#I've seen this piece around tumblr many times but always in a long post & not by itself?

[fixyourwritinghabits]

How to Tell If That Post of Advice Is AI Bullshit

Right, I wasn't going to write more on this, but every time I block an obvious AI-driven blog, five more clutter up the tags. So this is my current (April 2024) advice on how to spot AI posts passing themselves off as useful writing advice.

No Personality - Look up a long-running writing blog, you'll notice most people try to make their posts engaging and coming from a personal perspective. We do this because we're writers and, well, we want to convey a sense of ourselves to our readers. A lot of AI posts are straight-forward - no sense of an actual person writing them, no variation in tone or text.

No Examples - No attempts to show how pieces of advice would work in a story, or cite a work where you could see it in action. An AI post might tell you to describe a person by highlighting two or three features, and that's great, but it's hard to figure out how that works without an example.

Short, Unhelpful Definitions - A lot of what I've seen amount to two or three-sentence listicles. 'When you want to write foreshadowing, include a hint of what you want foreshadowed in an earlier chapter.' Cool beans, could've figured that out myself.

SEO/AI Prompt Language Included - I've seen way too many posts start with "this post is about..." or "now we will discuss..." or "in this post we will..." in every single blog. This language is meant to catch a search engine or is ChatGPT reframing the prompt question. It's not a natural way of writing a post for the average tumblr user.

Oddly Clinical Language - Right, I'm calling out that post that tried to give advice on writing gay characters that called us "homosexuals" the entire time. That's a generative machine trying to stay within certain parameters, not an actual person who knows that's not a word you'd use unless you were trying to be insulting or dunking on your own gay ass in the funniest way possible.

Too Perfect - Most generative AI does not make mistakes (this is how many a student gets caught trying to use it to cheat). You can find ways to make it sound more natural and have it make mistakes, but that takes time and effort, and neither of those are really a factor in these posts. They also tend to have really polished graphics and use the same format every time.

Maximized Tags (That Are Pointless) - Anyone who uses more than 10 one-word tags is a cop. Okay, fine, I'm joking, but there's a minimal amount of tags that are actually useful when promoting a post. More tags are not going to get a post noticed by the algorithm, there is no algorithm. Not everyone has to use their tags to make snarky comments, but if your tags look like a spambot, I'm gonna assume you're a spambot.

No Reblogs From The Rest of Writblr - I'm always finding new Writblr folks who have been around for awhile, but every real person I've seen reblogs posts from other people. We've all got other stuff to do, I'm writing this blog to help others and so are they, the whole point of tumblr is to pass along something you think is great.

While you'll probably see some variation in the future - as people get wise to obviously generated text, they'll try to make it look less generated - but overall, there's still going to be tells to when something is fake.

I don't have any real advice for what to do about this (other than block those blogs, which is what I do). Like most AI bullshit, I suspect most of these blogs are just another grift, attempting to build large follower counts to leverage or sell something to in the future. They may progress past these tattletale features, but I'm still going to block them when I see them. I don't see any value in writing advice compiled from the work of better writers who put the effort in when I can just go find those writers myself.

#writblr #AI Bullshit #The State of Things These Days

[theonethatyaks93]

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY ANIMANIACS!!!!!

I just want to say how truly amazed I am with this show. There are very few words that can describe it. I put a few in the picture seen above, but this is barely anything compared to everything I've said. Animaniacs has changed my life in ways that many shows can only dream of. And I'm thrilled to be here today to celebrate its legacy.

I wasn't born in the 90's. I didn't grow up with this show like I know a ton of people did. I was exposed to it, mainly through the Hub Network ads for reruns, the once-in-a-while YouTube video reference, and even in fifth grade when my teacher showed us a clip of "Wakko's America" for our state capital test (which by the way I passed). I didn't acknowledge this show's presence, at least until 2020. That was a rough year, not only for me, but for everyone. Online school sucked. I couldn't see my friends. I was always crying myself to sleep and staying up late just watching videos to wash away my sadness and hurting. It was hell. I didn't have any comfort. At the absolute worst of times around October, I saw that one of my favorite channels posted a video on the trailer for the reboot of a show called Animaniacs. I was curious, mostly since I'd never heard about it before (well, I thought I hadn't). But the way the characters looked and the amount of people talking about it got me interested enough to click on the video. I listened to the reviewer's thoughts, not really understanding much, yet still being enticed to continue. I watched the actual trailer afterwards and...the rest is history.

I instantly fell in love. I watched the trailer on repeat before the reboot's release, laughing and singing along. I researched the show more and discovered a ton of voice actors I knew. I loved the characters, especially Yakko, I listened to the songs, I watched the interviews, and I talked about it constantly to my family and friends. While I didn't have Hulu, I still kept up with the reboot quite heavily. For Christmas, I got my first piece of merch, a T-shirt, and I got the first 25 episodes of the original show. I watched them on repeat with my sister and we both laughed, sang, and danced around whenever the show came on. After taking a fandom break, I got back into the show in 2021, which came with a new appreciation for Pinky and The Brain and fanfiction. Around this time, I was finally able to watch the reboot and entire original series since I got Hulu. My merchandise collection expanded, my knowledge of the show grew exponentially, and my desire to contribute to the fandom was intense. Not much has changed since then. Granted my merchandise collection is bigger, I can do impressions of a few characters, I met some of the voice actors, I joined the community on Tumblr, I actually wrote some fanfiction, and I've seen so many Animaniacs episodes now that it'll make your head spin. I'm so proud to be a super fan.

My appreciation and adoration for the Animaniacs franchise knows no bounds. It changed my life in amazing ways. And I can't believe its thirty years old today. I'm struggling to keep my emotions in right now, it's all so surreal. So, to all my followers I encourage you to give this show all your love today. It deserves it. Thank you Animaniacs. Thank you so much for everything you've done. You have made me a better individual and have fueled my love of animation for nearly three years. I hope you continue to inspire many more like me to laugh, be silly, and sing "Yakko's World" to pass a geography test. Animaniacs is the greatest show of all time, and I'll never stop saying that. (Ps. this isn't the last Animaniacs Anniversary related post I'm making! The next one will be long! And I'll also be showcasing my Animaniacs merch collection! Stay tuned!) Goodnight Everybody!!

#animaniacs #animaniacs 30th anniversary #this show is everything to me #i'm so happy it has lasted this long #pinky and the brain #I love this show so much #I hope y'all love it too!!

[jinkookspencil]

how bts would react to you wearing matching couples outfits

brief description: (as described by the title! for the most part i pictured this as to how they would react if you accidentally matched, like you both got ready separately then meet up and realized that your outfits match or complement one another, but then i added some more for some of the members and how they'd feel about couples outfits overall)

note: a little ot7 piece to celebrate namjoon's birthday and to thank you guys for hitting 100 followers! i want to do a separate, proper post on it but for now, i just wanna thank you, the wonderful tumblr fanfic community! i've only been here for just over a month and it's been wonderful so far and i love experimenting with writing this way, it's so new to me. thanks for being so kind! as always, any feedback/suggestions welcome <3

namjoon

in an accidental matching situation, he would giggle and do that little nose scrunch that isn’t a nose scrunch that he does when he sees you

he’d be kind of embarrassed 

but he wouldn’t hate it

the aspect of it that he’d love is that it shows that you’re both on the same wavelength

it'd make him fall a bit harder for you

but he wouldn't do it again intentionally

chances of you intentionally matching in the future: 2/10

he'd think a feminine version of one of his outfits would be incredibly hot though (by feminine version i mean a dress or a flattering blouse that is very similar to one of his outfits and would complement it....) he would love to see you wear it... on a day he isn't wearing that complementary outfit...

seokjin

he would get so shy and embarrassed when he sees that you accidentally matched (the outfit in this case would be something like a button-down shirt with blue jeans and a crossbody bag)

this boy will turn RED

but he’ll also laugh his head off

unlike the other guys, i don’t think seokjin’s reaction will fade away (providing you met up in a public place and accidentally matched)

he’ll just stay red about it the entire time, giggling every now and then

he'll joke that he looks better than you do

he wouldn't hate it, but he wouldn't love it

a part of him will definitely think it's cute.... he wouldn't really make the effort to match though

on occasion, he wouldn't mind wearing the same colors out and about

he'd be into matching in very specific situations

he would surprise you by getting you a matching hoodie+sweatpants set to lounge around in.... and especially matching pyjamas. he'd think matching at home is cuter and more intimate than matching publicly

yoongi

yoongi would get flustered when he sees you

he’d do that little “yaaa” comment he does but he would laugh it off

not long afterwards he’d sort of adopt a “oh what to do” attitude

and he’ll just embrace it

he wouldn’t love it but he’ll just like the fact that it’s straightforward, convenient, and tells people you’re together

he’d make a comment and say that in case one of you gets lost in a public place, it’ll be okay because you can just ask people if they’ve seen someone dressed the same

he would also get you matching pyjamas and definitely matching bracelets - but i doubt yoongi will go for anything else that's matchy

until he becomes an old man - then he'd definitely get you one of those shirts that says "if lost, return to yoongi" and he would wear a shirt that says "i am yoongi" - again, he likes the convenience (lowkey could see him doing that NOW with hobi or jungkook)

hoseok

the first time this happens, hobi wouldn’t be able to stop laughing and giggling

he’ll take so SO many photos and videos of the both of you

he’d love it and he wouldn’t be shy to admit it

i said “the first time” because hobi would 100% end up buying matching/complementary outfits for you both after that first time

and insisting that you match

so accidental matching in the future is definitely a possibility

so the chances of you intentionally matching in the future: 1000/10

he'd also LOVE taking you out shopping

i think he wouldn't be shy to walk around with you, holding your hand, wearing matching neon sweatsuits, like the brightest yellow or orange neon colors - he'd buy you SETS of matching neon outfits

he has taste though, so he'll find ways for you to match that aren't tacky or cheesy, even if you're wearing the exact same items

and he'd complete both of your outfits, doing a "fit" check", on your way out, adding a beanie, a ballcap, a fanny pack, etc to *perfect* the look

he would love it so much that i could literally see hobi having the time of his life wearing matching / complementary outfits with you at a nightclub too, dancing together the entire night

jimin

jimin would laugh so much and he’ll find you really cute

but he will insist that one of you switches it up

he’d think it’s better if you’re complementary but not exactLY matching

so he might take off his jacket.... or give you a jacket of his…. 

but oH MY GOD will he find you as a couple adorable for accidentally matching 

if it happened before a date, jimin won’t stop talking about it and will keep giving you little you whenever he can during the date, staring at you with love the entire time

the type of outfit he'd insist you switch up could be one that is, in fact, "too much" if the both of you matched - something like a denim-on-denim look

but afterwards you’d coordinate with some complementary accessories

he'd get you matching chanel bags for SURE

and other luxury items

he'd be into shopping with you AND for you, buying clothes/accessories that you could both share, whether they're sold as unisex or not - he really doesn't care

taehyung

this boy would LOVE IT

he’ll blush and giggle when he sees you too

he’ll hold you close the entire time

& he’ll find subtle ways for you to match in the future

he’ll get matching jewelry for sure. probably something that’s the same design, but a different type of jewelry - like a bracelet for him and a necklace for you (or vice versa) with the same design - anything from a snowman to flowers to a luxury brand like cartier or louis vuitton 

he'd insist you wear them whether you spent the day together or not - telling you to wear your matching necklace to remember him even if you’re away from each other  

