#maybe its for not clogging when people search for it

[heywriters]

how to make a tumblr post (and get notes!)

Have never seen any post discuss these exact things, so i'm sharing my insights with y'all*

Use images. They don't have to be good or spectacular like this extremely coherent thing I just made. They just need to catch the eye break up dashboard monotony.

The gif search feature is an unreliable wild card at best and a NSFW eye gouge at worst, but it gives credit to the op of the gif

If you're an artist your whole post is your images, so skip to the links and tags section of this post because the rest won't help much.

-> Image Descriptions

When making a post that contains images, hover over an image and click the meatballs icon in the lower right corner of the image. Click "update description" to add a description. It isn't always necessary, but it is very courteous for a variety of accessibility reasons.

-> Text

Break up your text. Run-on sentences are standard here, lack of punctuation too, you can really do whatever you want, but avoid massive blocks of text. unless you've got a really incendiary opening line and the entire center of that granite chunk of text is actually comedy gold, hard-hitting tumblr journalism, or one of those zany confessional posts that can be followed up by the drive thru meme

break up

your text.

and go light on the ALL CAPS. save it for emphasis or when you're feeling very unhinged or saRcAStiC y'know how that goes, i don't need to explain it. this site has a very dry tone to its posts so caps are rare. also periods

Bullet points and numbered posts are good and fine. The "Chat" post option is used less often these days, but different groups found uses for it so it sticks around.

Titles Matter

they help break up text and put people at ease. they are best for informative, mature posts but can make you look like a square in more relaxed conversations. sometimes they are also great for emphasis in a comedic sh*tpost (censorship is entirely up to you, btw. you don't have to censor much on tumblr except titties and genitals).

Tumblr automatically shortens long posts now, but etiquette asks that you tag #long post if you want to avoid clogging up someone's dash. It don't matter too much though, this is the "color of the sky" site, so get used to posts being too long

That being said "READ MORE" is a fantastic feature. Use it when you want some level of privacy like "hey, only click below if you want to hear about my problems" or "click below to read my 18+ fanfic." Read more is also great in case you want to delete something forever. If a reblogged post has a read more, but op deleted the og post, that content is gone (readmore has to be on the og post at time of posting for this to work, btw; edits to og post do not span all reblogs)

the other bells and whistles like colored font or italics are helpful in improving text, but we don't really rely on them. every mode of looking at this site alters those aspects somehow so we often ignore them

-> Links

Hint: People don't want to click links. We don't know where they're taking us. Most of us are on our phone and don't want to open another tab or leave the app to go on the browser. We're cozy here on Tumblr and do not wish to be whisked away (unless it's a rickroll)

Don't leave the link thumbnail to do all the work, like so

add a little sneak peak info, maybe your favorite line from the article or a reason why it's important for people to know the info on the other side of that link. Sell it!

When you're adding a link into a list, i.e. no large thumbnail just a line of text leading you to another site, try not to copy/paste the link as is

"https://......"

No one wants to click on that it's gross and scary. It's screams "meh, i'll click later if i feel like it." If the build up to the link is too good to resist ("if you want to save the orphaned puppies here's the link") then that http mess is sufficient.

Otherwise, dress your links up a little by including the title or a description of what the link goes to:

Or, if it's an informal post where you're just popping info in to back up whatever insane thing you just said, just write something like "link here" or "(x)" and hyperlink it.

-> Tags

artists, writers, and other creators: leave a tag on your creative content that makes it easy for blog visitors to see it all at once. e.g. "My work" and we click on that while on your blog and see only your works

You can have up to thirty tags on any post. All will make your post show up in searches and followed tags (it used to be only the first five tags that got you traction). However,

Please. Do not tag everything you can possibly imagine being relevant to your post because

It's called tag spam and it's against TOS

Everyone here hates that

No one is going to check all those tags ever. Someone might search one five years from now and accidentally find your post hanging out in the ether and they'll still ignore it.

Your imagination is wicked tiny because I guarantee the perfect tag is going to be something indecipherable and seemingly niche.

Follow popular tags (or at least be aware of them)

If yours is an off-the-cuff post and you don't have time to find out what a niche group is into then wing it, sure, idc. this is also the shitposting site do whatever you want

Don't put your hate in the fan tags. This is the unapologetically-like-dumb-things site and your negativity is not wanted. You can still complain, just avoid tagging to get the attention of the fans of whatever you're complaining about. That enables pvp and even nonfans will know you deserve the backlash

-> Audio & Video

clickable by nature because we all love noise and moving images so there's no special way to share posts like this. just post them with good tags and maybe a one-liner, and they'll sell themselves

Tip: it's nice to add descriptions to these too but it isn't common

Protip: if the audio is the best part of the video (e.g. a baby burps REALLY loudly and it's hilarious) please caption or tag "Unmute!"

-> mkay bye

that's all i can think of right now. will update later if i remember something

---

*this is year eleven of my time on tumbles and i studied marketing in college for like six of those years and have been applying that bupkis to tumblr ever since. every post i see that gets no traction and every lovely artist that goes nowhere on here bothers me so deeply and i sincerely want y'all to succeed <3 <3

+ If you find this helpful and want to support my blog, I have a ko-fi!

+ If you're concerned about my mental health from being on Tumblr so long and want to contribute to my "get better" fund, I have a ko-fi!

#writing #tumblr guide #tumblr etiquette #marketing #writeblr #authorblr #artists of tumblr #og #tongue in cheek #long post

[inmyheadimobsessed]

All Up In Your Mind

pairing: shuri ✘ black!fem!reader

summary: you think shuri doesn't notice you.

contains: fluff

word count: 600+

divider by: @firefly-graphics

note: hii! this is my first fic on tumblr. i've been reading here for years though. like the rest of the world, i am obsessed with shuri and she is the love of my life. so i decided to write about it. just something cute and light for my first post. i hope you enjoy <3

When she kissed you, it shook the ground beneath your feet. You had not anticipated it. Sure it was a secret desire of yours, being alone with the Princess, having her all to yourself. The lab was always so crowded during the day, everyone running tests for whatever experiment they were working on, calculations for an invention they were tinkering with.

And Shuri, she was always the busiest. Always in her own mind, so far removed from the world buzzing on around her, and the people in it. So far removed from you. And you never envisioned her carving out time to see you, let alone kiss you. It knocked you back, shook your foundation to its very core.

A rattled heartbeat roared awake inside your sternum to revel in this unfamiliar, filling feeling. It yearned for more, starvation quelled by the delicate movements of her mouth. The kiss consumed you wholly. Shuri’s lips were the softest you’d ever known, they danced across your own gracefully, performing like a prima ballerina. Her tattooed hands were gentle when caressing your jaw, she made sure she took her time with you. Warm fingers electrified you, fanning the crackling furnace growing from within.

Shuri smelled of fresh cocoa butter, vanilla, and something else you were unable to identify. Floral maybe, but it was magnificent all the same. Her scent was so enamoring, so unique to her, and it always left you dazed. It wafted up your nose, intent set on coating your senses. The kiss, her scent, her presence, it left you intoxicated. Your head swam at the feeling, growing lighter and lighter until you felt tethered to the air. It was so much; too much.

The day began to fade outside the giant windows of her lab, and the city lulled in response. Shuri pecked your lips once, twice, three times before breaking the kiss completely. Hunger drove her as much as it did you. She cupped your burning cheeks in her palms before slowly dragging them down your neck. Your hands snaked around her waist hesitantly, tugging her into you. Feeling her warmth spill out on you brought forth a low gasp from your throat. Shuri’s face turned curious then and yours burned like the sun.

The rapid pounding in your chest mirrored the ceremonial drumming of the River Tribe. You knew she was aware of it, Griot was most certainly aware of it. Each thump coaxing you into averting her demanding gaze. You tried, and you failed.

“Eyes on me.” Shuri smirked at you with those perfect kiss swollen lips. “You are shaking,”

You huffed dramatically, then gave her a soft smirk of your own. “Sorry. That was…”

“It was. For me, too.” Dazzling brown eyes, illuminated by the sinking Wakandan sun drank you in. The most gorgeous sunset you’d probably ever witness, but your eyes only saw her. There would always be more sunsets, there was only one Shuri. She was all you needed to see. Her existence lit you up the same way the blazing ball in the sky would.

“I did not think you even noticed me most days.” Your braids fell into your face as your eyes found your shoes.

Her finger lifted your chin with nimble ease, “I notice everything there is to notice about you. You're a constant on my mind. I just, I don't know… I can't–” She bit her lip and shook her head, searching for words that refused to come. You could tell her mind was clogged with emotions just as yours was.

You smiled at this, it was truly a sight to see, “Princess Shuri, of the most powerful nation in the world, super genius, and the Black Panther, rendered speechless. By little ole me? Wow.”

“You are in my head, sthandwa.” Her blush consumed her features, beautiful and beaming. She overwhelmed you in the most serene way.

