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#i interrupted my work to write this
jamesunderwater · 4 months
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do the people who leave comments on my fics when they aren't even newly updated know they are making my day?? cause I need them to know
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aithusarosekiller · 10 months
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Every time I click 'next chapter' on a dorlene or Jegulus fic and see the words 'another super long wolfstar chapter bc we love them!' Or some shit like that, a gay person dies
It's true, scientifically proven and everything
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front-facing-pokemon · 9 months
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twicethetrouble · 5 months
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Surprise Family Web chapter!
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salora-rainriver · 3 months
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We're talking about Ads Again
Context for those followers of mine who weren't there: I made a post about tumblr ads being weird back in 2016 and it's literally still getting notes to this day. People responded GREAT to it. honestly, despite being like. ass old at this point and written by a literal high schooler, it's still pretty good! I thank my dad being in advertising helped significantly. I had an expert witness.
Tonight, I'm writing the sequel to that post. the sequel is this post.
let's just fucking dive into it or whatever.
why am I doing this?
okay for starters I made that post in goddamn 2016 and I refuse to believe my insights into the marketing world have not improved since then.
Also, the marketing world has CHANGED. Huge swaths of my old post are no longer relevant. What we saw with tumblr ads in 2016 was in some parts a passing fad, and in other parts the harbinger of a new wave of influencer marketing and corporate parasociality (I coined that term just now).
Honestly I've been thinking for a while that I should make an update post, but what with, yanno, adulthood, that's been kinda hard!
Well, I've missed a train, and it's Christmas, so I've finally found the time to do that.
What has Changed?
in my personal life... dad got fired! yeah it fucking sucks. the good news is he and his wife are working towards their retirement now, shifting away from the industry overall. Good news as far as life is concerned, but it does mean I no longer have as clean a connection to the Industry as I used to.
but more importantly, why he got fired. The fact is, dad's old! I know, shocker. More than just being old, though, his field (and my stepmom's field - they both did the same work) represents an older paradigm of advertisement. he did TV spots and posters, not ad reads for Raid Shadow Legends. He was great at his work, but we're in an era of data-driven, maximalist, google adsense, low-barrier-to-entry, super-fast and super-cheap digital advertisement.
Well, more specifically,
We're on the cusp of an extinction event poised to bring said era crashing to the ground.
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Pictured: the current vibes in the ad world
Siberia is on Fire and Everything is Dying
So given that my typical source on stuff like this is currently unemployed, I decided to hit good ol google (well, google and duckduckgo. fitting given what we're talking about) to see if I could get any insights into what the current state of advertising is.
and the short of it is that everyone says the end is nigh. check this out:
Digital is dead, and so is TV. God fucking damn. BY THE WAY, I loved these two articles. Chris Gadek, a man I only learned about today, is clearly an excellent writer and his professional insights are probably gonna be way better than my amateur synthesis of the half-dozen different articles I read today, including his.
blatant shilling for random article writers aside, let's get on to my half-baked synthesis, starting with:
What Set Siberia on Fire
In small part, it's the same issues facing most major companies and industries in our late capitalist world: Hubris.
As this New York Times article points out, we've got a low barrier of entry into a gargantuan industry that's increasingly pumping out slop to follow a strategy of 'more is more'. And we've all seen the bizarre mobile game ads and shady scams that have resulted from THAT.
On top of that, we've also got the fucking digital privacy issue shaking up the entire world as consumers increasingly don't like being spied on (imagine that), and the EU starts rolling out heavy restrictions on the data harvesting that was fueling a bunch of this advertisement bubble.
There's also the ad fraud. Oh, you didn't hear about that? Well, it's nothing much, just that lots of bots are clicking ads to falsify click metrics, artificially inflating the effectiveness of said ads. look, it even has a wikipedia article
oh and Facebook did it. Facebook did ad fraud. :)
and I'm not even getting into everything that works to shake up or demolish basically every advertisement channel out there - the decline of cable tv and print newspapers, the increasing use of ad blockers, the crisis of consumer trust, etc etc.