& he’ll also indulge in not-so-subtle ways to match every now and then, and will openly tell you to “wear that one outfit” because he wants to wear something similar

(outfits with a similar color palette - usually shades of brown complemented with white and gold accessories - he'd find matching with those colors/elements to be so romantic)

similar to jimin, he would definitely be into sharing clothes and accessories - the luxury matching items he'd get though are everyday pieces, like his white celine shirt

the most likely out of the guys to suggest you were a couples costume for halloween (another ot7 post idea incoming?)

whether it's halloween or not, he would also be into a form of very subtle cosplaying, similar to disneybounding - like he'd watch an older 1950s film and suggest you go out to dinner dressed in outfits inspired from that era, and honestly? you'll both pull it off.

jungkook

he wouldn’t know how to feel about it at first

he would find it a bit much or even cringeworthy, especially when he’s single, but when he loves someone he’ll like it

if you matched/complemented each other accidentally, he’ll be really shy and hold your hand while out on your date, and he’ll bluSH

but as a couple you would, every now and then, wear complementary couples outfits rather than matching exactly to each other

(for jk it'd be something like the same bucket hat or sneakers in different colors... he might wear matching colors if he really loves you)

he’ll start to find ways for the both of you to “match” without really matching - like wearing the same brand or like taehyung, he would like matching on the same day even if you aren't together/in different cities - as long as you both know you're matching, that's what's most important

but he’ll love it even more if there’s some meaning to it

like similar accessories/clothes in each other’s favorite colors, jewelry with each other’s birthdates, a t-shirt with your favorite flower on it, etc - and ESPECIALLY something that relates to an inside joke between the two of you, that only you could understand

if he’s really in love with you, he’ll start to think there’s some real power to it & would love the idea that you’re are saying that you are each other’s openly

but he loves and values the secrecy in it more, in the “only WE know that we match in this” way (as mentioned with the inside jokes/references matching outfits and accessories)

#bts reaction #bts reactions #ot7 reaction #ot7 imagine #bts scenario #bts scenarios #bts fic #bts fluff #namjoon scenarios #jin scenario #seokjin scenarios #yoongi scenarios #jin scenarios #hobi scenarios #jimin scenarios #taehyung scenarios #jungkook scenarios #namjoon fluff #taehyung fluff #jungkook fluff #ot7 fluff #jin fluff #hobi fluff #jimin fluff #yoongi fluff #jimin reactions #taehyung reaction #jungkook reaction #jin reaction #namjoon reaction

[familyabolisher]

I'm very curious about any more in depth thoughts you have on It Came From The Closet! It's been on my radar and I'd been planning to check it out soon as my next read, and this is the first opinion I've seen on it that isn't part of what feels like marketing reviews almost. Is it the analysis of the horror movies and themes that feels off or the way the essays are written? I'm a huge horror fan and I've definitely seen a...few queer horror takes that felt either like reaches or just "off" to me, but it's always hard to put my finger on it

i’ve only read the first few essays so it’s entirely possible that the volume will improve from here on out (though i … haven’t gotten my hopes up), but my impression so far is that it’s a series of schlocky, surface-level analyses providing a veneer of pop talking points around “horror” and “queerness” over what are often frankly uninteresting personal essays. v little insight and v little desire to bring anything new to the table; frankly, v little interest in the films they purport to be writing on beyond shallow rhetorical vehicles for personal reflection. my patience for The Personal Essay is vvv low at the best of times, but like, i can appreciate a work from which i can glean some compelling insights and articulate a thoughtful response. and, god, none of these pieces have crossed that hurdle so far.

like, if it’s not a long string of appeals to buzzwords like “queerbaiting” and “bury your gays” or v poorly substantiated appeals to "subversion" then it's incorrectly defined “reparative reading” or one writer citing that stupid mary oliver soft animal of your body whatever line out of literally nowhere. it’s just not insightful or imaginative. at its worst it does just read like an annoying tumblr post circa 2017. carmen maria machado writes an essay on jennifer’s body as articulating something essential to her bisexuality such that efforts to talk about the way in which it marketed itself via appealing to the homophobic cultural currency of teen lesbian eroticism somehow constitutes “gatekeeping.” this is not compelling or original critical writing, people.

almost every essay seems to fall back on the same base claim: that what makes horror horrifying relies on a currency of alterity which discursively constructs the “other” and that queer people can & will identify with the “other”—the monster in the horror film—in order to make sense of themselves & overturn the hegemony that the film may well seek to affirm. cool, awesome—this is not new analysis. i would not expect this kind of thing to be churned out in a book published in 2022; we know this already. i worry that overleaning into this idea of a “reclamation” of sorts a) risks forfeiting the language we have available to us to actually talk about the sort of bigotry which can fuel these kinds of stories; how many people talk about le fanu’s carmilla as a stunning depiction of erotic lesbian vampires and lose sight of its having been a v homophobic, colonialist text in their doing so?; and b) neglects the tradition of horror within alterity; horror being made not out of a conservative ethos that we seek to critically remould into a kind of limp simulacrum of a “radical” one, but one born out of a desire to tell a story against heteronormative social imaginaries in the first place. it’s all well and good to identify with regan from the exorcist and cite your poor understanding of reparative readings (not a critical framework i subscribe to anyway, but like, at least get it right?) in doing so, but do we have to keep limiting our discourse to this back-and-forth about whether or not we can salvage obviously homophobic/misogynistic/ableist/racist stories forever? lol. i watched Hellraiser for the first time the other day and that was queer horror that could be met with on far more compelling terms than whatever all this is.

#ask

[mariana-oconnor]

The Golden Pince-Nez pt 2

Oooh map! We have the map. I love maps.

This is a really weird looking house, though. I mean, those two corridors just go from that 1 room directly to either the outside or to the guy's bedroom? That's an unusual layout.

Love that we have a little x to show us exactly where in the room Smith's body was. O Willoughby, Willoughby, Willoughby Smith. We didn't know you and now you're a stiff. O Willoughby, Willoughby, Willoughby, say, From whom did they come, those golden pince-nez?

Apparently a very visually impaired woman whose eyes are remarkably close together and whose nose is rather wide, according to Holmes' assessment anyway.

We saw the cold winter sun rise over the dreary marshes of the Thames and the long, sullen reaches of the river, which I shall ever associate with our pursuit of the Andaman Islander in the earlier days of our career.

Do we know about the Andaman Islander? Am I forgetting something? Is that from one of the novels rather than the short stories, because it's been a long time since I've read those. Also, Watson is clearly feeling uninspired this morning. This is probable because he was up until stupid o'clock last night and then had to be up on time to catch the morning train before breakfast. Poor life choices.

I saw an intent look pass over Holmes's face. “You say that she must have come back this way?” “Yes, sir; there is no other.” “On this strip of grass?” “Certainly, Mr. Holmes.”

Alright... so there's something off about the marks in the grass. The grass is only bent in one direction, perhaps? Idk how tracking in grass works. You know who you need?

"This garden door is usually kept open, I suppose? Then this visitor had nothing to do but to walk in."

I like locked doors. The idea that anyone could just walk into my house at any moment is very upsetting to me. It is the role of the door to prevent that from happening. I could not live like this.

(I literally just tried to undo something and deleted more than half of this post, wtf Tumblr? I will try to reconstruct it from memory)

"Halloa! what is that scratch upon the face of it? Just hold a match, Watson. Why did you not tell me of this, Hopkins?” The mark which he was examining began upon the brass work on the right-hand side of the keyhole, and extended for about four inches, where it had scratched the varnish from the surface. “I noticed it, Mr. Holmes. But you'll always find scratches round a keyhole.”

I was going to defend Hopkins at this point, but then I read that the scratch was 4 inches long and presumable fresh, so nope, sorry, can't help you there. That's kind of a key piece of evidence.

I wonder if the professor is an alcoholic...

Sorry, couldn't resist that one.

"Halloa, Hopkins! this is very important, very important indeed. The Professor's corridor is also lined with cocoanut matting.” “Well, sir, what of that?” “Don't you see any bearing upon the case?"

So many Halloas in this part.

I expect the bearing is that it means the murderer could also have left down this passageway without their footsteps being heard. Which raises suspicion of the Professor.

It was a very large chamber, lined with innumerable volumes, which had overflowed from the shelves and lay in piles in the corners, or were stacked all round at the base of the cases.

Interior decor goals. I mean, I almost live like this already, but still, goals.

The bed was in the centre of the room...

(From This Tumblr Post)

Clearly the Professor is evil. No one else could sleep in a bed like that, unmoored from the world, surrounded by space, adrift from good reason and sanity.

I have seldom seen a more remarkable-looking person. It was a gaunt, aquiline face which was turned towards us, with piercing dark eyes, which lurked in deep hollows under overhung and tufted brows. His hair and beard were white, save that the latter was curiously stained with yellow around his mouth. A cigarette glowed amid the tangle of white hair, and the air of the room was fetid with stale tobacco-smoke. As he held out his hand to Holmes I perceived that it also was stained yellow with nicotine.

'Curiously stained with yellow' > proceeds to immediately explain why it is stained with yellow.

"I can recommend them, for I have them especially prepared by Ionides of Alexandria. He sends me a thousand at a time, and I grieve to say that I have to arrange for a fresh supply every fortnight. Bad, sir, very bad, but an old man has few pleasures."

This guy... this guy imports 1000 cigarettes a fortnight. 1000 a fortnight. That's over 70 a day. That's 3 an hour if he doesn't sleep. 4.5 an hour if he gets 8 hours a night. Sure, the internet tells me it takes about 5 minutes to smoke a cigarette, so he isn't actually chain smoking. He could totally smoke more. Really the take away from this is that he needs to work harder at this and stop his reliance on such unnecessary things as oxygen.

70 a day... yikes.

And he knows it's bad for him, too. What? 40 years before the first study in the US saying the same thing? 60 years before it became big news? The tobacco companies really messed with our understanding of things, huh?

Also, the fact that he can afford to import 1000 cigarettes every two weeks and still has the money to have servants, a nice house, and a secretary. This guy has way more money than any academic I've ever met, that's for sure.

“Alas! what a fatal interruption! Who could have foreseen such a terrible catastrophe? So estimable a young man! I assure you that after a few months' training he was an admirable assistant."

Maybe it's because of how unpleasant his introductory description was. Maybe it's because it was preceded by the implication that the murderer could have got into his room unheard. Or maybe it's just that he asks a rhetorical question here and I can never hear a person in this sort of a situation say 'Who could have forseen such a thing?' without my brain automatically answering 'You, I bet.' But Professor seems sus.

Or maybe it's just his bed.

“I shall indeed be indebted to you if you can throw a light where all is so dark to us. To a poor bookworm and invalid like myself such a blow is paralyzing. I seem to have lost the faculty of thought. But you are a man of action—you are a man of affairs. It is part of the everyday routine of your life. You can preserve your balance in every emergency. We are fortunate indeed in having you at our side.”

