OuthaulDagger

Fanfic writer. Barrisoka endgame. profile pic art by birdysketches. banner art by phil cho

[sakura-rose12]

So I had a funny dream the other night.

It involved a very gay witch.

[songspirits]

i love satine. i do. but i tend to ignore everything canon about her and i acknowledge that. but its partially because dave filoni doesnt know,,,, how to write politics? i mean, of course Satine being a pacifist is not a failure of writing, a pacifist mandalorian is actually pretty cool. And also we really,,, don’t know much about mandalorian culture? we really,,, don’t? I mean, idk. And dave filoni had a very hard time distributing of what side death watch or new mandalorians we were supporting. but i think my portrayal of satine is a little different.

my satine is awkward, unsure, but smart, really smart, obtains the darksaber and is so violent during her teenage years shes frightened at what she could be so she becomes a pacifist. and then clone wars shes eventually faced with that part of herself again. a bloodbath. dark blood running through her.

idk.

[betterbooktitles]

[outhauldagger]

This is basically how the oddessy was told for hundreds of years before homer decided to write it down

[loracarol]

There have been a couple of posts about how Rocky would feel about Eva Stratt, and I've decided to throw my own unasked for, unnecessary headcanons into the ring.

I think he'd have ✨complicated feelings✨ about her.

....

Okay, all joking aside, I can break down my Rocky & Stratt headcanons into three distinct modes.

Instinctual fear

I hc that, due to their paralysis during sleep, Eridians view messing with someone while they sleep to be deeply taboo. Something ingrained so deeply in society that it doesn't matter if it was done for a good reason, (rescuing someone, for example), any Eridian who does so would be looked at askance. Some parts of Erid treat the taboo more lightly than others, but at the end of the day, it's still a cultural taboo. As such, once Rocky learns that Grace was shipped out while asleep, Eva is folded into this cultural taboo and a part of Rocky fears her.

Intellectually, he knows it's ridiculous, but if somehow Eva and Rocky ever met, he would Not Trust Eva to watch him sleep. Or any other Eridian. Or human. Even if they time traveled, and Eva never sent Grace into space, (or didn't do it against Grace's will), there would still be that cultural fear, and Rocky can never trust her to keep watch. Statement.

Personal hatred

Rocky hates Eva on a personal level, because of what she did to Grace. I'm basing this on the Mark scene / while the Mark scene isn't in the book, Grace is a lot angrier in the book, and I think Rocky would still take his side because ✨besties✨.

Whether it's book or movie, Rocky hates Eva the way you hate your friend's parents even if your friend has more complicated feelings about it.

However. This is personal. This is, "sending her DM's if they figure out how to hook into the past internet." This is, "shit-talking her with Adrian one-on-one" while they do whatever the Eridian equivalent is of drinking wine and gossiping.

IMO he does not make it public. He might shit-talk her on Twitter under a fake username, but The Official Rocky The Eridian Twitter Account doesn't touch any of that, and does sometimes even go to bat for her. Earth does not get to use him as a weapon against Eva Stratt.

He hates her. It's personal. It's going to stay personal.

Utter Bafflement

On the flip side, while he hates her on a deep, personal level, he thinks the reasons that humans hate her are bad bad bad fucking stupid. In his opinion, the only thing she did wrong was force Grace to sleep and then send him up in the Hail Mary without his consent. ("Only.")

Everything else she did, he's like, "humans put her in charge of saving Earth. She did. Why humans mad, question?" In his opinion, the fact that humanity put her in charge of the Hail Mary project, promised not to persecute her (during the project only, but he doesn't care about that), but then immediately did so once the ship launched, makes humans untrustworthy. (Or at least, the ones in politics.)

He's especially pissed when he learns that she didn't have a Thrum, and the closest thing was all the scientists et al. that got "off easy" and "betrayed her."

When/if he finds out that Eva (1) took the reins of the project knowing that jail was going to happen and (2) (my personal hc) made sure she was the only one who could get in trouble, she joins Grace in Rocky's estimation as crazy/brave.

But he still hates her.

Let me be clear, on a personal level, he looks at Eva Stratt and is the Eridian equivalent of >:I. But in public, he's also researching FTL and/or time travel to see if they can go, pick up Eva Stratt before she went to human jail, and bring her to Erid so she can go on trial for what she did to Grace, (the only thing she did wrong), and then afterwards offer her Eridian citizenship and political asylum on Erid because she saved two, (two!!) whole planets and the way Earth is treating her is bullshit!! Statement!!

