#but don't take my word for it

[adampknave]

For spooky season why doesn't this place rename itself Tomblr?

#feels like an easy win #but don't take my word for it #ask the skeleton armies

[dunkelzahn]

One of the things I think a lot of people don't really get about writing is that it doesn't necessarily have to be fiction.

Like, fiction writing. Good, excellent, create your worlds, tell your stories, may it be popular and lead to success. But it's so easy to crush your writing under the weight of your own expectations, isn't it? It's so dreadfully easy. You can write a first draft, or just an opening, and give up because you feel there's no way that it'll ever be good enough to show to anyone and that just taints your feelings about the work, your skills, and writing in general.

But what if you didn't seep all of that into your fiction? Just... write something. Doesn't have to be fiction. Like a diary entry. Your thoughts on the news. Conversations you want to have. Events in your life. A paragraph or so on that nice meal you had. Non-fiction stuff, things no one will read. Something with an audience of one person, totally personal and private.

Still, it's writing. I've written furious screeds about topics I don't think anyone else cares about, so I don't bore folks with posting them. I've written tutorials about subjects that've undoubtedly been covered, and in a more comprehensive way than I could manage. I've written love letters to someone that'll never read them. Sometimes what I write is just transcriptions from another source. (No one I know is interested in recipes from 14th century England.) I've written political rants aching with frustration. I've written reviews of canons and products. I've written apologies that will never cross the bridges I've already burned. Even, embarrassingly, a few bits of poetry. They were awful.

And, yes, I've written fiction, both original and fan fiction.

Sometimes it's experiments. Sometimes it's just to get my emotions straight. But writing about the real stuff, the stuff that isn't fiction, the stuff that doesn't have the expectation of readership.

Some of it's saved onto an external. A lot of it, I just delete once I've done it, after I let it sit for a day or four. Then I'll come back to reread it and feel satisfied that I've got it out of my system. So I clear out the text document and start on something new.

But the thing was, I wrote it. And it was freeing because, since I knew I'd be the only one to ever see it, I had no expectations and felt no pressure to make it good.

And, honestly, I feel like doing that frees up some of the pressure for when I do write something that's intended for others. It's like singing in the shower.

Anyway. This got overlong. The short of it is just this: When someone says 'just write something,' they don't necessarily mean to follow it with 'and show it to everyone.' I think a lot of people get caught up on that silent adder and it makes them shrivel up when they do keep writing and never manage to meet their own expectations.

So write, but write for yourself. If you happen to think it's good enough to share, do it. Otherwise, just treat it as private practice, a way to vent out those ideas and feelings until you either find the diamond you want to polish and show off or you decide that you're ready to show off the diamonds you've already got.

#writing #but don't take my word for it #this is just what works for me #everyone's different #but what's true? #non-fiction is still writing

[dweemeister]

July 11, 2023

By Jonathan Taylor

(Los Angeles Times) — Jet-lagged and exhausted, LeVar Burton rallied his youthful energy as he exited customs at New York’s JFK airport and climbed into a waiting limo. He had just traveled from the Zambezi River in Zambia, where he had filmed a segment for the April 4, 1982, episode of ABC’s “The American Sportsman.”

The car made its way from Queens to Manhattan, dropping him off at Central Park. He was there to shoot the pilot for a new public television show aimed at encouraging early learners to love books.

The show was to be called “Reading Rainbow.”

He was not entirely sure what the job was, and certainly not aware that it would become one of his signature roles. It didn’t matter. The son of a former teacher and a passionate believer in learning, reading, exploring and growing, Burton was all-in on this new adventure.

“Everything about it just made sense,” Burton says, more than 40 years later. “It was about literature and the written word, it was about kids, it was about having kids discover the power of literature through the medium of television and that was why ‘Reading Rainbow’ was such a radical departure from other shows of its era.”

From the moment he first met the “Reading Rainbow”crew, Burton demonstrated not one iota of star attitude.

“He showed up, got out of the limo, and I said, ‘Hey, how are you?’” Cecily Truett, co-creator, head writer and producer on the show for most of its run, recalls. “He said, ‘Well, I just got off the red-eye, so…’ I said, ‘Well, what can we do for you? How can we make you comfortable?’ He said, ‘You know, I’d love to have a glass of orange juice and a toothbrush.’ And that was it.

“He walked right on to the set, he ran through his lines and for the next 25 years he was on the set, on time, with his lines memorized....”

“For 155 shows,” her husband, Larry Lancit, another of the show’s creators, producers and directors, added.

Burton had to hurry back from Africa to New York because a skeleton crew was waiting to shoot the pilot episode, including anxious documentarians Truett and Lancit and fellow creator and executive producer Twila C. Liggett, a onetime elementary school teacher who had realized TV was the ideal medium to reach and influence young children. If “Reading Rainbow” delivered on its promise that a children’s show focused on the joy and value of reading could be set in the real America rather than on Sesame Street or in Mister Rogers’ neighborhood, it would get the blessing from PBS.