Yep, super sus. That's way too much complimenting of Sherlock and way too much insistence upon his own infirmity.

I observed that he was smoking with extraordinary rapidity. It was evident that he shared our host's liking for the fresh Alexandrian cigarettes.

I suspect that this is for a different reason from the one Watson is thinking, but also NO HOLMES, do not be sucked into the 70 imported cigarettes a day pipeline.

“That is my magnum opus—the pile of papers on the side table yonder. It is my analysis of the documents found in the Coptic monasteries of Syria and Egypt, a work which will cut deep at the very foundations of revealed religion. With my enfeebled health I do not know whether I shall ever be able to complete it now that my assistant has been taken from me."

okayokayokay Tentative theory:

The professor's research is based on a lie. Everything he's worked on is based on some incorrect fact about a historical 'she' being somewhere or not being somewhere, and he has (or had) evidence that it was incorrect in his desk. WIlloughby worked it out and was breaking into the desk to get the evidence when the professor snuck up behind him and stabbed him in the neck, then scarpered back up the passage-way as fast as his tar-filled lungs would let him.

“I am a connoisseur,” said he, taking another cigarette from the box—his fourth—and lighting it from the stub of that which he had finished.

OK, now that is chain smoking. I really hope there's a reason for this and it isn't just a weird thing ACD put in for no reason.

"What do you imagine that this poor fellow meant by his last words: ‘The Professor—it was she’?”

That his research was a house of cards, built on nothing but hot air. That he was a fraud and his thesis fabrication. That his entire life's work would be worth more as kindling than as an academic paper.

Maybe I'm basing things on vibes again, a little bit. Sorry.

“Susan is a country girl,” said he, “and you know the incredible stupidity of that class."

Nope. Fuck that shit. Not sorry at all. I hope the Professor is guilty. Patronising, classist, intellectual elitist piece of shit. I'm all-in for Team 'The Professor Did It' and even if he didn't do this crime, he's definitely done some other crime somewhere.

“Possibly an accident; possibly—I only breathe it among ourselves—a suicide. Young men have their hidden troubles—some affair of the heart, perhaps, which we have never known. It is a more probable supposition than murder.”

Yeah, because stabbing yourself in the back of the neck is such an efficient way to do it? No wonder your research is so terrible when this is the amount of thought you put into things. Wow.

An accident? How very Final Destination of you.

“But the eye-glasses?”

Fine. Those I can't explain. Maybe they were what was hidden in the drawer and Willoughby found them? But why would the professor then leave them in plain sight? Maybe if Willoughby was the only person who knew what they meant?

So, secondary theory. The Professor's work is still rubbish and based on lies, but it's not Willoughby who found out, necessarily, it's some unknown woman with terrible eyesight and eyes very close together and a big nose, and she came to confront the professor then went missing. Willoughby knew about her going missing, but the professor claimed she'd never been to see him and the pince-nez are the proof the professor was lying.

And the woman is... dead in a ditch somewhere?

Needs work.

“Ah! I am only a student—a man of dreams. I cannot explain the practical things of life."

Oh shut up with your false modesty nonsense. Ugh. You're terrible.

...he continued to walk up and down for some time, lost in thought and consuming cigarette after cigarette.

Is Holmes trying to get through the Professor's entire supply so he has to order more? Wtf?

“Tell me, Professor Coram,” he said, at last, “what is in that cupboard in the bureau?” “Nothing that would help a thief. Family papers, letters from my poor wife, diplomas of Universities which have done me honour. Here is the key. You can look for yourself.”

Well obviously he's removed anything incriminating from it now. Pah

“It depends upon those cigarettes that I smoked,” said he. “It is possible that I am utterly mistaken. The cigarettes will show me.”

I have no idea how the cigarettes are involved in this, I confess. Is the professor involved in a smuggling ring?

I may have remarked before that Holmes had, when he liked, a peculiarly ingratiating way with women, and that he very readily established terms of confidence with them. In half the time which he had named he had captured the housekeeper's goodwill, and was chatting with her as if he had known her for years.

You mean he's good with people? Good at talking to people? Particularly women?

*side-eyes adaptations*

Is this the passage that they had in mind when they did that whole Enola Holmes lawsuit?

“I suppose the Professor eats hardly anything?” “Well, he is variable. I'll say that for him.” “I'll wager he took no breakfast this morning, and won't face his lunch after all the cigarettes I saw him consume.” “Well, you're out there, sir, as it happens, for he ate a remarkable big breakfast this morning."

Is he keeping a secret woman under his bed? Does she sneak in and have breakfast with him?

So weird.

"Well, it takes all sorts to make a world, and the Professor hasn't let it take his appetite away.”

Because he's a terrible human being.

Alright, at the end of this part, my current theory is that the Professor has some kind of secret meetings with a woman with very close-set eyes and terrible eyesight. Willoughby found out and the Professor lied to him about it, then Willoughby found the woman's glasses in the drawer and the Professor, or the unknown woman, killed him for it. Who she is, why she was meeting the professor, why it was so paramount that no one find out, I don't know.

Also, the Professor's research is terrible and founded on lies, because I just want him to fail at life.

And there are cigarettes... or something.

Yeah... there may be some gaps. I'm working on it.

#Letters from Watson #Sherlock Holmes #The Golden Pince-Nez #long post

[spockandawe]

Hello, your work is beautiful! Forgive me for I've fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole and I'm not sure if this is an appropriate question, but I was wondering how you gathered and typeset the text for all the danmei/baihe you do? On ao3 there's an epub & other download options, but on most danmei translations I've seen there isn't.

Sorry if this is a silly question or I worded it weirdly! I've been wanting to get into bookbinding for a long time but it seems like such an overwhelming hobby to get into haha

It's plenty appropriate!!! So there's a variety of different methods I've used depending on when I was making the book and how the translations had been shared online. It's kind of a nightmare in how there isn't a one size fits all solution. And after jjwxc did that whole thing about offering to pay (mainland citizens) for translations of novels, a lot of the options got more complicated, unfortunately. And locked google docs are a thing I understand, but I hate them so so so much, I'm in this hobby because The Ephemeral Nature Of Internet Posts And The Looming Fear Of Lost Media, and locked google docs are a nightmare.

(the practical parts of making books are also overwhelming, just because there are so many pieces that go into it and so many ways to do it. I recommend sealemon on youtube as a good place to absorb the basic elements of how a book is assembled, then das bookbinding once you feel like you've outgrown sealemon. or on tumblr there's renegadepublishing as a place to see a lot of other fanbinders post their work, and they also have a number of resources on the process!)

Once or twice, I've functionally retyped a novel. This sucks. I don't recommend it at ALL if you have better options. You almost always have better options.

The usual approach is that I've gone to a website, copied the text chapter by chapter (usually adding footnotes as I go, it's easier to do them four or five at a time than to wrangle like sixty when you have a huge document and 'footnote 1' x30 to place). This is tedious, but meditative. I don't mind putting in the work at all, I frequently harvest ao3 stories that are being turned into anthologies in a similar way.

Some sites are now password-protected. If you have the brain space, identifying groups you're interested in that have sites like this and doing the steps you need to get into their discord group or whatever and have access, that's a GREAT chore to cross off the list. Some groups make this very easy and you can do it on the fly, and some groups are a fucking NIGHTMARE, and it can be hard to tell which is which from the outside.

Some websites have copy protections as well. Some of them will let you copy and paste, but a paragraph or two in the middle will be jumbled up a bit, just a simple cipher. I think it may just be shifting the letters, not even swapping them at random. There may be a coding way to get around this, but I barely know the first thing about coding, so I copy and paste and retype these paragraphs by hand. Some sites bluntly refuse to let you copy and paste, or screenshot, and I resent these sites deeply because a huge part of the fun of reading these things is sharing choice bits with friends to try to bait them into the pit with you. Circle back to this with the same solution as I'm about to get into.

And then there are the locked google docs. At certain points, there have been workarounds, like loading the whole page and then disabling javascript, which lets you select and copy. But last time I tried that, the workaround no longer worked. There are other people who care about this kind of thing, it's a question that comes up on forums, but much like questions about how to break amazon's drm stranglehold on kindle books, old solutions frequently stop working, and I have no idea what the current best practices are.

BIG CAVEAT here, that.... I get it. Translation is hard fucking work, and it's really easy for other people to put in a fraction of the same effort to scrape a translation and repost it. Or worse, sell it. I think translators deserve MASSIVE credit for what they do, and I try to support them the same way I support authors whose books I work with. I don't want to divert any traffic or appreciation from them, but at the same time, I've got google docs, I know it takes about two seconds for me to delete any given document I've ever posted. I am here because I adored mxtx and was very afraid the translations of her books would disappear someday and would be unrecoverable, which is kind of sadlarious in retrospect.

But that worry still applies very much to a lot of other talented authors who haven't been licensed, and hell, it applies to the fan translators who were forced to take the hard work they did for free offline after licenses were secured by someone else! It's a niche community thing, but I witnessed a SCRAMBLE to preserve those documents before they disappeared from public view! I don't think the ExR mdzs translation was perfect, but nuking it from the internet is still a huge loss, and nuking the newer in-progress translations was fucking heartbreaking. It still upsets me to think about that too hard. And for translations tucked behind copy protections, yeah, it's harder for scrapers to steal and repost, but it also becomes so much more difficult for someone with archival intentions to preserve the silly things.

So..... there are sites where free epubs of books can be found for the downloading. I'm not advocating for or against piracy, I passionately do not want to take a moral stance on this, every person has to work it out for themselves. Don't ask me why I own gideon the ninth as a purchased hardcover, audiobook, and kindle book and as an illicit epub and mobi. Maybe I need five copies of one book, don't look at me. But standards for uploading on these sites are kind of lax, and once, I noticed that hey, waitaminnit, these don't look like published translated novels, these look like scraped fan translations. First, they were, second, when jjwxc did the thing, this became much, much more relevant to my workflow.

I'm not going into specifics on my blog, because really, I am very anxious not to divert attention or credit from translators. These ebooks are usually not formatted with much love or care. The footnotes are generally a formatting nightmare or missing completely. When a translator site jumbles the text via copying and pasting, a lot of these don't correct it, there's just a patch of gibberish. The places translators post are usually MUCH more pleasant ways to actually read the goods. But. In the event that the original translator suddenly yoinks their page, if there's that kind of emergency, I can still decode that cipher and reconstruct the original goods. It's not usually PRETTY to format these things, but it's still easier than retyping a whole novel, which I am stubborn enough to do, but I'm pretty sure that's how I killed my last laptop's keyboard.

I won't go into more detail than that on the public-facing part of my blog, but hopefully that's enough to go by! I can answer private questions as well off anon, but I do realize that I should have probably expected questions like this sooner, considering my hobbies XD I wanted to make it very clear why I'm doing this, and elaborate on the tricky line to walk between supporting the fans who do this hard labor for free and (understandably!) don't want their work stolen, and preserving these works so that they can't just disappear overnight. I am constantly aware (and lowkey anxious) that it would be easy for someone unfamiliar to take a glance at what I do and accuse me of being a dirty filthy pirate who's ready to destroy this community with my Thieving Ways, but I have a genuine passion for the archival aspects of this hobby, and it really is a driving force in what I do. Capturing and formatting these cnovel translations isn't easy, and if I wasn't passionate, I would have stopped ages ago. I do it because I think it's important, I think it would be genuinely tragic to lose these stories, or to lose variations on these stories when fan translations are taken down in favor of official ones, and I passionately want to see them preserved.

