217 posts
Latest Posts by thedudesareawake - Page 2
2003 Personalities
Just saw a post by someone who was breaking down Donatello’s personality from the 2003 TV series.
I noticed that a lot of that post included complete sections from something written by crabapplered 14 years ago - and the original author was not credited.
So I thought that I would post a link to the original for anyone who would like to read about Donatello and his brothers. This piece has been like a bible to me for writing the Turtles!
TMNT Rant by crabapplered
IT’S NOT AT ALL SOUP SEASON, MOTHERFUCKERS, AND YET IT IS ALWAYS SOUP SEASON, MOTHERFUCKERS
My viral soup post hasn’t gotten reblogged in a while and needed to be updated, and @redheadmystic asked me about it today, so here’s a brand-new master post of soups, including most of the ones that were on the list before, as well as some newer favorites. I’ve made many more soups than just this list over the past year, but these selections are my very tip-top, most enthusiastically-recommended picks.
Chef Michael Smith’s Thai Coconut (Red Curry) Soup with Chicken & Noodles
Not A Curry’s Thai Coconut (Green Curry) Shrimp Noodle Soup with Tofu
Nigella Lawson’s Cold Cure Soup (onion, orange, lime, ginger, cinnamon, chicken: your house will smell like heaven)
BA’s Chicken Khao Soi (very rich; will stick to your ribs)
BA’s Tom Ka Gai (if you can find galangal, it makes this soup)
Ellie Krieger’s Savory Carrot Cashew Soup (healthy & vegetarian)
my recipe for Pasta e Fagioli
my recipe for Creamy Spring Onion, Pea, and Zucchini Soup (easiest imaginable prep)
Victoria Granof’s Pasta con Ceci (sometimes I like it thick, more like a pasta dish, and sometimes I add more water and loosen it up because I want it brothier, like a soup)
my adapted version of Caldo Xóchitl(-ish)
Smitten Kitchen’s 44-Clove Garlic Soup (don’t be afraid of the number; it’s surprisingly refined and understated)
Yvette Van Boven’s Daube Provençal (stew beef marinated in, then simmered with orange, olives, and a whole bottle of Côtes du Rhône)
BA’s Poached Cod with Tomato & Saffron (note: I double all the ingredients but the fish, and add olives and capers, to make this more like a stew than a poach)
America’s Test Kitchen’s brilliant Creamy Cauliflower Soup (nearly dairy free, but super creamy)
my own recipe for Vichyssoise, adapted from a 1962 recipe in Gourmet
Alison Roman’s Spicy Noodle Soup with Mushrooms & Herbs (vegan)
Sue Li’s Lemony Shrimp & Bean Stew
Colu Henry’s Roasted Tomato & White Bean Stew
Kay Chun’s Hot and Sour Dumpling Soup
Eric Kim’s Cornish Game Hen Soup with Garlic, Ginger, and Fried Shallots
With Spice’s Cabbage, Onion, and Farro Soup
Veselka’s Cabbage, Sauerkraut, and Pork Soup
Classic Billi Bi (an elegant, wine-y, old-school cream of mussels soup)
Julia Turshen’s Chicken Tortilla Soup with the Works (requires a huge pot and an entire afternoon. Worth it.)
Elaine Louie’s completely brilliant Miso French Onion Soup (vegan if you leave out the melted cheese at the end)
I love your eleutherophobia! What are other fics that most influenced that that you recommend?
First and foremost, a huge honking caveat: Most of these are not Animorphs fan fiction. I am sorry about that, especially if you’re here looking for Animorphs recs. I tend to be super-picky in what I read in general and that tends to be quadruply true for Animorphs. There are lots of good stories that I know I am missing, and for that I’m sorry. This is just my own wildly eclectic and deeply idiosyncratic list of Things That Influenced Eleutherophobia.
Sword and Shield, Jewel and Song
Author: Elecktrum
Fandom: The Chronicles of Narnia
Genre: Action/Adventure, Family
Length: 1k to 104k (several fics in a loosely interconnected series)
Summary: Details the first two years of the Golden Age of Narnia from Peter’s and Edmund’s points of view, as the Pevensies deal with curses, quests, political tangles, cannibalistic giants, grumpy dwarves, and coming of age.
