muffinlance

[muffinlance]

There's a whole mini-series of these on AO3 for those not in the know (account required. why doesn't every fic reader already have one):

what is Herdbalist Zuko's hair like?

YES. Finally, someone asking the IMPORTANT questions!

“Well I would have brought my comb. But you kidnapped me.”

“You are just not gonna let that go, are you,” Sokka said.

“Sokka,” Katara said. “Aang did pull him into the saddle. While he was saying ‘no.’ And then we didn’t ever bring him back.”

“Because there is an evil fire-shooty admiral guy after us! ‘Us’ including him! Which I am still waiting on an explanation for, but I will at least accept a ‘thank you Team Avatar for saving me!’ ”

“Well,” Spirit said.

“Do not–”

“I would have brought my gratitude–”

“–finish that.”

“But you kidnapped me.”

He didn’t even say it accusingly. He said it while scratching the sweet spot at the base of a lemur’s tail, smiling with airy indifference, as Katara sat behind him combing out the bison-flight tangles from his ridiculously luxuriant waves of hair.

“Did you leave your dignity behind, too?” Sokka accused. “What kind of man has hair down to his butt–”

“Longer than that,” Katara reports, running her comb through just a section of that hair because they would probably both have to be standing for her to get a full swipe in.

“–and lets another man’s little sister play hair stylist? Do you not know the danger of surrendering hair control to a little sister?”

“I can think of worse things a little sister could do.” Their demure firebender kidnappee continued to smile. Sokka would have really appreciated if he’d been a surly firebending prisoner instead.

“I’m going to give you hair loops,” Katara said. “Beads or no beads?”

“No beads!” Sokka snapped.

“Just do the opposite of whatever your brother says.”

“Beads!”

“I’m so glad you agree,” his little sister said, sickly-sweet, her smile matching the firebender’s smirk.

It was stupid how good his hair looked when Katara was done. All… loopy, and beady. And every day on the flight north it got more and more complicated because there wasn’t much to do on the back of a bison, until there were tiny braidy loops and swirls intertwining everywhere and a loopy-beady high bun, and still so much hair left to cascade down his back, and it didn’t even get sufficiently ruined when the Northern waterbenders attacked even though Sokka’s hair looked like a hare-possum had died in it.

And one of their warriors offered the guy a hand down from Appa when they got to the city. What was with that?

“She’s pretty,” said warrior sighed, as all that hair went swishing after Aang and Katara.

Sokka squawked.

“Sorry,” the guy said. “Your sister?”

Additional squawking ensued.

#Been awhile since I've seen people reblogging Herbalist Zuko #Here new followers this is for you #Herbalist!Zuko #Miyuki Adopts Zuko

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the purest form of serotonin is when a cat looks at u and u go like “what?” and it meows at u

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I would actually dissolve into a puddle of primordial happiness if someone just straight up copied a whole ass discord discussion about my fic and dropped it in a comment. No joke

(Though on a practical note please do any hypothetical copy-pasting as actual text not a screen shot so my poor abused author eyes didn't have to squint tearfully as I read your tiny pixelated text at maximum zoom)

someone I follow on the bird app just announced they're starting a very exclusive private fic server because they and a bunch of other people want to talk about how much they love the fics they're reading, and as an author can I just say that a really great place to talk about a fic you love is in the comments for that fic

I understand that people are trying to create safe spaces, but as the number of comments that I get on my fics dwindles with each passing year, knowing these spaces exist where my fics are being discussed, places that I am excluded from, makes me want to write fic LESS

I mean I guess who cares, right, because if I stop writing, there's 10,000 other people that will continue...but if you participate in a fic "book club" server and you say nice things there about a fic you loved, maybe copy and paste that into a comment on AO3?

the only thing fanfic writers are asking for in return for hours of hard work is attention. please don't rob us of the one thing that we hope for when we hit "post"

#Primordial happiness #Actual ooze #Which is not mutually exclusive with giggling and kicking my legs #Listen I've got the RANGE #And I guarantee all your favorite writers do too!

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(image description: five images of black capitalized text on gray background that reads: Alt Text Unavailable For This Image.)

reminder that this is the typical online experience for blind folks.

imagine if your dash, your Twitter feed, your fb looked like this. imagine if someone shared a photo with the comment “omg so cool!” and the above was all you could see. now imagine this happened hundreds of times. imagine that this was your normal experience interacting online.

add image descriptions to every image that you share. here and on every other social media platform. every time.

access is love!