#spock replies #bookbinding #adjacent #long post/ #archiving #might be a tag worth having #idk how much i'll talk about it because it's really not something where i've cultivated SKILLS #like being able to capture these things quickly with macros or code or whatnot #i'm just a stubborn ass who's willing to do a lot of manual labor once i'm set on an idea

[godbirdart]

first off, i just want to say that i love your art, you are a huge inspiration to me and i love how expressive your characters are! would you have any tips for someone trying to grow a following from their art? specifically within the furry community ideally. im just not sure where to start

i hope youre having a great day!

thank you so much!!

okay i gotta preface this with: i have been doing commissions for over a decade. everything i say here i've been doing since roughly 2014, but my career as an artist didn't really Take Off and become reliable until 2019. success isn't immediate. some artists will grow faster or slower than others, not every tactic is going to apply / work for every artist; and that's okay. just keep pushing yourself and adapting and figuring out what works for You!

i’m putting this under a readmore as it got a bit long. every time someone asks me for advice on professional Anything i always write up a five page essay despite trying to bulletpoint it oof

post on multiple platforms and keep them all updated. i’m putting this one in bold because it is possibly the Most Important thing. we’re all watching twitter sinking over there, and many of my mutuals there were floundering because they hadn’t established themselves on any other social media site. i strongly recommend three or four socials minimum. my main four sites are tumblr, deviantart, twitter and toyhouse. furaffinity is also good. inkblot and artfol are new and i use them frequently as well. if you don’t like posting manually to every site each and every time you post art, Postybirb exists and is what i use to crosspost all my art to most of my socials at once.

avoid venting a lot on main. we all have frustrating days where our art isn’t getting the recognition we hoped, or we’re feeling petty about a controversial topic or the latest drama. it happens! it’s okay! however, many people just don’t like seeing dozens of negative posts on their feed. most people will sympathize, but if your negative vents are constantly clogging their dashboard they’re not gonna stick around.

shamelessly self promote yourself. reblog your own art. retweet it again. repost it. mention your other socials. we live in a world of timezones! when you post art, only a fraction of your audience is going to see it. i recommend reblogging / retweeting one to four individual pieces periodically over the course of a day and change it up each day. you can also repost your own work into photosets and title it “recent commissions” or the something like that.

don’t hide your linktrees and carrds. seriously! the amount of times on twitter i went to try and follow someone on another platform only to find they had no carrd or linktree link,, it is infuriating. put your socials link in your bio or pinned or SOMEWHERE readily at the top of your profile that’s easy to spot.

if you’re offering commissions, make a telegram channel or discord server for your announcements / openings.

post regularly. this one is a lot harder for artists that don’t make a lot of content, but posting even a status update once or twice a day can go a long way - especially if you’re on twitter with that platform’s hideous algorithm. alternatively as i said earlier, just retweet/reblog your work a few times a day and you should be good.

art trends are cool and fun and an easy way to get your work seen by others. see a “draw your sona in this outfit” meme? go, have fun with it. this one’s a bit tricky as timing is everything when it comes to ~trending~ content, so try and draw quick. that said, it’s never outdated to drawover reaction memes with your fursona.

try not to clog your socials with memes and shitposty images. this one is directed at twitter specifically. with twitter moments now gone, your media tab is the last way for people to hope to find your work organically on your profile without having to use the twitter search. they can’t get invested in your work if they can’t find it!

it’s okay to change course if you’re not vibing with where you’re headed. if you want to move onto a new aesthetic - that’s fine! you may lose some followers if they don’t click with your new vibe, but you’ll inevitably gain some new ones.

avoid frequent name changes. so many of the artists i follow have changed their brands / urls over the years that i don’t recognize them anymore.

tag your work properly. on tumblr, the first five tags on the original post are the tags your work will pop up in in the search feature. make those first five tags the Most important ones; example: #furry, #anthro, #art #fursona etc. twitter’s algo seems flip-flop if it likes tags or hates them. if you see a tag trending, repost your art in a photoset with the hashtag in the post [example: if #pokemon is trending, repost some of your pokemon fanart with the hashtag in the post body]. if the tag isn’t trending,,, i’ll be honest it’s a gamble if twitter likes your post or not at that point. i have no advice for that hell algorithm.

hosting raffles or doing a mini art request event [example: “leave a ref and i might draw your oc”] is good for traction while simultaneously giving back to the community + your audience a little!

try and reply to / like comments on your work. it’s not required per se, but it’s good to express gratitude.

engage with other members of the community. comment on other peoples work. like it. retweet it. follow other people. obviously don’t be disingenuous about it, but this is what the professionals call ~networking~

don’t compare yourself to others. this one is one you have got to keep in mind constantly. you’re going to find 17 year olds with huge followings and 30 year olds that are doing professional industry work whose level feels alien and almost out of reach. if you’re not doing as well, don’t let yourself get discouraged. we all gotta start somewhere!

related to the above point: be nice to your followers. venting on main about not having the same audience volume as others can come off as a huge middle finger to the audience you already have.

gaining a following takes time. unless you get a really lucky break, it’s going to take a lot of work and self promotion to build up your brand.

slap your name on everything. i mean it. any art you do - sign it. watermark it. people can and will share art in telegram channels and discord servers, and if the art interests someone they can easily source it back to you if your name is on it.

you can buy adspace. if you’re catering to a furry audience specifically, you can buy adspace on furaffinity pretty easily. inkblot i believe also offers adspace for artists though i haven’t looked too deep into it. this is really a “if you’re okay burning money” situation, as the huge chunkk of internet users have adblockers now and it’s a gamble if people will see or even click on your ad.

just have fun and do your own thing. you can hop on trends and draw art that caters to your audience’s tastes, but don’t forget to draw what YOU want and what YOU’RE about. Draw what makes YOU happy.

hope these help!! ;w;

#long post

[liz-allyn]

how can I get my fics to get attention like yours do? working your ass off and then getting 20 notes sucks. and I’m trying to become a better writer and honestly crave the validation like you get from your followers. hopefully you’ll see this! Obsessed with S&V

Hi my fellow 🖋️!

Thank you so much for your comment, and thank you for thinking so highly of me!

answers for fic writers after the cut

So honestly? I don't know how to get followers. This blog has been running since 2021, and I only started writing fic < 1 year ago. I've become so much more well known (ha) in the TASM fandom because I've hung out here a long time. I don't have a secret to engagement or understand how tumblr 'works' that well (ie the algorithm that social media sites use to decide what to put in front of you). There are still people I freakin' worship on this site who don't interact with my fics at all, haha. AND flip side, some of the best writers I've ever seen are on here and their fics have less than 100 notes. I have learned that persistently I'll look over into other peoples' yards and be like "fuck. how did they get 4K followers?" or like "wow, she just posted this yesterday and it has over 1k notes."

as for working your ass off and getting 20 notes—CAN CONFIRM: that sucks. some fics I wrote for fun. some fics I wrote for the creative challenge. but pretty much on all of them I've left a little piece of me, of my soul and the lessons i've learned in my meandering partial journey. blood on the keyboard. and those fics? the really great ones (or ones just as good as sugar and vice)? they still don't have many notes.

But I will acknowledge that my following dramatically increased when I started posting S&V. I think I had ~900 and that blew up to 1.5k. There are a few factors in this:

Always post fics with fic art (with gifs! if possible) - This is the number one thing that draws me to read fic. I like art that looks cool. I also have been playing around with Canva Pro for 3-4 years (it's my fav) and I'm animation-adjacent as a day job, so pushing myself to think about graphic design has been really good for me. I find it fun to come up with a whole aesthetic for your story, whether it's a mood board or a color scheme (I usually have 'branding' on the brain). If you don't want to play with fic art, at least find an appropriate gif. Use the actor's face. I also think the gif search on Tumblr sucks balls but it's really worth it to have the right gif.

Pay attention to the hashtags of other popular fics in your fandom - when I started paying attention to notes, this was the best advice. I was using all kinds of tags that made sense to me, but weren't effective. In the web version of Tumblr, I can search for a tag and see how many followers it has. It's significant if #peter parker x reader has way more followers than #tasm!peter x reader. Also trends come and go, tumblr has their hotboy of the month and it rotates. there have been months were TASM Peter was non-existent in the last year, and months where we're getting *fed*. Pro tip with tags: I have a separate Google Doc with a list of hashtags that I copy and paste to save time. After a while, you should try reblogging with different hashtags

Use a spelling or grammar checker - I'm not a grammar fac*st but if I open a fic and everything is misspelled, almost no punctuation is used, and I have to work really hard to understand your story, then it's not going to go far. (With respect to writers who post work in English, and it's their second language). I never pay much attention to the occasional misspelling or grammar mistake, but when it looks like you sent your fic via text message or tinder chat, I just can't. I personally use Grammarly, but I also hate it and think it's buggy and overpriced. If anyone else has a better option that works with Google Docs, let me know!

Never write your fics in Tumblr's post editor. That has nothing to do with engagement but that shit is buggy as hell.

Avoid putting too much text up front before the fic. I put author's notes at the end. I try to keep summaries short. I try to focus on what someone absolutely needs to know to understand this fic, and I *mostly* try to avoid apologizing to the reader ahead of time for what they're about to read, for it being too long, for it being weird, bleh bleh bleh

If you're writing a series, make people reblog to be tagged. I've seen lots of people do taglists and then they give up because it's a pain to manage (and it is), plus you have a bunch of people that go "add me to the taglist!" or "next part, when?" and they didn't even reblog what you've already written. I think that's been one of the really big factors behind S&V's success

Make navigation as easy as possible - this is web design 101 (which I flunked repeatedly), but a masterlist is good to have. If you're in a series, a link back to the previous chapter + next chapter is good to have, I've also recently started putting a link back to the masterlist. people that know more things about stuff than me told me that you want to make things as simple as possible for viewers to get from one page to another. (that's why youtube links are shit on tumblr, even videos are meh, but GIFs work so well and attract so much attention). this is a visual site, so big images or headings or links with color help to draw the eye's attention.

Write what you want to write. Because you really need to gain enjoyment from writing, and it should never feel like you're a content factory. Do this 9 out of 10 times. The 10th time, write what people want to read. My first mob fic was These Violet Delights which I thought was so smart, and I was so proud of, and I planned this whole series out for. But also I tag things accurately, and some people (even my moots) are uncomfortable reading about those topics. Then when I started S&V I was extremely self-critical because I didn't want to write something filled with tropes and cliches. And then I sort of got off my soapbox and let S&V be its own thing, full of tropes and cliches, because they're popular for a reason, and they're fun to read, and it's okay to have candy for dinner every once in a while. And I've been able to pivot my plans and create something I'm pretty proud of.

It does help to stay consistent in the fandom you're writing for. Either by writing or reblogging other writers. Just don't make yourself feel like you're a slave to Tumblr and you must stay active at all times f o r e n g a g e m e n t. Everyone should take breaks when they need to.

