#elememetal

@hobidreams​ is a peerless sugarcube of a person but here she is, HAVING ME PUT MYSELF ON BLAST (/ ∇ \ ⭒)

Rules: list at least 5 fictional or celebrity crushes you had as a kid. Be sure to include pictures! Incriminate yourself for your friends’ amusement!

1. Billy Zane

I mean, I stand by this today based on this headshot, and wouldn’t refuse a drink if he offered it scruffy, but... he has to be at the top of the list because couldn’t-have-been-out-of-elementary-school-yet pseu told her parents, upon exiting a movie theater, “Billy Zane is fine.” (the movie was not Titanic, which I still haven’t SEEN, a million tumblr brownie points if you guess the movie it was, I guess?) WTF WAS GOING ON AT THAT SCHOOL?!

2. Saphir/Sapphire, Sailor Moon

Smart, soft for his people, doomed. Just the way I like ‘em.

a little bit cranky? EVEN BETTER (♡◡♡)

3. Thackery Binx, Hocus Pocus, and every person my age/ever who has not sworn off ghosts and or men entirely will say the same, upon this sacred ground I Plant My Flag

Tragic. Devoted. A shirt that laces in the front. SOMETIMES HE IS A CAT THAT CRACKS WISE. TAKE ME, I AM YOURS.

4. Everyone on this poster:

(Jonathan, too, tbqh!)

The Mummy was an AWAKENING. Oded Fehr (STILL GORGEOUS jfc look him up! take a napkin to wipe your mouth when you do!). Rachel Weisz (the woman who did my hair and make up for my wedding asked if I had any goals as far as look and I told her “Jessica Biel’s makeup at the end of The Illusionist and any possible way you can make me look like Rachel Weisz”). Patricia Velásquez confused young pseu in allllllllllll kinds of ways, until slightly older pseu figured it out.  (*ﾟ∇ﾟ*)

5. Preity Zinta

Kal Ho Naa Ho was the first Bollywood movie I got to see, and wow. Wow. Of course SRK and Saif Ali Khan gave me heart eyes, too, but I was MESMERIZED by Preity! I loved her shape, I loved how her character’s suffering wasn’t made lovely-- she’s not always nice, she doesn’t always know what to do, and as an actress she made me believe it so, so hard. Midway through watching, I whispered to my friend “I want to find more of her movies!”. I have all kinds of feelings about KHNH in general, but it introduced me to and made me crush HARD on Preity. I still get butterflies thinking about her.   （˶′◡‵˶）

Thank you, queeni @justine-the-guillotine ! 😚

RULES: We’re snooping on your playlist. Put your entire music library on shuffle and list the first ten songs, then choose 10 victims [?!].

Like Justine, I wish there was a more comprehensive alllllll library way to do this... but here’s the shuffle from my phone’s “all songs” list!

President Snake, Part 2— The Doubleclicks

You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid— The Offspring

Only You (And You Alone)— The Platters

Round and Round— HEIZE featuring Han Suji

The Hills— The Weeknd

Set Fire to the Third Bar— Snow Patrol

Brokenhearted— Karmin

He Mele no Lilo— Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu & Kamehameha School’s Children’s Chorus

Jolene— Dolly Parton

Conga— Gloria Estefan

This is the first time since I bought the Hamilton soundtrack that a song from that hasn’t been at the top of my shuffle.

Tagged by @lamourche and I really appreciate it! I’m stupid pleased to be on your radar, thank you. 🙇🏻‍♀️💜

rules: bold the statements that apply to you, italicize your aspirations, then tag a few people to do the same if they’d like to!

AIR: i have small hands [lol some aspiration, pretty sure I’m stuck w/ the mitts i’ve got] / i love the night sky / i watch animals and birds when i pass them by / i drink herbal tea / i wake to see the dawn / the smell of dust is comforting / i’m valued for being wise / i prefer books to music / i meditate / i find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

WATER: i don’t have straight hair / i like to wear ripped jeans and overalls / i play an organized sport / i love dogs / i am not afraid of adventure / i love to talk to strangers [who look like they need it] / i always try new foods / i enjoy road trips / summer is my favorite season / my radio is always playing

FIRE: i wear bracelets on my wrists [?] / i love the bustle of the city / i have more than one set of piercings / i read poetry / i love the sound of a thunderstorm / i want to travel the world / i sleep past midday most days / i love simply lit dinners and fluorescent signs / i re-watch kids shows out of nostalgia / i see emotions in colors not words

