lavenderauthor

[lavenderauthor]

Lavan Dula Starter Pack(+ A Couple Add-Ons)!

Thought I'd make this while I'm too sick to focus on writing my last article (Yes, I'm article 3 of 3! woo!)!

So...The packs are as follows:

Starter Pack: Me!(Yes, my feet are like that IRL. Yes, my eyes are grey. Yes, I am short irl...its a balljointed doll, btw. Hard to show with clothes on. Feels like it represents my joints well), Lavender The Fox(They're a cutie, huh?), Headphones(Wireless/Wired), Pacifier, Coloring Supplies, Laptop+Keyboard, Tablet, Glasses(legally blind over here), and Green Tea.

Disability Add-On: Inhaler, Nebulizer, Pill Box, Heating Pad, and Medication (Doesn't go into Pill Box)

FunFact Add-On: Scalemate(have all the colors, always sleep with one. Pucefoot is my fav...biased for the color), Companion Cube Plush (to sleep with when I'm sick!), Sewing Kit (I like to sew), Manga(I have all the Sweat & Soap volumes and it's so good), Music Notebook (I write songs...it's also a Destiel notebook), and Pocky(favorite treat! Right nice to Hi-Chew! Mostly because of how little sugar is in it which helps not upset my stomach)

Let me know how I did! I'm still learning to draw and color so some things are more odd looking than others. (And sorry about my name plastered all over. I made sure nothing important was covered up)

[lavenderauthor]

My Stories Will Be Locked (you'll need an ao3 account) Until Further Notice.

[lavenderauthor]

[lavenderauthor]

Vietnam War Era Latine Queer Romance

@theparadigmshifts asks:

Hi, thank you for the work you do! I had a question about my story - one of my main characters, who's Latino, works on his friend's family's dairy farm in Texas in the 70s. The friend is white, and it's a small farm with about 50 cows, so it's only him, his friend, and his friend's father, plus some seasonal workers. The character and his friend end up falling in love, and I want to make sure I don't play into stereotypes here. The character is not poor, but he is hardworking. He's also gay. There are a couple of other things at play - his friend offers him the job in the first place because it's set during the Vietnam war, and if you worked on a farm you could possibly get a draft deferment. He could get more money working for his father, but he ends up staying on because he really enjoys the work. I do want to be careful with any sort of power dynamic here as well, though - he and his friend both work for his friend's father, but obviously, one is the son and one is hired.

I’m not sure what your question is (#rubberstampapproved), but here are some thoughts on the premise. 

Latino man does farm labor to avoid war

This sounds like a great story, and I think you’ve steered clear of playing into stereotypes. Let’s explore what you shared:

Farm labor as an excuse to avoid Vietnam is a very compelling reason to volunteer to work on a farm, regardless of how hard the work is!

It sets up a valid motivation for the Latino-doing-hard-labor trope that otherwise is commonly unintentionally deployed and perpetuates negative stereotypes.

Also, when the Latino MC chooses to stay on, emphasizing his sense of agency and the things he enjoys about the work can mitigate some of that manual labor trope as well. 

The setting of Texas and having a mix of people around them like the seasonal workers and locals allows a good range of potential foils, and offers many opportunities to explore those power dynamics you mentioned. 

Consider cultural and gender dynamics

Additionally, consider cultural and gender dynamics around masculinity: If you’re writing queer characters in Texas in the 70’s, especially Latino queer characters, there will be more to be mindful of. I served in the Marines and my father and uncles have worked in different trades; the culture of masculinity around “hard labor jobs” like the military, trades, farm work, etc tends to trend towards straight passing “tough” appearances for better or worse.

It’s also worth noting that queer people can be, and often are, straight passing and thriving in these spaces - even if they do not announce it.

You may also want to consider Machismo culture, and how queer Latinos in spaces that center and celebrate straight-passing masculinity have to navigate that. Additionally, much of Latino culture is also heavily rooted in Catholicism from Spanish colonization, so that reinforces a culture of anti-queerness. These things may or may not factor into the MC’s relationship or development, but they are culturally significant enough to mention. 