In short we are looking at a multitude of micro-crises all working together to make the environment unlivable for most current forms of advertisement.
in other words: an extinction event!
Who's Gonna Survive
And just like in a real extinction event, whether or not you survive depends on how good you can adapt to the brave new world you've found yourself in. Old school advertising needs to drastically rethink their everything if they're gonna stay afloat, and every field of the industry needs to recreate itself. As my new favorite writer Chris Gadek says,
"These crises show that there are no safe havens. You can’t substitute one advertising medium for another. Rather than pivot, the advertising industry must adapt and learn to effectively use the channels at their disposal (TV included), factoring in the seismic societal and technological changes that have occurred over the past decade and beyond."
and what is that going to look like? what's going to be the new face of advertising?
The field seems torn, at first... but also aligned, at least when it comes to the core principles:
privacy is a big issue. Seems like a lot of advertisers are seeing an end to wanton consumer surveillance, and looking into less invasive ways to gather important and meaningful data
companies that rely on selling ad space and propping up their engagement metrics are going to be relied on less, probably, because the metrics themselves are being seen as less reliable (for good freaking reason)
regaining consumer trust is going to be a massive priority in the future.
overall, we're probably going to look at a massive downturn in ads, as people turn to a quality-over-quantity strategy in an attempt to stop flooding the attention marketplace.
that's the gist I'm getting from reading oh so many different articles of varying quality from so many different sources.
So, yanno, there may be some hope out there. If smart people start leading this industry (lol), we may get to actually enjoy ads.
Yeah. Enjoy ads.
Unironically.
I know, it's crazy.
PS: if you start seeing affiliate links on mainstream TV ads, thank our lord of excellent business analysis Chris Gadek for calling it early. God, that's such a crazy left-field idea and I really want it to actually happen.
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lokisaved · 2 months
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The wildest thing about getting to take a photo with Tom is that it didn't feel quite real, like he wasn't a real person standing there in front of me that I was about to be right next to. I partially attribute that to how fast the line was going, but even if I had a bit more time to process, I surely would have felt the same: that a man whose life, basically, I had been following since 2013, was in the same room as me and I was mere feet away.
I was lightheaded in the moments prior to the photo, although whether due to being hungry and needed water or overwhelmed suddenly despite not feeling it before (and thrown off by the girl in front of me trying to hold a brief conversation and the crew trying to escort her away), I'm not sure. I do wonder how Tom feels about the whole thing, about how fast it went.
We greeted each other, I got to shake his hand (his hand really is big, much larger than I expected, yet when he shook mine, it didn't feel overwhelming, and he didn't crush me), he put his arm behind me and mine behind him (his coat was quite soft; my mom speculated it's a nice/fancy wool), we smiled, FLASH, I thanked him (I can't recall if he thanked me), and off I went.
While fast, definitely 100% worth it. I've never had the chance to go anywhere else he's been due to time and money, but this time, the stars aligned.
I was lucky enough to have enough income to be able to do that plus get better seating for the live show, which was also definitely worth it; I wasn't as close as I would have liked, but better than higher up—and the general seating filled up really fast, so much so that when it got delayed due to autographs (I get the sense they overbooked him, because he had to go BACK after it was done), they told us not to leave the theatre because so many people couldn't get in.
Anyway, I absolutely loved being able to hear him talk in person, and he told pretty much all new stories this time! At least, new to me, but I'm pretty sure most of them had not been told before, probably because the audience got to ask the questions (using a Google forms from the week before that was only open for twenty-four hours AND I MISSED—and they had apparently 84 questions?? Surely they could have left that open longer, then).
I really hope I get the opportunity to see him in person again in some form or fashion; i.e. I'd probably do an autograph, or if he's got enough live event, just pay for good seating for that. I don't know if I'll get so lucky a second time, and I will definitely cherish this for a long while.