EARTH: i wear glasses or contacts / i enjoy doing the laundry / i am a vegetarian or vegan / i have an excellent sense of time / my humor is very cheerful / i am a valued adviser to my friends / i believe in true love / i love the chill of mountain air / i’m always listening to music / i am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER: i go without makeup in my daily life / i make my own artwork / i keep on track of my tasks and time / i always know true north / i see beauty in everything / i can always smell flowers / i smile at everyone i pass by / i always fear history repeating itself / i have recovered from a mental disorder [mnnn that’s not how mental health works, but me and my buddy G.A.D. are doing better day to day 💪]/ i can love unconditionally

Thank you, dearest @hobidreams !

This one’s easy: put your music library on shuffle and list the first ten songs. Give a few personal liner notes, if you want. 💕

Laughing With — Regina Spektor Okay, okay, start off sad, sure

LAST DANCE — BIGBANG This is far from my favorite song of theirs, but not bad. AND my beloved T.O.P sings on it/swoons me right. ...definitely listening to this when I’m done.

On the Floor — Jennifer Lopez feat. Pitbull Look, I... I am a sucker for the danceability of their singles, individually and together.

How I Want Ya — Thames (feat. Dev) I LOVE this song! It’s on all my happy mixes. 💕 If I were going to make a “here’s me!” playlist, this song would be on it.

Light Colors — Lia This is from the Tomoyo After sequel for Clannad, which I still haven’t gotten to play, but when SpouseFaux was playing it when we were long-distance he sent me the song and said “I think you’ll like this a lot.” He was right. I wanna karaoke it sometime. 🤞

The Padstow Missile Crisis (Solarbear [~SUX~] Remix] — Metatronaut [the artist is now Nanode] I didn’t recognize this one by name, I have it because I bought the Waveform Warrior album. I’ve had it on a few exercise playlists. Not bad!

Cosmic Love — Florence + the Machine Another loved song! I held out against F+tM for a long time thinking they had to be a gimmick but now I’m an unrepentant feeler-fan. Don’t be a snob, friends.

Oh, Mr. Darcy — The Doubleclicks The DCs have grown so much since this was released, but I’ll always have a tender spot for this song.

Look at This — A Tribe Called Red LOOK THEM UP if you don’t already listen to A Tribe Called Red!!! I found out about them, fell all the way in, got SO excited to see them in grad school, and had to not go to the concert because I got really sick. I’ve never gotten over it. BUT. Their music is incredible recorded, too. This is from Pow Wow Step and Hallucination is even better! Powerful. Wonderful.

My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It) — En Vogue I have never been in the position the lyrics imply, but GOD I LOVE THIS SONG! My childhood girlfriends and I would try to harmonize after the “now it’s time for a breakdown” part. Sweet memories for a sassy song.

...that make me happy! Thank you for the tag, ever-sweet @otonymous ! 💙💙

My kid asking for “kiss kiss kiss!” 😭💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕 (the request is for three quick smooches on the cheeks or shoulders with dramatic “mwah-mwah-mmmmWAAAAHHH!” sounds and I guess it is ticklish, definitely delightful. We are all stressed tf out at home, and the happiness and laughter from these throughout the day is really helping!)

I Wish I Was the Moon, an IkéSen Mitsuhide/MC fanfic by TheFoxesFangs. I LOVE this story and when I read it last year I got personally excited for Mitsuhide’s route in IkéSen! Now that it is here I am reflecting on it A LOT and itching to reread for like the fourth time. So good! It feels so good to read. It’s like playing IkéVamp for me, in that it feels like it was made juuuust for me, it hits so many of the notes I like. 🥰

The fact that I finally invested (augh, that word, that entire concept, but still— happy maker) in a better blender, because now it doesn’t take multiple minutes of massaging and swearing at my old blender to make a smoothie. And it has cup vessel things, so easy to make everything and then swap the lid with blades for a drink lid! Smoothies give me energy and definitely raise my mood (hello, yogurt I don’t want to eat straight!). So what makes it easier for me to get my smoothie = what makes me happy.

The pair of mallard ducks that continue to occasionally hang out in my driveway and a tree in my front yard (first adventures here, and they have been back since). WTF are they doing?! The answer is way less important to me than seeing them again. 😂 I really want them to nest here, but we aren’t close enough to water.

