This Time Of Year Is Always Very Nostalgic For Me Bc I Used To Be The Token Gentile At An Office And

Hi! I like your collages :) I wonder how long does it take to make them?

Hello! Many thanks for your kind words and your thoughtful question! I am so happy that you like my collages, and I am so delighted to reply! :)

In general, it takes me several days to make a collage. It took me a total of eleven days to make both collages of Zuko (Fire Is Life and Zuko in Water Tribe war paint), so I think that these specific collages took about five or six days each.

I had a lot of fun making these collages! When I completed them and cleared my collage-making stuff off my desk, I felt a bit sad to be putting that stuff away. Then I received your ask, and it motivated me to put that stuff back on my desk, together with the completed collages, and to take the following photo to accompany this reply.

[Image description: A photo of the surface of a desk.

On the desk are two completed collages. Both collages are portraits of Zuko. In one, he is wearing Water Tribe war paint.

Also on the desk are some items that were involved in making the collages. These items include an X-Acto knife and cutting mat, two adhesive applicators, a ruler, a pen, a mechanical pencil, and various kinds of paper.

One piece of paper has a pen sketch on it. Other pieces of paper have shapes cut out of them. Some pieces of paper have smaller pieces of paper pasted onto them, and one also has pencil notations on it. End image description.]

For these collages, I made a pen sketch and chose color palettes based upon character design elements from the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series and comics.

For the Water Tribe war paint collage, I also consulted descriptions from the fanworks that inspired it, which are Salvage by @muffinlance​ and war paint by @agentcalliope​ — two beautiful fanfics in which Zuko is essentially adopted as an honorary member of the Southern Water Tribe.

I selected paper for Zuko’s skin and scar, and for the war paint, by pasting various pieces of paper onto other pieces and testing the effects of layering them.

When I had selected all the paper for both collages, I made a chart containing a column of paper swatches and a corresponding list of planned locations, such as “hair highlights” (russet origami paper), “irises, border” (metallic gold origami paper), and “background” (colorful and sparkly momi paper).

To assemble the collages, I cut the paper into shapes with an X-Acto blade, sometimes with the help of a ruler, and then pasted the shapes into place with one adhesive or another, depending upon the weight of the paper, which ranged from art tissue to card stock.

After completing the collages, I tried scanning them, but the scans didn’t show the reflective quality of the metallic gold origami paper.

I wanted Zuko’s gold eyes to shine, as though from his inner fire. So I brought the collages to a window, angled them so that Zuko’s eyes reflected the sunshine, and took photos to post on Tumblr.

Just as I enjoyed making these collages, I am enjoying reading and replying to people’s comments and questions, such as this lovely ask! Thank you again! :)

I don't think people without sensory sensitivities understand that what I'm asking of them is no more than I ask of myself.

I practice ways to avoid setting off both my own sensitivities and the sensitivities of others. I've taught myself to chew and swallow as quietly as possible, to scoop ice cream and stir tea without clinking the metal spoon against the side of the ceramic cup, to not smack my lips, to never clear my throat unless there is no other option and then to only do it once or twice. I repress my stim of touching my nose and upper lip when in the presence of one of my siblings because for some reason it bothers them (they don't have sensory sensitivities so I'm not sure why they dislike it, but I'll respect their preference).

I don't choose to have these. I would get rid of them if I could, but no amount of exposure and trying to stay calm has vanquished them. My sensitivities come and go as they please, and some have been with me for as long as I remember.

Yet somehow when I ask others to not set off my sensitivities, I'm told that I am overly sensitive, lazy, and just trying to annoy them.

Your average banana is about 150 cubic cm, but that’s too complicated for the math I want to do, and once its masticated you can put it in a smaller space so let’s just call it 100 cm^3. Eating a banana gives you a radiation dose of about 0.1 microsieverts, so ten bananas, or a thousand cubic centimeters of banana in your stomach, would give you one microsievert of radiation. The thing about radiation, is that it won’t kill you very much until you’ve gotten a lot of it, the maximum amount of radiation that astronauts are allowed to take in over their life is 1 sievert, which is the same as if you ate ten million bananas. In fact, even that doesn’t represent a significant danger to them because radiation is most deadly when it happens all at once, so a dose of about 4 sieverts is potentially fatal if it happens all at once, but the highest known non-fatal dose was around 64 sieverts administered (in deeply unethical circumstances) over 21 years, so if you ate about forty million bananas all at once you’d get a potentially lethal dose, but if you had eight thousand bananas for breakfast each morning you could survive the radiation. 