She reached for your hands that still sat around her hips, pulling your knuckles to her lips. Shuri ghosted them over your ever trembling fingers, eyes boring into you all the while. “And I don't think I want you out.”

#shuri #shuri x black!reader #lyricswriting #shuri x reader #shuri x f!reader #shuri x fem!reader #wakanda forever #black panther #letitia wright #myworks #mcu fic #marvel fic #namor #fluff #shuri x black!fem reader #marvel #mcu #shuri x y/n #letitia wright fanfic

[happysadyoyo]

@pillowspace So... this isn't the time loop au but I thought you might enjoy something a little different considering I'm going to be spending my next few ficlets doubling down on the whump. I really really like dangerous Moon and exploring the cruelty of turning a daycare attendant into an assistant murderer.

So to counterbalance that I'm gonna write a little bit of clone au, and am tagging you in it for the love and maintenance of caring for your resident DCA. If you don't want to be tagged or see the other parts it's okay to let me know!

____

When you applied, it'd been for a laugh. You'd never expected to be standing outside a large plexi and metal cylinder, watching as a seven foot (eight foot? You've never been particularly good at guessing sizes) jester animatronic be tested by a diagnostic robot.

Honestly, you have no idea what you're doing, really.

The computer in front of you dings, and you glance at it. Everything had gone green except for a part in the animatronic's chest. You squint and check your notes on what to do before opening the service chamber.

"Hello! How does everything look doc?" The animatronics' personalities aren't shut down during maintenance, a fact that had startled you the first time you'd been tasked to touch up the paint on the wolf's nails. Roxy? She wasn't one of the originals, so you found it harder to remember her name.

This one is new too. A sun themed jester for the daycare with flexible rays that softly flutter as it watches you pick up a wrench. It doesn't have pupils, possibly so the children don't know where it's looking and discourage misbehaviour. You're not sure how it wouldn't be off-putting.

Then again, this animatronic was designed by the same company who hired a biologist in place of a mechanic, so maybe you shouldn't be so surprised. Fazbear seems like a company that failed upwards despite shooting itself in both feet and eyes.

Ha, your sense of humor is coming back. Your therapist will be pleased.

You stand in front of the animatronic now, tapping the wrench lightly against its front panel. "Oh, are you hoping for a surprise? Sorry, but we don't have a cake hatch like the glamrocks." It does help with unlatching it's hatch, pulling the ruffle around its neck up, the sun rays retracting as you feel for the indentations along the smooth ridge of metal. It had to be hidden and baby proofed since it was a daycare attendant.

The hatch swings open and the smell of burning plastic is accompanied by an outpouring of glitter, falling over your hands and apron, the operating table and onto your shoes and the grubby floor below. You stare at the rainbow of color before looking up at the animatronic blankly.

It has released its ruffle and waves its hands apologetically. "I am so sorry. Of course I'll help clean it up but ---" Your blank stare comes across as unnerving for most people, but you're surprised when it seems to affect the animatronic as well. "A little one decided they wanted to make me pretty since it's been awhile since I've had the chance to clean up. I must've forgotten all about it with how busy I've been. How bad is it inside?" It tries to peer inside, but the rays get in the way.

You look too, covering your mouth and nose with one hand. It's not too bad, you guess. Most of the glitter has melted around the hottest moving parts, and the fan was clogged, making it all the worse. You snap a picture before showing it to the animatronic. It wasn't. A conscious thing to do. Later, you would reason it out as a way to document your work. There was no way the higher ups would like you tinkering so much otherwise.

"Oh! Well, that is bad I suppose. Thank you for showing me." The animatronic watches you curiously as you set down your wrench, going back to the table in search of something. "I've not caught your name friend. I'm Sun! Or Sunny to friends. I'd like to think we're friends, since you're going inside me."

There's a moment of hesitation, and you take the time to test the can you've found. It hisses sluggishly, making you frown. You can feel the animatronic's eyes on you. Sun, Sunny. Your hand twitches involuntarily, and you drop the can.

"Oh!" You hear Sunny move, and turn in time to see him taking one long stride to bend and fetch the can. It holds the hatch still, keeping it from smacking into your arm. "Here you go. I saw you don't like bending down so..."

You're face to plate with it now, and you can hear the mechanics in its head clicking and whirring softly. You can't shake the feeling that it's looking past your skin and inside you, all the way down into your marrow. You shiver and push it back, rubbing your arms and looking to the side. Ignoring its apologies as it returns to the table, still holding the can of air.

You find a new can and test it as well. It hisses sharply, blowing specks of glitter off your sleeve. When you return to the table, you hold out your phone again. Typed out on it is your name.

Delicate long fingers wrap around yours so the animatronic can read the small text. They're warm and smooth and it surprises you how softly it holds you. "Ah, that is a lovely name. It's like sunshine."

When it lets go, you can't help the heat creeping up your neck from the compliment. Or, more rightly so, the very genuine sounding warmth that came from Sunny's voice. How could that be programmed in?

#clone au #daycare attendant #fnaf daycare attendant #for the record charlie will be in this too >> #i adore the puppet.

[tilebytiles]

this has probably already been talked about lol but i was trying to find the puppets website for funsies and instead came across this really odd rabbit hole??? full story under the cut so i don't clog the dash or anything

so for context i have the ecosia extension installed and when i typed in "the last shadow puppets" and nothing came up i was like Hmm ok sometimes the results can be 50/50. so i hit a recommended search at the bottom that threw in the word "website" and the first 2 results were wikipedia and the domino page but the third was theageoftheunderstatement.com.

the immediate thing that threw me off was that the first sentence on the page is "Like monthly car insurance site prudentplus.com these guys are different." What. there's like a whole description of the band (which is out of date now cause the page is from 2010) but then underneath it, there's a whole thing about fast food delivery insurance (???) and how to get it, what the best way is etc etc. the prudent plus comment does have a link that leads to the insurance company in question and from what i can tell it was still active as recently as last year.

at the veeery bottom of the taotu page is "search here for uk short term cover" which has another link that leads to another page on the site about car insurance for foreign drivers. this has another link like 3/4 of the way down the page that leads to a different site that from what i can tell hasn't been updated in over a decade (at the very bottom it says copyright 2006/13).

its worth noting that if we hop back to the main page there's a box on the left side with all the songs off of taotu listed as well as a link at the bottom that leads to a page about no deposit car insurance in the uk. every song leads to a different page on the site describing the storyline of the song (and mv, if it has one) as well as the sound of the song. most of the song pages lead to different insurance things. standing next to me leads to disqualified driver insurance, calm like you leads to lorry insurance, the chamber leads to builders / business property insurance, only the truth leads to architects / beautician liability insurance, black plant leads to convicted driver insurance, and the time has come again leads to personal liability insurance.

at the bottom of the home page is the name peter marsden. initially i just tried searching his name up but then i realized the answer was right in front of me and i searched it up with "prudent plus" slapped on the end. sure enough, a page on the prudent plus site came up introducing the staff, including a man named peter. at least at the time the "about us" page was set up (idk if its still updated) he was 71 and "has an obsession for creating images of cars, people, monsters and other strange objects and beings in unusual, and sometimes impossible, environments." very cool peter!

i didn't check all the links on the songs because i didn't think there'd be much there but my only guess for the website's existence is that the insurance people saw the popularity of taotu and decided to make a page about it while promoting their insurance stuff. outside of that i have no fucking clue. maybe they're just big tlsp fans. good on you peter

#the last shadow puppets #tlsp #taotu era #this was just. #the strangest find #idk if its much of a rabbit hole in the first place but i still think its neat #like a little piece of internet history

[anglerfishenthusiast]

okay so the speedrun version of this post is "i think that d'arce, known very religious knight, could be called to action to take the girl into the god of the depths while i think that cahara could not."

more beneath the cut for my full explanations and reasonings but this is long i dont wanna clog peoples stuff

my belief in that statement is not because i think cahara wouldnt care about the girl or anything, but when asking the question "what character would reasonably think themselves able to protect a child while getting what they need to get done, done," the answer is 100% d'arce and kind of. definitely not cahara. like, it isnt a case of "would see a child and not want to help her", its that when asking who would let a child Be Their Responsibility In The Dungeons theres like, one answer. the other likely case Would be ragnvaldr because he would 100% be sympathetic to her but hes on a slaughter vengence death quest i DONT think he would involve a child in that (and what happened with him is accounted for in termina, with one of his descendants existing, so we Know he made it out). d'arce is a knight who sees herself as incredibly capable, even to degrees beyond her actual ability, and would absolutely take in the girl with the idea that she could take care of her And search for le'garde.