ACNH. I’ve never played an AC game before and I love it sooooooo muuuuuuch! If someone had told me “you can help your friends” I would have hopped on this franchise years ago. I’ve been furloughed from work and it’s sucking it out of me to not be helping people with reference stuff and readers advisory just when I had gotten back into the groove of things. 💔 The building will reopen eventually and my (very part-time) job isn’t likely in jeopardy (for which I am very thankful). But anyway— ACNH is helping to fill that empty place in my soul right now! If you want to be friends in the game let me know! I like sending presents. :) And I’m working on making my island nice!

Thank you, @helloheartsongs ! I enjoyed reading your list. Here is mine, not in order and NOT AT ALL exhaustive:

Toyotomi Hideyoshi, IkéSen for his Big DADDY Energy. He is so devoted (as a mother hen, I vibe with all his fretting!), and soooooo sexily soft for MC. His character was also the first I got to enjoy with the gentle-sweet-manly-dangerous when he goes low-YOU KNOW voice of Kosuke Toriumi. How could I not stan?! I could not not stan, ever. I want him to hug me and head pat me and [redacted] me [redacted] and I want to tell him so because you know he will do whatever you ask! Also!!! Built-in ultimate wingman/instigator in the form of Nobunaga.

Impey Barbicane, Code: Realize, because SOMEONE has to love this giant sweetheart! Big of bicep, big of braid, perhaps big of foot in mouth at times, but I LOVE him and I loved him from the very first! He ties with Van for my favorite in the game, but There’s Something About Impey... it may be his perpetual horn, which harmonizes nicely with mine, I think Offscreen (!) I’m insta heart eyes for mechanical aptitude. And he is so funny! Like actually funny and also the kind of funny that makes you wanna wrap hair around your finger and tell him is so funny~

Le Comte de Saint-Germain, IkéVamp because EVERYTHING. He’s timeless, powerful but gentle, worldly as hell, SAD but sweet, doting as hell, there’s that swoop (swoop! swoop de doop! swoop de doop de doop de...) that makes me weak... the golden and sepia aesthetic... a coat worn as a cape... the sense that he would and could keep you safe at the expense of literally everything else except one thing he will do anything to keep you from knowing about... I said weak, I meant w e a k

Honda Tadakatsu, SLBP and no I am not kidding even one little bit! He’s way up on my favorites list for this game! He’s massive and stronggggggg, he’s sweet as warm sugar, he’d let me slap him with whippy words and whippy sticks for that good good supercrisp pain and then be so grateful I took care of him that he’d take good care of me. I accept no other canon. 😌 That sprite where he’s holding up the one hand???????? His sunshine smiles?????? Welcome attacks upon my composure.

Taku Hayama, Irresistible Mistakes. HEAR ME OUT. Taku gives me the bastard (but not really) (but really yes, a bastard) vibe something dumb in my heart craves from games like these. He is ALL DUDE and I love that. Competent and ruthless but makes an exception for MC... and even then, he doesn’t totally capitulate! I guess I like (?!) that MC doesn’t come first for him she does before him, just first in terms of people in his life. There’s also something realistic about his character design and personality that I extra appreciate in a Voltage title, where that’s not a given. I’ve known and crushed on real people like Taku. Dangerous! Delicious.

Thank you for the tags, @alloveroliver and @otonymous!

Name: pseu (I lowercase it on purpose, but it doesn’t bug me if you treat it as a proper name/capitalize!)

Fandoms: Now: SLBP (lingering-- I love some of the characters too much to quit!), Cybird’s Ikémen series, FE3H. I’m also reading STUPID amounts of BTS stories lately, those writers are amazing! Looking forward to: Hopefully getting back into The Arcana when some of the routes conclude. I started TAISHO x ALICE recently and I’d love to write stories for that and some of the other otome I’ve enjoyed. And like so many other writers, some original projects. :)

Where You Post: pseu slings and gift stories are here on tumblr, and everything pre-dumblr. Longer/refined pieces on Ao3. Many, many things languish in my google docs or emails I’ve sent myself and don’t get posted. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Most Popular One-Shot:  Not what I thought it would be! Here it is Venture (Kanetsugu/MC). On Ao3 it’s Something Blue, IkéSen Masamune/MC. I tried really hard last year to edit Something Blue to bring it up to where my writing is now, but couldn’t get through it. Learned my lesson in letting things be. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: Real (ao3 / tumblr), which is Shigezane/[named] MC. Another one I feel compelled to edit, because I would change a lot about it if I were writing it today. But I also cherish it for what it is.

