@aureliansgalley

the960writers :

rlyehtaxidermist :

ephemeralhorror :

ephemeralhorror :

why are cyberpunk tabletop things so obsessed with decency and personhood being tied to how many surgeries you haven’t had

“if you have a prosthetic it takes out a part of your soul” like thanks shadowrun

in early cyberpunk, the point was more along the lines of “if we integrate technology into our bodies we risk becoming dependent upon the people and institutions who control that technology, who would then use that to enrich themselves at our expense”

unfortunately that was too anti-corporate for American mainstream culture so as cyberpunk moved out of its niche it became “uhhh it eats your soul I guess”

tags by @rubyvroom: 

#this is important context #if you weren’t around at the time it is easy to miss but #anti-corporate sentiment was pretty much the lynchpin of cyberpunk until there were movies and games making money off it #it was the 1980s you guys #the entire point was that corporations are evil and technology should be used to circumvent them and escape their control over our lives #and not be used to make ourselves into another product #now that the internet is entirely monetized and corporate it’s harder to remember that originally it was synonymous w freedom & independence

Yes, exactly. Cyberpunk is anti-corporations, not anti-body-modification.

ultraviolet-techno-ecology :

ultraviolet-techno-ecology :

ultraviolet-techno-ecology :

So like… is she tokyo cyberpunk or seattle cyberpunk?

Tokyo Cyberpunk: Emphasizes human relationship to technology, identity, psychological transhumanism, and the human-as-resource. In Tokyo Cyberpunk - Capitalism wants to own you.

Seattle Cyberpunk: Emphasizes class analysis through technology disparity, physical transhumanism, and the disposability of humans. In Seattle Cyberpunk - Capitalism wants you gone.

Aesthetically speaking…

Tokyo Cyberpunk showcases nightlife where clean streets are illuminated by neon signs tempting you into consumerism as a therapy for your alienation. It’s percieved cleanliness acts as a symbol where corporations justify their rulership through the illusion of social progress. The robot is friendly, companionable. Societal problems and capitalist contradiction are silenced and swept away without the common person knowing.

Seattle Cyberpunk showcases a nightlife of homelessness and decay with corporate monoliths on the horizon. The streetlights no longer work, but the darkness is kept partially at bay by the neon tubes of bars where people watch wishes of their youth vanish at the bottom of the bottle. The lucky ones working for the corporations do so with the fear they will be kicked to the street. The robot is an expression of force intended to keep the common person afraid. Corporations do not try to justify their rulership, social problems and contradiction are solved with force.

filmnoirsbian :

WHY ARE YOU HAUNTED?

A survey

hifructosemag :

Li Songsong, known for using thick layers of paint to craft scenes that appear similar to fragmented memories, brings his historical look at China to Pace Gallery with the show “One of My Ancestors.” See more here.

quietlovewasherefromthebeginning :

im obsessed with this guy now

gorgonapologist :

A Perfectly Normal Interview with Carmen Maria Machado Where Everything Is Fine

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sjdsjkdlskdas-deactivated202012 :

part of what makes tragedies tragic is the story being preventable from the outside but unpreventable from the inside

imagine you’re walking down the street on an early, rainy morning. you just got yourself a cup of hot coffee. you’re thinking about work. there’s a bumpy part of the sidewalk, and you trip….what do you do? you brace yourself with your free hand, of course. you balance yourself with your dominant foot, naturally. you catch yourself while holding your drink high above your head, nothing is spilled, you don’t get hurt, you keep walking. but as you read this, you aren’t even standing are you? you’re likely reading this while lying in bed, sitting on the couch, or sitting at your desk. you don’t consider how slowly your brain works behind early-morning fog. your sense memory of a rain-slick sidewalk beneath misplaced feet is vague at best. you don’t consider how instinct takes over logic when you’re scared. you don’t have to avoid getting hurt while maintaining balance from where you read this.