cahara is in the dungeons to get loot and to get le'garde so he can be paid for it. he has a girlfriend and an unborn baby to go back to and has way more reason to go into ma'habre when le'garde insists he and the player character go deeper because hes looking for loot to make it rich. the ancient untouched city? literally what could be better for Exactly what cahara is looking to do? d'arce, however, is a joan of arc figure, both visually and in her deeply super-not-christian All-mer... everythingness. d'arce would, absolutely, upon receiving a vision from nilvan requesting that she to bring her daughter to the depths agree and follow through with it. especially if she thinks to herself that she can look for le'garde at the same time, and just never comes across him. and not to be like "cahara would take one look at the god of the depths mouth-hole and go 'i am absolutely not doing that'" but. well. i don't think i'm wrong to safely assume that. i just don't think that he would commit to it if asked by nilvan. maybe he would try, but i don't think he'd commit.

now, for a bit of why i think it would all just go together More, if we see it as this way; cahara's S ending has him live in fear. he gets everything he wants, but the dungeons haunt him. he never really knows peace. the prophecy ending is about escaping and being haunted, and then decades later after hearing about him and his conquests, seeing the yellow king go by and finding yourself horrified when you see that le'garde hasn't aged, and that something about him is deeply, deeply wrong. more wrong than anything you'd seen before, wrong in a new way. the two would just go hand in hand to make a perfect mix; cahara helping le'garde get deeper inside of ma'habre, and then doing nothing to prevent him from becoming what he wants to become. what business of that is his? cahara just wants to get out and get out with the riches he found. him submitting and allowing le'garde to do as he pleases would just make sense.

now, on the flipside, it would make sense for d'arce to do all this too, of course. but! i just think that it would be... a bit nice, even, just to think about the possibility that d'arce was able to, in a way, redeem herself for what she was complicit in as part of the knights of the midnight sun by helping birth a new god that was loved and loved her in return. taking her S ending as canon with her being part of le'garde's... everything that comes with it makes her complicit further in his awful crimes and of all of it, she does it for nothing. her lack of mention would mean that, rather than dying in obscurity but dying loved and peacefully, as part of something bigger, she just... despite being what brought le'garde back, brought him his power, and allowed him to become what he was, she's just... gone. completely wiped from history in all mentions. and while this would be fitting, in a grim way for sure, i think that cahara's ending affinity mixability with the prophecy ending and the direct, closer ties of the prophecy ending leading to the yellow king everything and all just tracks. it would make sense, is all.

theres the counterargument that d'arce's fate can only be attributed to her S ending because if you use rot on le'garde in termina, it shows a form like the one from her ending. but honestly, i don't think this sets it in stone, considering that the gods are shown to have multiple forms, especially ones more grotesque than the ones they project outwardly/are portrayed as in artistic works. and also rot does just sorta... do that, so i mean, i'm just not really convinced from that alone that it confirms d'arce's S ending.

this also, disclaimer, is not me saying "its impossible for cahara to be the one who did the girl ending", it's me saying that it could just as easily make sense, if not make a little bit More sense in my humble opinion, that d'arce could have done it instead, since the possibility is written off as impossible on the wiki. simply food for thought! yaaaay d'arce we love you d'arce

#if you read this thank you. big kiss #fear and hunger #lemon squeezy.txt #fear and hunger termina #fear and hunger 2 #sure ill tag it. read my endings thoughts boy

[adarkrainbow]

Glass slippers, yes... SLIPPERS

Whenever the “verre VS vair” debate is brought up, glass shoes or fur shoes, something is pointed out. It is extremely funny that people seem unwilling to accept the “glass” part of the shoes (which in itself is not something weird, especially since as other people pointed out there is a lot of glass in fairytales, up to entire glass mountains) ; but blindly accept and never contest a much more puzzling and weirdest part of the item. “Slippers”. Glass “slippers”.

In French “pantoufle de verre”. The shoes you see in every modern Cinderella iteration are not “pantoufles”. They’re high-heeled shoes, they’re shoes to go outdoor, they are not “slippers”/”pantoufles”. And the very decision of making Cinderella wear “pantoufles” to her ball seems very strange... 

A “pantoufle”/”slipper” (for the sake of simplicity I’ll use the French pantoufle from now on) is not a ball shoe, and certainly a strange choice to go to the ball. A pantoufle is a comfortable “inside shoe”, worn usually inside the house (or sometimes even just in bedrooms), and often the pantoufle was opened up at the back, leaving the heel uncovered. That’s the kind of slipper the 1950s dad wears alongside his pajama robe when he gets out of the house with a pipe in his mouth to go searching for his journal. A quite unelegant and unusual shoewear for a formal ball organized by a prince. 

Maybe we can get some clues from looking at the history of the pantoufle? Let’s see...

The French pantoufle was originally inspired by the Arabian “babouche” (you know, the archetypal “Arabian” shoe you’ll see everyone wear in One Thousand and One Nights). Somehow the fashion of the “babouche” reached France in its Middle-Ages and became there “pantoufles”. Originally pantoufle were peasant and low-class shoes: made out of felt, they were not shoes per se but things people put on their feet when they wore clogs (what in France we call “sabots” shoes) so that it would be much more confortable (”sabots” being thick and hard wooden shoes). So basically it started out as the peasant equivalent of socks. 

But by the 15th century the “pantoufle” suddenly reached the upper-class where it became a true fashion, every gentleman had to wear some, usually made of silk or thin leather (those were costly shoes). These “pantoufles” were notably worn with a sole made of either wood or cork (”liège” as we call it in France), to avoid the pantoufle being dirtied by the muddy ground. 

In the 16th century, a new change to the “pantoufle” was made (which notably became confused and conflicted with another type of slipper known as “mule”). The “pantoufle” became feminized, to the point that it became at one point an exclusively “feminine” fashion, the “pantoufle” becoming womanswear.

Though it had exceptions: notably under the rule of Louis 14 (who was the king under which lived Perrault and whom he served), the servants of the royal palace had to wear “pantoufles” with felt soles for two reasons. 1) So that the sound of their constant travellings throughout the palace wouldn’t disturb the upper-class. 2) So that their shoes wouldn’t damage the floor. 

It was at the end of the 17th century (which is also the time Perrault wrote and published his fairytales) that women started to use “pantoufle” as proper shoes, not just glorified socks. They noted how light and practical and easy to slip on and wear those things were, and so they wore them all on their own - but only inside their house or in their private chambers, due to how fragile they were. As I said, “inside shoes”. 

 So in conclusion, we know that in Perrault’s time the “pantoufle” were feminine footwear, traditional footwear of the royal court (but for servants), and fashionable enough to be worn on their own... But at the same time it was still an “inside shoe” of comfort and rest, and still stays a very unusual item to go to a royal ball with. They certainly were not easy shoes to dance with (not even counting how they were made of glass!). 

It is probably just another one of those details that Perrault liked to add to his fairytales just for the sake of having a form of humor in there. But it is fascinating to see how the “pantoufle”/”slipper” concept was rejected through time - in fact, even when people in the 19th century debated the “verre or vair” topic, they often called the shoes “soulier” (which is a type of outdoor shoe much closer to the ones popularized by modern adaptations than the indoor “slippers”, bedroom “pantoufles”).

All in all I can’t give you an answer, but it is an interesting detail that not many people took care of looking at (from my knowledge) ; or if they did, it was themselves to only point out how somehow nobody seemed bothered by the fact the shoes were slippers.

#cinderella #cendrillon #charles perrault #perrault fairytales #glass slippers #glass vs fur #french fairytales

[groundcontrol21]

Going Around (M, Modern AU Musketeers)

You guys have gotten a little reprieve from my nonsense on here, but I'm back ;) I'm in such a bad state mentally that I just had to do something, so this!!

It's a modern!AU story, which as you can guess I don't usually go for, but it's a belated gift for @seasnz set in her pharmacist AU. It's based on stuff we've discussed, but the absolute BEST part of the fic is all her, babyyy 😈😈😈

CW: contagion

“Is everything alright?”

The voice comes from somewhere close (too close) over Athos’s shoulder, and he turns to see the man from behind the pharmacist’s counter, the one with the kind of wavy black hair you’d see on shampoo commercials, beaming at him as though Athos is some excitingly rare artifact and not just… Athos. The man’s voice is, irritatingly, just as bright as his smile, and Athos casts a desperate look around the shop only to find, even more irritatingly, that he’s been standing in this one spot long enough for sunshine-man to have helped the three other customers that were in line when Athos entered. Sunshine-man is helping him out of boredom, Athos realizes, and he bites back a groan. 

The man’s head is cocked as he awaits an answer. No, Athos wants to say, everything is very much not alright. He’s only just moved here two weeks ago and apparently just being in this new, godforsaken place has been enough to break his immune system out of its three-year-health-streak and give him a terribly damp, snuffly cold in his head. He knows he’s been in the aisle for quite some time, staring bitterly at the boxes of medications in his hands, but he is so seldom sick he can’t even remember what he used the last time he felt bad enough to do anything but tough it out (and besides, he swears all the boxes have changed since then–why on Earth a box for snotty-nosed sick people needs a revamp to look enticing and modern is beyond him).