Don't listen to my advice because no one knows how to hack tumblr. There are some posts that have sooooo many notes and I'm like 'why?' Meanwhile, my heart's been ripped open in LED pixels on screen and sometimes it passes by.

I hope that this was useful! And if not, I'm sorry for the long post. I look forward to reading your fic (whoever you are), and feel free to tag me when you write your next thing!

💜

#on writing #writing advice #fanfiction #fanfic advice #peter parker fanfiction #tasm fanfiction #writing #writers on tumblr

[cosmic-navel-gazin]

"About the Blogger" Meme by @razielim

Haven't seen one of these in forever; I'm being the change I want to see. (You're encouraged to adapt/remove questions or add new ones to better suit yourself.)

Favorite Pseud: Cosmic is the new hotness but my indecisive ass has had a billion! Alas-poor-yorick! is an old one I'm still fond of because my child self really went and saw Hamlet and thought: "YES! THE SKULL OF THE DEAD JESTER! THAT'S WHO I WANNA BE!"

Time Zone: GMT

Star Sign(s): the one that's a COSMIC RAM! 🐏🌠✨

Favorite Holidays: every holiday is always tinged with just a tad of existential dread, a pang reminding me of the time that's already gone by, that I'm one day closer to death , I guess the ones during Spring and Summer, just because of the weather and that the days are longer

Last Meal: Soup and a piece of bread with olive oil (and olives)

Current Favorite Musician: my dear friend who plays the piano^^ (whom I hope never finds out about this blog and reads this or I'll never hear the end of it). Not sure if current, but I've listened to a lot of it regularly so, shout-out to Jordi Savall and his Hespèrion XXI group *gnaws on their many variations of the spanish Folías*

Last Music Listened To: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In) · Kenny Rogers & The First Edition

Last Movie Watched: Saw X and The Lobster

Last TV Show Watched: The Bear

Last Book/Fic Finished: Can't remember what was the last book so I'm going with: One of only two in existence A Field In England fics on AO3 😳

Last Book/Fic Abandoned: Kafka's The Trial (not abandoned, I just wanted to finish the ones I had started first before continuing because I know this one's gonna hurt for sure)

Currently Reading: Solaris by Stanisław Lem

Books/Shows/Movies/etc. You Want to Get Around To: For Films I have some listed on this ask. For books I got some Strugatskys to get to, some Terry Pratchett, some Kafka, some Horus Heresy, my sister got me Foundation *looks at bookshelf and ignores the dozens of others that have been sitting there for years, waiting for me*

Last Thing Researched for Art/Writing/Hyperfixation: Wild boars! Boarzinhos if you will.

Last Eureka, Breakthrough, or Neat Fact/Concept Learned: Have learned nothing and remain a fool.

Favorite Online Fandom Memory: I don't think I've ever been in a Fandom™ per se. It's usually just, sitting in my dark lair and enjoying a thing with a handful of other people. But, if it counts since it's the closest to interacting with Fandom I've had: these past (4?) years on tumblr in general. From the months-long (sometimes years-long) discussions about this or that piece of media and the insightful observations traded, the juicy meta, the joy and privilege of people sending you unfinished pieces of their art and writing through DMs (the trust and intimacy of it all!!!), sending each other memes and posts we think the other might enjoy, the nice messages, etc... all of it really.

Favorite Old Fandom You Wish Would Drag You Back In/Have A Resurgence: Am baby and haven't really experienced this yet.

Favorite Thing You Enjoy That Never Had an Active or Big "Fandom" but You Wish It Did: I literally can't choose because almost everything I love is some flavour of weird-ass-obscure thing! But uhmmm, *flips through enormous tome of interests* : Here! Rule of Rose ! I was starving for psychological horror games after the Silent Hill series and this is the closest I've ever seen to them while also not being just a rip off/clone of SH, and telling its own beautifully tragic story (the combat is broken and there's other issues but everything else, maaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnn).

Tempting Project You're Trying to Rein In/Don't Have Time For: I will draw Rumata and Budach's Conversation™ from chapter 8 in full, in comic form, skill to pull it off and do it justice or not, EVEN IF IT KILLS ME!

Tempting Project You're 100% Going to Undertake: It involves sandcastles and the joys of creation... but it needs to *gasp!* actually be written and not just daydreamed about.

Tagging: AAAAAA I DUNNO ANYONE WHO WANTS TO!

#I thought I could do this when you first tagged me but I underestimated how I can't get anything done before an appointment #so I only got to this now #razielim #ask games #ty for the tag gabe <3

[helloquotemyfoot]

Book Backlog Busting Reading Challenge!

I missed an update last week because I've been so busy, and sadly don't have a lot of progress to report for this week either... but you know what, at least I'm reporting on it!

Femina by Janina Ramirez. FINISHED. Really interesting examples and analysis throughout. I feel like this would be especially good for folks less familiar with this period of history for introducing you to figures that are less well known, although I did know quite a few of them due to my own reading. One thing I really liked about this in particular was the strong link to the doing of history in the present and the reflection on the way we use history for our own needs and to understand our own modern society. It was very refreshing to have a popular history book confront this so baldly because it really is an important part of doing history, and part of what makes books like this one so important, but I think less understood by the wider public. Highly recommended.

Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North. FINISHED. This book is several different genres in a trench coat, to the point where I can't even tell you all the genres because one of them is a plot twist. But if you want a fantasy science-fiction solarpunk dystopic political thriller (etc) then I strongly recommend this book. If you are scratching your head at that incomplete list of genres and wondering how that can possibly be accurate then I also strongly recommend the book as an experience worth having.

Before We Go Live by Stephen Flavall. FINISHED. This is a memoir by Slay the Spire streamer jorbs, who I am a long time fan and watcher of. I have always valued jorbs's sense of humour and perspective and so when I heard he had published a book I was eager to read it. I did not anticipate quite how hard-hitting this book would be. It deals with professional and personal abuse, the toxic world of gaming, misogyny, and the healing power of being loved by cats. In many ways, it's a very brave and sensitive piece of work, especially as jorbs/Flavall shares his personal struggles in it, at the same time as sharing how being watched by thousands of people 8+ hours a day for a living has created some issues around privacy because... like duh, of course it has. I think what keeps this feeling like an ultimately hopeful book is the central narrative around jorbs's incredible friendship with Hannah, and his own personal dedication to spreading kindness and understanding. Also cats. I'm not sure you will get much out of it if you are not familiar with the online gaming sphere, but I very much recommend reading it anyway.

Since I still have 4 books ongoing, no 'next reads' in this post, just the books I have picked up since I was last here.

Passions Between Women by Emma Donoghue. A study of British lesbian culture and representation from the late seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth, so far it has been a really interesting read and questions a lot of assumptions about the wlw historical experience (because the author takes a broad approach to 'lesbian' identity and includes the experience of all lovers of women). I didn't post a picture of this one as the cover of my edition risks breaking tumblr's NSFW policies.

The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain by Ian Mortimer. If you've seen my previous posts you'll be familiar with this author's name already. A guide to life in Restoration Britain (mostly England, really, despite the title) as though you were travelling back in time, covering many questions about day to day living and culture which don't come up in traditional histories.

Until next time...

101 books remaining!

#book backlog busting reading challenge #bbb challenge #reading #reading challenge #history books #history #medieval history #women's history #jorbs #gaming #gamer culture #gaming culture

[valeffelees]

For the fanfic writer ask game! ^_^

🎁 🌻 💌

ugh, thank you so much, you're such a top-shelf mutual. 😭💞 my girl went to work a little bit ago and i am so bored without her around, life is a void.

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

oh for sure, i'd love to!

i haven't worked on a D:BH fanfic in a couple months 'cause i've been in simon snow purgatory, it is all vampires and wizards and dragon boys in my brain these days, but i do (!!!) plan on finishing my convin Titanic AU, so i'll share a snippet of that (that i hope i haven't already shared with you before lmao), plus, since i mention unrequited love diseases in one of my other answers here, i'm also gonna add a snippet from one of my back-burner simon snow drafts.

both are below the cut (i lied about the cut, Tumblr won't let me add one) (i tried like four times, this app is so rude) at the end! 😄

🌻 How often do you read your own fics?

oh, very often. the thing about me and my fanfics is that, while i don't post things much at all, i am always writing. i have sooo many first drafts lying around that'll probably never be seen by anyone but myself, some of them are even written longhand in physical journals.

for a long time, i've written with myself as my only intended audience. and i mean, most of the time i'm still my only audience, i have a very nervous personality and sharing things makes my brain itch a bit. (but y'kno, i am working on that.) (i've been doing six sentence sundays and wip wednesdays with the simon snow fandom the last two weeks and that's been a delight.) (a terrifying delight, but still a delight.) so yeah, i actually sit around and like… read my own fanfics for fun all the time, over and over again. i'm extremely fond of my own stories.

💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write?

unrequited love diseases.

and i don't just mean hanahaki disease, although i do love writing hanahaki fanfics, i'm also really fond of star tears disease and forgotten love syndrome (and anything else in that general sphere).

i'm not working on it actively at the moment because i'm focused on a different story right now, but i actually have a draft in my gdocu for a simon snow fanfic about a fatal unrequited love disease i created myself called marigold's heart syndrome. i dunno what it is about love diseases that makes my silly brain light up like a string of fairy lights, but i find them so overwhelmingly tragic.

(if anyone else feels like hanging out, questions are here!)

— CONVIN

Connor doesn’t let himself wonder if his own mother ever looked at him that way. If she ever smiled at him warmly, touched his cheeks like he was precious and irreplaceable, combed the curls back from his forehead while he slept. Things he should remember, but doesn’t. He focuses instead on the slender line of the woman’s brow, the owlish shape of her eyes, the slope of her mouth as she smiles, and drags his charcoal across the page. Trying to capture it. A wet thumb rubs at his chin. Connor cringes away without looking up from his work. “Silas.” “You got that black shit on your face,” Silas says. He leans forward to peer curiously at Connor’s sketchpad. The shadow of his dark curls, identical to Connor’s own in every way but the direction he parts them, falls across the top half of the page. “Dunno why you waste your time with that, Connie. S’not like you make any money from it.” “It’s called a hobby. Some people actually have those. You should...” Connor looks up, “... should... try it.”  His fingers hold weakly to his charcoal. His pulse beats strongly up his throat. All at once, the world becomes soft and muted around him. Distant. Like he’s been plunged underwater. Near the edge of the veranda, drenched by the strawberry sunlight, a man leans over the rails. Weight on his elbows, his forearms extended out and relaxed above the drop down to the lower deck. A cigarette hangs from between his teeth with a thin ribbon of white smoke twirling from the tip. He looks sad, Connor thinks. Lonely, and terribly beautiful. Light-eyed, olive-skinned. Long and lean and frayed at the edges like a sheet of weathered parchment paper. His waistcoat is unbuttoned and hanging open around his hips, while the rest of the first class maunders behind him like an expensive quatrefoil fog. “Connor!” Connor blinks, and the world comes tumbling back into focus. He looks down at his sketchpad, at the single dark, distracted line marring the outline of what should’ve been the little brown-haired girl, then back up at his brother. “What?” Silas cocks an eyebrow at him, knowing and unimpressed. “Don’t even think about it.” “I won’t. I mean, I wasn’t.” Connor sets his charcoal aside, turning to unfurl his pencil case. A soft, battered green cloth one with seven leather loops stitched along the inside, each of them sized to hold a different one of his tools. He pries his old, sticky eraser out of it. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he mutters, then sets to work trying to salvage his sketch.