but i’m sure you wouldn’t fall in real life. you wouldn’t crack your chin on the sidewalk, you wouldn’t spill coffee down your shirt. you’re a reasonable person. you wouldn’t kill the random traveler on your way to thebes. you would’ve just talked to the creature you made, formed formed from corpses. you would’ve just talked it out before making a harsh decision. you’d wait a minute to see if your lover woke up before killing yourself. i’m sure of it.

tibby :

tibby :

starting to think that people shoudln’t be allowed to talk about the final girl trope unless they’ve actually read men women and chain saws (the book that coined the term) because so many of you clearly see it as the ultimate feminist trope and apply it to any woman who makes it to the end of a horror movie without paying attention to the nuances of the trope and the noted flaws of it

like even this very small snippet shows that it’s a trope that isn’t as black and white or as empowering as people want it to be and while we should love our final girls, engaging with the trope without any criticism and labelling every single women in horror AS a final girl just completely misses the point

ao3commentoftheday :

Summaries are one of those things that a lot of people hate writing. It’s not easy to take the big huge idea you have for a story and distill it down to a couple of sentences. But you know what makes things easier? Practice!

When I was in university, I took a Russian Literature course. We read 18 novels over the course of the year, and for each one I was required to write an essay. The trick was, that essay had to be a maximum of 200 words - and semicolons were considered cheating. 

When I started out, it was an impossible task but by the end of the year I could do it in my sleep. And you know what? All of that practice makes writing fic summaries a breeze. If you want to get better at summaries, or if you just want to be able to summarize complex ideas more easily, give this a shot. 

Here’s the format we used:

• 2 sentences on the main characters
• 2 sentences on minor characters
• 2 sentences on plot
• 2 sentences on theme(s)
• 2 sentences on anything else that we wanted to say about the novel

Ten sentences. It can be done. But just like anything else you learn how to do, it takes practice. 

evakant :

a study in body language

catilinas :

the hero’s journey but it’s by anne ‘katabasis-doer’ boyer

mattsharp :

the way that destiel confession would have gotten like 6 kudos on ao3

endophoras :

“[…] Not all horror stories work that way. In some, the protagonist does not escape from or kill the beast, but nor is she simply killed in turn. In these stories, the protagonist enters into a state of communion with the very horror that has spent the rest of the movie threatening her life and her sanity. The process may be voluntary or not. The embrace of the evil may be gleeful or reluctant, and the outcome may be triumphant or tragic. But in the end, the dangerous, deranging, demonic forces at work are greeted not as destroyers, but as liberators, freeing the human protagonist from his human concerns once and for all, the life he once led forgotten in favor of a supernatural, superhuman new state of existence.

This is transcendental horror: stories that climax with the protagonist entering a state of ecstatic or enlightened union with the source of the horror they’ve experienced. […]  Sometimes a touch of transcendental horror is all that’s required to elevate a film’s climax from a mere “down ending” into something more mysterious and harder to shake. Because what the narrative offers us is not all that different from what stories of martyrdom, or tales of witchcraft and devil worship — martyrdom’s dark mirror image — offer believers, from antiquity to the present day. For martyrs and saints, their horrifying ordeals brought them closer to God; for witches and Templars, who in the fevered imaginations of their detractors were said to have literally kissed the Devil’s ass, their self-abasement before Satan was the prerequisite for power. We want to believe that there is virtue in suffering, that pain and has some kind of up side, that whether alive or dead we can reap some kind of benefit from pain, humiliation, torment, torture. More than anything else, that is what films like The Lighthouse and Midsommar offer, in their own dark way. Ephraim and Dani are made to endure the tortures of the damned — their spirits battered and abused, their connections to life outside the sphere of suffering severed, their brains tampered with to a hallucinogenic degree. Yet on the other side of all this, they see things other humans can’t, and they achieve a power the normal world cannot offer them or abide at all. If you were within reach of something that made every awful thing you’ve been through worthwhile, wouldn’t you reach out and touch it? To paraphrase The Witch, wouldst thou like to live, or die, deliciously?”