“Oh, you’ve got a cold?” Sunshine man’s voice is all worried sympathy, far more sympathy than Athos and his pitiful headcold deserve or even want (Athos tells himself this latter part is true, no matter how his stomach flutters a bit at the thought of being fussed at). He gestures to the box whose ingredients Athos has been squinting at for the past five minutes.

“No, I just peruse this aisle for fun.”

Immediately Athos bites his tongue. Why does he do this? The man is only trying to help him, for God’s sake–more than that, it’s literally his job to help him–and here Athos is, falling back to his snappy self and–

The man laughs, and Athos resents the shimmer of warmth the sound sends through him. Why can this man not just let him wallow in his own self-pity? Surely a man with a 37.8 degree temperature deserves to. Athos tucks his chin into his scarf with a low grumble, trying resolutely to hold fast to his rapidly dwindling bad mood. 

“Maybe I can help you narrow down your search,” the pharmacist offers, taking a step closer. “What’s bothering you most?”

Athos gives a demonstratively clogged sniffle. “My head is so stopped up I can hardly even think.”

Though the sound made Athos himself shudder with disgust, to his credit, the pharmacist does not so much as flinch. Rather he leans forward, fingers ticking along the medicine boxes as though he is a librarian looking through titles for a book. “Something with a decongestant, then. This one is–”

The sniffle clearly shifted the delicate balance in Athos’s stuffy head, for before he knows it, a sneeze is bursting out of him with no warning. “Ihh’KESHHH’uhh!” His hand comes up a crucial second too late, for Athos sees the mist fly between them in the fluorescent shop lights and, to his utter and abject horror, glisten on the pharmacist’s neck and cheek. 

Athos hurries to retrieve a tissue from the pack in his pocket. Should he offer it to the man to clean himself up? “Oh God. I’m so terribly sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“A sneeze clearly came over you,” the pharmacist says calmly, wiping his cheek with his sleeve. He turns to hand the box he has chosen from the shelf to Athos, and his face softens impossibly further. “You’re ill, it comes with the territory. It’s quite alright.”

Athos takes the box from him, feeling the weight of it heavy in his hand with guilt and embarrassment. The sneeze, though dampening his skin, has not dampened the man’s spirit, for he chatters away with the breezy tone as before. “What I was saying though, this one will work well to clear you up a bit and it’ll get rid of that little temperature you have.”

Athos pauses, narrows his eyes. “How did you know I–”

There is that beam again, and the pharmacist looks ridiculously proud. “You’re a bit flushed around the cheeks, and you’ve been in here a tad too long for it to be from the wind.”

Ah yes, Athos swallows the embarrassment and–perhaps disappointment?--this observation conjures up. Of course sunshine-man was so keen to help him, Athos had been cluttering up his shop and breathing his germs for the better part of half an hour by this point. 

Athos, are you really so foolish as to be disappointed that the pharmacist doesn’t deep-down care for you personally? Good God, perhaps more so than a decongestant, Athos needed a heaping dose of Extra-Strength Get-A-Grip tablets. 

“I’ll take this, then,” Athos says.

“Brilliant.” It would be so much easier if the man would stop smiling like that. He claps his hands together with a little oh sound. “Tissues and lozenges? Have you got enough of those?”

Athos shifts around on the balls of his feet, willing the worst of the flush which had nothing to do with his illness down from his cheeks.“Yes.”

“Good,” the pharmacist says and gives him a little wave. “Well let’s head over to the front, then, and I’ll ring you up.” 

Athos follows him to the till, feeling incredibly foolish and fighting the sudden urge to stuff the box of medicine in the pocket of his coat as though he were buying some outrageous sort of sex toy from the sunshine-man and not just a box of decongestant medicine. Their fingers brush when Athos hands the box back to the man for scanning, and he prays that if the pharmacist notices the all-out shiver which jolts through Athos, he’ll be inclined to think it’s Athos’s fever. 

Once it’s all paid, the pharmacist hands it back with a smile. “Come back if you need anything, and I’ll be glad to help you.” He gives a chuckle. “If I’m not in the front, I’m probably in the back. Ask for Aramis.”

“My name is Athos,” Athos says before he thinks, as if the man has asked, and dear God, can the tiles swallow me whole–

“It’s been nice to meet you Athos,” Aramis says, and his voice is so smooth and kind it sounds as though, against all odds, he genuinely means it. For a second, his expression seems almost intimate, before it shifts back to his usual pharmacist-ly authority. “Though I wish it weren’t under these circumstances. Go home, drink lots of fluids, and feel better, alright?”

******

Three days later, when Athos stops at the pharmacy again after a GP visit, with a 38.5 degree fever and a pounding headache, he feels as though he’s failed Aramis in a way, particularly after the man had told him in no uncertain terms to feel better, alright? At least this time, Athos thinks bitterly, he won’t sneeze on the man; he’s stopped-up so tightly no air has been coming in or out of his nose for the past 24 hours. 

There is no one in the shop but Aramis, who is seated this time behind the counter rather than standing. As Athos approaches, he instantly sees the reason why: the man’s nose is red and chapped, his lips parted to allow himself to breathe. His tired eyes are downcast, glassily out of focus on some point near the floor, and he’s sniffling wetly. If Athos looked that bad when he’d first come to the pharmacy, he wouldn’t have blamed Aramis for taking off running. 

“Oh no,” Athos says, cringing at the thick sound of his voice. “You caught this from me.”

Aramis springs from his seat with a tired but genuinely delighted smile. “Athos! I–Ihh’CHMPFF!” He deftly catches the sneeze in the crook of his elbow, something which Athos wishes he had done. “It’s nothing. There’s just something–heh! Snf!--going around.”

“Yeah, me.”

Aramis takes two tissues from the box which Athos has just noticed at his elbow, still looking distinctly hazy. He sniffles liquidly before getting a far-off look in his eyes. He looks up, squints at the overhead lights, breathing slowly and deliberately. Then, his breath hitches and he comes crashing down into the tissues. “Hih’TSHIEW!! Hihhh’TSCHHH!” 

Aramis gives his nose a soft, polite blow into the tissues before crumpling them up and tucking them in the pocket of his trousers. He squirts a liberal amount of hand sanitizer on his palm, and for a brief moment as he rubs it in, Athos gets the insane urge to chastise him at the hygiene of it all before he remembers he is the one who brought this all down on Aramis by sneezing in the man’s face. 

Aramis snuffles, then fixes him with a bleary smile. “What can I do for you?”

Athos clears his throat, the dragging ache reminding him distinctly of his own misery. “I’ve got a prescription.”

Aramis nods and disappears a moment to the prescription shelves. When he returns, he is holding Athos’s prescription and paperwork in one hand and tucking the collar of his shirt up over his nose with the other.

“Heh’RSHHH’uhh! Ehh’KSHHH! Hehh’ihhh’HIKSHHHH!” He pauses, just long enough to open his eyes to gauge where he is placing the bag on the counter, before his eyes squeeze shut again and he tugs the shirt up further. “Hahhh’KSHOO!”

For a moment, Athos had felt a bit jealous, for he’d have given anything for the sweet release of a sneeze to loosen the pressure built up in his head, but now that feeling was all but replaced by pity and guilt, for the man sounded awful and it was all Athos’s fault.

“You had to have caught this from me,” Athos croaks miserably. “I sneezed directly on you.”

Aramis picks up the paperwork, scans the prescription information with a rueful smile. “Well, if I did, it looks like I have a–snf! Snf!-- A sinus infectiod to–heh’KSHHOO! Ugh… Christ!” He gives his head a shake and presses his thumbs into the corner of his eyes to wipe away the bleary tears which have gathered there. Athos’s heart turns. “Snf! To look forward to.”

Aramis wipes his drippy nose with the balled up tissues from his pocket, either too tired or forgetful to use the hand sanitizer this time. He goes over the potential side effects and interactions of the antibiotics with Athos, sniffling and clearing his throat the entire way through.

As soon as he finishes, he murmurs a little, “Excuse me,” and crumples into his elbow with a raspy fit of coughing. Mid-fit, a man in a white coat, a bit older than Athos or Aramis, materializes from somewhere beyond the prescription shelves, shaking his head and clucking his tongue.

“Help that gentleman,” the man says, “and then go home, Aramis.” He picks up the tissue box and shoves it into Aramis’s chest; the man grasps it with a little oof. “God’s sake, you sound about three times worse than when I last saw you an hour ago.”

“Your point is taken, Treville,” Aramis says hoarsely. He smiles, all bright and cheeky like a little boy, and Athos’s stomach does a flip. “You don’t have to insult my wonderful voice, too.”

#my writing #modern muskesnz #i can't even put my historic snz tag on this womp womp #snzfic #more muskie snz!!! #sick ara/mis #and sick a/thos #though he's like... A Plot Device sorry man

[whatudowhennooneseesyou]

Was passing by and smelled a steaming heap of drama lol. Cause I'm like that, I went back and read every single ask about the big discussion to make sure I saw everything.

