nezumasa

[nezumasa]

discussing literary criticism with your friends can sometime be like

[nezumasa]

I appreciate the hustle, my guy, but I cannot overstate how much I am not the target audience for a tabletop RPG whose itch.io store page manages to use the word "cozy" twice in the space of a single paragraph. There's a certain minimum level of fucked up and horny I expect in my RPGs, and this ain't it.

[nezumasa]

I beg my kidnappers for a phone, swearing not to make any calls or texts, and they stare over my shoulder, holding a gun to my head as I use my newly-freed hand to post, "So do like, dudes just buy ropes and baklavas from the same store or what lmfao like a specialty Crime Store"

One of the kidnappers says "balaclavas" but it's muffled under the fabric. I ask them to repeat and they do, their voice raspy from disuse. "You wrote baklava, that's a pastry." The other kidnapper goes "stfu" and then after a pause goes "Why would you buy from a crime store"

[nezumasa]

lord the peasants are so loud today

[nezumasa]

If small cats are the cutest animal, surely Mr. J is the cutest of all small cats.

However, does this mean Kofu is one of the cutest animals as well?!

Yep, small cats are cute equally, even if it were my silly apprentice or my natural enemy, that the damn stray tabby......

[nezumasa]

Game of the year

[nezumasa]

Honestly, I have been thinking about taking mine down, in part, because I don’t really get the discussion that I’d like on themes or craft. Or just general comments like 💜💜💜 outside of a one off.

At most, I get “can you write this for me (for free/no trade)” on random fics that are unrelated (or not even the same fandom) or guilt-tripping about “think about how much your story means to people and how it may have saved them from suicide” on social media and those hypothetical people have never said anything. Or people’s dumps of their sexual fantasies in my comments.

It’s honestly too much “take and take” for me tbh when I enjoy writing (and still write and not post + gush to my friends) and do it anyway without posting. Not to mention issues with AI scraping.

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[nezumasa]

Literally cannot stop thinking about this tweet btw

[nezumasa]

I understand that folks tend to think of open homophobia in popular media as a Thing Of The Past, and that the 2000s are still sufficiently recent as not to count as The Past in a lot of folks' minds, but still it kills me the sheer incredulity I keep bumping into when people are confronted with how casually homophobic early 2000s popular media actually was. Like, buddy, you have no idea how recently "isn't it shameful for a straight man to know what a latte is?" stopped being a standard sitcom bit. There were whole shows airing as recently as the early 2010s whose entire premise was "this ostensibly straight man has somewhat fruity mannerisms" – like, that was the entire joke.

[nezumasa]

rekindling

commissioned by @nezumasa

[nezumasa]

I have an insane amount of OCD ngl. Like yes, yes spinning cow or whatever but also having to do certain actions/say certain things at certain times or else I think something bad will happen

[nezumasa]

I wish there was approximately 100% less biphobia in gay romance novels.

[nezumasa]

I think 90% of conspiracy theorists would be a lot happier if they just bit the bullet and got into creative writing

[nezumasa]

the thing about the trans congresswoman for me is that like. she can be the most bloodthirsty centrist in the world and that still isn't enough. republicans are already trying to make administrative moves to stop her from using the capitol bathrooms. like it doesn't matter how respectable you are you're still a tranny

[nezumasa]

genderbend osvald x temenos commissioned by @nezumasa

nothing is stronger than a rareshipper who keeps commissioning stuff no one else ships

[nezumasa]

Gluten-Free Reese’s Pieces Cookies

[nezumasa]

i had a dream last night that kermit the frog died. it was on the news "kermit the frog, aged 96, has passed away peacefully in his sleep"

i turned to my mom like "how does that even work, he's a puppet?" she got really mad at me and said through tears "now's not the time, the frog JUST died. show some respect."