Favorite Story You Wrote: Oooooh! Hard! I think from last year that is Frost-Edged Fire, a “what happened” story for Sansa post-GoT. I like the way it reads, it felt good to make, and the response has been positive somewhere where I didn’t have my name to stand on, so I feel very satisfied with that one. I also really like one of the pieces I wrote for an Arcana zine coming out this year. :)

Story You Were Nervous to Post: I swing back and forth between “what happens, happens, I’ve written what I felt l needed to” and “PLEASE LET PEOPLE NOT HATE THIS sob sob sob”. I remember when I was working on Real I was trying to let go of some of my own standards for MAKE IT MAKE SENSE BACK FIVE GENERATIONS, so I was scared people would pick it apart even though it was such a soft, smooshy story and such a soft, smooshy thing to write. It still makes me feel vulnerable! I had my first run in with an anti in 2018 and for a while that shook me. I didn’t change what I wrote after that, but the experience was so jarring and gross I was tense.

How You Choose Your Titles: I like sideways titles, in the way of allusions and references. I usually choose single words that are either meant to encapsulate the tone or primary action of a story, or a word or short snip from a phrase, which I hope a reader will read in full in their head even though part of it isn’t there. But I understand that once something is out there, it’s really up to the reader to make of text and title what they will! That or phrases in French I try to make myself but often have to run by a native speaker to make sure they mean what I think they do (often: not quite).

Completed: I have no idea. The pseu slings bump the number way up, it’s probably around 150 total? For non-snippets, around 50? (Ao3 has 53 works, some of which have multiple sections)

Incomplete: I have an idea, and it is mortifying. There are some things I’ve written a little bit for but I know I won’t go back to and sometimes I think about putting them up as free prompts for others. Things I’m really trying on? 7. Given up but not ready to say so... 15ish? More I’m forgetting?

Do You Outline? Sorta! I start with the scene or scenes that motivate me to write in the first place, and then I have to outline to connect them. They are not usually the beginning or end because life is not fair and those parts are really hard.

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: More IkéVamp! More parts in at last (MLQC). More FE3H! Maybe this will be the year I finally write the Isshiki-sempai story I’ve had floating in my head for Shokugeki no Soma. WHO KNOWS?! (I do. I won’t.)

Do You Accept Prompts? Sometimes! I love doing pseu slings twice a year (once in March and the other later in the year for a follower milestone or something). tbh it can be incredibly freeing, motivating, and feel-goody to write what I know someone has asked for-- connecting to requests and filling them feels wonderful and I have less time to dither or gather rosebuds or whatever, so it’s productive. I think some of my best work is writing that others have requested. 

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: 

More of aesthetes, belligerents, contortionists (IkéSen Yoshimoto/MC).

♥️ ASH EXTRAS! ♥️

What do you use to edit?: Just me! I’m not flawless, but I trust myself more than any automatic service. I consciously choose to ignore several best practices when writing anyway. When I’m not as confident as I would like to be about something new, I may ask someone I trust in fandom to look it over as a one-time thing.

Writing setup: This is my desk right now! That’s a draft of this post on my laptop screen.

I need silence and steady lighting to write, so I set up my ~space~ in our basement. When I get a better desk chair and my cozy chair in here for brainstorming, it will be heaven! 🥰 Need: better record storage, more bookshelves, to paint, a rug instead of one of those Barnes & Noble quote blankets on the floor...

Do you use a beta reader? No. I love the just-right feeling of a good collaboration with (or being!) a beta reader, I’ve had it and it is magic! But it has proven incredibly difficult to find anyone who can be trustworthy long term + available. + interested. adflkjsf

Where do you get your writing inspiration?: Nature, conflict, and consuming other media. Museum trips. New foods. Sometimes dreams!

Can we get a quote from an upcoming WIP?:

Every lord of Kasugayama (even the lord of Kasugayama) had given her fine thread and cloth. It was Yoshimoto who made a quiet gift of needles before she could attempt to find them herself. They were in a slender little canister, painted blue and cream and gold, and when he placed it in her palm goosebumps bloomed over her arms and legs. One of his hands held hers from below and the other lingered on the other side of the needlecase, close enough for warmth, close enough that she felt like a carefully-captured butterfly. A part of her soul waited to be appraised and wished she had wings.