It did the trick. This month marks the 40th anniversary of the national premiere of one of the longest-running children’s shows in the history of public television.

#Reading Rainbow #LeVar Burton #PBS #Corporation for Public Broadcasting #Ronald Reagan #George H.W. Bush #Bill Clinton #Los Angeles Times #huh the show was a co-production of Buffalo's and a Nebraska PBS station? did not know! #I swear too much of the programming is from WGBH or WNET - with apologies to any Bostonians and New Yorkers among you #but don't take my word for it #news

[modernwivestales]

If you follow a orange cat behind a dumpster you will get lost in another universe

But if you follow a GREY cat behind a dumpster then you'll find where you were meant to be

#modern wives tales that may or may not be true #wives tales #old wives tales #but don't take my word for it

[mokeonn]

"But if college was free, then people would abuse that and get useless degrees" hell yeah I would! If I could go to college without debt I would make it my job to get a degree in every little thing that interested me. I'd get a doctorate in film studies. I'd have a bachelor's degree for every science I like. I'd try to learn at least 5 languages with varying results. I would learn something "useful" like coding and then follow it up with a ""useless"" degree like art history. I'd be the world record speed run holder for getting every degree possible.

But I can't afford college without going into massive debt, so instead I spent the last 5 years trying to figure out what I am passionate enough about to consider going into debt over, because unfortunately being passionate about everything is extremely expensive to pursue.

#simon says #i love learning so much and I hate the USA's college debt system #once they make that shit free I will be unstoppable #this topic sprung up because I had the idea that im very academic and annoyingly analytical that I might as well get a degree in it #because without a degree you just seem like an autistic asshole #but with a degree? then you look like a CREDIBLE autistic asshole #don't worry I will still learn but I still want that funky piece of paper to tell everyone I learnt it #also there's some things that are VERY difficult to learn #like I would love to persue this topic further but unfortunately I would need help with that #also before you say 'try taking [blank] classes instead! it's less expensive than a degree!' im broke #my only learning resource is the library sorry about that #also this is not the post to give me unwarranted financial advice #finances are one of the topics I DO NOT care about and I WILL NOT listen to a word you say

[counting-stars-gayly]

Book: "I don't know what my mom will do. I just know I'll fight next to you." "Why?" "Because you're my friend, Seaweed Brain."

Show: "You've done more for me in the past few days than my dad's done for me in my entire life. If I have to stick with someone, I—" "Careful. I think you were about to call me your friend."

#AAAAAAAAAAH #I don't have the words for an essay rn because life is life-ing but I hope you guys Get It #percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #annabeth chase #percabeth #rick riordan #pjo books #pjo tv show #pjo tv series #pjo tv spoilers #pjo disney+ #pjo adaptation #pjo ep 4 #pjo 1x04 #we take a zebra to vegas #I plunge to my death

[5ummit]

AO3 Ship Stats: Year In Bad Data

You may have seen this AO3 Year In Review.

It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!

Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.

I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.

Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.

Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:

Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:

Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?

Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?

Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!

If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.

At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.

The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.

Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).

Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works

Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works

This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.

How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.

With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):

The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.

Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.

To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.

#ao3 #ao3 stats #psa #my words #fandom #I doubt anyone is even going to read this but I needed to get it out of my system and at least try to stop this from spreading #if you know me #you know I get Big Mad about misinformation #don't take anything at face value #do your own research

[clown-owo]

🤨

bonus:

#good omens spoilers #gos2spoilers #good omens #good omens season 2 #goodomensedit #aziraphale #crowley #og post #gifs #the thesis of this gifset is: #“aziraphale lies BADLY to crowley's FACE repeatedly for no reason and crowley ALWAYS takes him at his word #but crowley's the demon so he's the one who lies. apparently" #i just think its hilarious #and the fact that crowley doesn't notice aziraphale lying despite the fact he knows how he lies (see: Job) because “why would he lie to ME” #i don't think crowley thinks the inverse of aziraphale (“you're an angel. its not what you do”) because he KNOWS he lied to heaven #(again see:Job) #this took so fucking long i'd open photoshop and my computer would shit itself #even worse if i dare opened a longer video to make into several gifs #sacrificed my Firefox window to my computer like a newborn lamb so that photoshop may live but it barely even helped #apparently i do NOT have the needed ram for gifmaking #i mean i did do it. i completed it. but still #though it worked a bit better after i restarted my computer. so. maybe i should do that more frequently lmao #i tried to include “i'm a demon. i lied” but it just did not. fit. quite right