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spaghett-onaplate · 3 months
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a celebratory post: i have just experienced the most fruitful writing 24 hours of my entire life. at 3:30am last night, i started a new fic, wrote maybe 3k in the hours before I slept? continued the next evening at 5pm, and since then the document has reached the grand total of... 12.5k words!! :D
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ehlnofay · 8 months
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Summerfest Day 6 - IN BLOOM
The door to the tower room is much too heavy – that’s the next thing Efri needs to try to get them to change. She has to shove her whole weight against it with her shoulder to budge it, which is a dangerous game with her hands full of books and paper and an inkbottle and pen with a chewed nib. She doesn’t drop anything, luckily; but she does bash her ankle on the hefty slab of wood, which is almost as bad.
She doesn’t bother to knock, because why should she – she entered very audibly. Instead she just marches, vaguely irritated, past the entryway – almost slipping on the silky blue rug (honestly, she’ll need to make them remodel the whole place at this rate) – and into the room proper. One of the chests has been moved, she notices at a cursory glance; the Archmage is watching her from the desk, twisted around in his seat, brows knitted. He doesn’t have his hood on, which startles Efri far more than the change in furniture. (She can see his whole face. It’s weird.)
His lips press tightly together inside the little window left by his facial hair. It’s an expression she normally would not be able to see so clearly and does not make it any less weird. But Efri’s not one to be rude – when she remembers to try not to be, at least – so, very politely and with no small effort, she says, “Hi,” and doesn’t mention it.
The Archmage’s lips go even thinner.
“Hello,” he replies slowly. “You didn’t bring your friend.”
Efri shakes her head. Hair tumbles in her face – she cut it just a mite too short when she gave it a trim last week, and now it’s doing all sorts of silly things – and she purses her lips funny-like to blow it away. “Sissel’s talking to one of the teachers,” she informs him. She frowns. “And Kazari’s resting, but you didn’t ask, because you still haven’t met them, because you still haven’t fixed the stairwells.”
(The stairs are too narrow, the turns too tight, and Kazari – taller than Efri standing on four legs and at least twice as long – doesn’t even want to try to climb them for fear of getting stuck.)
(She didn’t want to come up today, anyway; something about being bothersome. But she has wanted to come up before – like two weeks ago, when they had to explain the Saarthal thing, and a week and a half ago, when they had to ask why no-one was telling them why the College doesn’t have books about Saarthal anymore – and besides, it’s the principle of the thing.)
One of the magic lights fizzes and bobs. The Archmage’s eyes flicker away. “We’re not widening the stairwells,” he says, voice dry, hands beginning to fuss with something on the desk.
“Yes,” Efri tells him, “you are. It’s not fair otherwise.”
He tips his head so she can’t see his face. (It might actually be a more comfortable arrangement for both of them.) “These are my rooms. I’m the only one who needs to be able to access them.” A page slips from his hands onto the floor and he mutters something. As he’s bending over in his chair to pick it up he adds, “If you didn’t need anything…”
Efri shifts on her feet, balancing her books as carefully as she can. She says, “I wanted to look at the garden.”
Silently, the Archmage picks up his paper and smooths it with careful attention over the surface of his desk. He doesn’t sigh exasperatedly, but he certainly has the posture of someone who would like to.
“I’ll be quiet,” Efri says. (Because she’s polite. And because she really wants to look at the garden.)
The Archmage, who doesn’t seem to be much concerned with politeness, flaps a hand. Efri takes it as approval, and goes to set herself on the low stone steps by the bed of soil.
(To be fair, he doesn’t have to be polite. He’s the boss. If Efri was in charge she probably wouldn’t be as polite. She still would be when she liked the people, or when she wanted to – but she’d be much less polite to him, because he’s ridiculous.)
The garden is as bright and wonderful as it always is, a strange little pocket of life bowered by cold stone. It looks a bit like a moon set into the slate-grey sky of the flagstones. (A rainbow moon. Incandescent moon. Are there plants on the moons? Almost certainly not, but it would be very cool if so.) Efri sits carefully at the edge, her books and things arrayed around her, pen set over the paper of her word-book and inkbottle uncorked and ready. (She’ll have to make sure not to spill it.)