FAQs

All About Image Descriptions

Join our discord for help with image descriptions

#do it for Toph

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Can absolutely vouch for this, toddler LOVES picking out his stack of books and checking them out himself. As a bonus, may libraries now include play areas for kiddos, and in my area they got rid of late fines for children's books, which is very nice when you discover that that book that's been missing for a month was tucked lovingly under your kid's pillow this whole time

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

[muffinlance]

“If a society puts half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing trousers are urged to “eat like growing boys,” while the children in skirts are warned to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups of people will be biologically as well as socially different. Their muscles will be different, as will their reflexes, posture, arms, legs and feet, hand-eye coordination, and so on. Similarly, people who spend eight hours a day in an office working at a typewriter or a visual display terminal will be biologically different from those who work on construction jobs. There is no way to sort the biological and social components that produce these differences. We cannot sort nature from nurture when we confront group differences in societies in which people from different races, classes, and sexes do not have equal access to resources and power, and therefore live in different environments. Sex-typed generalizations, such as that men are heavier, taller, or stronger than women, obscure the diversity among women and among men and the extensive overlaps between them… Most women and men fall within the same range of heights, weights, and strengths, three variables that depend a great deal on how we have grown up and live. We all know that first-generation Americans, on average, are taller than their immigrant parents and that men who do physical labor, on average, are stronger than male college professors. But we forget to look for the obvious reasons for differences when confronted with assertions like ‘Men are stronger than women.’ We should be asking: ‘Which men?’ and ‘What do they do?’ There may be biologically based average differences between women and men, but these are interwoven with a host of social differences from which we cannot disentangle them.”

— Ruth Hubbard, “The Political Nature of ‘Human Nature’“ (via gothhabiba)

Yes.

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Rereading Artemis fowl is so delightful. That child is committing atrocities but it's okay he has adult supervision

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A thing I love to do is telling prepper dudes that one of my disaster readiness skills is making stuffed animals. They never get it. Like, my dude, when things get very bad and we're all sharing overcrowded shelters, you're gonna want the power to comfort children. Trust me.

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[id: Cheerful full color drawing of a rowboat literally sinking in the background, everyone else scrambling to save supplies from it, while Chilchuck chills and has a drink of indeterminate providence on the beach some distance away, like the Labor Rights King he is. End id.]

People are talking about how reading Dungeon Meshi gives them an internal monologue Senshi for eating properly I think we all need to adopt an internal monologue Chilchuck at work. Like the boat is literally sinking and he's just watching it happen because he's on his lunch break.

#Boss always wants you to think the ship is sinking and it's your problem #Maybe you shouldn't have laid off the ship inspector and the repairman and the navigator who knew about the reef then boss #Chilchuck strikes me as a man who understands overtime pay #Union Man for Best Character

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Does AO3 automatically list what works were inspired by a work. Like sometimes, at the end of fic there is a section “works inspired by this one”. I was just wondering if the creator of the fic fills that out themselves or if the site does it on its own.

Sorry if this Ask is wordy.

It's a special field you can select when posting a story--you can choose to list it as inspired by/related to another work, and then if the author of that story approves the relationship, there will be a mutual link between both stories.

Definitely a good system, since it sends readers both ways. <3

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Gift Fic!

Summary:

Zuko was really hoping that the disaster that lead to his life on the Akhlut would be a once in a lifetime event. Unfortunately, he is demonstrably unlucky - and things can never happen the same way twice.

OR: Zuko takes a tumble just when he's thinking about getting comfortable in his new life, and gets fished out by a less than sympathetic group of Earth benders.

Inspired by MuffinLance's fic 'Salvage'. Please mind the tags/warnings!

#Oh this sounds FUN #and by fun I mean WHUMPY #They'll attach the other end to Seal Jerky for additional buoyancy #avatar the last airbender #atla #Zuko #Salvage #gift fic #Update: read it and YEP it is off to a great start <3

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Hi Muffinlance! You might remember me as the author of Aang, Sokka, and Katara are Awkward Turtleducks? While I have started an update on that, another one of my projects had me checking where you stand on canon characters ending up with any of your crew or other available characters. (A very prominent character keeps flirting with one of them. DM me for details if you are curious because I don't want to give everyone spoilers.) I assume its okay... but this is also an excuse for me to sneak into your inbox because I think you would get a kick out of the pairing that I can't seem to write around but it felt rude just to message you about it. 😅 Enjoy your writing and reading and weekend! ~SeleneMoon (aka LynZine)

I do indeed recall your adorable story <3<3<3

And feel free to use my OCs however--once they're in your story, they're your dolls to play dress up with, lol

#Feel free to reblog with any details you wish to spill!

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[id: Pencil drawing of Zuko from Salvage post-adoption. He faces the viewer with a mildly grumpy expression. He's wearing a parka, with his hair in a Water Tribe style. End id.]

Just finished reading the fic, so here's my take on @muffinlance 's Zuko from Salvage!

(Drawn in pencil with a bit of gel pen in the beads and eyes)

Salvage is an absolutely stunning fic, everyone please check it out if you haven't already!