[ratuszarsenal]

so there's this thing which I've dubbed academic fiction, where I write a long, precise academic paper, confirming to your citation model of choice and everything, except every single thing in there is made up. anyway if I made a zine that was a pretend-academic journal full of only that would anyone be interested in reading it

#sorry if this is insane I'll delete the post in the morning but I need to know if anyone has seen anything like this before #I also do fake wikipedia articles. in microsoft word don't worry #I take my responsibilities as a wikipedia editor extremely seriously I would never actually lie on there #echo

[koshercosplay]

Neil gaiman is a Zionist :(

this is so funny because if you google "neil gaiman zionist" nearly all of the links are to unsourced tumblr posts or responses to a single tweet from 2015 that just acknowledges Israel's existence

I see gaiman has once again committed the heinous crime of Being Jewish When Israel Is In The News

#*gasp* somebody actually checking for sources before succumbing to hearsay and speculation??? #must be a foreign concept to you anon #sorry but like im not just gonna take someone's word for it #ESPECIALLY when 'zionist' gets bandied about to mean 'jew i don't want you to like' #asks #anons #neil gaiman #antisemitism #ALSO like so what??? the post i reblogged is about him dealing with antisemitism #unless you think jews you don't like deserve antisemitism? 🤔 #fascinating #also ive never even given my OWN opinion on this blog #for all you know I'm a zionist lmaooo #i purposefully keep all my own thoughts on the subject far away from this blog #ooooooh scaryyyy a jew who won't tell you if they're a Good One or a Bad One

[raetttriestowrite]

Me, an author, side eyeing my WIP: you're not going to do anything weird, are you? We've discussed this. There's a plan. We're going to stick to the plan, aren't we?

The WIP: *presents subplot, presents additional conflicts, presents character development, laughs in my fucking face*

#raetttriestowrite #fanfiction #writer problems #raett rants about writing #look honestly it's not that bad but it's relatable #so feel free to reblog #just. Bless This Mess is a disaster of a series and there are way the fuck too many things going on #and i'm staring at the word count of the next part #and am really hoping that isn't an indicator of how long this is gonna be #but don't hold your breath #i am very very slow. and i'm not that far through the plot. and it's uh. 3.5k #so. this may take a while. hopefully not six months but we'll see #considering i'm fully expecting to be laughed at by my plan as per the post

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 89

 The young justice team is in a bit of a pickle. It had been a usual mission, Klarion causing mischief again, before someone had mentioned the date. 

 The literal chaos lord had shrieked, stopping his attack, and asked for clarification. Maybe that wasn’t a good idea because one moment they were in Happy Harbour, and the next they’re somewhere else with green everywhere and floating islands. 

 And Klarion doesn’t explain- not that they were expecting him to- and just bolts into a… wow that is a very big and scary looking castle. Keep? Honestly it’s if someone combined a gothic citadel with a clocktower of some sort. 

 Not important, because they had chased after Klarion who uh… Oh no, that is a Very big entity, that is two Very Big entities that could crush them in their fingers. And they are now stuck in this place seeing as the portal closed behind them. 

 Honestly Klarion is happy he made it home before curfew! Even if he had to bring his sort-of-friends with him to make it in time. It’s not his fault, he’s not used to having a guardian, nevermind two! Not to mention siblings, which he’s now the oldest of too, so he has to be a positive influence. Like teaching them how to properly do chaos without destroying a world. 

 Oh, but this is perfect anyway, one of his dads has been wanting to talk to the speedsters anyway, and his other dad is still under house arrest for the whole, trying to take over the living realm thing. But that’s not important, he has little siblings to introduce! 

#dcxdp #dpxdc #dark ages #prompts #klarion the witch boy #young justice #Accidental Sleepover Au #Klarion is just a lil guys- just a lil baby chaos ancient #Pariah is on thin ice with CW & had a choice of either attempt at world domination & getting put back in the box #or work on his previously failing relationship & help him take care of these baby ancients/halfas he found #Look he was stuck in that sarcophagus *so long* and he has an eternity how hard can parenting be #The older a ghost the larger they are #Klarion & Fenton siblings are human-sized #but their ghost-parents are Definitely Not when they aren't pretending to be human-ish #They have the space to sprawl out in their Haunt and they're going to use it! #Poor young justice has no clue what's going on #CW ain't letting them leave because eventually the other speedsters will arrive to get their baby speedster back #And he has Words for them #Klarion: Look at my maybe-friends :D They're good at fighting! #Klarion: I don't like their parents tho- they hang out with yellow-helmet-@!& #Danny w/ his 3 friends who all just finished finals & are tired: Omg did u bring friends over for a double sleepover :O #Danny: That's such a fun idea we can spar and make smores and- aw why are they hiding :/

[kineticallyanywhere]

Time & Space pages 1-2 ( This is the start || ao3 (not yet!) || next ) Starts less than 24 hours after the death of Willy Stampler. With the job done, there's finally time to sort some things out. They just need the right amount of space.