Not that anyone asked me, but with my psych hat on and having participated in the discussion myself and on the opposing side to you but having thoroughly enjoyed it, here are my takeaways:

1. I communicate a little but similarly to you. I separate emotions from facts and opinion and I feel that most times I should be able to have a brutally logical, articulated debate with someone without worrying about their feelings. However, the topic itself made that a big gamble. It's one of those topics that is deeply emotional and weaved through with layers upon layers of other emotional things like self-worth, values, purpose in life, culture, family, traditions, etc etc etc. A large number of people would simply be unable to have a conversation on this topic without their emotions getting mixed in.

2. But here's the kicker- just because a topic is emotionallt laden doesn't mean that you're responsible for someone taking it personally and running with it. One thing I do agree with, perhaps only tag moots/followers in such things that you know aren't bothered and are not easily triggered. And don't tag anything with "smut" that doesn't actually have explicit sex in it. I know it's tempting, it helps it get more traction but it's not good tagging etiquette. "Clogging the tags" they call it. However, even if you tagged someone in something, it's their choice whether to take it as a personal attack, a simple question, or ignore it altogether. Personally I've not responded to every single thing you've tagged me in or felt obligated to because sometimes I just have no opinion or nothing to say, or maybe I disagree but I'm not in the mood to discuss. No one HAS to respond to anything, it's a choice. They can also choose whether they get into a fight with you or not.

3. Other than that, there are loads of other things that affect how people perceive a topic or your take on a topic in general, and some of those were evident in people's answers. Like their own history, their beliefs about themselves, about the world, about what they think they deserve or what is realistic, what they feel they're entitled to (entitled isn't an outright bad word folks, by the way). Those things can be like an Instagram or Snapchat filter, they can make us see things differently to what they actually are. For anyone that wants to actually learn about this and work on themselves, search "cognitive distortions". There are at least 15 of them, over 15 different ways that our thinking can get wonky and starts being unhelpful to us.

4. We had a lot of discussion and not once did I feel disrespected for holding a different view to you. It's not even about "disagreeing" because it's so personal and subjective. I didn't see you pushing other people to come around to your point of view, I saw you just laying out your personal reasons for choosing not to have children. And plenty of other people who wanted children were perfectly happy to participate in the discussion, give their own reasoning and experiences and weren't disrespected or manipulated by you in any way.

5. This was a broad topic. Tagged or not, if there was no prior history of you discussing it with a particular person or having had heated exchanges with them in the past, then them taking it personally or seeing disrespect in your words is them choosing to take it that way.

Hello my love! @muselin

You're my fave psych moot and I'm so glad you've taken the time to come on here to respond to me! I feel stronger when you're around.

The 'clogging the tags' etiquette is a valid point and i didn't get that its bad etiquette so I'll take the steps as to not do that again.

And thank you for the time to read through every single ask, that would have been a long time and a lot of tea being spilled.

I'm honestly a bit too mentally fatigued to really elaborate more on the important of the post but just know that you have made some very beautiful points that everyone should see because they do add value to the topic that was discussed.

Truly, from the bottom of my heart. I am so grateful to have found you on this app.

#whatudowhennooneseesyou moots #whatudowhennooneseesyou answered asks #whatudowhennooneseesyou hard hours #us Aries gals have to stick together because whew it's brutal out here

[athenaholmesartistsguild]

So I really like the introduction to Yakuza 7! I'm noticing a lot of parallels to the beginning of the first Yakuza game (main character is hanging around with friends and family and then he takes the blame for a murder and ends up in prison for a long time).

But with LAD you can really see how much the series has developed when it comes to writing characters and structuring scenes/gameplay (and their animation holy shhhhit.).

I just finished chapter 1 and I can't help but think about Kiryu's introduction in 1 and all of the little decisions LAD made to make its intro hit really fuckin hard.

This post is really long, so I put the rest under the cut so I wasn't clogging people's dashboards or search results. Although maybe I should be a little spicy and cause chaos.

So in the beginning of 1, there's a lot of little fetchquests that help you learn about the characters you'll be interacting with later, but upon replays just makes the beginning of the game a slog to get through. In fact, it was pretty boring the first time I played as well.

Like when someone steals the ring you just bought and you have to get it back from a pawn broker, but he doesn't believe you so you have to find more money, and then he raises the price, so you have to get even more money and--

It's such a pain and feels pointless when the pawn broker just gives it back to you anyway.

If I'm remembering the scene correctly, the point was to establish soaplands as an important location so it isn't jarring when they come up later, and it establishes that Kiryu is autistic kinda clueless and doesn't notice his accidental innuendo. So we get this silly scene where Shinji thinks Kiryu's just horny as hell and Kiryu's so embarrassed that the ring he JUST bought got stolen that he feels like he needs to hide the reason he needs more cash.

When I describe the purpose of the scene, I actually really like it! You get a really good idea of who Shinji and Kiryu are and it endears us to our main character which should really be the focus at the beginning of a story (at least if you want to make your main character somewhat likeable to the audience). The yakuza games are really good at characterization so it's not a surprise that the foundation is really solid.

It's the execution of the scene that kinda takes the charm out of the whole thing. All this running back and forth just doesn't work. Sure it establishes that Kiryu has a pretty strong belief that you don't hurt innocent people (at least unprovoked), even if they're making your life super difficult, but making the player physically walk up and down the same alley just kills the momentum. Either having the screen cut to black and skip over walking to Shinji or simply putting Shinji closer to the player would've tightened up the pacing a bit.

Obviously there are really good scenes in the introduction. Two examples that always stood out to me were Majima's introduction and how quickly he's established as a dangerous foe as well as the scene where Nishiki mentions Kiryu getting to run his own family and Kiryu's ambivalence (or even hesitation) serves as a good foil to Nishiki's eventual development into a primary antagonist as well as also being a huge hint that Kiryu isn't going to be yakuza by the end of the game.

There's also some really good lines establishing Reina's unrequited crush on Nishiki which becomes important to the plot later. But the really good scenes are kinda overshadowed by the fetch quests in between them which are really more a relic of the original 2005 game than anything.

But Like a Dragon's intro? It's crisp.

You're introduced to Ichiban and you understand who he is real quick. Not only does Ichiban outright tell you he wants to be a hero, but he acts like one too! He's just a cutie-patootie and you fall in love with his energy and his excitement and everything really.

Which is what makes the scene where Arakawa asks him to take the fall for murder so much more heartbreaking! I'll talk about technical things in a second (because there's a lot to talk about), but it's so freaking heartbreaking to see Ichiban take going to jail for murder in stride. The shot where he starts crying just breaks my little heart.

And then when he eats his final meal? So fucking good. I just love it so much!

Onto gameplay and other technical stuff.

Chapter 1 of LAD is longer than 1's first chapter (I think. I might be remembering wrong), but the time feels so much better utilized. Number 1, locations are closer together. Number 2, there's no back-and-forth. It feels like you're progressing, even if you're just getting a plunger for Shangra-la.

LAD also uses a lot more cutscenes and a lot more varied ones at that. Not only do you have the fully rendered cutscenes for story exspositing moments, but then you've got game-rendered cutscenes where characters are either walking somewhere, or they're chatting about things.

There isn't too much gameplay in the beginning likely because the point of the introduction is to establish characters, their motivations, and their relationships to each other.

But the gameplay that is in there is pretty sharp.

Most notably the battle system is super fun. I like that there's more to it than just pushing a button and waiting your turn. There's special abilities that require button presses, regular attacks can get an extra hit in if you press the button at the right time, and you can block attacks if you time it right (I'm the worst at this one lol).

I also really like how you can press the run button once and it'll keep letting you run until you stop. This was the biggest (little) issue with the switch to the Dragon Engine. The walk speed was now as fast as... walking. Whereas I would mostly use the default walk speed in 0 and K1, in the Dragon Engine, if you need to go someplace, you're running because you'll never get there if you walk.

However! The run button is X. Combined with the need to use 1 joystick to run and a 360 degree camera, it can be difficult to adjust your camera angle while running which can make moving around the map difficult. You'd essentially have to press the run button with the middle joint in your thumb and try to move the camera joystick with the pad of your thumb. It's just not comfortable and like. I don't think it's a particularly healthy way to use your thumb I think.

Obstacles and story beats were also a lot closer together so any time you had to go somewhere or do something, it was never farther away than around the corner or down the street. And if it was, the characters would walk part of the way in a cutscene so you could get to know them while you're traveling to the next location.

There were just... a lot of good decisions made and I like them a lot.

In terms of other mechanical stuff that I liked, the animation is so freaking good?

The characters have these like. Micro expressions that give you an extra dimension to what they're feeling. Like when Arakawa asks Ichiban to cover for Jo and Ichi's looking at Arakawa, his surrogate father, and you can see the pain in his eyes, how he knows this is ripping Arakawa apart, how this is going to tear his own life apart, but then he pulls his lips together and he's not smiling but you can see this tenderness, this acceptance. Just... It's so fucking good!!!!