— SIMON SNOW

September ends. October passes. November begins. A few things happen in between: One, Simon meets Natasha Grimm-Pitch. Or, well—he meets her ghost. And she’s terrifying. Even in death, she is a woman who commands attention and, for all her immovable melancholy, she holds with her an air of intense regency. He could feel her magic in the room with them, and it was white-hot and ancient. Like something from the very core of the Earth. Two, Baz comes back, and Simon promptly forgets why he’d ever given half a shit about the toff prat being gone in the first place. They’ve worked out something of a truce with each other, (it would’ve been nice if Natasha Grimm-Pitch’s visit had only been a courtesy call, but of course things can never be that simple, so now Simon has gone and roped himself into solving her apparent murder,) but suppose that truce must not extend to Baz cutting back on being a right shit about everything because his mood is fouler than ever and, for once, Simon really doesn’t have the energy to deal with their whole bloody song and dance thing they do. Because he’s still sick. Because three, somewhere in the middle of scouring the Catacombs and razing the Wavering Wood and his sworn enemy’s dead mother appearing in his bedroom, Simon started coughing up flower petals. Baz likes to tell Simon he’s an idiot. And sometimes Simon believes him, but most of the time he doesn’t—because he’s not an idiot. (Also because Baz is a fucking twit.) He knows what the petals mean. He’s seen flower spitting disease before.

#ask game #veilder #simon snow #dbh #snowbaz #convin #(i'm sorry fandoms 😭) (i need these tags for organising my blog)

[lespritdekin]

enslaving appetence.

the man dressed in white was an enigma, but his revolting desire to possess you for all of his eternity wasn't. na jaemin was the devil's entity in human form, and he scorched you in the burning flames of your nightmares.

pairingㅡ yandere!jaemin x fem!reader

other charactersㅡ best friend and crush!jeno

genreㅡ yandere!au

warningsㅡ madman!jaemin, stalking, obsession, unhealthy possessiveness, mentions of sexual preferences, breach of privacy, implied physical abuse, use of a baseball bat.

song recㅡ she will be loved by maroon 5

disclaimerㅡ as far as my miniscule intelligence could muster, i may have posted this piece on wattpad a year ago or two under the name 'neo alternative plots' or alike. with that explanation, please don't react to the oneㅡshot's presence here on tumblr negatively. this also isn't proofread.

You watched as the pink decorations of the ceiling mimicked your nose, the happy smile on your face getting greeted by an excited Roseanne. You embraced her dressed her figure as she did your own, the gentle noise of the lullabies of her favorite songs supplemented her girlish saturnalia.

You observed your environment and smiled widely, this was the theme you wanted when you were sixteen, and you're happy your best friend got to live her dreams.

You were scooping in a small bowl of punch to drink and munch on as all of you were at the backyard of Roseanne's home, a film on going about your female companion's life story to where she is now. As you were about to pull a slice of lasagna from the tray, a large figure dressed in white shadowed your hand.

You looked up to see a gorgeous brunette with dark, tantalizing eyes, his pretty lips in a small lopsided smile. You unconsciously swallowed the lump in your throat and pulled your hand away from him, apologizing for the things you've never done wrong.

❝I don't accept apologies from gentle faces, princess.❞ A lethargic smirk made its way to his devastatingly breathtaking face, the air escaping your nose suddenly asking for entrance.

❝Although, I'd love to see you rotten.❞ The leathery substance of his inky voice held your throat captive in its seat, the inching hand on your own tiny one made your skin crawl. Your eyes trembled from their sockets, the humidity of his lips turning your skin cold.

What did he want to turn you in?

R-Rotten?

❝P-please,❞ You squeaked, his eyes turning darker, duller, more disheartening. ❝Let go of me.❞ The nimble appendages around yours tightened their grip, the male forced a smile. You yanked your hand away, and a broad back made its way to greet your mousy nerves. Your cheek touched the soft fabric of his lavender pullover, and you immediately acknowledged the scent.

❝Respect the girl's privacy, man.❞ Jeno grumbled from his strong stance, the sardonic, hateful laugh of the man with midnight eyes eyeing your best friend's hand on yours, the way your fingers clutched at Jeno and not at him.

❝Pretty boy came to pretty girl's rescue, how romantic.❞ The white silk of his fit tuxedo adjusted, his hand running up the thick strands of his brown hair. His head hung down, but his eyes bulged forward. Your hands scrambled to find substance of relief when his feet came closer and closer, his abyssmal orbs boring right into your savior.

❝Better watch out for the Madman if you want your skin unscathed.❞ The silence of his voice caused you to wince, and you hid your face on Jeno's back, his hand instinctively holding your arm. The odd chap turned away, went on his heel, and disappeared into the party. You held your head, Jeno turning immediately to hold you close to him.

❝You're alright, [Name]. You're safe.❞ Tears blurred your vision and you cried, large thumbs swiping them away. Jeno didn't need to ask what you needed to have, wanted to hold, he was there through it all, and he's seen you in lights other people haven't, seen you burned and drowned and survived.

❝I'll take you home.❞ Jeno excused the both of you, telling the birthday girl that you needed to leave. Rosie embraced you and wished for your well-being before you left. Jeno never let go of your hand, you've been staring at it for the entire while. The male looks down at you, an apologetic smile on his face.

❝I'll hold your hand, don't worry. The parking lot's only a few blocks away, I'll keeping you close.❞ You didn't give him a response, continuing to walk along side him.

You sat inside the front seat and held your phone with trembling hands, your best friend turning on the heater for you. He kissed your head before driving away from the parking lot, wanting to play the first song of your favorite playlist whenever you're feeling down.

❝Dㅡdo you mind?❞ You softly asked Jeno, his eyes suddenly turning into crescent moons when he looked at you. ❝Go on.❞ You turned your phone of and browsed through the screen, pressing onto the first song of a dozen. Your nose had turned red from crying, and the only way you could ease it away was by listening to your favorite songs.

Jeno caught a glimpse of your face once the tune reverberated within the vehicle. He sighed, absolutely despised when male after male molest you. You weren't a toy to play with, you needed care, love and guidance, some things he's always done to you for so long.

You felt revolting. You felt like your world was crippling, distorting, shattering, just as you were finally alright again, just as you were finally read to be happy again. Your fingers shivered despite the ongoing heat of the car. Your best friend took notice and held your hand in his again, your heart almost ‎skipping another beat.

He brought you to your flat and made sure that your roommates were home. He gave you a towel after knocking on the door for permission, seeing your newly washed face gave him feathers inside. You were so adorable like that. You dried your face and changed into a pair of thick pink pajamas, your thoroughly scrubbed hand rivaling the feminine color.

You assisted Jeno on the way to the door after he made sure all of your windows and doors were locked and snug. You laughed at him softly after the occurrence of a male touching you like a predator temporarily left your mind as you see Jeno with roseate adorning his cheeks.

You look up at him with red eyes, already wrapping your arms around him. ❝I could kiss you right now.❞ He muttered, holding your cheek. ❝But, I don't have your consent, and your roommates are probably awake.❞ You giggled wholeheartedly, causing him to heave a sigh despite chuckling.

❝[Name], your parents might hate me!❞ He whined, but you continued to laugh, you didn't give a damn if he brought you to a stage and kissed you in front of a crowd, you didn't care if he kissed you in a family reunion.

❝You two are so annoying!❞ Someone screamed from two bedrooms down, the both of you and Jeno genuinely laughing. Despite allowing his submission to appear, his hands never left your back protectively, and you felt safer than a baby getting taken care of an entire village.

He held you in his arms one last time before walking through the doorway, closing the door after him. You leaned your back on the smooth wood and slid down, keeping your squeals at minimum. Your person of interest of almost a year held you like you were the most delicate thing in the world, kissed your hair, made you feel special, and wanted your parent's approval of everything.

You went back to your room and screamed into the pillows, your hand waiting for the phone to ding. You eventually turned drowsy, but you couldn't sleep. You tossed and turned, but they were futile. You went downstairs and had three glasses of water, all chugging them down in one go.You washed your face in the kitchen sink and washed your glass and was about to return, not until one of your favorite songs played through the speakers from your room.

Your eyes trembled, and so did your hands.

You immediately hid inside a bottom cabinet, covering your mouth with your hands.Your roommates never entered your room strictly without your word, and they disliked your odd taste in music for them to play your speaker and one of your favored songs. Just before you could foolishly land your foot over the creaking wood of the stairwell, the screeching noise of your room opened, heavy, aching boots gripped the silence of the flat, and you almost pissed yourself.

You covered your ears, the sound of another thumping object frightening you. He desired nothing but to daunt you, turn you into a demented marionette, just like him.

Beauty queen of only eighteen

She had some trouble with herself

He was always there to help her

She always belonged to someone else

Each nerve in your body stiffened and your teeth clattered, you assume your hair stood in all directions, and you're certain your heartbeat's abormally thumping inside your chest. You need Jeno, but your phone's in your room, you could call or run for your roommates, but he'd already be there, appendages wrapped prettily around your neck.

And indeed, he was awaiting for your arrival of submission.

I drove for miles and miles and wound up at your door

I've had you so many times, but somehow, I want more

The deafening dollops of burning rubber on wood ceased sound, but the certain reverberating outcries of polished wood on rusty ones had you inching closer to the corner of an enclosure that barely fit you, and your mind was running wild. He could feel it, your idiotic heartbeat grumbling inside an unprotected fence, something he can break so easily.

❝I don't mind spending everyday out on the corner in the pouring rain.❞

Your eyes shot up, the accostumed voice in your ears, the silent, demanding whispers, the glacial, dispassionate delivery of a monster, and you've only heard it once. He smirked, tracing the dimly lit crevices from the street lamps standing tall on the fronts of the floor, the thin glass of the windows making him believe how pathetic you were, how much of a feeble-minded whore you were.

Look for the girl with a broken smile

Ask her if she wants to stay a while

You hear footsteps again, aggressive, menacing, resounding, and he was so close, so near of getting his hands on you, taking what was never his. You enclosed your fingers and bit your knuckle, closing your eyes shut. Tears encaptured the pink-stained skin of your plump, delicate cheeks. He could materialize the trembling clatter of your teeth, the perspiration in between your chest, and the reverberating drift of your clenching pussy.

