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Too Many Words And Counting

@awriterpretendingtowrite

Fruitier than an apple orchard - writing commissions OPEN - Moss - any pronouns

Welcome to the Blog

The name's Moss, any pronouns work (she/her if you can't pick), and I write fanfiction here on hellsite.com. All my long fics are on AO3, all my shorter stuff is here, although it does overlap quite a bit.

Commissions: My fanfiction commissions are OPEN!!! Thank you all for your patience with them being closed, and I am excited to be back in business!

Ko-Fi: consider buying me a coffee. I'm currently working toward restocking my art supplies with the money donated.

Discord: occasional memes, updates, and Q&As. Pretty chill server. I take suggestions on there as well as here on Tumblr.

Complete List of AO3 Fics Here (descriptions below the cut):

Current Fic: The Genderfluid Gryffindor (previously titled “Genderfluid at Hogwarts”)

Completed Fics: "Thus Conscience Doth Make Cowards of Us All" (4.2k, OFMD fic), The Stowaway (21.9k, Mando fic), The Clan (52.6k, sequel to The Stowaway)

Character Letters/Letters from a Character: To Be With You Always (500 words, The Arcana fic)

One Shots: Dean's Confession (pictures here) (1k, Destiel fic), The Stowaway/The Clan One Shots (6.8k in total, occasionally uploading new ones)

I think that's about it! Thanks for sticking around I guess :)

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I think Mary’s role in OFMD is complete and rightfully so. It ended on a lovely note and I do not expect her to be a regular cast member in Season 2.

BUT in Season 3, if they keep to even the sketchiest outline of historical events (as they also did in S1) and Stede gets caught and arrested for lapsing back into piracy after accepting the Act of Grace, THEN I would absolutely die to see a cameo scene of Mary when word gets back to her about all of Stede’s dastardly crimes and among them his close association with Edward “Blackbeard” Teach and THAT’S when I want the lightbulb to flash above her head as she puts 2 + 2 together and screams, “Stede’s Ed is BLACKBEARD?!” because that revelation is the ONLY thing I think is missing from Mary’s arc in the show

my favorite ofmd fan theory is that izzy is one of spanish jackie's husbands, primarily because of how much funnier it makes his one direct interaction with geraldo. imagine you are the most cringefail member of the polycule and when your toxic metamour who works for a pirate celebrity shows up you try to be nice to him only for him to insult your mutual wife's place of business and then ignore you completely to have a pissing contest with a guy who just drank nose jar juice. and your aforementioned wife still likes him better.

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More favourite tropes:

  • “Unfortunately, [thing that would ordinarily be described in much stronger terms than ‘unfortunate’].”  
  • “Fortunately, [thing that is in no way fortunate].”  
  • “Unfortunately, [thing that would be fortunate in nearly any circumstance except the particular circumstance at hand].“  
  • “Fortunately, [very minor benefit that absolutely does not offset the considerable drawbacks of whatever just happened].“  
  • “Unfortunately, [the exact, word-for-word thing that somebody just expressed that they hope won’t happen].“  
  • “Fortunately, [complete non sequitur].”

And may I add

“Fortunately, [thing]. Unfortunately, [the exact same thing].”

I have a mute character in the story I’m writing and one of my beta readers suggested I use italics when they sign so that I don’t have to keep peppering “they signed” or “their hands flashed” throughout the piece.

But like…I always read italics in a different tone like they’re thoughts. It seems quieter than using normal quotations which makes what they say look less significant on the page than other character’s dialogue.

I really don’t think my audience needs me to use completely different punctuation around a mute character. There’s no need to act like they’re speaking a different language since their muteness isn’t a focal point in the story.

So really this reader’s comment has done the complete opposite of what they intended. Now I’m actively taking out as many of my “hands flashed” notations as possible and just writing in normal body language because, clearly, the other characters understand them and my audience doesn’t need to be coddled.

As an HOH reader and writer I can affirm that once the signing has been established it can just be treated like “said”.

You can add little things for emphasis though, like how fast or flippant a sign is given, also a lot of our “punctuation” is in facial expressions, so wild looks is kind of normal. Also messing up signs and just.. pushing them aside. Like, you mess up a fingerspell and just take both hands and shove the air in front of you to your side, people who sign eventually end up doing this for other things, like a “forget it” motion. It’s like a “wave it off” gesture.

Body language for someone who signs is a lot more animated than someone who speaks, as we use our upper body a lot in our conversations, so the act of “signing” is more than just hand signals.