And like. The sound design in this scene? You can hear Ichi and Arakawa shifting in their chairs, you can hear their clothes rustling.

When Arakawa's putting his face in his hands because he's so ashamed that he's about to ask for something so unfair, you can hear him rub his face.

The tension is so thick and the room's so silent that these almost silent movements are the only noises. It's a flawless scene.

I'm so looking forward to playing more of the game! I'm super blown away by what's happening so far and I'm looking forward to meeting our new cast of characters and seeing how the plot unfolds.

And like. I don't want to make it seem like I don't like 1 (Kiwami specifically since that's what I played). I'm not comparing it to LAD to say Y1 is bad. It was the first installment in the series and RGG has had 15 years to learn from their previous games and tighten up their process. The purpose of this post is more: "look how much you've grown! I'm so proud of you!"

Because I love K1! I like it as an introduction to the series. I love the absolutely heartbreaking ending. I love how even after Kiryu loses everything, he keeps going. For him. For his new daughter. For all the people that he lost.

I just love that even though he's surrounded by cynicism and violence and indifference, Kiryu still chooses to care, to feed a stray dog on the street, to carefully lay Haruka down when she's asleep and he gets into a fight.

Ichiban is an aggressively uplifting and caring character while Kiryu is quiet and subtle. And there's beauty in both, I think.

#yakuza #yakuza 7 #yakuza 1 #yakuza 7 spoilers #yakuza like a dragon spoilers #yakuza 1 spoilers #There's a billion other things I'd love to talk about but this post is already really long #and I wanna go back to playing the game lol #I wanna talk more about 1 because I feel like it happened so long ago (and doesn't stand out as much among the other entries) #that we don't talk about it much! #But that's a post for another time. I'll add it to the list of things I want to talk about and maybe I'll get to it eventually.

[pseudo90sdreaming]

𝘽𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙊𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙨

so ive actually never played genshin before. ive only read fanfiction and listened to my friend talk about it so this is probably rly inaccurate. oh well. get over it yall. happy (very belated) birthday @peachykeenwritings. love you.

The demon wrapped its hands around his throat. Xiao could feel it begin to squeeze, each clawed finger digging its way through his skin. The claws were long and sharp, thick and matted with dirt and grime and shit Xiao didn’t even want to think about. The nails were a dark brown, almost black. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Xiao could remember someone telling him the name of the color. Smokey, the voice chimed in his brain, musical and vibrant, the term is smokey black. It reminds me of you when you leave and reappear. Xiao wished he could disappear in that one moment, fall asleep in that miasma he could escape to; any other time a prison, but tonight, his safe haven from the pressure around his neck. The smokey black was cracked along the nails, like a shitty paint job, and along the palms, Xiao could feel the rotting clots dig their way into his skin. One sniff of the repugnant smell made Xiao heave. It turned into a struggling wheeze, and Xiao vomited a raspy cough. He knew what that smell was. He’d known that smell for years; had worn it inside and out, hanging over his shoulders till it inked his skin darker than the tattoos on his arm.  

The thumbs pressed against his Adam’s apple, tearing into him and pulling at the cartilage. It burned. It burned so fucking much. Xiao gasped, eyes wide and frantic, searching for something stable to settle on.

Don’t look at the face.

Don’t look at the face.

Don’t look at the face.

Look anywhere but the face.

HisAdam’s apple bobbed, and he could feel the thing rub against the demon’s callused hand. Something sharp caught onto the cartilage; Xiao couldn’t give a rat’s ass what it was, but it was thick and long and had hooked itself into the flesh which lay right before the Adam’s apple. His breath quickened. His neck tensed. In a quick riiiiiip! Xiao felt the skin tear apart, warm blood gurgling. Xiao’s vision went white; his jaw slacked. He could feel cold air rush through the cavity in his throat and past his throbbing voice box. The limp skin flapped as the hands pressed hungrily into him, its matted fur clogging his exposed cartilage. He choked pitifully, feeling something warm and wet well up, and he whimpered. Fucking whimpered like a dog without its teeth. He wanted to cry, feeling he was no better than the stray fucking mutts being butchered by their own kind. He didn’t know if it were the blood from his throat, or the tears in his eyes, or the acidic spittle of the monster, but a wetness burned him through, creating a wound in his heart far more painful than the one in his throat.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, maybe more present, maybe farther gone than he could ever go, Xiao thought the tear in his throat sounded like a warm spring day. Where the wind was warm and inviting; where the fields were decorated in vivacity and children ate from the orange blossoms. The leaves smelled sweet, like tangerines, and couples kissed in the dying sunlight. His chest would tighten, as he watched the people eat oranges together, as the juices ran down their chin and their neck, as a loved one cleaned up their mess, and all Xiao had to show was the rotting skin of an old blood orange.

He wished panic was the only thing to have him in a chokehold right now.

The nape of his neck felt cold. The demon’s talons slowly sunk into his pearly skin, marring his most coveted place. His skin rolled in goosebumps, and he felt his stomach tighten in fear. He could hear the subtle tearing of flesh, a gentle pull, something so soft and sincere, and he could feel the warm plunge as the dirtied claws grasped at the muscles in his neck. He gasped, gurgled, as the fingers dug around inside him, latching onto tendons and ligaments. He screamed and thrashed, wailing like a child looking for its mother, as it slowly dragged its dirtied hands along the seven vertebrae there, tapping each one for good measure, counting him. It tickled the Atlas, snapping his head forward in a blinding snap. He could hear how hard that snap was; feel the ringing pain behind his eyes and in his ears and all around his head.

He let out a wailing sob as he felt the dirtied hands touch him. Everything he had been holding back for archon’s only know how long; days, months, years, decades, centuries of pain rushed out in a torrent of self-hatred and ugliness and sin and rotting blood orange skins. Those fucking fingers dragged along him like they knew him, like they owned him, like he was theirs and they were his, in an act so sacred and so loving. The tears were warm tears, and he shuddered as he felt them drip down his face. They left hot streaks in their wake, searing his skin and leaving it red and blotchy and ugly. He felt like shriveling up and dying, hiding away in a darkened corner, his smoke, his miasma, in the farthest corners of Teyvat, in his head, and letting his body rot and fester for the rats and dogs to eat away at his carcass. He breathed in quick and heady breaths, his diaphragm clutching painfully. The hole in his throat swelled, the tears growing, and Xiao could feel the breaking skin reach his chin and his clavicle, exposing far more than just his cartilage and muscle. He felt naked. He was under a spotlight, bright and burning, and there was nothing he could do to hide himself. There was no dark corner, or smoke, or miasma, or anywhere in Teyvat or in his head which could hide him from the burning, prying eyes of the demon which slowly choked him into submission.

Blood oozed into his mouth, staining his teeth. It crawled into the crevices and gaps, his gums standing out like blood on the top of Dragonspine. His tongue lolled out, feeling heavy and all too big to fit into his bruised and swollen mouth. The blood which coated his teeth dripped from his tongue, trickling down slowly, and it covered his tastebuds so distinctly, so uniquely.

Because the blood was sweet.

It tasted like mandarins. When you bite into a freshly picked mandarin on a dying spring day, where the juices roll down your chin and onto your neck, and a lover cleans your mess for you. When your lover, who had also been eating mandarins, smooths a towel over you, softly, gently, taking care to keep you clean. When they take your orange and steal a bite, and their laugh is more golden than the sky, and their eyes are brighter than the setting sun, and their cheeks rosier than the blooming fields, and their lips sweeter, more potent, so much more than what a mandarin could ever offer. More of a food, more of a treat, more of a good thing.

Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. Fresher tears. Less acidic; bittersweet. When the tears rolled down his skin, they felt like water washing a blood orange. The skin is rough and course; it’s covered in bumps and ridges, and it doesn’t sit in your hands comfortably. But the water is cool on it, washing away the dirt and grime, cleansing it of impurities. It’s easier to peel the skin, if nothing more than because you think so, and beneath is a beautiful bloom of dark red and purple, sugary and perfumed. The water gives way to reveal the beautiful blood which pours from Xiao and there’s a part of him which had been so suppressed and hidden that begins to feel safe. Not absolutely safe, but safer than he had felt in a long while. Safer, like he wasn’t so alone. Safer, like he didn’t need to hide as often. Safer, as tears cool his splotchy cheeks and the hole in his throat wheezes with every breath. He begins to feel safe. And he begins to feel warm. He can taste the sweetness of blood oranges in his mouth, staining his teeth and tongue.