Regardless of your focus, I think this is a fantastic setting and story premise and I’d love to hear back about the finished work. You did a great job setting up a story with lots of space for nuance and depth. Good luck! 

Melanie 🌻

[Note: this rubber stamp ask was submitted before the Masterpost rules took effect in 2023. We have chosen to publish it to prime our readers on Latine topics and tropes.]

[lavenderauthor]

l0ki-causes-ragnorock replied to your post: Requests? (:

Can you please draw some sterek? (If that’s ok with you)

Of course I can, it’s always okay with me uvu I wanted to do random background stuff, so I hope that’s okay ;v;

[lavenderauthor]

[lavenderauthor]

when Derek gets pissed and calls Stiles a mouthy little brat....but that's what makes his blood run hot anyway, the need to sink his fangs into the long, pale throat, to put him in place, to fuck him up a little until he's a crying and Derek kisses the tears away murmuring baby, it's okay, I'm here.

[lavenderauthor]

Kidnapper: We have your mate derek: Unless stiles admits that I won that game of Monopoly, you can keep him Kidnapper: Wha- stiles, in the background: Fuck you, Hale!

[lavenderauthor]

Top Fave Books from Black authors and/or Black MCs (2025)

Happy Black History Month from WWC!

In honor of BHM, we've compiled a list of some of our top favorite reads (thus far) that are either by Black diaspora authors and/or the main character is Black. Feel free to add your own to this list!

---

Colette’s picks

For my recommendations, I've focused on escapism and/or black woman romances only, because we all can use a bit of joy. These are adult reads by Black authors.

The King’s Seer (series) by L.S. Bethel | Genre: Feudal, Fantasy, Romance, Alt World, BWAM (Hero is Korean-Coded) | Link (My new favorite series)

Voices and Visions by Lashell Collins (Touched Series) | Genre: Mystery, Psychic Detective, Romance, BWWM | TW: Escape from off-screen domestic violence, murder | Link (Love this series so far!)

Taken to Voraxia (Xiveri Mates Series) by Elizabeth Stephens | Genre: Sci-Fi Romance, Fantasy (BWAlien &Alien) Coded race | TW: Kidnapped bride | Link

Taken to Nobu (Xiveri Mates Series) by Elizabeth Stephens | Genre: Sci-Fi Romance, Fantasy (BW&Alien) | TW: Kidnapped bride | Link

Unfrozen by Regine Abel | Genre: Paranormal Romance, Sci-Fi BW&Alien/Monster | TW: Torture, experiments (briefly at beginning) Link

I Married a Naga (Prime Mating Agency, #2) by Regine Abel | Genre: Sci-Fi Romance, Marriage of Convenience BW&Alien/Monster | Link

Rescued by Her Relic by Paulina Woods | Genre: Sci-Fi Romance, BW&Alien/Cyborg, Apocalypse | Link 

The Alpha Promise by Hayat Ali | Genre: Paranormal Romance, Vampires, BWAM | Link

Deena's Deception by G.S. Carr | Genre: Western, Historical Romance, Mail-order Bride, BWWM | Link

Chosen by Tiffany Patterson | Genre: Paranormal Romance, Shapeshifters, BWIM (Indigenous hero) | Link

Honorable mentions at the top of my to-read list

Death at a Seance by Carolyn Marie Wilkins | Link

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora | Link

The Gatekeeper by K. Alex Walker | Link

Melanie’s picks

A mix of fictional narratives, memoir, and politics/culture. All adult reads. 

The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa | Genre: Sci-Fi, Romance | Link

*Kindred by Octavia Butler | Genre: Sci Fi | Link  (*Triple recommended by multiple mods!)