She takes a good minute, first, just to stare; the Archmage lapses into quiet scribbling, with only the faint scrape of the nib or rustle of the page to remind her that he’s there, while she eyes the odd pointy-tipped flowers, the sprawl of spiky roots, the tasselled mushrooms. She wants to touch it all really badly but the Archmage told her that some of it is poisonous and she doesn’t yet know well enough to know which ones.
But that’s what she’s here to learn, isn’t it? She picks up the heavy book she’d wheedled out of the Arcaeneum. It’s nice, bound in smooth leather, the pages thick and old-smelling. And it’s illustrated. She flips through, the dense words interspersed with printed pictures of plants she doesn’t recognise any better than the ones in the garden. Lumpy fungus, prickly fruits, tangled vines. Finally, there it is – one of the garden plants, the straggly little bush with its toothy yellow flowers, printed in plain ink on the page. Efri checks the picture against the real thing several times, just to make sure they match.
Satisfied on that front, she sets the book down, holding it open to the right page with the heel of one hand, and begins the lengthy process of sounding out the name. “D – R – A –”
It’s not one of the quicker words she’s worked out.
It’s also a bit frustrating. Normally Sissel helps her with these things – she didn’t anticipate it being so much more difficult on her own. Much harder to focus. But she sticks with it, manages the first word (it’s dragons – what dragons have to do with anything, she has no idea) and begins to tackle the second with a determination that disregards the increased sighing and rustling of paper from the desk a ways behind her.
Somewhere in the middle of her heroic effort to parse vowel forms and plosive consonants, the Archmage says, “I can tell you what it is.”
“Shh.” Efri flings up a hand, twisting around in her stone-step seat to glare at him. “I’m learning.”
He is not appropriately impressed by her academic commitment, but at least he shuts up. She turns back around and squints at the word.
After a moment, she adds, “Besides, I already know what it says.” She stabs at it with her finger for emphasis, reaching for a slip of the spare paper she brought to mark the page. “It’s ton-g-you.”
(It might not be, actually. She hasn’t accounted for the E at the end. But those aren’t always there to make sound, Sissel told her – although now that she thinks it might make more sense. It could be said like gooey, which she knows is a word.)
“It’s dragon’s tongue,” the Archmage says, and she hears the legs of his chair scrape against the stone floor.
Efri peers at the printed letters. “Oh.” It’s a stupid way to spell the word, but a lot of words are spelled stupid. She tucks her slip of paper in anyway; as she reaches for her word-book, a hand taps her on the shoulder.
She looks up. The Archmage looks down, eyes red as the snowberries in the garden (she knows those ones), a hand held out, palm up, waiting. When she doesn’t move he gestures, impatient, to the book in her hand. She passes it up.
It’s a good book. Nice paper. She likes the sound it makes as he flicks through. “Urag gro-Shub let you borrow this?” he asks doubtfully.
Efri leans over the paper of her word-book, dipping her splodgy pen in the inkpot. “I wheedled it out of him,” she says, voice bright, and marks down a careful D. “I have to bring it right back, though. And I can’t take it outside.”
“Hm,” the Archmage says. He turns another page.
Ink drips from the pen nib to spot the page. Efri swears under her breath and blots it with her thumb. (It doesn’t help. Now her finger is just black.) Not looking up from her work, she asks, “What’s it say about the dragon flower?” She hopes it’s interesting – its name was far too difficult to decipher for a boring plant.
“Hm,” the Archmage says again, and flips back. Efri manages an impressively neat G. “It’s native to Black Marsh –”
“Ooh. I’ve never been there.” She’s barely even heard of it – knows it’s down south, and warm, and wet, and that’s about it.
The Archmage pauses, continues, “– but it also grows in, among other places, the volcanic tundra of Eastmarch’s Aalto.” Another pause. “It looks like that’s the only place it grows in Skyrim at all. Interesting.”
“Maybe it’s because they’re both wet,” Efri suggests. Swamps and springs are close enough, probably. Her pen goes a bit awry on the T, and she frowns at it. “I mean, so I hear. I’ve never been to Eastmarch either.”