The demon released Xiao slowly, its claws retracting back into its hands. Its maw, full of the glistening teeth which were as stained with blood as red and as sweet as Xiao’s, slowly closed shut. Its wide amber eyes burned into Xiao, watching every twitch; every move. The demon lifted a hand up, and in its palm was a strip of skin, rough and course and littered with bumps and calluses that could only be washed away by water. Xiao picked up the skin and felt the life pulse within it. It was his skin. It was the skin which belonged to only him and one other; one other who was far sweeter, far more beautiful than a blooming orange blossom. Xiao felt the scars along his neck close up. The bruises and the swelling subsided, and he could breathe through his throat again.

The demon had settled into a shadow which followed him. He understood it would never leave. It would haunt him on dark nights and in dark corners. It all the places of Teyvat and in his head. But the sun is setting. Couples are eating mandarins, and the juices run down their neck. And the shadows are behind him as you wipe the mess off his face, and he captures your hand briskly, a glow as dark as the blood oranges skin on his cheeks. You laugh, and he swears to all that is holy that the hole has opened back up in his throat and he’s wheezing through a cavity in his esophagus. Your hand is soft in his. It’s smoother than any mandarin or blood orange, a hand purer and cleaner. A hand which didn’t need to be washed to be clean, or peeled to see the beauty which hid beneath. A hand which fit right into his. It was a hand he had memorized all the bumps and ridges to, and smelled sweeter than any orange blossom. A hand which was your hand; a hand he hoped would never leave his.

Spring has begun.

#aight shawtys lets do this #tw: bodily mutilation #tw: bodily harm #tw: body gore #tw: gore #tw: demon #?? #do we panic over demons guys im not so sure #anyway its there #tw: anxiety #tw: self-hatred #tw: food #tw: food mention #tw: blood #tw: blood mention #tw: spring #lol idk allergies #you never know chief. cant be too careful #genshin #genshin impact #genshin imagines #genshin impact imagines #genshin fic #genshin impact fics #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x you #genshin impact x you #genshin xiao #genshin impact xiao

[neshatriumphs]

You can't be new to Tumblr and Black comfortably. I have been here something like 11 years and outside of mutuals content, if ever I'm specifically looking for Black things? Oh no.

It becomes a mission. You gotta scrape through white girls tagging "black socks" with they goofy ass or some other article of clothing or in b&w,so that whether you want Black women, fairies, mermaids, whatever, if you're in the search it gives you anything with "Black" anywhere in the post.

And you motherfuckers who post hundreds of Sirius Black posts a day? I hate y'all more than anything on this site. I hate y'all fucking guts.

Tumblr, where the fuck is my content blocker? I at least was able to put in stuff like THAT, but if its not a tag, I no longer see where to filter from my phone. Y'all showed me an ugly white man all day today talking about a face reveal. And I couldn't even filter him away because nobody tagged his name and I don't know white people.

This site gets increasingly more frustrating to navigate all the time. It was an ongoing joke forever. But I'm getting "fuck this shit I'm out" pissed again. Maybe a break can do me some good. I never have to see as many random white people as I have in the past couple of years that I've been using the search feature a lot to try to find sideblog content.

If I was a new nigga here, I'd just sign back out and leave. Because this place is atrocious and all the Black people keep getting booted or leaving. And the rest of y'all circumvent filters or clog tags.

Fuck Tumblr everyday, but especially when it takes hours to find maybe 3 posts that are what I want to see. I wish I could take my fucking mutuals and go. Shit is ridiculous.

#I HATE TUMBLR #PERSONAL #search feature is garbage #people tags are garbage #people tastes in white people are garbage #Nesha Rants

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

have again encountered (old? maybe defunct?) infighting about which communities belong to which disabled people and which parts of their discourse others are allowed to relate to and who has it worse and blah blah blah

this is all so silly? like, i don’t particularly want able-bodied nd/mentally ill people to use the term cripplepunk either, but that’s because a. the term’s creator didn’t intend it to be used that way and i have some prescriptivist sympathies + kinda miss their posts and want to respect their memory,* and b. when i want to read the words of other physically disabled people i find it a slog to skip past posts about mental illness. even tho i’m also mentally ill!—i just. when i’m in the mood to commiserate about physical disability/chronic illness i get annoyed to see other topics clogging up the tag. in the same way i’d get annoyed if trying to look up content for a fandom that shared its acronym with something else

and i feel like that’s? fine?? like i realize this discursive well is too badly poisoned for that argument to convince anymore—that if i tried to argue that to someone in favor of broadening the term, they’d probably make an eloquent plea about gatekeeping and win the rhetorical contest instantly (unless i, like the people in this and other posts i’ve seen on the topic, were willing to respond with moral arguments of my own)

but that’s what annoys me! i feel like “hey please leave this tag/slogan to us because it’s a convenient way to communicate and we don’t want to lose that by changing/broadening what it means” should be a persuasive argument on its own. andddd frankly it’s one i respect a lot more than all these overwrought guilt trips about how physical disability is importantly different or who gets to reclaim a slur** &/or c. and like………. i don’t keep up w/ this discourse so idk to what extent the dispute continues now, and if most people consider it a settled issue then i don’t know who “won,” but

i do suspect that in the long term, spaces originally populated only by physically disabled voices will be ~infiltrated~ by mentally ill ones and i’ll have to scroll through more posts about anxiety and autism while in search of that precious resource the chronic pain meme.

and i find this mildly disappointing. but no worse. and like—i know many people will/would find that very upsetting! i know that! but i don’t think that was inevitable. like: i feel like if you are a partisan of either side in this debate and are/were very upset about it then……. that’s valid, but only because the discourse got so heated. and i think it’s fucking silly that it did

*their original post outlining the rules, where they explicitly stated that they wanted only physically disabled people to ID with cpunk—that post is what, seven years old now? which for tumblr is an impressive heritage. i can’t shake my intuition that it’s rude to expect this tradition to make room for you while disobeying its number-one rule. but also, i don’t think it would strike me this way if the person who wrote those rules were still alive and could be argued with. somehow the fact that they’ve died and the community they left behind maintains these rules in their honor makes the idea of flouting them while cloaking yourself in the movement’s name seem ickier to me, even though logically i would argue that the “respect for the dead” element makes the rule more arbitrary? idk. i guess i get the feeling that people who want to identify w/ it see it as like a political coalition they shouldn’t be gatekept out of, but,,,,,, to me it has never looked like that? it looks more analogous to a small insular community, or an art movement, or a hobby group. an entity that doesn’t owe shit to outsiders because dissenters can easily make their own group instead.

**i’ve never been called a cripple, lmao. only in media have i ever seen this word used in its original sense—viz., as a noun for a disabled person. in my daily life i encounter only the verb, and only hear it used metaphorically (“with this venture they’ve crippled their chances of success,” and similar). the word to me signifies only “edgy self-deprecating thing to call myself when i want to signal that i’m annoyed about ableism”—and i doubt that’s rare. like, yeah, i too get kind of annoyed by the prospect of an able-bodied ND person calling themselves a cripple, but… mostly because it just sounds silly? like a rail-thin bespectacled college boy trying to reclaim “himbo,” or a lumberjack trying to reclaim “metrosexual.” it doesn’t feel more personal to me than those examples would, and if it does to other disabled people then……… ok, but is that because you actually endure being called a cripple on a regular basis or just because you enjoy getting to use this word as a symbol of the ableist judgments you used to fear but are learning to embrace? because if it’s the latter then. the fact your legs don’t work right doesn’t make this a less arbitrary word choice for you than it would a mentally ill/physically abled person. there is no moral high ground here imo because it’s not a moral question, it’s about convenience of communication

[queercatboy]

mmm call me old fashion or a prude but maybe dont tag your rated T fics with Bottom(character) or Top(character)

like unless you fucked up your rating and need to go change it, top/bottom dynamics should not be involved in essentially pg13 fanfics.

like sorry not sorry but i dont need to know your headcanons of whos a top or a bottom(also i have a lot of feelings as a queer guy about THAT but this isnt about that)

i dont go to T rated fics to see if so and so is a bottom. that shit shouldnt even be relevant

no one should be having explicit sex in a Teen fic

and because i know people are going misconstrunt that. i mean porn. when i say explicit, i mean porn.

obviously you can write non explicit sex in a T fic. pg13 movies do it all the time. the point is when it goes to discussing their sex life in detail or giving them "positions" or "roles" to play that becomes iffy

i am not going to mention labeling characters who are minors as tops or bottom

except yes i am because oh my god i do not want to know. obviously teens have sex. im not your parent. have all the sex you want. i dont care i just really dont want want to see it in works with gen or t ratings.

if you want to write about two 16 year olds boinking fine. its weird as 25 year but im not the moral police just please for the love of all that is gay tag and rate your shit correctly

when i filter out explicit fics it means i am not in the mood to read smut. i have my own confort characters i go too for that but im also just extremely asexual so sometimes i dont even want to see it

you can have your side of ao3 while i have mine and we wont have any problems

finally when tagging a fic if something is not relevant to the plot or has anything to do with what you written then dont tag it

it clogs the tags and makes searches confusing for people who are looking for that tag

#morgan rant #can you tell im a slightly frustrated asexual #tagging advice for ao3 #ao3 #fanfic writing

[thoughtdumpshitposts]

Love is in the Heart

18.02.24

I dont love anyone who's not family. I don't love my friends. I care for them, I worry for them. I show them affection. I say I love them. And it is not a lie, but it's not really the truth either. Because I don't. Not in a way that is cruel and crass and closed off or a vain attempt at sounding cool in the superficial sense. I feel for them exactly what they feel for me, but I simply worry too much about semantics and have a tendency to over intellectualize myself. But I've always been so curious about what I feel about love, and how exactly I feel love, and I didn't find out until much later.