Why I love it: This writing is complex, disturbing, hilarious, and deep. It features characters who are so fleshed out you feel like you could meet them on the street, imagery so powerful it haunts your mind’s eye for days after reading, and dialogue that seamlessly melds with the original novels’ writing style. More importantly, it updates and refines C.S. Lewis’s work for a modern audience through adopting a contemporary perspective on gender, race, and social roles. It has irreparably re-terriformed Narnia in my mind, and for that I am grateful.
What it gave me: This author understands absolutely how to write siblings, including a set of four siblings with a deeply complex history such as the Pevensies. I gladly take lessons from this series not only on how to write families but on how to write leadership and consciousness with one’s public role interacting with one’s extreme youth and inexperience.
The Maddest House
Author: Busaikko
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre: Romance (Remus/Sirius), Kid Fic, Adventure
Length: 43k
Summary: Sirius gets custody of Harry after James and Lily’s deaths. Over the course of his first decade as a parent, he and Remus must learn to forgive each other for past transgressions and eventually to fall in love again.
Why I love it: This story makes incredibly creative use of some of the devices and concepts from the original Harry Potter series while also adding a lot of its own flairs and twists to the plot. The writing is so good specifically for all the things the author doesn’t say: for instance, we never find out the exact circumstances of Remus and Sirius’s breakup, but all the tiny hints allow us to infer a very disturbing picture. It’s also notable that this author resists the temptation to make any of the characters anything extraordinary, instead celebrating the fact that they are a handful of mostly-incompetent mediocre blokes thrown into a situation beyond their control who nevertheless rise to the occasion.
What it gave me: WORLD BUILDING. There are dozens of running jokes and small elements in this story that really make Sirius and Harry’s life feel real, from the book of domestic spells that worms its way almost accidentally into every aspect of Sirius’s life to the question of what it would really be like on an everyday level to have one-seventh of Voldemort living inside one’s soul.
Redefinition
Author: KilroyWasHere
Fandom: Blue Bloods
Genre: Family, Adventure
Length: 137k
Summary: Schuyler Van Alen learns self-defense, befriends her antagonistic cousin, finally goes on a date with her best friend, discovers her family history, and generally gets her groove back. Oh, and she prevents Lucifer from rising and ending the world along the way. Canon divergence as of Masquerade.
Why I love it: This story draws attention back to a lot of the coolest aspects of the Blue Bloods series (the protagonists as Grigori, the plethora of female heroines, the idea of high school drama echoed on a literally cosmic scale), most of which Melissa De La Cruz sort of tosses out and then leaves untouched on the table. Other commenters have said that this story is a more worthy sequel to Masquerade than the deeply problematic Revelations, and I could not agree more.
What it gave me: I should admit that I’m biased, since I betaed this fic and its author currently betas my stories, but this is the one story that taught me more about the possibilities of fan fiction than any other I’ve read. It updates and complexifies the canon work, challenging its casual sexism and also celebrating its daring scope. It actually takes the time to explore the implications of her universe and its rules in full, bringing considerably more depth and nuance to the characters’ relationships than are present in canon.
The Tocsin
Author: Beth Epstein
Fandom: Animorphs
Genre: Canon Divergence
Length: 7k
Summary: After Tom breaks his leg, the yeerk inside him gets replaced—with a member of the Peace Movement. He teams up with Jake and ends up acting as an older brother of sorts to the entire Animorphs team.
Why I love it: This was the story that got me intrigued about the possibilities of Animorphs if the kids actually had someone they could lean on instead of each other. It was also, for many years, the only work of fan fiction on the entire internet that offered any speculation at all about what Tom Berenson would be like if he was ever given a voice in the canon series, and I must have reread it 50,000 times as a result.
What it gave me: A fascination with Tom, for one. I don’t know that I even paid much attention to him as a character before I encountered this fic and then immediately returned to reread #31, wondering for the first time about the person underneath the homicidal alien using his body. Needless to say, I’ve been wondering ever since.
Another Brother
Author: AvocadoLove
Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender
Genre: Family, Action/Adventure, Canon Divergence
Length: 224k (INCOMPLETE)
Summary: Hakoda finds a mysterious firebender child with a very distinctive scar on his face but no memory of his past life, and decides to take mercy on the little boy. Zuko grows up as a middle child between Sokka and Katara, until the arrival of the avatar at the South Pole brings his old life crashing into his new one.