The Archmage hums. “Neither have I,” he says passively. When Efri looks up, she sees him fixed on the page, engrossed, his eyes leaping over the text like jumping fish.
Brow wrinkled, she asks, “Really?” Eastmarch is only a hold over, and he’s a wizard. He’s nominally in charge of the whole College. “I would have thought you would’ve been all over.”
The Archmage glances down at her, head tilting. “Why?” he asks.
Good point. Efri shrugs. “I don’t know. I just feel like wizards go places. Make expeditions. They’ve at least been to the next hold.” All her wizard friends have gone far and wide. It’s what she’d do. It’s what she has done, and plans to continue to do.
Though she supposes it makes sense that the Archmage wouldn’t have gone many places. He barely leaves his tower, let alone Winterhold.
He’s still looking at her. (He does that sometimes – normally he doesn’t even meet her eye, staring at his desk or his book or the walls or his hands, and then every now and again he just looks for ages at a time. It’s weird. She can never tell what he’s thinking.) “I’m not overfond of travel,” he tells her. The skin under his eyes, in the weird look of the lighting from underneath, looks like it’s smudged hollow with ink.
Efri shrugs. She looks back at her page, marks down the best O she can. (The circle turns all wobbly by accident – but oh well, she did her best.) “How do you think they had to change the flowers so they could grow here?” she asks.
(He told her all about it, last time – in so many too-long words she’s mostly forgotten it. But she remembers the gist; the plants that grow in the Archmage’s garden are the descendants of plants collected by Archmages long before, precious few of which naturally grow in weather like Winterhold’s. So the wizards of yore, with some esoteric botanical magic, had altered each plant’s characteristics so it could survive in the relatively controlled – but still chilly – environment of the Archmage’s tower.)
(He’d talked about it more, something about microclimates and innovation and it’s fascinating, really, but by that point she’d just been looking at the shrubs. He stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and didn’t speak for another ten minutes.)
The shadow the Archmage casts over the garden is long and spindly as a wintertime tree. He replies, “I don’t know.”
Efri draws an N, a G, a U.
“I know what had to be done to that one,” he says. Efri looks up and follows his pointing finger.
She squints, asks, “The spiky one?”
“No, underneath. The little mushrooms.”
Efri outlines an E and sets her word-book aside. The mushrooms he points to are flat and pale, tucked under the leaves of a bigger shrub. “What had to be done to them?”
The Archmage wears silver in his beard, she’s just noticing. It flashes when he moves. “Ordinarily, they grow in caves –”
“I met my friend in a cave,” Efri tells him brightly.
He blinks. “Not this sort, I’m assuming,” he says. “They only grow deep underground, and often out of decaying matter.” There’s a pause; then, “Dead things,” he adds, for clarification.
Efri peers at them. “So they had to make them able to grow in the light, out of dirt.” It’s interesting. She’s interested. But the closer she looks –
It just looks familiar, is all. (Old dust and corroded metal and blue, blue, blue.)
The mushrooms grow very low to the ground, broad and wrinkled and papery. She thinks of touching one, to check the texture, but the idea makes her fingers flex, hands gripping hard at her scrunched-up skirt.
“Precisely,” the Archmage says.
Efri clasps her fingers together and jams her hands between her chin and her chest. With some difficulty – it’s hard to talk when she’s using her jaw to pin something – she says, “I think I’ve seen them.”
The Archmage’s feet shift beside her. “They grow very deep underground. I can’t imagine –”
“On the dead man.” Efri’s face is getting all scrunched up. “In Saarthal.”
She doesn’t think she likes the dead-man-mushrooms. She’ll look at something else, next.
The Archmage says, “Ah.”
She scrunches up her face harder, looking over all the bright colours of all the other things in the garden. There is a moment’s silence.
When the Archmage speaks again, his voice is careful. “I doubt it,” he says. “The fungus derives some of its names from its resemblance to withered flesh.”