He won't volunteer to watch her sleep, but it will be An Honor to do so.

If he can figure out FTL travel.

[digitalkiddo]

If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.

[ekjohnston]

Also the DVD commentary for LEVERAGE. It's less specific, but very helpful for writing.

[thatmadscientistbitch]

I cannot tell you what it meant to me to go into Supergirl and see a woman getting to be angry and fucked up on screen and see her WIN. To see her be RIGHT. To see her be Angry and Fucked Up and Not Always Nice but to still be GOOD. I was crying watching it. She's angry, but that doesn't mean she's wrong - Kara and Ruthye both have every right to be angry! - but their anger... doesn't make them bad people. It makes them do something about it.

As a woman who's been told my whole life that I'm too angry, that I need to be nicer, that I'm too bitter and fucked up.... Yeah I needed that.

[casterintherye]

love that the supergirl movie confirms that kryptonians aren’t weird ubermensch fascists and clark’s parents were just weird. Like they were just Scientologists or something

[garnetislovegarnetislife]

wait, is there a kpdh httyd au, because i feel like a polytrix httyd au where rumi finds and tries to kill dragon derpy but cant do it while local dragon killing prodigy mira and dragon knowledge prodigy zoey try to figure out where the fuck she’s running off to every day would be great

[redfoxraccoon]

Mira: wherefore art thou like this?

[tolbiny]

master and apprentice alignment chart

[geckyjuno]

my bedsheet is pregnant and it's. the rest of my laundry

[muppetyaoi]

another one for the collection, gang.

[mysharona1987]

[okiitos]

Rescue professional here:

If you need rescuing or help, DON’T FUCKING MOVE. You are so much easier to find when you stay put.

[thegreenpea]

Credits: @foxes-in-love

Your most important survival skill is asking for help

[existential-dread-in-the-am]

Goddamn preach this

[rogue-cyberman]

"Your most important survival skill is asking for help." THIS, it makes me so damn pissed off when parents try and normalize that asking for help is a taboo thing!

[isthescavengervideocute]

This feels important to reblog

[spam-monster]

Just rewatched A New Hope and I have to say the energy between the main trio is absolutely bonkers; like they switch between "you are the most annoying person I know" to "omg bestie hugs!" at the drop of a hat.

- Han and Luke are arguing the whole way from the cantina to the detention center.

- Then Leia comes in and she's yelling at both of them.

- Then they get stuck in the trash compactor and Han desperately tries to save Luke from the tentacles, and then when the compactor goes on and they're all panicking he's trying to help Leia get to higher ground.

- Trash compactor goes off, they all celebrate, Han and Leia freaking HUG...and next scene we're right back to the Sass.

- Leia kisses Luke on the cheek for luck right before they swing across a gap.

- Han and Luke bond over shooting tie fighters away.

- Han admits he kinda likes Leia even though they've basically done nothing but bicker (when not in immediate danger).

- Luke gets upset when Han wants to take his money and leave even though he's know him for like a day. Han pretends he doesn't care but then leaves Luke with a completely sincere "May the force be with you." Despite thr fact that he doesn't believe in that stuff.

- Luke continues to be upset so much that he complains to Leia about Han leaving and she kisses him on the cheek AGAIN as comfort.

- Han comes back and must have been tapping into the comms the whole time because he swoops in specifically to save Luke.

- When they return to the base Leia runs to hug Luke, and then Luke runs to hug Han, and then they all just end up in an excited group hug.

And maybe it's because Leia just lost her planet and Luke just lost all his parental figures and Han is just lost but they absolutely speedrun found family in a way that critics nowadays would find completely unrealistic, and yet the energy between them is something neither the prequels or the sequels were able to match. Just "nope, these idiots are mine now".

Anyway the point is Star Wars is good when it's good.

(Luke doesn't get a braincell until RotJ, Han has no braincells but is very good at making it seem like he does, Leia has braincells but they are angry.)

[kaen-ace-of-diamonds]

What are your thoughts on Cassandra being sidelined in tlovm? Like I KNOW she's an NPC, but she never gets an important role in the scenes where she really should. For example, she has zero lines in Percy's resurrection scene, and in 4x07 she shows up for three seconds and then leaves for the rest of the episode is. Is it really fair that it took 7 episodes of a season to even see her? I think not, I want to see my daughter!

