the artifice archive

word butcher. artifice on ao3.

[artificse]

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[artificse]

TO MAKE IT ON THIS EARTH;

The boys make it to Kalos. There's a lot to be scared of, but nothing quite so terrifying as growing up.

read on: ao3 | tumblr

[artificse]

"nobody told me the song of achilles was a doomed mlm romance" are you joking. you're surprised that the young adult trojan war prequel/retelling about achilles and his close personal friend patroclus is doomed yaoi???

[bluegrasshole]

Vessel

rated T - 21.5k words - complete

Eleven years ago, a total psychopath walked into a bar, onto a wharf, and all over Captain Shane Hollander’s life. And then he did it again, and again.

This is a story about the weight of expectations, being scared of the future, and letting yourself be honest with those you love. It has a lot of ocean metaphors and some discussions of climate change. It was supposed to be funny but it isn’t much! Instead it’s a little weird. And I made Scott Hunter a 75 year old snowbird, for some reason. I hope you read it.

[bluegrasshole]

maintenant disponible en français

[ololygas]

social skills training, solmaz sharif

[artificse]

hollanov fic entitled force majeure and the author had ilya cite art. 1457 ccq... when i tell you i literally yelped and closed the tab like it was a fucking jumpscare

[usergif]

"Had I understood the message, then I think I would have thought about it, reflected on what it means, what the team wants me to do, to leave Mark [Webber] in first place and me finishing second. And I think I would have thought about it and probably done the same thing because Mark doesn't deserve [the victory]," [Sebastian Vettel] said. Pressed by Reuters on why he felt Webber, who had obeyed instructions to turn down the engine and look after the tyres, had not deserved to win, Vettel replied bluntly: "I don't like to talk ill of other people. It's not my style. I think I said enough. The bottom line is that I was racing, I was faster, I passed him, I won." The tone of the encounter was set from the first question enquiring of Vettel how he felt to be the 'bad guy' after previously being the 'good guy'. "I don't consider myself the bad guy," replied the 25-year-old, who said on Wednesday that he had apologised to the team after the race for his act of disobedience but not for winning. "I don't think I did something that was particularly bad."

multi 21 - watercolour and mixed media

[ivettel]

just have two more readings to get thru today so im treating myself to a little blogging break--here's some progress/process pics!

dollarama haul (feat my beloved tims): i didn't end up posting some of the stuff i'd done with other materials--but definitely saving everything for future sets and projects! esp the origami..

my original idea was to incorporate some of the stuff i'm learning in criminal law atm, but it ended up too complicated to break down easily at my amateur level, and i realized i was halfway through making a second project LOL. so i dialed it back, but here's part of the og storyboard!

(i actually quite liked the first panel.. in the end it didn't really match w the rest of the gifset, so we parted ways...)

i think my fav panel has to be the one with the red string; i literally haven't touched a sewing kit in YEARS, so it was awesome to pick one up again, even a plastic little thing from the dollar store. initially was kind of nervous bc i went w the cheaper sketchbook too and it had thinner paper, so i wasn't sure if it'd hold if i tried to poke holes in it or rip.. luckily i got it first try! couple close calls there tho jksdfnskj you can see how much i didn't want to tighten the stitches 😭

the original quote--"was what i did so bad?"--is actually from gemjam's slaughterhouse five au, but after a few iterations of the set on after effects, i liked the effect of just "bad ?" + seb's quotes from china 2013 in the caption... also, while i knew i wanted the popsicle sticks in there for some of the typography (broken wood = broken relationships, blue and red team colours but also red like blood bc i'm basic lol), i really wasn't sure about how it'd tie into the last panel. my printer's out of ink, so i had to do away w the idea of printing out the rb9 and adding cutouts zine-style.. ended up actually taking one of my test pages and scanning it, then playing around. something something accidents?

i've washed my hands so many times and there's still some faint blue stains on my fingers from painting the sticks. just gonna roll with it at this point DKFNDF.

anyway, post prod adding the actual images and whatnot was pretty easy--masking things out on photoshop and importing to edit + colour. i will say i struggled a lot with my scissors tho? the shadows just refused to fall neatly.. with some sleep in retrospect i think i fucked up a blending mode somewhere but last night i was just like. aghh fuck it.