And she will be loved

❝She will be loved.❞

#nct dream #nct dream scenarios #nct dream yandere #nct yandere #yandere jaemin #jaemin scenarios #jaemin imagines

[anxiousnerdwritings]

hiya! it's me, the one and only knull anon!! ik you arent currently accepting requests or asks, and that's fine, but I recently written something for LexLuthor and I though I should share. this ask is in no way telling you to start posting again, or anything of the sort. remeber, mental health is always the most important thing! but I was thinking of you today and I was hoping you were doing good. so hopefully this piece will help improve your mood. again, you dont have to awnser this at all rn, only when you feel better!

ps, this has been spell checked by google so that's why it uppercase lol

~~~~~~

"How long do I have to wear this dress?"

"As long as the gala goes on, ___"

"Just call it a fancy party, or a luxurious gathering since its you-"

"Oh, do not get smart with me, ____"

Pulling at the top of your dress, you tried to loosen up the tightness of the neck area. It felt like a noose to you. Fortunately, the fabric was soft, extremely luxurious, and it covered every part of your body, excluding your hands and head.

Lex, on the other hand, was in some kind of fancy suit, that looked more expensive than the carpet in his penthouse. And his carpet was more expensive then your phone bill. Well, when you had a phone.

You didn't remember when he had found you, but you remember before. At least, bits and pieces of it. A home in a suburban neighborhood, a mom and a dad, a normal looking life for a kid like you. However, after a few months ago, it was far from normal.

You were given the finest things people would want in life, in return for… hanging out with lex luthor. It sounded weird at first, but you soon realized it wasn't a joke.

You werent treated as a prostitute, and not as a lover either: you weren't even legal. If you had to guess the relationship between you and Lex, it would have to be a father and daughter kind of relationship. Which also could explain why he wanted you to call him dad.

Back to this "gala", Lex actually would ban you from going to any party at all and left you with guards at all parts of the penthouse you were stationed at, sometimes even leaving you with Mercy. 

You didn't really know why he was letting you go out to this gala, but you had a few ideas. For starters, this gala was not just for anyone, it was for extremely rich people who had nothing better to do then sit around in a room. Which also explained the reason why everything looked the price of a liver.

Another possible reason was that a close colleague of your "dad" had seen you walking around in the penthouse. You never saw who it was but Lex advised you to stay out of sight when people were visiting.

Fortunately he didn't get as mad as you expected him to which was a good thing to be honest. He wasn't the type to tell you, more just reprimand you in a voice that just spelt disappointment. 

Anyway. It wasn't good to think of when he was angry with you. Right now you had to focus on the people who were trying to figure out who you were. 

Sticking close to Lex was easy, since he was 6 feet tall. Easily. And the fact that people wouldn't approach you when you were next to him. Only the people who you actually recognized either from voice or appearance were brave enough to even look in your direction.

The night was almost over when a man approached the two of you. At this point your feet were getting sore and when you asked Mercy for the time, she responded that it was almost 12: lex would definitely send you to bed as soon as you got home again. 

However, the man who approached the two of you was familiar. It only took a few seconds of going through your memories and seeing Lexs face turn to slight annoyance to realize this was Bruce Wayne.

He walked up to the two of you and smiled down at you. 

"Well, I didnt know Lex had a child. What is your name?"

You were about to respond when Lex interrupted you. "Their name is ____. And unfortunately, we were just about to leave. I hope that whatever you were going to ask can wait until later?"

Wayne's smile faltered a little, before it turned neutral. "Unfortunately, no, but it is a quick question. And one that I need to speak with you in private?" He looked at you, before speaking again, "No harm meant."

You were about to respond again, when Lex motioned to Mercy. "Mercy, could you take ____ back to the limo? I will be just a moment- oh, and do not let her out of your sight."

Mercy nodded, and taking your hand, she led you back to the elevator where the entrance was. All while everyone was focused on the two of you.

Wayne was the first to speak. "Shes not yours, is she?"

"____ is my daughter, and I hope you would have the decency to not spew this to the media. You dont seem the type of man to feed the media with info, especially not of a, young girl."

Wayne looked offended, and didnt even try to hide it in his face. "No. If anything, I was wondering why you, of all people, would be taking care of a child."

Lex did not seem offended. "Oh, but you have so many children, I thought it was a necessity." Lex leaned in a little towards Wayne and whispered, "And to be quite honest with you, it is none of your concern."

Wayne simply glared at Luthor before Lex started moving away from Wayne. 

"Well, I'm sorry to say but I believe I've kept ____ waiting for long enough. I'm afraid I must go."

He didnt wait for Wayne to say anything he simply stormed off to the elevator and left.

Wayne did nothing but walk over to the windows, where he was able to get a clear view of Mercy holding your forearm and opening the limo door while a few more guards stood near you. Lex appeared soon after with his own guards and ushered you in the car. 

Lifting his hand towards his ear, he commed his own children.

Whispering, he said "All of you better be following that limo when I get down there."

He heard Dick chuckle. "Oh, dont worry Bruce. I think the 4 trackers on that thing will be enough."

Bruce didnt say anything as he watched the limo drive off into the distance. Figuring it was time to dip, he left his wine glass empty at a table and left the room, and trying to figure out who was the strange girl he had just met.

~~~~~~

oof so now as I paste this here from google docs I feel like an asshole by sending you this so I just want to remind you that you can awnser this whenever you want! I might send in some more in the future but I want you to prioritize mental health over tumblr! your health matter, both physically and mentally! and dont forget it! with lots of love,

- knull anon

Sorry I didn’t see this sooner! This is really good!💖💕 I love the idea of Lex Luther and Bruce Wayne beefing over poor Reader. Having two extremely rich, intelligent and determined people duke it out just appeals to me for some reason.

Don’t feel bad, thank you for sending this in while I was gone🥰💚. It was nice.

#anxious answers #knull anon

[dayseternal-blog]

Hi Days! I'm a huge fan of your work and your tumblr blog bc you give so many naruhina fanfic recs and talk about your stories, etc.

To sum it up, you're my favorite person lol, I'm a bit shy so I'm asking this as an anon, but I wanted to tell you something random just because I've always just thought about it and maybe you would agree or comment on it.

Have you ever listened to mitski? If you haven't I recomend you do bc she's amazing, but anyways I was listening to a song of hers called "washing machine heart" and it reminded me of naruhina, like the fic "together you and I" but different you know, like naruto only married hinata because he couldn't have sakura, she was his second option and every time he looked at her he wished and pretended it was Sakura, so Hina tries her hardest to look pretty and try to be the person he wants, always getting saddend by the idea that she isn't the one he wants, she knows his heart will only belong to Sakura. She let's him trample all over her heart and use her because she loves him unconditionally, maybe cry to her on some nights because he longs for Sakura's love that will never come.

I've read so many fanfics and I've never encountered one using this concept, I'd write it myself, but I'm not good at writing, maybe I'm reaching but it could inspire an angst story made by you or just a prompt or idea/concept for anyone to use. The hurt in this could be inmaculate and I bet a good writer could bring everyone to tears if they read a story like this. You don't have to do anything ofc I'll love you either way, I'm not meaning to push you to write a whole story with this concept by any means or to even post this ask, it's just something I made up/ related to this certain song, so I wanted you to see it, perhaps share your opinion or thoughts on it or just think about it. I love pain a lot hahaha bc I'm not a narusaku shipper in any way, I actually dislike the ship a lot.

Thank you for reading this and pls keep up the awesome work!! I'll always be a fan and support you and your spectacular writing❤️❤️

GAH What an awful fic idea you have 💔

“The Ring that Binds” by softwind - Rated M, Canon-Divergent, Multi-chapter, Incomplete.  Naruto and Hinata are married.  So why is Naruto calling “Sakura” in his sleep?

“Girl No 10″ by meeiwen - Rated M, Modern AU, Multi-chapter, Complete. Naruto makes a mistake with a dancer one drunk night.  Years later when he meets her again, he begins realizing his perfect life is a lie, but he’s too late to fix it.

And

“Territorial” by @bunny-hoodlum - Rated M, High school AU, Multi-chapter, Complete.  When Hinata takes advantage of Naruto’s desperation for love, they’re both a little too much for the other to handle.

Are similar to what you have there.

HERE’S MY VERY QUICK AND INCOMPLETE STAB AT YOUR PROMPT IT’S UNEDITED UNREVISED CANON-DIVERGENT AU RATED T FOR LANGUAGE BUT I HOPE YOU LIKE WHAT I COULD COME UP WITH 😘  THEY ARE NOT MARRIED BECAUSE I WOULD BE TOO SAD

...

Naruto finally makes it to the Hokage’s office, having had trouble shaking off fangirls on his way.  He can immediately tell he’s the last one there, even though it’s the eve of the Rinnegan Festival.  Tense expressions greet him, the atmosphere somber.

Sakura whips her attention back to the desk before them.  “Rokudaime, with all due respect, I don’t think Naruto belongs on this mission.”

Her behavior has confused him all night.  First moving away from him so that Hinata would sit between them at Ichiraku when Hinata could have just sat on the other side of him.  Then pushing him to follow Hinata back home.  He said aloud that he’d be seeing her later, and that he wanted to catch up with everyone first, but Sakura just glared at him...

She’s been pushing him away, more and more every day, breaking his heart to smaller and smaller pieces...whether knowingly or not, he’s not sure about that, but she’s never rejected him from being her teammate on a mission.

Worried, he meets Kakashi’s gaze.

“I understand your concern, Sakura.”  His tone is heavy.  His usual careless attitude nowhere in sight.  “Call it just my gut-feeling...you’re going to need Naruto’s strength for this mission.”

-

Hanabi was kidnapped.

Hiashi and Hinata are nowhere to be found.

“What do you mean...?” Naruto finds himself asking.  “I just saw her.  We just saw her.  Not even an hour ago.”

“When Sai reported Hanabi’s kidnapping, believe me, Naruto, we moved to notify her family immediately.  Anbu can’t find them.”

“What?”  The last memory he has of Hinata abruptly leaving dinner and running off without hardly a word nags at him, inexplicably tightening his chest.  “She’s fine.  Hinata’s strong.  She can take on anybody.  No one would dare-”

“Naruto,” Sakura interrupts, her gaze cutting sharp.  “She’s nowhere to be found.  And as much as you believe that, no one is invincible.  Not even Hinata.  We need to form a plan, otherwise we’re losing precious time.”

“No one is invincible.  Not even Hinata.”

An emptying numbness invades his insides, discomforting slickness muting him.

This isn’t his fault, is it?

-

What if she needed to tell him something?

She was acting strange at Ichiraku.

Quiet, unusual for her as of recent...

But how was he supposed to notice?  Should he have followed after her, like Sakura said?  But they were supposed to meet at his apartment later on anyway, so why did she have to come out early like that and ruin the good time he was having?  She knows how he hasn’t given up on Sakura.

She knows everything about him.  She’s been his rock after Sakura tried to shut him down for good.  So how can it be that she’d just disappear?  There’s no way.

There’s just no way that she disappeared right after she left...

-

Hours.

Hours of wandering around in abandoned, desolate, war-stricken villages in god-knows-where, and nothing.  No one.

He’s asking for the hundredth time, but he doesn’t care, he’s past the point of desperation, and anxiety-laced tension fills the air.  “Taku, you really don’t see anything?!”  The Hyuuga they have on their team led them into this godforsaken wasteland.

Taku turns on him aggressively, getting in his face in reaction, and yells, “What about you??  You think I’m not trying my best?!  This is my family!  Just because you’re Hinata’s boyfriend doesn’t mean you’re any more worried than the rest of us!  You don’t sense her??”

No.  He doesn’t.