“Oh.” That actually is very interesting. Efri wriggles her fingers. Maybe it’s like a sort of camouflage – though why a mushroom would need camouflage she has no idea.
And when she thinks about it, her dead man would have been embalmed, so there wouldn’t have been much decay for mushrooms to grow from anyway. She squints at them, the little cluster of shrivelled-looking things. Still doesn’t really want to touch them, but her stomach isn’t lurching like it did when first she made the connection, so it’s fine.
She hears the Archmage’s coat rustling. He says, “Efri?”
Efri glances up at him out of the corners of her eyes. “Have you ever seen a dead man?”
The Archmage’s face creases; he sighs, a quiet exhale. He tilts his head away again so his face is in shadow and holds out her leather-bound book, his body already angling back towards his desk.
Efri looks at it. She says, “You can tell me the other ones, if you want.” He clearly knows his garden well.
She thinks he frowns, though he’s still at that odd angle so it’s hard to see. “I’m rather busy at the moment.”
The magelights flash. Efri knows she frowns, then. “No, you’re not,” she points out, because he isn’t. Mirabelle does everything. The Archmage sits around being important.
He twists his head to look at her again, his face all lordly and severe. He does that sometimes, looks down his nose all haughty. Efri’s not sure if he does it on purpose or not, but just to be safe, she tips her head way back so she can look down her own nose back at him. Beside them, the garden shimmers, a rainbow bouquet of plants and textures and smells, a round motley moon set into the cold flagstones of the floor.
The Archmage sighs again (at some point Efri should start counting, make a game of beating the record) and folds his hands, with their heavy book, behind his back. Efri’s eyes crinkle, victorious. “If you look there,” he says, “at the base of the tree trunk, you can see the grapevines…”
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You ever write some shit where you're like 'oh yeah I'm totally just describing what this guy is doing in his free time nothing else im just setting the scene it's unnecessarily detailed for no particular reason' and then realize you are in fact just info dumping about some shit you are interested in actually
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girlishrage · 1 year
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did some art for this poem i wrote a while back ^^
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llycaons · 2 months
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mostly good advice however the commanding sentance structure grates. as if some of these are easy....also this
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obviously thinking critically is a skill that needs to be honed but 'simply discern What To Do' unfortunately I have bad judgement and every single time I've tried to do either of these I've regretted it. sad! well there's other goals
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the-cookie-of-doom · 4 months
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having a very bizarre experience with my writing rn where I can fire off 2-5k without blinking, but as soon as I stop looking at that fic for nay length of time, I just. can't work on it anymore. The inspiration totally wells up. I'm having a hard time just finishing the smut fic I wrote yesterday? I know what needs to happen, I'm very motivated to write, but... there's just nothing
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fusulyesheep · 10 months
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I had never finished eizouken's anime in 2020 but was already one of my favourites somehow just because of the themes and animation. I never had the time till this weekend and I did it.
Just one tiny problem: I got COMPLETELY obsessed but the fandom died 3 years ago and now im scrapping for ANYTHING about it now
where are my incredible specific fanfics at
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angelosearch · 3 months
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HOORAY I AM HOME!!!
Home is where my bed and shower is!! And my art supplies! And my Ultimania! And my Nintendo Switch! (Plus my dog after I pick him up tomorrow 😁)
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detectivechandler · 5 months
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He has never been afraid of the night or the shadows that wait within it, has never been bothered by the silence that others deem oppressive. Sometimes, tucked away in his office until the late hours, he feels the quiet of an empty incident room gather 'round his shoulders like the hug of an old friend - familiar and comforting in its stillness. His heart quickens at large crowds and loud parties, lungs aching at the energy to form conversation and fingers curled into sweaty palms until they leave crescent shaped marks in their wake. People, noise, small talk ... those are the things that leave tendrils of fear in his chest that snake their way into the pit of his stomach and sit like heavy boulders, holding ground against whatever courage he tries to rouse.