— Sean T. Collins, The ecstasy of the agony: A quick guide to transcendental horror

umbrella-ish :

Excerpts from Reginald’s notes, Vanya’s book, Dr. Terminal’s programming instructions, and Pogo’s diary. All about the Academy.

(Photos belong to G. Way and Gabriel Bá)

aesterea :

ideas for interesting platonic dynamics:

• older siblings trying to maintain a cool persona to impress younger siblings who idolize them 
• character avoiding their landlord cause they’re late to pay rent 
• neighbors who have grown weirdly accustomed to each other and don’t feel right if the other person isn’t home 
• following the same idea… one of them finally moves out and the other neighbor deliberately scares away potential new inhabitants cause they can’t stand the idea of anyone else living next door 
• alternatively, shenanigans between neighbors who cannot stand each other and are each trying very hard to get the other to move out 
• adult characters bonding with their friends’ children 
• characters who are just sick of each other for no particular reason, they’re just weirded out by how often they coincidentally end up in the same places 
• character stalking another character, but solely to use their extensive knowledge about them to avoid them 
• long-lost friends/relatives reunited after many years who now have to get to know each other all over again 
• doctor/therapist/other health care specialist frustrated with a chaotic patient who keeps getting themselves into awful situations 
• tension between characters of different religions, but not hateful!! there’s just a lot of confusion about each other’s beliefs as they get to know each other 
• parents trying very hard not to play favorites with their children 
• children trying very hard not to play favorites with their parents 
• teachers trying very hard not to play favorites with their students 
• business partners become business rivals 
• business rivals become business partners 
• friend groups where pets are also considered part of the group (thinking of scooby doo) 
• bitter enemies teaming up against a bigger enemy 
• mentor/apprentice, but the mentor doesn’t know what they’re doing at all, they’re just winging it 
• mentor/apprentice where it turns out that the apprentice is actually more skilled/knowledgable than the mentor 
• ex-villains slowly learning to trust their old enemies 
• ex-villains trying so very hard to persuade their old enemies that they are not villainous anymore 
• friends who’ve grown unhealthily attached to each other keep putting off an inevitable goodbye 
• overachieving classmates who barely know each other and have no intention of furthering their relationship, but they enjoy working together because they make a great team 
• adoration between villains and their henchpeople 

feel free to add on as many as you please

👻👻👻🖤🧡👻👻👻 happy early halloween!! 👻👻👻🧡🖤👻👻👻

tua fic is published!!! so current actual wips remaining are only sleep well beast and the a6 collection of one shots (currently bluebloods until i rename all my fics for some reason, again).

sleep well beast gives me a headache every night because i wish it was good… but then i open it again and i’m. why is this happening. maybe i cant write romance. f. but i truly… would love to finish this someday. was also considering splitting into two fics, thus separating chapter 1 from the following pieces and maybe connecting them in a collection but. tbd. idk that that would really accomplish anyway other than splitting up the relationship focuses a little more clearly… but gokudera & yamamoto coming back in the current draft of ch3 anyway.

bluebloods is… waiting on ch 5 on andromeda 6! waiting for the route lock-in atm.

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and… nanowrimo is upon us!!! :O i’ve literally never done it but i have. a decent chunk of free time right now, so i’m thinking of attempting it, but mostly as a general “write everyday”-type exercise, maybe in fic since i dont have any original project ideas. other than. c o d e work ahahah… anyway. tbd how this turns out but may either put stuff (if it.. is any good… lmao…) in either a ficlet collection or as separate fics if anything develops.

im thinking… mushishi? ginko my king. samurai champloo jin also. ace attorney? i havent played any of the 3ds games so i think i am missing a lot but phoenix adopting trucy… think about it every day. :’) monster prom brian yu. (somehow mid-monster camp i remembered how many sexual jokes are in the game.. lmao) or, i write sibling fluff for tua like i was thinking, anyway… hM. what if i wrote more than one fic for a fandom… what a concept….