#dungeons and daddies #dndads #normal oak #henry oak #normal oak swallows garcia #dndads 2 #fanart #kineticallyart #time & space #Coming at chu live from my first dance chaperone duty #Monkeys paw is not over btw! In case this made you nervous #I'll be doing both #Next 4 pages of mp already in the works #They're delicious you're gonna love them #Anyway canon didn't have the framework to peel apart the oaks like a surgeon with a grape #So here we go :) #Don't worry normal i gotchur happy ending #For you. Personally. #Anyway i don't have this planned quite as meticulously as mp #Plotwise #But the script doc is like 6k words long so there's gas in this tank #That said updates on this will be slower than on mp until mp ends #Getting mp done is still priority 1 #Anyway (x2 combo) #Implied context here is that at the “Willy is dead and we saved the world” after party at the S-O-G's place #Normal kinda lost it #At who and what about doesn't really matter #No one's holding it against him #But the result is that they're not gonna let him pretend to be okay anymore #Normals done a lot of taking care of other people; time for other people to take care of him for a bit

[star-born-mars]

Soft Jason Todd

"Jason, baby, come to bed," you muttered, stumbling into the Cave in nothing but some boxers and one of Jason's shirts. You plastered yourself to his back, wrapping your arms around his torso, resting your head between his shoulderblades.

"I swear I'm almost finished with this, doll, it's right there, I can sense it," he muttered, placing his hands over yours instinctively.

"Come sleep on it. You've been down here for hours. Come back to it fresh tomorrow," you told him. "Please?"

"Doll, really I---"

"Jason, it will still be here tomorrow," you promised as he turned to look at you. "You're too tired to make the connection clearly. Come to bed, get some sleep, eat something nutritious, then come back to it."

He looked at you, brushing some hair from your face, then cupping your cheek and leaning your foreheads together.

"Okay, doll, I'll come to bed. Just let me clean up down here, okay?"

"Okay," you replied, leaning further into him.

"Or I can leave it here for Bruce," Jason decided, sweeping you up into his arms.

"Jason! Oh my god!" you yelped, grabbing onto him in shock.

He chuckled, pressing a kiss to your temple in apology.

"Thank you," he murmured. "For looking out for me."

"'Course, I love you, why wouldn't I?" you asked, leaning your head against his shoulder, eyes drifting shut in exhaustion.

"I would die for you," Jason swore quietly.

"I'd rather you lived, and lived well."

"I'll work on it."

"Good."

"Go to sleep, doll, I'll be here in the morning."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Love you."

"I love you too."

#jason todd #jason todd x reader #jason my beloved #this is so fucking short omg #i don't even know what this is #i word vomited this in 15 minutes instead of doing my stats homework #i regret nothing yet #emphasis on the yet #reader #taking care of your significant other #i have a feeling that jason gets no sleep

[modernwivestales]

Cats are just as, if not more, superstitious as humans. If you see them avoid walking over a specific part of the sidewalk, you should avoid it too.

#modern wives tales that may or may not be true #but don't take my word for it #old wives tales #wives tales

[camellcat]

lose my mind every time the doctor takes rose's last name in fics. brilliant, amazing, splendid, absolutely perfect.

like, what do you MEAN she'd be the one to change her last name? he doesn't even HAVE a bloody name like us! plus, she's rose tyler. you think he's going to want that to be different? it's the doctor and rose tyler in the tardis (or I suppose whatever they do in pete's world, but that's still the doctor and rose tyler having their new adventure)!!

she's rose tyler and he is whatever-he-wants tyler. end of discussion. the whole pond diabolical should've been clue enough imo

#sorry but I cannot stand it #and I keep being forced to anyways #she is ROSE TYLER #like how amy is amy pond. and not amy williams. because she's amy pond. #well rose is rose is rose and I HATE rose smith/noble sorry I've said my truth #like... rose SMITH? what? that doesn't. that's not. no. that doesn't sound right. that doesn't... fit. #I just cannot imagine in any universe or au where the doctor would want her to change her name. I literally cannot. #he wouldn't want to change a damn thing about her and her name is just so. it's her. it's beautiful. I've ran out of good words. fantastic! #he should take her last name just sayin #very passionately saying ahahahaha #this feels aggressive and like I'm getting onto people for writing these. I'm not. I just also have a very strong opinion about this lol #I just don't think you understand what it does to me when I see the doctor take her last name. I simply don't think you do #john tyler. james tyler. whatever tyler. hngk #timepetals #tenrose #tentoorose #tenth doctor #tentoo #rose tyler #doctor who