Why I love it: It’s probably painfully obvious by this point in the list that I’m an utter sucker for stories that focus on families and how they influence the observed lives of fictional characters, and few fics do it as well as this one. This story is complex without being difficult to follow, plotty but undeniably character-driven. It’s probably the only incomplete story I can unambiguously recommend, and it holds that status for a reason.
What it gave me: The plot of this story leans heavily into the unique strengths of fan fiction as a literary genre through making use of the readers’ knowledge of the canon work to set up and then subvert expectation after expectation. Right from the very first moment that Hakoda encounters a child with a burn scar over his left eye, this author uses that dramatic irony to raise intriguing questions and ramp up the tension in this story. The contrast between the Zuko we see in this story (trying to live up to Hakoda’s expectations, wavering over how to be an older brother to a younger but more-competent Katara, acting as a fond but exasperated mentee to Sokka) and the Zuko we see in canon (with Ozai, Azula, and Iroh in those roles, respectively) raises really fascinating questions about the roles of nature and nurture in shaping canon characters.
The Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail
Author: Owlet
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Humor
Length: 3k to 144k (several fics in a loosely interconnected series)
Summary: Bucky Barnes has been dehumanized for the better part of the past 70 years, meaning that when he tries to put himself back together he remains in some ways fractured. However, the ability to make his own choices and to seek out hedonic experiences more than makes up for the confusion of freedom. Too bad he’s trapped in perpetual indecision about whether or not to contact the former best friend he recently tried to kill.
Why I love it: I first opened this story on a Tuesday afternoon when I had errands I meant to run—and when I looked up, it was evening, nothing had been done, and I’d had an entire new universe implanted inside my brain. Prepare to be swept away by this writing from the moment you first dip a toe into its waters.
What it gave me: Humor and angst in equal measure, without either one overlapping or diluting the other. It makes really good use of an experimental writing technique (which I’m normally wary about in fan fiction) to give us an enormously deep emotional connection with its deeply unusual narrator.
Prompt 1 ("it's mine now") for Animorphs with a Serious Injury Underreaction? Or any prompt with that really (my poor kiddos reacting to injury with "oh nooo, I liked this outfit, RIP my favorite sweater," while bystanders and/or whoever stabbed them in the first place watch in horror is my Pain Jam)
This is post series and consequently includes spoilers, and is an AU of canon, specifically that Ellimist Ex Machina AU I keep talking about writing, so if characterizations are off from the end of Book 54, that’s why.
1: “No. You buried your knife in my stomach, which means it’s mine now.”
Things Sargeant Vic Santorelli agreed to when he signed up to be part of this groundbreaking military training unity:
Learning how to turn into an animal
Things he did not agree to:
Being handed a knife by a girl younger than his sister and told to stab her in the chest
“Um,” Vic says, looking at the knife she’s handed him. His fellow students are all too well-trained to actually blurt out what they’re thinking, but he sees them stare, flick glances at General Berenson in the corner.
(”You can just call me Jake,” their teacher said the first time they met. “The title’s ridiculous and we all know it.“)
(”Yes, sir,” Berenson’s new students chorused obediently, and proceeded to never ever address him as Jake, because the title’s not ridiculous and they all know it.)
Berenson looks almost bored. He certainly doesn’t seem concerned that his cousin might be getting stabbed herself with a Marine’s combat knife. Berenson usually has about the emotive range that you’d expect from a hardened veteran–it’s hard to remember that he’s only eighteen, a full two months younger than the blonde staring Vic down–but he focuses like something predatory when he wants to, and apparently he doesn’t care to right now.
“I’d rather…not?” Vic finally says carefully.
Rachel scoffs, thrusts the hilt of the knife at him again. She’s dressed in a leotard–a plain black one, not the official-issue morphing uniforms they were given at the start of this training. “Don’t be a weenie. Stab me with the knife.”
Keep reading
”You can just call me Jake,” their teacher said the first time they met. “The title’s ridiculous and we all know it.“ ”Yes, sir,” Berenson’s new students chorused obediently (Yes, Prince Jake.) (Ax called him prince from the very beginning - it was respect, it was allegiance, but do you think maybe it was also something else? A reminder, that they follow him, he holds their lives in his choices, and he is not - can never be - one of them. He knows this by the end; Ax knows it in the beginning.)