#Look at him! #100% adoptable #No backsies Fire Nation #Salvage #Fanart #avatar the last airbender #atla #Zuko

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So... @muffinlance wrote a really awesome story. I read a post from a point in time, though I truly do not remember when since it seems like I've been working on this project forever, saying that she gives blanket permission for people to print and bind the story into a book (I think there was an also addendum saying that they do not give permission to be sold, since selling fic is illegal). This fic has had total control over my whole brain since it was sent to me (@creatorofthemind I believe it was you, so thank you forever for tuning me into it) back during the days of like chapter six or seven.

So here I am now, sharing this amazing journey of my first ever bookbinding adventure. Further reading below.

So to give you an idea of what's going on, this is a fanfiction about Zuko (Avatar the Last Airbender) (animated show version, the LA show did not exist yet and we do not speak of the movie) being adopted by Hakoda, Father of Katara and Zuko. (This might have also been what kicked off the Give Zuko A Parent craze, but don't fact check me.)

Overall, the characters from the show stick very well to the cannon versions, but where MuffinLance really shines is in the rich backstories and fleshed out feeling of all the non cannon elements. Especially the background characters. I would argue that the writing in this peice of fanwork could easily rival the cannon show at many points of comparison.

Now that you have context, we can get into the actual process.

To start, I used this guide to figure out where to even begin, and fount the included resource list to also be quite helpful. I cannot for the LIFE OF ME figure out where I found the template I used for the front matter and such, but it must be somewhere and I will link to it when I inevitably come across it again.

Then I began to typeset. This step took... a long time. I worked in chunks from about September of 2022 to late March of 2024. I would get a big section done, sometimes even the entire thing, but then find I hated the way I had done it and give up for months at a time. Such is the life of ADHD and flitting interest in projects I suppose.

And then finally, step one was done, and I was left with pages on a word document that look like this. (And do please let me know if you want the link to the document. It was so much work, and I would love to not be the only one to use it.)

Next step was printing out this beast. Ended up being about eight pages of front matter, and about 630 pages of body text.

That I printed wrong.

Twice.

Before finally getting it right. And then not getting a picture of it, because I finished at 4 am and had work at 7, and am also an idiot.

Then I simply stitched along, putting everything together into a beautiful text block.

And came up with a design for the cover.

Yes the glue did end up lumpy. Ignore it.

Yes I did have to sketch out the design onto a scraped page several times before I figured out what I was doing. Ignore that too.

The cover design does wrap around the entire cover. No I did not get a picture before I glued the thing down. See again: I'm an idiot. And just... massively impatient.

Finally, we get to the stage of gluing. Behold, my bookpress.

Of course, topped with Madam MuffinLances own actual professional-people book, Fox's Tounge and Kirin's Bone. It is Excelent. Here is the LINK so you can go and support this amazing author with the real-monies as well as the internet-kudos.

Then, once everything is glued together, one must give the book its "gilt" edges.

#Oh it's lovely! #And yes I did laugh at Fox's Tongue sitting on top of the stack #RIP I felt that Printed Wrong. Twice. Felt it in my SOUL #fanbinding #salvage #atla #avatar the last airbender #Zuko #Undescribed

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Hi!! Thank you so much for writing your wonderful/amazing story Salvage, you are such an awesome author and this fic has become such a comfort fic for me in like 3 days I’ve already reread it!!!! 🥰

I hope it’s okay to ask (and no pressure ofc to reply!) but I was just wondering please, how do you feel about having people write ‘fics inspired by’ yours?? I would love to please write a little hurt/comfort fic inspired by yours with your wonderful OC’s (who I adore!) but would never want to do it without your permission or if you weren’t a fan of that! Sorry I was scared and sent this on anonymous - I just didn’t want any pressure on you at all so no worries if it’s a no ❤️

Thank you again for writing such a wonderful fic and sharing it with us ❤️

Inspired By/Related Works are always welcome and encouraged! <3

#Do it do it write write write

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Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

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Petition to add more disabled magical creatures in fantasy

Like picture a mermaid. When they have to be on land their tail turns to legs, but because their body is used to lower gravity their joints tire easily and are chronically in pain.

Also depending on how deep in the ocean they live, it’s likely they have circulation problems because their body is used to the water pressure holding everything where it needs to be and now their blood is always fucking pooling in their legs and they have to wear compression socks everywhere.

Wheelchair user mermaids. Partially/fully blind mermaids because who needs to see when there’s no light at the bottom of the ocean?

Mermaids with sensory issues who have to wear headphones all the time because sound is so much louder up here on land and they are constantly overstimulated. And also the sun is simply Too Bright™.

Mermaids who have POTS because in the water postural changes make no difference and their bodies don’t know how to stabilize with so much gravity.

I’m really fixated on the mermaids rn but PLEASE feel more than welcome to add more!!!! I wanna hear about disabled dragons