Now, I’m an astrophysicist not a biologist, so people who actually know things will have to forgive me when I say that the human stomach is probably not bigger than a 10x10x10 cm cube, I mean maybe it is, we played with those 10x10x10 cm cubes in math class and they weren’t *that* big, maybe the stomach is two of those, but honestly if I misplace a factor of two here or there it really doesn’t matter too much, I’m doing far worse things to the numbers here, but you certainly shouldn’t be citing anything I’m saying to the sort of precision where a factor of two should matter, I’m being very open about how approximated this is. Human beings, on a similar note, are probably about a cubic meter or two tops, one or two million cubic centimeters, or in other words, about ten or twenty thousand eaten bananas of volume, and the stomach is probably ten or twenty. I know the human digestive system, miracle that it is, is capable of expanding somewhat to fit its contents, but the upper bound on that has to be somewhere less than the entire volume of the human body it is contained in. So if you’ve stuck with me on this exciting journey, I can now lead you directly to the point I’ve been slowly building towards, which is this: If you want to give yourself acute radiation sickness you are going to have to find a method other than eating bananas. You cannot fit enough bananas inside you at any one time to fatally poison yourself with radiation.

Top 5 Best Funny Hobbit Lines

1) “This is what it is, Mr Baggins,” said the leader of the Shirriffs, a two-feather hobbit. “You’re arrested for Gate-breaking, and Tearing up of Rules, and Assaulting Gatekeepers, and Trespassing, and Sleeping in Shire-buildings without Leave, and Bribing Guards with Food.”

“And what else?” said Frodo.

“That’ll do to go on with,” said the Shirriff-leader.

“I can add some more, if you’d like it,” said Sam. “Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools.”

I am particularly impressed by Sam’s ability to marshall the power of Verbal Capitalization when called for.

2) “If you turn over a new leaf, and keep it turned, I’ll cook you some taters one of these days. I will: fried fish and chips served by S. Gamgee. You couldn’t say no to that.”

“Yes, yes we could. Spoiling nice fish, scorching it. Give me fish now, and keep nassty chips!”

Poor Gollum, doomed to a world without sashimi.

3) “Mercy!” cried Gandalf. “If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?”

“The names of all the stars, and of all living things, and the whole history of Middle-earth and Over-heaven and of the Sundering Seas,” laughed Pippin. “Of course! What less? But I am not in a hurry tonight.”

What makes it all the funnier is Pippin’s sheer laziness. He spent two months in Rivendell and, going by Merry’s comments, I doubt he so much as opened a single book. But he’ll quiz Gandalf incessantly.

4) Gaffer Gamgee, on his son’s sartorial choices: I don’t hold with wearing ironmongery, whether it wears well or no.

There has never been a more quintessentially Hobbit line.

5) Merry Brandbuck, after assisting in destroying the Lord of the Nazgûl: I am hungry. What is the time?

Okay, so it’s not inherently funny, but it gets major points for context.

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes.

DC (Batman)

buy the ticket, take the ride by Anonymous

Tim had always figured that if he ever woke up in Vegas sans-memory, it would be when he was older than fourteen. But there were some things he couldn’t control, and apparently whatever had happened last night that he didn’t remember was one of them.

Instead of All the Colors That I Saw by SilverSkiesAtMidnight

Dick comes around to stand fully in front of him, keeping a steadying hand on Tim’s arm. “Just because you know you’re safe intellectually doesn’t mean you always feel safe,” he says softly. “It’s okay if you don’t feel safe.”

“But it’s not okay!” Tim bursts out. “Because if I don’t feel safe, then how is Jason supposed to feel safe? He shouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable just because my brain is screwed up!”

There’s a faint sound by the door, barely more than an intake of breath, and his eyes snap to the no-longer empty doorway.

Day 28 - IT’S NOT JUST IN YOUR HEAD “Good. You’re finally awake.” | nightmares | panic

Star Wars

Present by WhatisWithin

Luke sometimes forgot how scary Daddy was to other people.

It was a weird problem to have. And a stupid one too. He should remember that kind of stuff. Everyone was scared of Daddy.

(After being rescued by his father from the streets of Mos Espa, ten year old Luke adjusts to life on a Star Destroyer.)

Clone Wars

walk by faith/tell no one what you've seen by Killbothtwins

Part 1 of the massive machinery of hope

After the end of the war with the Empire, Obi-Wan wakes up in his twelve-year old body. Now all he needs to do is convince everyone he's psychic, trick his Master into taking him on before he's sent to Bandomeer, redeem a few bad guys, and try not to have a nervous breakdown. Pretty easy. It's not like the Sith are lurking on the horizon, waiting to devour the Jedi Order.

Sticker Burrs by RileeTheRiddler

Obi-Wan gets thrown back into his baby body at the exact moment his birth mother tries to drown him in a rushing river.

Instead of a Jedi, a Mandalorian fishes him out.

General Jocasta by BairnSidhe

Picture, if you will, a shiny new High General Obi-Wan who has just been given control of the GAR on the logic he's the only Jedi with war experience. Except he's never actually organized an army before, and he needs help.