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby  | Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense | Link

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosely  | Genre: Mystery | Link

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor | Genre: Mixed/Meta | Link

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates | Genre: Bio & Memoir | Link

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon  | Genre: Memoir | Link

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall | Genre: Politics, Society & Current Affairs | Link

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander | Genre: Politics, Society & Current Affairs | Link

SK’s picks

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin | Genre: Fantasy, Romance | Link

They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib | Genre: Nonfiction, Essay Collection | Link

Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaoabi Tricia Nwaubani | Genre: Young Adult Realistic Fiction | CW: violence and sexual assault | Link

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo | Genre: Young Adult Realistic Fiction | Link

Copper Sun by Sharon Draper | Young Adult Historical Fiction | CW sexual assault and slavery| Link

After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson | Young Adult Realistic Fiction | book deals with racism, incarceration, and the foster system | Link

Jaya’s picks

The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste | Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult (violence against activists) | Link

Each of Us A Desert by Mark Oshiro| Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy | Link

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas| Genre: Young Adult, Realistic (racial profiling, Black Lives Matter) | Link

Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Manifestor Prophecy by Angie Thomas| Genre: Fantasy | Link

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat| Genre: Short Stories (violence in Haiti) | Link

Monster by Walter Dean Myers | Genre: Young Adult (racial profiling) | Link

Meir’s picks

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler | Genre: Sci Fi (tw for apocalyptic climate conditions)| Link

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler | Genre: Sci Fi (tw for apocalyptic climate conditions)| Link

This is a two-part series taking place in a sometimes uncomfortably realistic near-future climate apocalypse. Lauren Olamina is a young woman with a hyperempathy disorder who is determined not only to survive, but to make sure her loved ones, her greater community, and humanity as a whole survive as well. To do this, she will have to found a settlement and a religion.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin | Genre: Fantasy | Link

I’m still in the middle of reading this one, but it’s already a compelling and suspenseful story of dynastic succession and powerful but unpredictable magical beings. Don’t spoil it for me!

Jess’ picks

Raybearer duology by Jordan Ifueko | Genre: Fantasy, YA | Link

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson | Genre: Gothic/Horror, Fantasy | Link

James by Percival Everett | Genre: Historical, Literary | Link

Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope | Genre: Fantasy, YA | Link

The Kingston Cycle by C.L. Polk | Genre: Historical, Fantasy | Link

The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk | Genre: Historical, Fantasy | Link

Buy local when you can!

We recommend buying your books at your local bookshop (esp. BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ friendly spots) when you can, smaller online bookstores or checking them out at your local library (the Libby app is great for ebooks and audiobooks) or of course at the author's first preference. Also: if a store doesn't have a book, sometimes they can order it for you.

As for online book trackers, The StoryGraph is Black-woman founded!

Happy reading!

~WWC

[lavenderauthor]

rlpaperadventures answered: Formal wear for character/s of your choice? Like Tumblr prom or something?

[lavenderauthor]

Creating the content i want to see in the world: more sleepy derek hale :] a wolf burrito. worrito. wolfarrito.

we'll workshop it.

Also to further my Stiles' erratic taste in music (previous: 1 / 2) headcanon, he's listening to:

Which is another had-it-on-repeat-for-days kinda song for me, what can I say! it slaps. also recommend Bobby, huge earworm.

[lavenderauthor]

"Knock knock! You boys up-" "NO! You can't come in, he's not DECENT!"

Stiles stilinski makes goo eyes at and jealously hoards soft derek hale send tweet

Part two of the brainworm @nerdherderette's request gave me (: Derek in stiles' clothing - the pajama bottoms are my own though (10+ years old target purchase, sadly not available anymore or i would've purchased a backup pair)

In my heart of hearts soft derek in comfy clothes makes stiles go HEART EYES MOTHERFUCKER in a markedly different way from nudity (◡‿◡✿)

[lavenderauthor]

*sits down to write a smut fic* The plot of this smut fic is that Character A believes himself abandoned by God.