I love my family. When I feel love, I feel it physically. I remember a post about how everyone feels every emotion in a seperate body part and it's right. And as corny as it sounds, I feel love in my heart. It is not an abstract thing - hawa mein baat nahi. When they're hurt, not even in a major or physical sense, but when they are hurt - I don't feel concern or worry or sympathy. I feel my heart constricting. I feel it physically. My pain is tangible and so thick in the air that I could literally cut through it. Literally - because I mean none of this figuratively. My chest feels too small and suffocating for my heart. It can't move, it cant breathe, it cant pump my blood fast enough. I feel the pain course through my upper body, my heart desperately trying to claw its way out for air, clogging my throat, pricking and gouging out my eyes with its nails, still searching, still climbing, still desperately finding an opening to escape and be free.

Love is different for all, sure. There's familial, platonic, romantic, erotic. Maybe the way I feel familaly can never be attained elsewhere. Maybe the proximity, the socially constructed idea of family, is what drives it all. But I'd like to think not. I'd like to think I would feel this way for anyone who's mine -- not as a possession but in the way my family is mine. People I can fall back on. I don't think everyone in my family feels as intensely as me or simply for me as I for them, but that doesn't matter. It's not that I don't resent any of them -- I could never resent anyone as much as I do them. No one has betrayed me as much. Yet, here we are.

[plum-pitt]

not to be that mf on main but like,,,,,

fuck multifandom one shot books, and honestly one shot books in general to some extent.

In this post I pulled out of my ass out of sheer frustration while looking for a fic to read, i will messily lay out my grievances, then make suggestions of what authors could potentially do differently to avoid these issues.

Section 1: Me Angy

First off- the tag and fandom lists on these things are ALWAYS 50 miles long and take up like half the damn page on Ao3, and istg a good amount of the time they’ve got like a single 1000 word chapter and haven’t even been updated in like 2 years

They absolutely destroy filters for things like tags and word count.

like if i’m looking for a longfic to binge read, i don’t need these books of one shots, when i’d maybe be interested in 10% of what’s in it, clogging up my search results.

plus if you’ve got even just one single oneshot in there with an icky tag i’ve filtered out, then i’m never gonna see any of it even if i might’ve actually liked what the rest had to offer!!

The fandoms are also like a whole other beast. God forbid you’re looking for an actual crossover fic between two franchises because sorry bout ur luck there kid, you’re gonna be spending a stupid amount of time weeding out random fandom after random fandom in the filters section just to get rid of these oneshot books and find what you’re actually looking for.

Section 2: Suggestions

If you’re an author just trying to keep your page organized by keeping all your oneshots together somehow, then put them in a series! That way they can all be tagged individually and more people who’d want to read them will be able to find them, and they don’t jack up the filtering system!

Kinda sorta relevant to the conversation too; if you’re making a fic for a franchise with a bunch of different iterations, and you’re don’t necessarily have a specific version in mind when writing it, or perhaps are making an original iteration all your own, then for the love of all that is good, do not put every iteration in the fandom tags.

For example, if i’m looking for say, fanfic of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and you’re writing a Zelda fanfic set in your own version of the Zelda universe. If you tag literally every single game in the franchise that has a fandom tag to its name, then your fic will come up even if it’s not at all what i’m looking for.

Most multi-iteration fandoms of that nature have an overarching tag that looks something like:

*insert random franchise*- and related fandoms

It’s there for a reason! If you’re not sure what version you’re writing for, or you’re making one up, then just use that! It can still be found by anyone scrolling through fics on that general tag, and doesn’t get in the way of readers on the hunt for something more specific.

In Conclusion:

i ain’t trynna be a dick, but some of yall don’t know how to tag and it’s working to both your, and the readers detriment. Thats ok tho! it’s not like there’s a rule book out there that lays out exactly what to do, and thanks to that everyone has subtle differences in how they decide to label their work. i’m just pointing out some minor inconveniences i’ve gone thru as a reader and some possible solutions for authors that could circumvent them.

this is in no way a personal attack on anybody, not sure why anyone would think that it’s literally fanfic tags, but just trynna cover all my bases here. Ok bye

#also irrelevant to the premise of the post #but still a tag tip #if you have ocs in your fic #JUST TAG Original Character(s) #if you wanna specify more characteristics in other tags that’s fine #but ALWAYS keep the plain Original Character(s) tag in there as well #same goes for y/n and reader insert stuff #fanfiction #fanfic #transformative works #Ao3 #ao3 fanfic #ao3 author #goddam this is a mess💀 #thoughts from the pit

[jim-fetter-illustrations]

You think your in control, but you have to buy tools just to open your food cans!

Why the hell aren't "all" food cans the easy-open pop-top?

Well, so the story goes,.... in 1959, a humble engineer from Dayton, Ohio, named Ermal "Ernie" Fraze was enjoying a family picnic when he realized that he forgot to bring a "church key." A church key was the can-opener of that time, in the era before pull-tab cans, and was used to cut two holes in a can of beer.

Fraze searched in vain for something to open his beer and settled on the bumper of his car, which resulted in a messy beer geyser. Always the engineer, Fraze vowed to come up with an invention that would eliminate the need for a church key altogether.

In 1963, Fraze patented the "easy open" lid, a scored aluminum top that could be cracked open and peeled back with a pull tab. Fraze's first customer was Iron City Beer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which marketed the revolutionary pull-tab technology as the "snap top beer." Fraze died in 1989, but his company, DRT, is still making its patented easy open "ends" for food and beverage cans.

Tom Crothers a friend of Fraze's has worked at DRT for 40 years, most recently as its VP of sales. He was asked why — nearly 60 years after the invention of the easy open can — only some canned foods come with pull tabs while most still require a fricken can opener.

"Basically, what it gets down to is a cost issue. Easy open ends are more expensive than the sealed lids that require a can opener."

Now you've probably never thought twice about how your can of pineapple chunks was made, but it's done with precision industrial machines that stamp out more precise engineering than aerospace or medical applications.

So we can put a friken robot on mars but to make a food can Pop-Top is harder?!?!

Ya see,.... A can with a plain-old end is stamped from a flat sheet of metal and double-sealed to the shell. Nothing too tricky.

BUT cans with a pull tab are more expensive because there are more steps to the manufacturing process. First, the end piece has to be scored with incredible precision. The scored end needs to be strong enough to hold the contents inside — often under pressure — or to withstand a fall from the store shelf, but the lid also has to pop open easily when the tab is pulled.

If only we'd made computers like that maybe we wouldn't have to keep upgrading every two years, and spending more money for the pieces of crap that are clogging up all our landfills today.....

There's no argument that easy open lids are easier to open than containers that require a can opener. But that convenience comes at a cost. According to a survey from 2014, American consumers weren't willing to pay 30 cents more for a can with an easy open lid, the Cheapskates that we are.

Because we don't really recycle anymore so we can recoup our 30 cent investment in the more expensive can that's easier to open.

This is because can's aren't really made out of recyclable materials any more and we've reverted back to the cheap ass metals that end up in,..... You guessed it, the landfills.

Because people are too damn lazy to recycle anything anymore, because most recycling places weren't giving squat for recycling, because they were hoarding all the profits for their recycling businesses!!

Because the Government promise to help out in a National Recycling effort,... like most other government efforts, ended in a clusterfuck!

Ya see,.... eventually all capitalistic efforts end up going bankrupt because of greed, and when the seller and buyer tell each other to fuck-off and everything goes to shit,.... that's true capitalism the way human beings do it,...... and all those 3rd world nations on earth are the proof of that greed, because the world didn't start out that way, we made it that way through extreme greed!

This is why the world is going down the shit-hole little by little, because we are all telling each other to fuck-off and being greedy about it,..... and starting a never ending catastrophic reality of chaos, that isn't gonna end on a positive note.

So I'm suggesting a drive to make all cans with editable content Pop-Top, easy open cans, and to make them out of recyclable substances! Like pass a fuckin law all cans be easy open and the manufacturer be forced to eat Spinach for every meal until they obey!

Well that's my point of view anyway, and I only buy food cans with pop-top lids, and put Out-of-Date stickers on all the other cans that aren't pop-top easy open cans (that's a joke).

Just sayin...........

Like

Comment

Share

#Pop-Top food cans #easy open food cans