensive and the cycle of hatred is restarted.

I know this reply was like a huge egocentric monologue and I strained with non related issues at the end, but you asked my thought on this so I tried to convey it with detail.. including things related to the perception we have concerning fictional themes and I just kinda had to vent at some parts of it.

etc…. This doesn’t mean I forbid judgment from others or criticism or that I forbid people from harshly criticizing works of fiction, just that sometimes it gets more harmful than beneficial and scare people off, and I felt like saying that.

Anyway,,, just want to say nonetheless I find it very sweet and considerate that you are taking different opinions in mind while writing, but you don’t need to worry at least from my part, and I don’t think you ever got even close to being explicit in your writings so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

#beyond-far-horizons