#cozcat

[effiestrinkets]

that is a wholly unexpected lore drop re Gwyneth Paltrow's stilettos

hahaha yeah :’) i couldn’t resist the opportunity to buy a piece of my fave character’s actual costume !!

[offarawaysnfuturedays-inmydreams]

3 sentence fic meme: Effie and Haymitch + the calm after the storm

Months after Effie comes back to District 12, months after the war ends and they're halfway to something resembling living again, Haymitch finally musters the courage to ask why she chose to come here when she could have gone anywhere she wanted. There's several ways she could answer that – she could say it was just for the kids (because Haymitch's girl and Effie's boy need someone to keep them from falling apart and Haymitch is barely equipped to keep himself in one piece most days), or because the Capitol doesn't feel like the home it once did so many years ago (in truth it hadn't since the first year she was involved with the Games), or simply because she didn't know where else to go (that's not entirely true, though, and she'd promised herself she would never lie to the only three people in the world she loves). So all she says instead is "I came back for you," and the way Haymitch's face softens in the way it only does for her and their kids tells her he feels for her exactly what she does for him.

(for the three-sentence microfic ask game)

[neednottoneed]

fic meme: 2, 5, 27, 46?

2. Go to your AO3 “Works” page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for “Additional Tags.” What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?

"Angst" "Smut" "Oneshot" "Slow Burn"

Yeah that's... pretty accurate, actually.

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!

I would LOVE to talk about the character dynamics in 'ganz besonders' because it's one of the things I'm the proudest of—I approached that fic with the most canon approach I could and with the thought of "What, genuinely, would make these two characters even consider having a sexual relationship with each other" and I think the answer is in the fic—they are two desperately, wretchedly lonely people who are both obsessed and fascinated with Rebecca and how her absence shapes the story, and I think they initially (in the fic) approach each other that way. I really just wanted to think through why they'd get together because canonically, of course, they would never.

27. How long did it take to write [insert fic]? Describe the process.

Sticking with 'ganz besonders' I wrote the first draft in a fevered haze over like... a week in February 2020. With 'ganz unerwartet'... yeah I'm still working on finishing it.

46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write?

I prefer to write for longer sessions on my computer, though I'll jot down notes and scenes on my phone and have written longer scenes on there though it hurts my hands after a while. I also own a Freewrite Traveler though I mainly use that for professional writing (although occasionally fic too.)

I think I'll tend to edit more on the computer and be more thoughtful about how I'm approaching my writing. Phone is really just for getting the quick and dirty details down (pun slightly intended.)

[clarabosswald]

on philip pullman's approach to analyzing human nature vs jack thorne's

(posting here per request since the conversation on discord got, uh, distracted before i could put my thoughts into words)

bbc/hbo's his dark materials has expended on a lot of characters and plotlines that were only hinted at - or did not exist at all in many instances - in the his dark materials book trilogy. one of the characters that was impacted by that a lot - if not the most of the whole cast - is mrs. marisa coulter. and while many media outlets and fans alike have been very pleased with the show's version of marisa in comparison with the book version (and i'm referring specifically and strictly how she was written, not how she's portrayed by ruth wilson), many of us on the discord server have felt that jack thorne's spin on the character resulted in major changes to her personality, to the worse. it's a huge topic (which i love discussing but don't want to focus on too much in this post) but in short, many of us are in opinion that jack thorne's marisa coulter is significantly humanized and mellowed compared to philip pullman's, more palatable and more relatable... and thus considerably less fascinating and captivating than the books' version.

the thing about this is that i don't think this is something that's exclusive to thorne's interpretation of marisa. i think it's a trend that you can see in nearly all of the characters in the his dark materials tv show - especially the ones that were explored more deeply than in the books. i can see it with lyra, asriel, boreal - even will. and i think you can put it all down to a very basic approach to exploring and writing basic human nature that's vastly different between pullman and thorne.

with pullman's writing, i think he finds fascination in how different humans are from each other. pullman says: humanity is so varied; there are so many types of personalities; people can be really extreme; it's so interesting to explore the human nature in its weirdest and most unlikable, looking directly at the aspects people would rather not expose. lyra, the protagonist, possesses many traditionally unlikable characteristics: she's a liar, she's rude, she's arrogant, she's blunt. asriel sets out to save humanity but he's far from a good person. he doesn't see all humans as equal; he sees roger as a tool to reach his means rather than a living person; he resents his daughter for being a unruly street urchin rather than an elegant scholar like himself and her mother. he berates marisa when she obtains traits he sees as inferior (her love for lyra, which he can't understand). and marisa herself... powerful and power-hungry and ruthful and remorseless. slick and skillfully manipulative. she knows the games in the society that she lives in and she plays them masterfully. those are the characters pullman writes and explores. and not one of them is more or less human than the other. they're people; and "good" and "bad" are names we give to the things they do or the choices they make.