Yes….yes GOOD this is the good stuff right here. I’m going to incorporate some of these ASAP ESPECIALLY the pushing the air but to clear it of your mistakes

I love Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland but I loathe how edgy subcultures have turned it into some one dimensional thing associated with psychedelics and other drugs.

Like, I wanna talk about the recurring presence of logic and mathematics, the cross language (primarily French) puns, I want to talk to people about their interpretations and thoughts but everyone’s so stuck on “haha yeah she’s on shrooms” like come on there’s so much going on don’t let it just be the easiest, weakest response, you’re smarter than that

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It’s probably one of my favourite books and I have the exact same problem

My favourite take: Alice in Wonderland adaptations all all dysfunctional because both stories are a hellish amalgamation of victorian pop culture

Turns of phrase, tourism in-jokes, children’s songs, academia at the time, popular figures in media, all of these are huge contributing factors to the characters and world of alice in wonderland/the looking glass. Reading the Annotated Alice is a trip and a half. Most of it isn’t actually nonsense, it’s an out-of-the-box joke on things most people when the book came out would have instantly recognized. They’re comedy pieces. Even as a modern reader it can get me to laugh, and the more I learn about what the time period was like when the book was released, the funnier it is. Caroll’s vicious deconstruction of mathematics was simply him cracking one one amongst many.

AiW adaptations are always going to be empty products unless you’re entirely willing to either double down on the time period or update it for modern times with commentary on things instantly recognizable to the modern audience. 

AiW adaptations with modern settings are like “what if it’s a DYSTOPIA and the animals are all HUMAN and it’s DARK and FOR ADULTS” like…we still have animated movies starring animals? Kid media is more identifiable for the whole family than ever?? There’s a better way????? Turn the dancing mock turtle into a ninja turtle who paints masterpieces you cowards

I like this take. 

So what you’re saying is that Alice in Wonderland is basically Victorian Shrek

Actually, yeah, kinda. There’s no real way to say, it’s never been fully explained by Charles Dodgson, it’s all truly interpretation. But in the way it’s written, I’d be willing to call it a literary version of Shrek. It has layers.

why don't people in zombie apocalypse stories ever just wear suits of armor? you think any zombie is gonna get their shitty rotting jaws through this?

I'm gonna rip and tear my way through the zombie apocalypse completely unharmed because none of the undead hoards will be able to get through my plate mail

everyone else is like "oh we gotta stay inside the most secure places possible and never leave" and I'll be storming through the wastelands in my bloodstained suit of armor, blasting the Doom (2016) OST and plowing my way through waves of the undead. one of them tries to bite me but his shitty rotting teeth don't even leave a dent in my armor before I turn his head into paste. I'll be unstoppable until I die of dehydration or something like an idiot

this goes along with my other pet peeve about zombie apocalypse stories, namely: why does no one ever think to ride a bike? 

bikes are quiet- if the zombies react to loud noises, they won’t hear you on a bike the way they might hear you in a car. bikes don’t need gas, meaning you won’t be stranded if you run out. bikes are much, much easier to maintain than a car- there’s no computer that can short out, no fiddly engine bits that could kill you if you mess with them wrong. you can learn how to maintain a bike with a couple weeks’ worth of classes. almost every adult knows how to ride a bike, and without cars on the road, it’d be much safer to do. 

what i’m saying is

You are a supervillain who has just captured your rival’s child. Rather than being afraid, they’re begging you to let them stay.

Frankly, you’d known those idiots had had a kid for years now. You’d pretended not to, because while you’d committed a lot of atrocities in your life, you weren’t willing to face the moral quandary of whether you would knowingly kill a child just to spite its parents.

They probably thought they were being clever though, what with the blaming you for an injury you knew damn well you’d never given keeping one of them out of commission for a few months, then references to what they would ‘leave behind’ or ‘could not follow’ when in the latest death trap. One of them had accidentally pulled a pacifier out of their utility belt once, and tried to pass it off as being prepared for any young children they came across while rescuing.

Idiots.

Still, you had standards. Standards that fell somewhere past war crimes and before common decency, but they were standards.

Ok but when Lucius and Pete get married, they both want the last name of the other (for personal reasons) so after a little talk they decide to just choose an entirely different last name, and then when Stede asks them which name they chose, they tell him that they chose the name of the man that's most important to them (besides eachother), so Stede tearfully pronounces them Mr. and Mr., Lucius and Peter Bonnet.

…now I’m just imagining 5 minutes after the final shot he eats a sandwich for the first time in like two days and goes. Shit did I really just abandon half the crew on an island. Izzy turn the boat around what the fuck was I doing.