[pukestains-deactivated20180817]

[bluegrasshole]

something something alexei rozanov being a coke addict, their mother dying of a drug overdose, ilya carefully portioning out pills for their father, sasha casually offering ilya coke during the olympics while russian athletes are being subjected to illegal doping. eventually smoking less because of shane, drinking less because of shane, is he addicted to shane? i wish i knew how to quit you

[artificse]

tagged by zoe @flawlessassholes! thank u 🫶

the last book i read: dante's inferno (for ficwriting purposes i promise omg)

a book i'd recommend: empire of ai - karen hao. essential reading for ai haters, though i dislike the final conclusion she draws

a book i couldn't put down: the long game - rachel reid, and i mean this in the most derogatory sense

a book i've read twice or more: the true lives of my chemical romance - tom bryant. it's an annual reread along w my annual rewatch of lotms

a book on my tbr: the vegetarian - han kang. the epub's been sitting on my desktop for so long, but i just haven't gotten around to it!

a book ive put down: flashlight - susan choi. i thought i'd love it immediately and didn't... i may try again one day when i'm in the mood tho

a book on my wishlist: deep burn - brendan mac evilly. picked up while visiting charlie byrne's bookshop in galway, but didn't end up buying it bc i was out of space ):

a favourite book from childhood: i was in fact a percy jackson kid! actually had the series recommended to me by a guy in my class who i barely talked to back in grade 3, and i remember connecting w him briefly over it before he embraced the budding jock stereotype. i wonder where he is now

a book i'd give to a friend: slaughterhouse-five - vonnegut.

a book of poetry or lyrics that i own: i don't own any! closest i have is sophocles' theban plays?

a nonfiction book that i own: most of my books are nonfiction because i pretty much only bother owning textbooks and whatnot. we'll go with securities law in canada: cases and commentary, 3rd ed - mary condon et al

what im currently reading: audition - katie kitamura

what im planning on reading next: flesh - david szalay

tagging @rozzed @xboyheroxx @bluegrasshole @vincentlemaire @thermocrying @veilofimag and anyone else who wants in!

[artificse]

⭐️ i want to hear specifically about the texture of memory SEQUEL! a director’s commentary but also interested to hear about writing from an outside POV, through the lens of non-sports media, which i find so interesting

thank u sm for asking!!!

basically back in 2020 i signed up to be on the email lists of a bunch of mags / newspapers so i'd have a way of managing my anxiety about The World, and the paris review kept drawing me in with daily poems and archived pieces they'd release for free access on weekends. i very quickly fell in love with their art of fiction series and eventually got myself a big boy subscription!

fast forward to around the time that ttom started gaining traction on twitter, a bunch of ppl were also bitching about the lack of a hallmark happily ever after ending (which i never promised but whatever)--and i was like, i don't want to write a direct sequel or mess with the message of the fic, so initially i didn't have anything planned. but that week following ttom's release, i was reading budd schulberg's art of fiction feature, and my brain latched onto the idea as something i could stomach without interacting too much with ttom, all while sticking with the media-as-a-window theme, hence the outside pov.