His Sage Mode has never been so useless.  In fact, he senses no one besides them in this place, and it’s with terrible unease that he begins to entertain the thought that she’s gone for good.

“There’s no one even here besides us!  Nothing!  Why’d you take us down here?  Where are we even?!  How do we get out of here in the first place?!” he argues back.

“Sakura-san was right!  You don’t belong on this mission!  I don’t know what Hinata-sama could ever see in you, I haven’t seen her smile in months!”

“What do you mean by that?!  She smiles all the time!  I’ve never seen her act so cheerful in my life!”

“So you fucking know it, too!”  Taku glares at him with an incredulous expression.  “That she’s just acting!”

“What the hell do you mean by that-”

And he doesn’t know what happened next, but Sai’s grabbing onto Taku and he himself is locked in Shikamaru’s shadow manipulation.  Chakra’s sparking off his own hands, while blue embers warp along Taku’s.

“Calm down,” Shikamaru orders both of them.  “We’re not getting anywhere if the two of you keep fighting.”  He waits for Taku to loosen his stance.

Sai lets go of him.

Taku throws an insulting glare around before sauntering off.

Shikamaru sighs.  Hard.  “Go cool your head, Naruto.”  He retracts his shadow, and Naruto wastes no time walking off in the opposite direction, far from wherever Taku is heading.

Yet Taku’s ridiculous words ring in his head.  “That she’s just acting.”

But she said that she’s happy to be with him.  That she doesn’t mind that he’s still in love with Sakura.  She said that she’s just happy to be with him.

She said that.  She did.  And she wouldn’t lie to him, right?

She was just acting?

“You’re not going to finish your ramen?” he asked her on their date last month.

“No...”  Suddenly, she smiled brightly, something she’s been doing more often ever since he mentioned that he’s always liked how genki Sakura is.  “Do you want the rest of mine?  I’m dieting.”

He scrunched his eyebrows at her.  “Dieting?  Why?”

“Well...”  She looked thoughtful for a moment before seeming to come to a decision.  “Naruto-kun, you like thin girls, right?”

He knew she was talking about Sakura.  “...I guess...”

“I want to make you happy,...” she started.  She bit her lips for a hesitating moment before continuing, “so I’ve been trying to lose a little weight.”

“Oh.”  He didn’t know what to make of that.  Unbidden, he looked her over. 

“Can you tell?” she asked, her characteristic shyness lowered her lashes, yet she didn’t fidget under his examination, and he could tell how she was trying her best to have that confident persona he admires in his former teammate.

Despite her recent changes in attitude, Hinata’s still been so physically small compared to himself and everyone else.  Under her jacket, he couldn’t tell if she looked skinnier or not, and even if she was, he doesn’t think she really needed to be skinnier.

But then she looked up at him with that heavy, hopeful weight in her gaze, and he couldn’t let her down.  Not when she’s trying so hard for his approval.

He fibbed easily.  “Yeah.  You look really good.”

She shined another smile at him that made him feel good.  Even if their relationship wasn’t traditional, he could at least still make her happy.  He could at least tell her some sweet words and see her sweet smile and-

She was lying.

She wasn’t happy?

He never made her happy?

Then what was the point of any of it?

No, she must have been happy, right?!  She said so!  She told him so!  Many, many times!

After all, he asked her.  All of those times he thought she was faking her smile, he asked just to make sure, and she vehemently told him that she was really happy to be with him.

She said he could talk to her about all of it.  That she could take on his heartbreak because her feelings were so much bigger than...

“Uzumaki Naruto.”

The unfamiliar voice has him leaping to his feet.

A man as pale as a ghost with piercingly icy eyes is floating down to him on some strange platform.  “You’re really as pitiful as I expected.”

“Who the hell are you?!”  He readies his stance.  He’s not in any mood for games, and he’s ready to let loose some of his stress on this very suspicious character.

“Hinata’s fiance.”

“Hinata?!”  Fire races through his veins, heating his feet, and he’s ready to leap at this guy.  “Where is she?!”

“With me.”

His heart rate exponentially explodes, beating into his ears, his skin practically bristling.  “Let her go,” he demands, and the threat of his words leaks from every pore of his being.  “Now.”

The man almost snorts.  “What makes you think she wants to see you?  You only ever used her, broke her...”  His collected expression hardens, and Naruto can sense that he has no intention of releasing her.  “I’ll make her happier than you ever could.”

Several thoughts fly too quickly through his mind to properly process any of it, leaving only residual uncertainty and that deepening sense of his culpability in her sudden disappearance.  But he doesn’t linger on the unpleasant sensations.  “What the fuck do you know?!”  And he’s charging at him, a Rasengan heavy in his hand.

The enemy is far more powerful than he appeared, immediately blowing him back with some kind of focused chakra.  “Weak, pathetic.”

“GIVE HER BACK!”  He replicates himself a dozen times, each of them throwing Rasenshurikens at the man.

Yet more of that strange yellow chakra protects him.  He’s unscathed even under his shadow clone onslaught.  “No.  I gave her a choice, and she came with me.  I’m just here to get rid of you, take revenge against you for her sake.”

He hardly comprehends the nonsense spewing out of the enemy’s mouth, and he rallies his clones into close combat, but the man manages to avoid many of the attacks while landing hits of his own.

Clones poofing away only to be replaced by more, frustration and fury starting to blind him into sloppier and sloppier moves.

“I love Hinata.  That’s why I deserve her.”

He chokes on his own breath, and in his momentary loss of concentration,...

He’s falling.

------------------------*

aaannnnd that’s as far as I want to go with that.  Imagine the rest of the team arriving in time to notice Toneri making his escape toward the sky, and I guess the rest of the story would sort of follow the rest of The Last...Naruto self-reflects a lot in a bundle of depression for a long time and yeah.

...ahhh...  I encourage you to write the fic you want to see in the world ❤️

#anon #thank you for thinking i could do your fic idea justice #but in the end 😅 i'm sorry that this is a letdown #i'm not much one for angst you know #who wrote white lilies not me #thank you for laying the praise on thick 🥺 don't know if i'm deserving #thank you for reading!

[juliansummerhayes]

Being still

I'm not long back from my daily walk with the dogs; the weather was atrocious. Mind you, they didn't mind, especially Alfie who is a dab hand at swimming and finding the deepest puddle. The puppy, Eddie, now that's a different story. When he's running madly around, chasing the leaves or the poor birds, he's happy as can be but the moment he stops and notices the rain and how wet he is, you can see on his face his intense dislike for his sodden condition.

Me, well, once I'm out -- however extreme the weather -- I don't tend to give it much thought. I walk and nearly always have an audiobook on the go (Alan Bennett at the moment), and I'm in my own world. I always wear a woolly hat to keep the worst of the wind and rain at bay and having a good set of waterproofs (RAB right now) is essential. Having a waterproof pair of shoes also helps; I've never liked wellington boots, so they're out. Over lockdown I've gone through three pairs of supposedly waterproof walking shoes -- they're more like trainers actually. At the moment, I've got a pair of Adidas 350 Traxion shoes and even though they started off in a very promising way, the stitching is now coming apart and the water gets in easily. There's still plenty of wear in the soles, so I'll have to put up with the wetness for a good deal longer; I always make my shoes last and these will no exception.

As I said in yesterday's post, today, I was minded to go to Dartmoor or the beach but if this weather keeps up, I'll more than likely hunker down at home with a good book and potter around the house, which, once it's warmed up (thank goodness for central heating), keeps its heat for most of the day. This is in contrast to our last home in the village -- a terraced Edwardian property -- that was more like a wind tunnel and was almost impossible to keep warm, let alone dry (the roof had a tendency to leak when the wind and rain were coming from a certain direction).

I'm reading another Mary Oliver book. Her writing is perfect and brings me great joy. I'm also reading more poetry including Anne Sexton and Robert Bly. I'll also complete my diary and daily pages -- a bit like morning pages -- where I'm still exploring the question: Why do I give up so easily on things? There's a lot I could say but I'll hold fire from sharing anything because I'm still trying to unearth a cogent or valid reason for having quit so many times. Previously, I might have been downbeat about acknowledging this (i.e. I'd have seen it as a failure) but, as odd as it sounds, I'm quietly and reverently excited about exploring the traits of non-completion and if/how, going forward, I might change my routine, habits or daily ritual to keep at one thing without losing interest etc.

One last thing. I'm still not 100% sure about using Tumblr or Wordpress for my daily musings but I think next week what I'm likely to do is write my daily piece to my blog and leave Tumblr for poetry, quotes, photography and anything else that catches my fancy.

Anyhow, have a wonderful weekend.

Blessings

Julian

#blog #musings #tumblr #rain #weather #dogs #wind #poetry #mary oliver

[maglors-anion-gap]

Friday, May, September for fic asks!

[from this ask game] friday - most self indulgent fic:

I think the most self-indulgent fic that I've written is actually one I haven't posted yet. I'm working on some tolkien secret santa advent calendar prompts (which I'll be releasing in the coming week-ish) that center on transmasc!russingon. It's not exactly a unique headcanon (arofili has some lovely transmasc content for them) but I'm transmasculine and it's something I enjoy. I actually wish more people would write trans narratives in fandom! Don't be hesitant! I've never seen someone totally screw the pooch (except out of deliberate malice); you'll do better than you expect the first time around; there are always people happy to answer questions. I know lots of people have steered clear of trans fic because some people have incredibly strong opinions about what is transphobic or not or what the best way to write a trans character is, and honestly, it's what kept me from wanting to write trans characters (and I'm trans!!! the irony). If you do some research, ask some questions, and engage in good faith, you're doing fine.

may - fic I regret posting:

eurgh. Um so I think I regret something about literally every fic I've written. Actually, even though I love russingon I have Major Anxieties about posting anything russingon. I'm not going to name names or link or anything bc I think gossip is pretty rude, but there was a piece of meta that went around maybe two years ago? It had a lot of insightful things to say (I actually wish I'd saved the link because it was pretty good), but at the end the op alleged that the fandom fixation on russingon was fetishistic. In general, accusations of fetishism made me really hesitant to write russingon because I really don't want hate in my inbox, and I was really scared I was playing into like, bad characterization or stereotypes or something? Which is so fucking stupid because I'm transmasc and I'm literally dating another man (fellas is it fetishistic to gay-love another dude?). But it gave me mega-gender-upset because the Age Old Internet Accusation that transmascs get hit with a lot is that we're basically just creepy "fujoshis" or whatever. I don't think that was op's intent but. Anyway, I wish people were more careful about how they turn their personal complaints ("fingon needs more characterization," or "I don't like fic drabbles that focus on maedhros' recovery in hithlum") and make them into sweeping claims about the state of fandom.

that was a long anxiety-dump to say I sometimes regret posting Where the Spirit Meets the Bones, which is the Bad Russingon Fan trifecta of Unholy Smut, Maedhros Man-Pain, and Taylor Swift lyric inspo.

september - comment that warms my heart:

I went through all my AO3 comments for this, there are so many lovely ones but the one that jumped out at me was something undercat said on Turning Shadows into Shapes: "I saw this linked again on tumblr a week ago or so and came back to reread this, and it's just as good as I remembered!"

I'm always happy when something I write withstands the test of a re-read :)

#asks