fan-arter :

did I really just come up with a bunch of side effects for Ben’s power so I can imagine sickfics in my head? Mmmmmmaybe…

whelvenwings :

Absolutely amazing how AO3 is a part of the internet that doesn’t sneak in any ads and doesn’t have an algorithm and doesn’t watch you or record how much time you spend looking at each fic or whatever. It’s just right there to use for free. Legend

sometimes u have extended thoughts about your own fic and the only place to put them is under a stupidly long and self-indulgent post:

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(the fic in question)

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originally started this fic because. well, obviously, first of all, BEN… 😔💝🤲 and second of all, because i thought an interesting explanation for why ben has aged and looks unharmed as his ghost self would be that he is “dead,” but “dead” in the sense that he accidentally sent himself into the realm where his tentacle monsters come from. as in, my understanding of the comic book explanation of his powers is that he is opening portals to another realm, and one day he just. opens a portal on his body that is too big (hence the emphasis on all the “seam” stuff). so, he’s dead, but like, “dead?” (and thus aging, seemingly uninjured, etc)

also initially thought that would be nice to imply that there is perhaps some way of him bringing himself back (reverse portal, u know), but uh. canon s2 penultimate episode killed him off, which, really annoyed me from a viewer’s perspective. but from the perspective of someone who has difficulty writing anything over 5k (and constructing plot… ouch), ty for the built-in closure lmao. because if i had spent the time to explore it, i think there’s a lot of interesting things that could happen with both reviving ben as well as. i mean, tua has whole organizations managing time and the realms of five’s power… intersections of ben and klaus’s powers and like. death bureaucracy (or u know, we could do something new instead) would be fun!! or that time klaus met god. lmk if any of u write it, kings. (or if it already exists)

i also unfortunately made like 95% of the fic a huge bummer which is also my bad because ben is externally quite cheery, except when he’s being an asshole, and. yea i wish i had found a way to write more of that to be truer to him but maybe i’ll still edit this and/or do another fic.

in any case, some other notes:

1. honestly. too many thoughts about ben’s childhood that i wanted to write/confirm in but the draft was getting a bit bloated. but basically just stuff like a) ben didn’t actually kill his birth mother as a baby, although he did injure and scare her enough to run away (…small mercies), b) just. i should have written more sibling bonding but i couldnt find a smooth way to work it in. that ones on me, mb. and c) a little more klaus… originally hoped to maybe examine that one comic quote from vanya about how klaus was also softer as a child.
2. was not able to shoehorn in ben’s hug with diego…. ):
3. i think most people know this already, but if not: the quote from vanya’s book is from the comics, and the other line in italics in that passage is the inscription on ben’s grave (shown on the netflix show). the other semi-important thing i got from comic lore is where reginald notes about ben, “gruesome but fascinating… must learn to suppress my nausea in order to study further.” huge ouch. hence union between being invisible as a ghost and also others not wanting to look at him as a living boy.
   
4. for like the fourth time, more sibling/family moments in general. wrong genre tho.. but anyway this is a safe space for all the hargreeves siblings, its not their fault they were young and dumb and traumatized and now that they are old and dumb and traumatized i forgive them, mostly, also <3
   
5. was considering briefly suggesting that the reason for klaus’s refusal to tell the family about ben is that he still sometimes has his own doubts that the version of ben he sees is real. derealization/depersonalization-type stuff, but i feel like that would take much more time to explore effectively and respectfully, and idk that i would be able to do that well
6. was going to try to work in that one quote from junot díaz about how monsters can be made by denying them reflections (original context was about representation of poc in usamerican culture, which… i guess is not not related to ben, though more in a meta way) but couldnt do it succinctly and uh also #junotdíazisoverparty from about 2018 or something, too
   