Jake would have been very unremarkable, if he hadn’t walked through that construction site, if the Yeerk expansion had not come to Earth in his lifetime. His family is well off and he’s not much of a follower (good leaders make poor lackeys, there’s a reason that there’s an officer track), so he wouldn’t have been likely to go into the military, and he wouldn’t have thought much about public service, I think–he’s not the type to want to play detective. He might have volunteered as a firefighter, a way for him to turn his big frame and athletic experience into a real world task, but he wouldn’t have worked as one full-time.
He would have gone to college and gotten a degree, maybe in history (if he ever even realized that he loved history, without a war to prepare for), maybe in whatever seemed reasonable. Business, perhaps. He would have tried out for a few basketball teams, but probably never would have done particularly well on them. He would have graduated middle-of-the-road, not terrible, but not great, and gotten a job, and married, and maybe had children. He would have been a great father, but nothing special in the rest of his life, except.
Except.
The handful of times when something went wrong–then people would wonder how he learned his steadiness, where he got his level head, whether he had always been so confident in command.
Then the crisis would pass, and Jake Berenson would go back to his comfortable, quiet life.
He would have lived an unremarkable life, but he might have been happy.
Instead, when he tells people to call him Jake, they agree and nod and call him sir, sir, sir.
Star Wars Memes 15/?
AU where (somehow) Palpatine becomes Emperor and all that jazz without killing off the Jedi, but before they can like... DO anything to fix it, Anakin (recently implied imperial heir and visibly off his rocker) has a meltdown of absolutely horrific proportions and beheads Palpatine on live television, then declares that he's installing Padme, his WIFE whom he adores VERY MUCH, as Empress.
Padme isn't even THERE, she's busy giving birth on Naboo and nobody's had the guts to tell her about the whole Empire situation. IDK maybe Anakin begged Obi-Wan to look after her while Obi-Wan was on a forced leave and got a "Well, I've certainly nothing better to do" in response, and Padme and Obi-Wan are both kinda bougie, they're on an ~*~electronics cleanse~*~ while Padme rides out the end of her pregnancy.
"Don't contact us unless it's an emergency," they said, not anticipating that people would fail to tell them about the fall of democracy.
Realistically, the Jedi manage to Handle the Anakin problem (which, like, nobody's that upset about someone tackling him in the middle of the Senate to take him down after what he just pulled, there are OBVIOUS justifications for this arrest, holy shit), and then let democracy come back before Padme ever finds out, and really someone should have told her and Obi-Wan the second Palpatine went "hey, I should have a crown, and absolute power, and also the opportunity to torture Anakin for shits and giggles," but I just think it would be really funny for her and Obi-Wan to come back to Coruscant, twins in hand, only to find out that Palpatine was a Sith Lord, the Republic is an Empire THAT NOW BELONGS TO PADME, and Anakin lost his mind so spectacularly that he now thinks presenting Palpatine's severed head to her on bended knee upon her return to Coruscant is somehow a good idea.
Maybe the Jedi just decided that, since Palpatine was a Sith anyway, and Anakin isn't really DOING much while warming the seat for his absent wife, they could just... wait for her and Obi-Wan to come back and knock some sense into him. Less of a risk of a Jedi getting hurt trying to arrest him?
Baby bear catching snowflakes
this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about
Vintage Stockholm apartment
THENORDROOM.COM - INSTAGRAM - PINTEREST - FACEBOOK
This
gotta be the equivalent to this
This is some badass shit! I love this guy!!
what if it seems like batman has safehouses all over the country because he’s a paranoid maniac always ready to go into hiding in iowa, but actually he just goes on a lot of business trips for his day job and when he sees a cute house he buys it and stays there. he grew up in a big mansion with a butler, a house with only three rooms is like camping for him. he thinks it’s fun. he gets to play house and eat cereal for dinner. the flash accidentally committed some light treason and needs to lay low for a while so batman sets him up at this little place in maine. flash is like “wow he really does plan for everything” but no, he just saw an old queen anne with green shingle siding and white accents and he couldn’t help himself. it had a wraparound porch and a spire. a spire. technically it wasn’t in his carefully alloted ‘whims’ budget but he sold an extra yacht to make room. “geeze bats i get that it’s a safehouse but couldn’t you have stocked the pantry with something besides kix and peanut butter?” flash asks. “they’re shelf stable,” batman says, as if that is why he bought those things, as if this is not just What He Does when alfred leaves him unsupervised.