thorne's approach is no less thoughtful, but is significantly different. characters start off as having seemingly polarized traits, yes. but as thorne digs deeper, he finds that they have a lot in common with the perceived idea of an everyday person, and you can see that very early on in the show. asriel sincerely apologizes to lyra for not being able to spare more time and attention for her, and (infamously) declares that "everyone's special!"; marisa seems to form an emotional bond or attachment to lyra nearly as soon as the girl hugs her in jordan college (because who doesn't feel touched when being hugged by a grateful kid, right?); as she watches the severed children being rescued and shown affection in bolvangar, she looks stricken by remorse; she refuses asriel's offer to cross the bridge together because she feels committed to their child, not because of the magisterium. then in season 2, thorne invents a new side of marisa - a woman oppressed by a patriarchal society. she was oppressed as a scholar due to being a woman (in the books, female scholars were far from unheard of; marisa was a member of sofia's college, an all-women institution); she stares with longing at a woman working on a laptop while caring for a baby in a stroller; she's obviously jealous of mary. what woman can't relate to that, in this era of fourth wave feminism? then, as she faces lee scoresby - beaten and shackled and still gaining the emotional higher ground by appealing to marisa's (the master manipulator, the skilled torturer) emotions for her child - and he deduces that she was endured parental abuse as a child (which wasn't hinted at in the slightest in the books - in the book of dust we meet her mother, who's a terrible person but adores and idolizes her daughter to a fault). and of course that would tug at the audience's heartstrings - because how can you not understand marisa's vulnerability? how can you not feel bad for her, learning about the abuse she endured? this is jack thorne's way of exploring characters and filling up gaps in their stories. this is his way of exploring humans. "deep down, we all have shared experiences and feelings." the more you learn about his characters, the more relatable they are. they become more palatable to the average viewer.

these are the two approaches, and neither of them are inherently wrong or bad. but they're profoundly different. and they create different characters.

and what we keep coming back to and complaining about on the discord server - specifically in the context of marisa but i do think other characters suffer from it too - that, compared to pullman's characterizations, the result is just... well, boring. or at least disappointing. because what draws many of us to marisa, what makes her so magnetic and unique and unforgettable, was never her being relatable. in the books she's very unapologetically a horrible person; the show feels like it keeps making up excuses and apologies for her horrible deeds (so much that it even neuters just how terrible some of them were). the uncompromising extremes in her personality and her choices are exactly what make her so utterly fascinating and unusual. without excuses or explanations that would make her actions make more sense to the average reader. you rarely ever think "i'd have felt exactly the same! i'd have done exactly the same! i can perfectly understand her motivation here!" yet thorne tries to make you think exactly that. and it's not wrong. i'd have loved it a ton if i were a show-only fan. but when you compare it to pullman's version - its intensity and spectacle, the heights and perils the story reaches with characters that are masterfully created as both extreme and human without compromise - thorne's is just ever so... dull.

and i honestly think the show would've been better and more successful if thorne didn't shy away from letting the characters be unrelatable. there seemed to have been intense concern in making the characters more easily digestible to as wide an audience as possible; and ironically i think that has caused the story to lose a ton of its initial appeal. and i think the same worry was applied to thorne's handling of the plot; and the show suffered massively for that too; but that's a topic for a different post.

[birgittesilverbae]

do you know what percentage of references to breasts in wot are specifically references to arms being crossed under them

I'll have you know I had to brave WoT reddit for this because I knew someone else had done the analysis already

RJ was on something writing KoD, as is tradition

[vancouver-lord-goldeneyes]

fuck it, Moiraine bingo

You’ll notice it’s exactly the same as Siuan’s except with Autism for reasons of her really being the character ever. RJ really said I’m going to pack so much generational and religious and institutional trauma into this tiny French lesbian and set her loose on a prophecy. She really makes me so insane like can we talk about your buckwild family for a sec? How your uncle basically set your birthright except not to the throne as you thought but to the search for the child his actions brought forth? What about being set on the path to saving the world at TWENTY TWO and you’re not even the Chosen One you’re just looking for him?? Rand at least had the soul of the Champion of the Light in him Moiraine had …. Lan. Any compassion extended to Rand due to the immense stress he’s under has to be afforded to Moiraine too like she was really out there doing this alone!! And her impact being gone for what six books haunting the narrative the whole time and still coming out as the eighth highest POV character in the series! The handled differently part is just like getting to talk about ANY OF THAT (or even acknowledging Elayne is your niece wtf) and of course GETTINGG RID OF THOM GET HIM OUT OF HERE

[queenofnabooty]

Marisa/Asriel, pre-affair

He's used to eyes being on him out of lust, resentment, or a combination of the two, but Edward Coulter wife's eyes are blank giving nothing away. The only thing to do is stare right back at her until she looks away or someone else flicks him on the back of the head for not minding his place. She holds his gaze and finally, after a long moment, laughter reaches her eyes.

[markantonys]

may i have your verin opinion and your elaida opinion

verin:

it just so happens that verin IS in my top 10 characters! what an absolute icon. not many of these boxes apply to her so it looks like i don't care much about her haha but that couldn't be further from the truth! partial box for "i would be afraid of them" because i would not be afraid of her unless i knew about what she was like under the surface, in which case i would be terrified of her. and partial box for "not enough screentime" only because i would gladly read an entire spinoff series about verin, though in the main series, i think she got just the perfect amount of screentime for the sake of keeping things tantalizing and mysterious.

elaida:

i can see the appeal of elaida, but for me personally, she always made me want to chew rocks! i did feel a tiny bit bad for her when alviarin was controlling her, though. but on the whole, i was cheering my ass off every time egwene got the better of her, particularly during the dinner scene in TGS.