[lavenderauthor]

So during a wayne gala, there was a rouge attack shocker. It was by scarecrow he was planning to flood the ballroom with his gas

Unfortunately his bomb was shoddily put together and one of the cannisters holding the gas fell and landed in the hands of one danny fenton there with his godfather

Now unfortunately all anyone could do was watch as this gas can suddenly spayed gas in this young mans face who started looking panicked and backing up before spotting vlad and stopping

Suddenly this kid who seemed like he was seconds from running is now fucking growing and preparing to pounce on vlad???

And vlad just looks resigned as if he figured this would happen

[lavenderauthor]

So...might be a slight delay in the snakey Danny fic. Got a little bit of side quest to do and it's gonna take a bit. I do get paid though! Yay!

[lavenderauthor]

Happy New Year 2025 from WWC

Hello everyone,

Merry, cheery holidays! The WWC team and I have been making many silent strides closer to a writingwithcolor.org.

What we've been up to

While the going has been slow, we've made a lot of progress since raising donations from you guys to go towards a .org, which we've secured ever since. With this support and encouragement, we plan to maintain the blog as a permanent resource.

As for progress and use of donations

Times have been busy and oh, so trying, but we're trying harder. Also, donations (and free time) have been going to good use.

For instance, we've:

Cleaned up (Added, removed, renamed, combined) WWC post tagging for clarity and consistency.

Created mirroring pages on new blog (e.g. navigation, stereotypes and tropes navigation, etc.)

Migrated all blog posts to our standalone blog (4000 some posts)

Maintained the URL ($12 a year, Writingwithcolor.org, hidden from view lately as we get closer to launch, although we've had it redirecting to Tumblr only until recently)

Overall building out blog content on the host site ($15.99 a month)

Next steps are to:

Finalize our theme (The fun part)

Finish blog post cleanup on the migrated posts (WIP!).

More actions at a latter date after publishing

Currently, I have been going through each and every post, one-by-one, to:

Edit, update and refine content

Fix broken links

Improve accessibility, particularly on image-heavy posts

A lot of changed in the world since 2014, so we want even our earliest posts to reflect today's standards or at least note if something is olden days or we have a more helpful post or resource since.

Example of a post on the .org. Final theme and colors not applied yet

Soft launch and new hopeful publish date

This is the end stretch before we have an official SOFT LAUNCH!

We're considering it soft since there are just some things we can't easily correct yet or will just make everything take even longer to wait on. We'll continue to cross-link between here and there as we work on getting it all centralized, though.

But to be clear, as intended, we'll continue to post on tumblr as well as long as it sticks around.

Our new prospective publish date is for Spring 2025, in which we can also re-open to questions, release new guides, invite new members, etc. etc.

But who knows - perhaps we will get a chance to answer some questions in between then.

Thank you and let's catch up!

All of your support and patience has been so appreciated. Thank you for sticking around throughout the extended hiatus. Nonetheless, I do hope our robust depository of existing answers, detailed guides, recommendations, reblogs and so on has been helpful with your creative, professional and academic pursuits.

What have you all been up to? What strides have you made in 2024 and what goals do you have for 2025? Have you published any works? We want to hear it all. Share with us on this post!

Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2025,

~Colette and WWC team

[lavenderauthor]

Give me several days and I'll have a fic. (It won't be Jason x Danny, more Danny got a free bodyguard. Sorry, DeadDuo shippers. Crossfandom ships are not my jam most times, but others may write that! Dont give up hope!)

Danny is a sewer monster. He is a little snakey fella.

The Bats catch word of a creature in the sewers that not even Grundy or Killer Croc want to tussle with.

This is how Jason ends up treking through the sewers looking for whatever stole his favorite jacket. He stumbles across a nest(?) that has an odd glowing rock in the middle. He found his jacket though...wrapped around the rock.

Danny finds Red Hood in his nest, the guy isn't hurting Ellie so he seems all right.

Now the Bats are panicking because Jason's gone missing.

Jason is not complaining.