i do think sometimes about the core concept of batman being parental in nature. the thing is, batman is a child’s idea of what the world needs; bruce wayne at eight years old lost his parents, and that safety that parents provide, that protection. he lost that, and missed it so dearly that he resolved to do nothing for the rest of his life but give that protection to others. and if you think about his methods, they’re really 90% show - the cape, the cowl, the attitude, the voice, that’s all a carefully crafted act. it’s like how elephants will fan their ears to appear larger, or cats will fluff up their fur, or puffer fish will blow up like a balloon: it’s fear tactics. batman tries to scare criminals off, first, because his focus is the survival of the victim. it reads like an angry parent running off threats, because that’s exactly the thing bruce had wished he’d had. and you know what i never would’ve thought i’d be here making posts that boil down to, “batman is trying to be gotham’s dad,” but you know what here i am doing exactly this don’t judge me i’m doing my best
You’re a daycare worker, watching over toddlers, when the imminent end of the world is announced. It becomes increasingly clear none of the kids’ parents are going to show up as the end inches nearer.
amazing double dance by hao ruoqi ( in blue)and wang xuerou(in red)
Dormant Predators
dramione fic rec list
COMPLETED SERIES
this is my first deep dive into dramione and i wanted to share these amazing series i’ve read in the last few months. no particular rank or order to this list. enjoy!!!
Manacled - @senlinyu / @senlinyuwrites if you’ve delved into Dramione at all, you’ve most likely heard of this incredible dark epic. it takes place in a Voldermort Wins!AU and takes inspiration from the Handmaiden’s Tale about population control in this new frightful era of the Wizarding World. be prepared for all 77 chapters to consume you in this tale of love, loss and hope in between.
+ emphasis on dark epic. the writer themselves have acknowledged that with such dark and heavy themes, there are large aspects of the story that may be triggering for some people and therefore manacled might not be the fic for you - and that’s totally okay! (what’s important is that you take care of yourself) as always, read the tags and know your limits. + senlinyu is a phenomenal writer, often collaborates with @elithien, pairing their artistry together. @avendell is also another great digital artist who has worked closely with senlinyu, even creating multiple companion art pieces for Manacled (but try not to let the art spoil some parts of the fic for you!!!) + senlinyu has soo many Dramione works, just follow them & dive into it!
Bone Mortar - @mightbewriting enemies to lovers is a given in everything i’m about to talk about in this post, but this short and sweet series takes us to a modern!au setting of academia. what’s not to love about these two professors who are about to go head to head over a little administrative conflict at the start of the new school year?
Keep reading
we tore the moon asunder
A special boy || collab with @doodlingraka
Keep reading
FIC REC FRIDAY
That is technically a Saturday….
But we managed to circumvent the technical difficulties and now we offer you the Mod Picks of the week :D
This is a short one, sorry guys!
Mod Aurora:
To Be Enough by graysonsflight ( @gothamsgrace) Rating: Teen and Up Audiences | Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply | Pairings: Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd| Words: 2952 | Chapters: 1/1 | Status: Complete| Summary: She and Dick didn’t talk about it often, but Barbara knew that whenever Dick and Bruce fought, Jason’s adoption was the elephant in the room. She wondered if Bruce knew it too. Commentary: I love everything this author writes - and she is especially spectacular when it comes to a Bruce who cares for his children, but doesn’t always know how. And when it comes to a Dick Grayson that only wants love.
Keep reading
For the record while ATLA is an excellent show and Zukos redemption arc was perfectly paced, I would kill to have had Zuko join the Gaang at the end of book two, because the first half of book three would have been the funniest thing on the planet. Like. Just picture it. A bunch of unsupervised teenagers travelling undercover through enemy territory, trying to blend in… and the only people who have even been there before are 1. A guy who hasnt been there in a century, and 2. The former crown prince who has literally never spoken to a fire nation citizen who wasnt nobility, military, or one of his servants.
Like. Neither of them have any idea what they’re doing, or how normal fire nation citizens act, but they’re pretty sure the other one is wrong. Rest of the gaang knows even less. No adults. Zuko and Aang getting into a shouting debate over the finer points of fire nation culture is a nightly event. They are both so wrong, and so, so awkward
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gracefully gathers everybody during a discussion with R. Emmett Tyrrell and Emily Maitlis. Watch it here.
here is your sign, if you needed one.
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just copy, add your name, and send the email to a town member!
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i haven't seen posts about yemen so im making one
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can we signal boost