This may be a weird question but I just like to talk about Cass and hear what others think!

much as Cass is the main character In My Heart, sadly, she is a side character and just going to be on the sidelines for much of the time

like, I'll agree that she should have had something to do or say in Percy's resurrection scene, even if it was just one line, especially with the change from the stream of Percy being dead for a lot longer and her having to deal with that, as opposed to her only finding out/showing up after he's already been brought back:

(linking with timestamp for anyone who hasn't seen it, mostly because the "FWOOMF" sound effect Matt gives her slamming open the door fucking kills me)

but that's pretty much the only part where I legit think it was a wrong move, mostly I can understand from a production/storytelling standpoint why they're cutting down her presence at the points that they do.

like, in season 4, specifically, I would have LOVED to see her at the ball in a fancy new outfit, or to see more of her reaction to [gestures at the entirety of Ghosts of Whitestone] ALL OF THAT, and was a bit let down not to. but at the same time I’m also like

“okay, fiiiiine, Percy and Vex get new looks because the whole sequence is all about them and it wouldn't be worth it to make a new design for her for just a few seconds, so a mention of her will just have to do and we'll continue to rely on @radsity for absolutely killer Cass outfits."

"okay FIIIIINE they've got the whole gang here doing a bunch of different plots at once which already narrows down the time we can spend on each of them and though it would have been possible to give Cass more relevance I can see why they chose to leave her out of the horror basement extravaganza. would have loved to hear Esmé doing the 'Percy tells Cass that Delilah is alive' scene from the stream but you know what that's what we've got fanfic that hits you upside the head with a shovel for. also what we lacked in Cass we made up for in Laudna and I cannot complain about that."

you do what you've got to do when you've got a ton of material and only so much time to fit it all in. and tbh, I wasn't expecting to see a huge amount of her in S4 in the first place

HOWEVER. THAT LAST BATCH OF EPISODES. MY GOODNESS.

not only did we fucking FEAST as far as side character screentime goes, they took my expectations for whatever's going to be going on with her next season and fired them into the STRATOSPHERE. LOOK AT HER LITTLE FACE SHE'S BACK IN THE FUCKING BUILDING AGAIN:

she said that EXACTLY THIS was going to happen and her fuckass brother didn't listen and now she and her city are back under the control of the fucking whisper cult who now have an actual evil god around and you know the first fucking thing Vecna's going to do when he stops gloating is snap both Briarwoods right back into existence and Cass is in nightmare hell forever

and when Percy gets back to Whitestone he and Vex are going to CATCH THOSE HANDS like they have never caught them before because holy shit how did he manage to do this to her again

like, I've tempered my expectations so far but NOW I might be actually disappointed if we don't see enough of her next season even with all the final arc things going on

[alexkablob]

Cosigning all of this—as someone who's been a fan of a lot of side characters in my time and who looks at shows from a writers-talking-shop standpoint I think it's important to keep your expectations adjusted to them not being a main focus, otherwise you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

In this instance it's that LOVM is a show with limited screentime and a lot of main characters to juggle that screentime for, working off source material where the PC/NPC distinction is literal. I think Cass is the most important girl in the world, but I recognize from a greater stortelling standpoint she's just one thread in a very large tapestry. (Ironically she does have proportionately more screentime in LOVM compared to Campaign 1—she really doesn't show up all that much in the stream!)

And yeah like. The thing about the last batch is that Vox Machina are like "oh man Cass is gonna kill us for this" but it's in that, "we're doing a bit of insubordination and we're going to ask for forgiveness when we come back with a fait accompli showing that the concerns were unwarranted" kind of way, you know? Surely we can have it both ways and this won't actually be a choice between saving Pike and dooming Whitestone.

Except, oops! They completely fucked it up, the absolute worst case scenario happened, Cass was entirely correct based on the information they had and is now not only back in The Situation again, this time it really is Percy's fault.

Because that was the whole point of the season: Vecna played their flaws and personal conflicts against each other, they all struggled with their duty to the greater good vs their personal desires and they all came up wanting, the villain won and brought them to their lowest point. (This is why, in this version, Vax had to die because he chose to spit in Vecna's face after everyone else had already knelt. Someone had to reject Vecna's whole premise in that moment or all hope would be lost.)

Season 5 will be about building them back up, and part of that is probably going to involve Cass tearing her brother and sister-in-law a new asshole over how bad they fucked things up.

[mylordshesacactus]

Countdown | Chapter 5

Heatstroke and frostbite. Despair, an empty road, a band of raiders, a homecoming. And a woman alone, wrapped in the colors of the Ban Acani.

[bennetsbonnet]

210 years ago today, on April 1, 1816, Jane Austen wrote what is one of my favourite of all of her surviving letters. It is a response to James Stanier Clarke, who was the Prince Regent (the future King George IV)'s Librarian and secured the dedication to him which can be found in Emma.