Enter Co-High General Jocasta Nu, who runs the GAR like she would the Archive. Everything organized and cataloged, her precious Collection now expanded to include the entire GAR.

And well, she's a librarian....

The Sith never stood a chance.

Of Tookas and Interdimensional Wormholes by FictionalDragonMother

This is a silly fic about fluffy kitties and their war-torn counterparts who expose a great evil and somehow manage to save the Galaxy along the way. Okay, actual description time:

When the Force decides that things are starting to go down the wrong path, the mystical presence decides to shake things up. And what's the best way to flip the script? Bring in cats. Lots of cats. Cats on the Resolute, cats on the Marauder, cats running around the Jedi Temple and sitting in the seats of Jedi Council members. Is that a completely hairless cat on Chancellor Palpatine's lap? Gross. The rest of them are pretty cute though.

Nerdanel: What are these?!

Fëanor: Dwarf costumes.

Nerdanel: Why? Have you lost your mind?!

Fëanor: How many dwarves in Snow-White?

Nerdanel: Seven.

Fëanor: How many sons do we have?

Nerdanel: ...seven.

Fëanor: Et voilà.

Y’all should check out Four Seasons Landscaping’s facebook. They keep posting memes and it’s hilarious

Hello! You have just been visited by the Crackship Fairy, as of now you will be given a crackship and you have to do good by them. Your crackship: Voronwë/Maglor

(This is much more of a gen take on their relationship than it is a shippy one, but my headcanon is that Voronwë is aro, so that’s just how it’s gonna be!)

~

It wasn’t often that Maglor came across another elf on these shores. They were rocky, dreary, generally abandoned; he liked to be alone, and this stretch of coastline was good for that. The few weary Secondborn who eked out a living here were suspicious enough to steer clear of him, and in return he did the same for them.

In ages past this land had been the border of Ossiriand, pressed up against the Blue Mountains. The mountains were still there, taller and grander than ever, but the seven rivers were sunk under the sea and the singing Laiquendi had long since fled for greener lands.

Mithlond was not too terribly far from these his favorite haunting grounds, but no matter how genial and polite Círdan was Maglor knew he was not welcome there: the Falathrim had not forgotten the ruin of Sirion. No, this was a place where he could wander alone, his mind free to catch forgotten melodies on the wind and his spirit unbound by any constraints of law or temptations of love.

And yet: here stood a simple dwelling, still clearly Noldorin in make, looking near as old as Maglor felt. He had wandered this beach a hundred times or more, and never before had he run across this little elfhome that appeared to have been here since Beleriand’s death throes had finally ceased and the lands he had bled and fought and suffered for settled under the vast ocean.

Entranced, Maglor approached the house, noting its angular shapes, the Tengwar over the door, shimmering with some faint enchantment. He shivered as his fëa brushed against it: he was not repulsed, per se, and yet he was permitted to pass through the barrier.

“Who goes there?” demanded a voice too soft for its tone.

Maglor turned around, tensing instinctively and letting his hand wrap around the hilt of his dagger. The speaker was an elf, as he had thought, though they conversed in Westron, and though his eyes did not shine with Treelight he had the stature and bearing of one of Maglor’s kin. Still, there was something a little off about him—the shell patterns on his clothing, perhaps, the shimmering blue of his blade, or the curve of his nose, which reminded Maglor strongly of a person he could not quite place. Perhaps he was of the Sindar as well as the Noldor.

“Peace,” he said slowly in Sindarin. “I mean you no harm. I was simply curious of your dwelling. I will leave you to your solitude.”

The ellon relaxed, though he did not sheath his sword. “Thank you,” he said in that soft voice. “But you have not answered my question. Who are you?” He glanced to Maglor’s cloak, tattered and torn and yet unmistakably blood-crimson. It was not the same one he had worn when he cast the Silmaril into the sea—that had long since unraveled into nothing but a painful memory—but thought Maglor no longer wore his father’s star openly, he would not abandon his Fëanárion pride, nor could he wash his hands of the blood upon them.

He could give the ellon a false name; he had done so to others in the past. But Maglor was so tired, of hiding, of running, of lying, and he did not have the heart to do so. He adjusted his grip on his dagger, knowing that if this ellon was part Sindar, there was every chance he would be met with long-sleeping anger reawoken.

And yet, still, he spoke his name.

“I am Kanafinwë Makalaurë Fëanárion,” he said, “though you may know me better as Maglor the singer; and you may wish my name had never had cause to be uttered here in the east. Certainly I wish that at times.”

“Oh.” For a moment the ellon’s resolve wavered, and then he grimaced, sighing, and sheathed his blade. “Well,” he began, switching to musical Quenya that made Maglor’s heart swell with a fondness long-forgotten, “by all I rights I ought to hate you, Fëanárion, and yet it is not often that I hear my father’s tongue spoken, especially not by a voice so lovely as yours.”