7. there were like 15 other song lyrics i almost used oops but i’ll spare u
   
8. …… ah shit. found out that the timeline in the fic is. quite off since in this published timeline grace was created in 1993? 1994 along with the rest of vanya’s early power stuff so. this is very far off what i implied of training for their powers (and graces appearance) starting much later, almost 2002/2003………… will i fix this???? tbd.
   (EDIT: as of 11/18/20, minor edits are now in place to adjust for this. whew now everything i have written is for sure, 100% valid, bible truth… u r welcome.)
   

anyway in closing: thanks for reading!! love u. <3 it is very much appreciated :)

oh ben. my sweet ben. come here.

👻 the umbrella academy: genfic
👻 expansion on canon re: ben’s childhood, death, etc.
👻 oneshot, complete
👻 teen audiences and up
👻 tagged: canon character death (its ben lmao), angst, mild gore, body horror, implied/referenced (child) abuse, implied/referenced suicide, contains vomiting

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extended author’s notes here

marioincandenza :

Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.

– David Foster Wallace

thesevenumbrellas :

Thanks Justin!

evelinaonline :

(via Justin Min’s Instagram ☂️)

“The old Ben is dead. The new Ben is here. He’s not… He’s not playing games. He’s serious. Very serious.”

days-of-reading :

Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

skitpost :

holy grail

dogmotifs :

happy halloween lgbties!! what creature feature gay metaphor r u?

rabdoidal :

ALISTAIRRRRRRRRR MY KINGGGGGG

pearwaldorf :

ladyofrosefire :

1. Know the difference between style and a problem. In beta-reading, try to preserve the style of the writer. You may not have chosen that word in the author’s place, but this is their story. If you’re not sure which it is, ask. If there’s a comprehension issue, say something. But the point is to show off their style. 

2. Ask the writer where they want your focus. This will allow you to focus your beta-reading! You want to be thorough, but you need a place to start, and having an idea of the writer’s intent and what they see as important will make things easier for you.

3. Be specific. People need to know what you’re saying is helpful or unhelpful in their writing in order to make changes and keep useful tricks. Line notes are great for this. Highlight words or phrases, and say why you recommend a change if it isn’t immediately obvious, like a spelling mistake.

4. Frame advice using positive statements. This means pointing out “should”s rather than “shouldn’t”s. It’s more encouraging, helps you to be more precise, and avoids presenting a problem without also giving some idea of a solution. 

5. Commit to your comments. Noncommittal phrases can come across as damning with faint praise. If you like something, say so. If you don’t like something, phrase it kindly, and say why. If you’re not clear on something… 

6. Ask questions. Sometimes you don’t know why an author made a certain choice. Let them know! Ask! Saying “This word makes this passage seem ______, is that something you want?” will give the writer context for suggestions you make around what you’ve highlighted. 

7. Say what you like, too. This is fun for you and a confidence booster for the writer. AND it lets them know things they can continue to do.

This is such a good list of pointers! Whenever I beta for a new person I try to get this info before I look at their work:

• How deep they want me to go - is this just a SPAG/does it make sense check? Do they want feedback on more structural things, like plot or character stuff?
• How nice should I be - I tend to be rather blunt in my comments which can come off as gruff or terse even when I don’t mean it to be. If a writer needs me to give feedback with a little bit more finesse, I can do that, but I need to know.
• Line editing - If it’s not a typo or grammatical error, some people get touchy about others editing their prose directly, or would prefer suggestions instead. Make sure you and your writer are on the same page (heh) about this.

actually mostly exactly the same as the previous post except i have actually made negative progress post-publishing chapter 2 on the khr! fic because i am once again rewriting things in an already-published chapter. but i promise this is good, guys, this is some critical emotional reframing of events okay, fr, i swear, things might actually make sense now.

have also written two paragraphs and deleted one on the tua fic as well lmao. baby steps