Tonight, he sits at his desk like always - proud with shoulders rigid and straight as he flips through notes with fingers that are raw from hot water, fingers that he pretends aren't trembling the slightest bit. He's always been good at hiding, at control .. but here and there .. the movement of a page or the click of a pen ... his discipline slips - a corner gets crumpled, a stark white page blooms with an ill placed bot - and the detective does his best to rein it in all the tighter. He's long stopped paying attention to the empty room outside his open office door. The whiteboard looms against the wall, empty and taunting, a stark reminder that their current investigation is getting no where... and Joe stares at his files, ignoring it..stares at the pages of evidence and suspects and testimony until the words swim and the photographs blur .. and all the while he can feel that whiteboard staring at him, whispering...
Catch me if you can.
One palm has moved to his side, pressing against the stiff fabric of a fresh shirt as if testing the sting, fingers tapping the area around the ache like poachers teasing out their prey. It's gotten worse since they arrived back, it's gone from a dull ache to a sharp pain that feels as if the flames of hell themselves are burying their way beneath skin and into muscle and bone... and Joe all but grits his teeth against it. He hadn't been near anything, it was just raw skin from damp fabric - he had been sweating, they all had - it wasn't anything important... making a deal of it would have only led to fodder for more bloody ghost stories. The shadow that suddenly falls across his desk makes him jump, calls forth a squeak of a noise that the detective will absolutely not own up to, and the feel of warmth in his cheeks causes blue eyes to narrow when they look up at the office's assailant.
@gentlemanstarkey: lift up your shirt a little so i can see. (WC)
"Wh-what? What?" The question is indignant, a single word tripping over itself as it waits for him to unravel the others from a tangled up tongue and Joe opens and closes his mouth soundlessly for a moment at the other man's appearance. It occurs to him, suddenly, that his one hand is still pressing against his side, protective of a tender wound that he is still telling himself isn't really there, and he removes it with as much of a relaxed air as he can muster, using suddenly free fingers to rearrange papers to the clearing of his throat.
"It's nothing. I checked in the .. I looked when we got back. Just irritation from my shirt or something, that's all." Blue eyes stay trained on the polished wood before him, jaw set tight against the memory of what he had seen in the mirror. Lines, three of them, angry and raised ridges of crimson that had stood out in stark contrast against his pale skin... he had thought cold water from the tap would soothe them, had taken a damp towel and tried to care for them as best as he knew how ... but with each cool drop, Joe had felt that fire burn all the hotter until the heat felt as if his very bones were turning to ash.
James Starkey is a thorn in his side - a man who by all rights should be an absolutely mad charlatan but instead has proven himself a fount of intelligence and quick thinking time and time again. It's enough to set the younger man's teeth on edge. He can feel it on him now - that silent, judgmental gaze that seemed to see everything .. even the things that Joe wasn't aware he'd been hiding. The younger man knows what awaits if he glances upwards, knows the power of those sharp, piercing eyes that seem to shatter the disguise that's served him for decades with a single flicker... but he finds himself doing it anyhow, brows furrowing in an effort to quiet the sudden lurching of a heart that begins a steady and thunderous rhythm inside the hollow of his chest.
"What are you still doing here? Don't you need a good night's rest to fight whatever evils you find in the archive tomorrow?" There's a snort of laughter at his own joke, a huff of breath that serves as the sound of a man awarding himself a point in the competition he's dreamt up... but Joe is quick to frown soon after. "Seriously, James. As flattered as I am that you've chosen to wait for the opportune moment to appear out of bloody nowhere and ask to see under my shirt ... There's no overtime in it for you." He's angry. He doesn't know why. But the rhythm of his heart is chased by a heat that seems to pulse in time with the wound across his flank and his left hand taps restlessly atop the paper it currently sits on, fighting the instinct to return to where it was pressed against his side. "Go home. Find someone else to study like an experiment. I won't be used as fodder for one of your ... stories... or whatever it is you call them."
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lucyvsky · 4 months
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made discoveries while working on this essay for example at some point jamc distortion guitar just sounds like white noise and so my brain actually works better listening to it. number two stimuwrite let’s kiss on the mouth
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