substantively, i liked the idea of ilya also reinventing himself à la alexander graham bell, where he chafes against being pigeonholed as "just" a hockey player. he says it in ttom, that he contains multitudes, and in the sequel he refuses to write an autobiography for the same reason ("everything i write is a biography," "i don’t like to distill myself into categories," etc). it's also a play on the beverly story in ttom--he returns to his youth (the cottage / beverly's prep school) which has changed for the better (transferring land back / demolishing the berm) and embraces self-reinvention rather than calling it a sin or chasing something that isn't there anymore. so yeah, not sports media! i like also when ilya is an intellectual and isn't reduced to some ooc gender essentialist garbage. it's like people forget he went to live alone in a different country when he was still a teenager and learned to thrive in his second language? lmao

lastly, i was feeling salty about some of the bad faith critique of ttom on twitter, so some of ilya's answers are targeted. namely: People read exploitatively, always fishing for gems they can scuttle off with. I did the same when I was younger. No, I’m of the opinion that I know what I wrote, and I know what I meant when I wrote it, and I wrote it for me. It is not the endeavour of the artist to hold the audience’s hand like a toddler and walk through Hell together. Art requires active participation; art does not happen unless you let it happen to you.

feel free to ask for director's commentary!

[artificse]

⭐ for directors commentary… what’s something you wrote into TTOM that nobody’s picked up on/noticed???

thank u for the q!!

honestly i'm surprised nobody's called me out yet about the unrealistic driving times. i thought for sure that'd be one of the first criticisms when ppl started getting on my ass about realism! not that it's impossible to drive the distances ilya did in the time he did, i have family friends who do it lol, but his perpetual exhaustion and the questionable times were meant to lend themselves to the whole inception limbo/dreaming/unreality thread. so either people got it or nobody cared LOL

another thing is the love actually references! which are admittedly buried. but e.g., kelly clarkson "the trouble with love is" needle drop + the entangled narratives of my OCs along w the flight motif + shane showing up at the hollander family door on christmas with a prop as his declaration of his love. implicitly: "for now, let me say, without hope or agenda, just because it's christmas (and at christmas you can tell the truth)... my wasted heart will love you until [we're dead]." i think i said this in an ask game a while back on ivettel, but growing up the love actually soundtrack was The soundtrack for my family's cross-country road trips, so i had to shove it in somehow.

a few ppl have also pointed out the fob reference but nobody's actually spelled out that the album is folie à deux. i.e., (1) the last album before that miserable hiatus period; (2) shared madness between two people; (3) the joker 2 movie that connor was in for some fucking reason.

there's more littered throughout, but those are three easter eggs off the top of my head!

feel free to ask for director's commentary!

[nomettesbizzareadventure]

Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

Reblog this if you want readers to come into your ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines. 

Or, send in a ⭐star⭐  to have the author select a section they’ve been dying to talk about!

[hollandar]

shane waiting to be kissed

[anyataylorjoys]

tfw fuck off that's mine

[fluentinbird]

shane hollander - "who are you when you aren't performing?"

Paul Butler, “Untitled (Two with Puck – Red)” - Collage, 2018  / Detail from Kazuo Nakamura, Suspended Landscape, 1967 / Heated Rivalry 1x01 / Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man / Detail from Kazuo Nakamura, Suspended Landscape, 1967/ Heated Rivalry 1x04 / David Hannan, Falling from Grace, 2024 / Paul Butler, “Untitled (Two with Puck – Blue)” / Detail from LEE U-Fan, From Line (1976) / Rebecca Bellmore, At Pelican Falls/ Heated Rivalry 1x02 / Heated Rivalry 1x01 / Sally Prasch, Neon Series / Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds / Robert Matta, Bleuêtre, 1993 / Heated Rivalry 1x04 / Kazuo Nakamura, Blue Reflections, B.C., 1964 / Heated Rivalry 1x02 / Sally Prasch, Shattered Shell / Heated Rivalry 1x02 / Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House / Heated Rivalry 1x02 / Kazuo Nakamura; Blue Morning / Detail from Rebecca Bellmore, At Pelican Falls/ Jennifer Walton, Frozen Lake Series / Heated Rivalry 1x04 / John Steinbach, East of Eden / Koichi Nabatame, Morning Mountain Range

[artificse]

there is a not insignificant number of instances where i've opened threads and seen an insane take about my writing that is so out of left field i can do nothing but say "what?" Out loud