You Make Me Better Than I Was Before

Hello! Your welcome, and I’m glad you are enjoying the blog😊. Also, I’d be happy to showcase your writing. Thank you for the fic rec!

Effie Trinket 2024 vs. 2012

I tried to keep a certain influence from my original Effie idea (with her canon-accurate Reaping Day outfit) but elevating it with the haute couture references I have now, so, the outfit on the left is inspired by a Vivienne Westwood RTW FW 1995 suit and heels and the one on the right is inspired by a Thierry Mugler SS 1997 couture suit, heels also VW. Makeup inspired by mother Pat McGrath and hats inspired by Philip Treacy.

Grieving Seam-eyes, Katniss/Gale-looking Haymitch but unfortunately mean blonds are my weakness I love him in a Yuri Plisetsky typa way ALSO NO ONE say anything about SOTR IM STILL IN D MIDDLE OF MOCKINGJAY

Some of you might have spotted this week’s kerfuffle about how it if was written by a dude it can’t be fanfic, in the guise of an interview with author Lonely Christopher, who claims not to have written fan fiction of Stephen King’s The Shining. The Mary Sue article covers it pretty well (and has a link to the original interview, should you be that way inclined), but we thought we’d highlight some Fan Studies research that could help Christopher put his work in the wider fan fiction context.

Here are a couple of extracts from the interview to get us started:

“LC: The book can be read as a self-contained “novel,” but it’s more than that. I used another text conceptually, structurally, and materially to generate a resultant yet original work. That’s what I mean by “source.”

The text that I was utilizing was the novel The Shining by Stephen King and the subsequent media iterations and interpretations and its cultural ubiquity. So I wrote my story in relation to another, more specifically on top of it. I took the basic tropes of The Shining and replicated and subverted them, and I also took chunks of language and interwove material pieces of Stephen King’s novel.

(…)

Interviewer: You’ve described this book as “intertextual.” Tell us a little bit more about this book’s relationship to other literature.

LC: The book is a concerted rejection of the standards of any type of literature, so in that way it is reacting to the formal elements it eschews, and interacting with readerly expectations as well as the history of the medium.

I guess the reason why this isn’t “fan fiction” is because, first of all, it’s not enjoyable in the same way and then it’s vaguely academic. Aesthetically speaking, it owes much to Stein, Beckett, Robbe-Grillet, and Bernhard. Intellectually, it has a relationship to Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Debord, and especially Baudrillard. So it is having conversations with different texts in different ways.”

You may recall a couple of relevant articles, such as this one by Abigail Derecho on fan fiction as “archontic literature”. One of the really interesting points Derecho makes in it is how fan fiction writers will frequently repeat the same motif, explore the same scene, but with a difference. (For those interested in the “vaguely academic”, Derecho bases on Deleuze’s concept of “repetition with a difference”.) So we may look at something from a different character’s point of view, or take a group of characters and put them in a coffee shop AU, or try to work out what would be different if a character had made a slightly different choice. You know what that does? It plays with and challenges the reader’s expectations, and allows readers to make meanings from both the similarities and the differences between the two texts.

You may also remember this paper by Mafalda Stasi which looks at fan fiction as a “palimpsest” - the medieval practice of partially erasing and writing over past manuscripts, creating layers of text and meaning. Does that sound a bit like what Christopher is doung by writing his novel “on top of” The Shining? Maybe a bit.

This isn’t any fucking pioneering, it’s nobody wanting to admit they’re taking fanfiction seriously because fanfiction is for the WOMENS and the GAYS and the WEIRDOS and it’s INHERENTLY BAD AND STUPID and therefore a cis man doing it and being successful must be something TOTALLY DIFFERENT

Christ on a cracker, first they feed people the line about fanwork being inherently worthless so hard that “it’s just fanfiction” and “it’s just fanart” is uttered in apology over every fanwork in existence, including pieces of unspeakable skill and beauty that are 10000% “academically correct”, then when it finally hits a tipping point of fanwork being so competent they can no longer ignore it as an art form, they try to go “no this is NEW and GOOD because a MAN invented it”

Guess what?  Fuck you.  Is there bad fanwork?  Of course there is.  There’s an equal amount of bad art and writing (or moreso) not based on pre-existing comics.  There’s a woman in my fandom who draws comics so intricate that each panel is a full resolution painting and it’s “just fanart” because the idea of a hobby seen as inherently female is so threatening to the world that you tried to stomp it out for literally decades, to the point that it doesn’t matter how much hard work and emotion is put into something, if it has a pre-existing character it “doesn’t matter”.  And now you’re trying to make it matter even less.  How.  Fucking.  Dare.  You.

Hello and welcome to this new post of mine! I wanted to get into manifestation methods again since I had many people requesting them, I hope you enjoy!

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What the method is used for:

The pillow method is used for practically all manifestations you can think of. This can go from manifesting love, to manifesting money, to manifesting pets. This method is also very easy to do for everyone, and therefore a good way to start your manifesting journey.

Instructions:

1. Write down your desire:

Take a piece of paper, it doesn't matter what kind, and write down your desire(s), the things you want to manifest. This method is done before going to bed or before taking a nap.

2. Focus on your desire:

Fold the paper toward you, hold it in your hand, close your eyes and focus deeply on your intent and desires, put all that energy and trust you have in the universe into that piece of paper.

3. Put the paper under your pillow:

Put the paper under your pillow, and if you wish, repeat a couple of affirmations as you lay down and get ready to sleep. Then simply go to sleep and let the universe bring you your manifestations over night.

personal manifestation readings here