It was written in response to a previous letter she had received from Clarke, which suggested that she should consider writing a historical romance centred on the Prince Regent's ancestors, the Saxe-Coburg family. Not only is it oozing in sarcasm, with plenty of her characteristic wit, but it contains a fascinating excerpt which gives us an insight into how she viewed her writing. One that I wish everyone who believes that Jane Austen was primarily an author of sentimental romances would read and internalise:

But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

Straight from the horse's mouth. Even in her lifetime, Austen was somewhat averse to being pigeonholed as a romance author. But most of all, she wished to remain true to herself and write what she wanted to write. I really respect her integrity!

I'll include the entire letter of only two paragraphs just below the cut. If you're familiar with Austen's writing style, I'm sure you'll find it as hilarious as I do!:

MY DEAR SIR, -- I am honoured by the Prince's thanks and very much obliged to yourself for the kind manner in which you mention the work. I have also to acknowledge a former letter forwarded to me from Hans Place. I assure you I felt very grateful for the friendly tenor of it, and hope my silence will have been considered, as it was truly meant, to proceed only from an unwillingness to tax your time with idle thanks. Under every interesting circumstance which your own talents and literary labours have placed you in, or the favour of the Regent bestowed, you have my best wishes. Your recent appointments I hope are a step to something still better. In my opinion, the service of a court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of time and feeling required by it.

You are very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which might recommend me at present, and I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe-Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

I remain, my dear Sir, Your very much obliged, and sincere friend, J. AUSTEN.

(photo of letter source, transcript source)

[penig]

Except that "romance" here does not mean "genre romance," which did not exist at the time. Modern genres are a modern invention, by publishers and booksellers, intended to organize bookstores and catalogs in a way convenient for reader tastes so readers can find their preferred kinds of books. Austen and her contemporaries organized literature in a different way.

"Romance" here should be read in light of the contemporary "Romantic movement," the artistic philosophy of Byron, the Shelleys, Coleridge, etc., which emphasized emotion over reason, wild nature over tame civilization, and the fantastic over the mundane. Marianne over Elinor, in fact! Her own attitude toward Romanticism is tolerably well expressed in Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey: it's fun and it can be beautiful, but you can't really live like that. (And she has a point. The lives of the most prominent Romantics were hot messes.)

This is also about the time that the distinction between the Romance and the Novel began to appear in literary criticism. The Romance in this sense is the (traditional, old-fashioned) story of incident and action, essentially the plot-driven story, as opposed to the (modern, up-to-date) Novel or character-driven story, involving the interior life of the protagonist and what we would now call their psychological development.

Under either use of the term, the idea of a Romance about a modern civil servant was ridiculous. This man is putting himself forward as a figure of high drama and passion and/or action and incident worthy to be enshrined in fiction to the author who gave us such first-class pompous asses as Mr. Collins and Sir Walter Elliot; he is setting himself up as a target and Austen's sitting there quivering and chewing her lip because she can't not take her shot but due to his position she also can't afford to offend him. This is her walking the thin line of Letting Him Down Easy while also Laughing in His Face. And yes, it's brilliant and it's hilarious, but the degree to which it expresses her attitude, both toward her own writing and toward its position in regard to modern genres that didn't exist then, has to be judged with this in mind.

Jane Austen did not write genre romance, first and foremost, because genre romance wasn't a Thing at the time she wrote. Her work is related to modern genre romance in the same way that it is related to modern genre literary, realistic, and mainstream works (and don't let anyone kid you: "realism" and "mainstream" are genres, they're just genres that aren't ghettoized in the same way as "romance"). She was a literary pioneer who achieved mass popularity, and literature today would look very different without her.

Lesser writers have imitated her to the point that many superficial and incidental features of her work have hardened into tropes and stereotypes within the genres, which is one of the perils of being a pioneer. The Brontes are in a similar position in relation to modern Gothic romance and Tolkien in relation to modern high fantasy. They all can be sorted into the genres they have influenced, because people who find what they like in those sections of the bookstores will probably like what they find in the works of those authors, but to read them the same way as one reads a formulaic Regency Romance, Gothic Romance, or Quest Fantasy does them, and you, a disservice.

And to dismiss any genre out of hand, by defining it by the most most formulaic and bland examples within it, and making special exemptions for the good stuff within it, is a snobbery worthy of Mrs. Elton.

[dogpuppy]

[nineteenyearoldmeblog]

im fucking crying