“Who was your father?” Makalaurë asked, dread coiling in his stomach. If this was another long-lost relative—

“Aranwë of Ondolindë,” said the nér, and a smile twitched at the corner of his lips. “I am Voronwë the mariner, once-friend of Tuor Ulmondil and Eärendil Morningstar.”

Voronwë—yes, he had heard that name before. A nér of Gondolin, a mariner, a friend to Eärendil and Tuor...and kinsman to Círdan, if he remembered correctly. Makalaurë shuddered, bowing his head.

“You were at Sirion,” he murmured. It was not a question.

“Not precisely,” Voronwë said. “Elwing, wife of my dear friend’s son, and her children—they were there. But I dwelt alone in a home not unlike this one, some miles away from the city, as I ever have since Tuor and Itarillë departed for the West.”

Makalaurë’s heart skipped a beat. “I—regret what was done,” he began, but Voronwë waved a hand.

“Come in,” he invited, walking past the protective enchantment around the perimeter of his little home and beckoning Makalaurë in. “That was an age long ago, and we have both suffered enough for our choices. I would speak with you, over supper, of those you called your sons—unlike Eärendil, I did not have the pleasure of seeing them grow to adulthood, and I would hear from you what they are like.”

Makalaurë took a deep breath, then nodded. Voronwë’s offer of conversation, of a meal, of companionship was more than he deserved—but he spoke truly, that he was not the same nér who pillaged Sirion and kidnapped little children. And Makalaurë could never turn down an opportunity to sing the praises of his sons, no matter how little right he had to call them that.

So he walked inside, let Voronwë lay a gentle hand on his shoulder, and let go of some small portion of his sorrow.

“Long before, in the bliss of Valinor, before Melkor was unchained, or lies came between them, Fingon had been close in friendship with Maedhros.” 

Okay honestly I am fascinated by this line and I feel like it doesn’t get touched on much in fanon. The implication here (”lies came between them”) seems to be that whatever friendship Maedhros and Fingon had was already deteriorated to some degree by the time of the Flight of the Noldor, that they had begun to mistrust and be in opposition to each other which in a way, makes Maedhros’ apparent betrayal in Alqualonde/Losgar worse for Fingon–it may feel like the nail in the coffin to a friendship that was already on ice. It also makes it potentially more powerful for Maedhros that Fingon comes for him anyway, in spite of everything that had broken between them.

It also sets up a more awkward dynamic going forward in Beleriand. These are not necessarily two bosom friends reunited after a single misunderstanding. Clearly this relationship had issues before the Exile and while Fingon’s rescue of Maedhros was a grand gesture (although far from lacking in political considerations) recovering trust from someone you’ve lost it with is not easy, especially if they don’t yet realize the hand Melkor played in what went down in Aman.

It would also be fascinating to examine a more contentious and possibly even competitive dynamic between Fingon and Maedhros in Tirion, as their friendship goes downhill and they begin to mistrust each other as Melkor works the knife in between Feanor and Fingolfin. Which makes Fingon’s kingship in Beleriand even more interesting, particularly in light of the fact that by the Maedhros Rule (rule by the oldest/most experienced of the royal family), he could make a second bid for the crown, and Fingon has to be aware of that.

There just seems to be a lot of room for exploring a more complicated friendship between these two and how that affects them going forward.

This is legitimately good advice and works for almost everyone, but I do want to add that when an author believes that reworking a piece is worth it, we end up with such treasures as The Code by @adurowrites

As someone who reads favorite fanfics over and over again, it's always a treat when an author posts a new and improved version, especially when they give the reader insight into their rewriting and editing process

You don't owe it to anyone to redo your old work simply because it isn't as skillfully written as your newer stuff, but if you yourself want to engage in the endeavor and you think that it'll be good for you, go for it! And let me know afterwards because I want to read it

I know you said at one point that towards the sun was a multi year project (or at least I’m p sure u did? ig if I’m wrong just ignore this ask fjigjgjg), and I wondered something. What if by the time you get to the end, you’ve improved your writing so much that you’re not satisfied with the beginning anymore?

That is actually a normal part of writing! If you can see places to improve your old work, then you have improved since you wrote it. So like. It's a good thing when that happens.

Little edits like typos, or things like the Towards the Sun edit to remove icky blind stereotypes, are almost always worth fixing. The former is quick and easy (and bugs me on a visceral level), the latter is basic decency.

Big edits, like large plot or character arc changes, are almost never worth doing. Especially in fanfiction, where most readers aren't going to see those edits because they read the chapter months ago and ain't coming back.

AKA: I'll be leaving older stuff alone. Everyone can see the post date, if it's not as good as my newer stuff there's a pretty self-explanatory reason.