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open-hearth-rpg · 6 months ago

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The TTRPG Year So Far

I’ve been away from the blog for a couple of weeks, mostly because I’ve actually had a burst of productive energy. This week I released Danger! Unexploded Spell, a series playset for Girl By Moonlight: “Unacceptable mages drafted by the authorities protect their city from damage wrought by arcane air raids and bombings while trying to survive and create a community.”

Before that I finally cracked down and finished writing up Numberless Secrets, my Hearts of Wulin sourcebook for running mysteries. That came in at about 110 pages, and includes six sample mysteries. I’m really happy with the end results. Of course leading up to that I posted the draft of the new Celestial playbook for HoW on the blog and a tweaked version of the Villain playbook.

Then in early April ago I put out Veil: Iterations, my version 1.5 rules for The Veil. I’ve had some feedback, but it is a pretty niche release (like all of my stuff). I have to make a couple of tweaks to that.

Assuming I get this next GBM playtest written up, I have several other things in the queue: a couple new cases for Apocalypse Keys, my fantasy/samurai hack of Free from the Yoke, Hearts of Yokai (PbtA inspired by Changeling the Lost), and maybe more campaign frames for Hearts of Wulin. I’m sure there’s a couple of other things I’m forgetting.

ACTUAL GAMING

All of that has been in parallel to all of the games which I’ve been running online and locally. Here’s what I’ve done so far this year, 87 sessions total with nine as a player. I have links to actual plays where they’re available. You can also listen to these in podcast format on our Open Hearth site:

Before the Sith: My hack of Before the Storm for the Star Wars minicon. I’d run another hack of this for superheroes before and realized that a four hour block just didn’t work. So I ran this as two three-hour blocks with an hour break in the middle. That helped and gave us room to let the scenes breathe. Even with that, we still ended up cutting out one of the rounds to make sure we had enough time for the ending.

My Star Wars framing worked, but I think particularly because we had three Jedi and one non-Jedi character. That created a really solid set of tensions and questions. In the end two of the four characters had tragic/heroic deaths in the final battle. The core game’s mechanic for the cards works really well and would be worth adapting for other games. (one session)

Bounty of the Week: We just started this as a stand-in for the Veil: Iterations game I’ve been running on alt-Sundays. I managed to over pack my schedule so I asked if someone else could step in to run something. We did our session zero and I’m looking forward to playing. I’ve played vanilla MotW a couple of times in both editions and dug it. However I found it tough going when I ran it, I think because I have a different approach to structuring mysteries. (not recorded, one session)

Dreams and Machines: Oof. I ran a couple of sessions of D&M from the starter set last year, and even wrote up my impressions. I picked up the physical boxed set afterwards. So when someone asked for a series to see how 2d20 worked, I volunteered to run the full game complete with character creation. It crashed and burned.

I don’t want to go too far into this here- it deserves a full write up. But I only remember canceling one other series in mid-run because the game itself just didn’t work for us (that would be Dangerous Times: Muckrakers and Magic in Old New York). I like 2d20– I have two other series using it on this list. But Dreams and Machines has some serious problems. After the second play session, the group talked about our frustrations. I switched over to a Hearts of Wulin series, to help cleanse my palate. (two sessions)

Dune (not recorded): This remains probably my favorite implementation of 2d20. It has its issues (move as an action, spatial duel set up, slow advancement) but I dig the presentation, resources, and the mechanics generally. We’ve gotten fairly deep in our story. The world our PC house has taken possession of has developed nicely– with interesting ideas about society and ecology. Plus we’ve had some fun interactions with rival houses. We will be hitting a stopping point for this soon. That’s because the group’s schedule can be uncertain and we want to do some short-run things we can likely finish. (six sessions)

Fearful Symmetries: The Second Aethyr: We did a full three-month campaign arc of this Trail of Cthulhu series at the beginning of 2023. I loved Fearful Symmetries' combination of magicians, folk horror, and a specific historical place. Towards the end of that series it became clear we could easily do another arc.

We took up that story a year later real and in-game time, checking in with our characters and how they’d recovered from the conflict at the end of the last series. Despite the break, everyone fell right back in. We ended up with three “mysteries” (including a country house murder) plus some transitional sessions, and an action-packed coda. I loved it the whole way through. It has renewed my faith in simple, streamlined Gumshoe.

We decided we would do a third and final arc, even talking in the final session about the framing for the start of the next campaign. We might do this later this year or at the beginning of next. I’ve done some pipelaying already for the campaign, and have been thinking about how to integrate the Bookhounds of London material with it. (twelve sessions)

Girl by Moonlight: On a Sea of Stars: Another one we started last year, though right at the end. It became one of my favorite series; I dig GBM’s approach and mechanics. The group enjoyed it, though I think one of the players significantly less so than the others. We decided to do a two-month series to finish out the campaign this year. I imagined it as a mid-season break for a prestige TV show. On Wednesday we hit our 14th session, playing out the final, world-breaking mission. Next session we will do role-play and epilogues to finish out these stories.

I really like GbM. The mechanics drive an interactivity which feels right with the genre. Any action can be from the individual, but becomes stronger when you wrap in the other characters. It may be the rpg with the strongest support-class mechanics I’ve ever seen. (four sessions)

Godbound: Sundered Cycles:We finally ran the third and final quarterly arc of this series. I really enjoy Godbound. I love how the wild powers combined with an OSR adjacent system make people think carefully about how to solve problems. It has some wonky bits– and the problem of the flat OSR combat, but overall it works.

I really enjoyed returning to this because we’d built up the characters and world so fully in the previous two quarterlies. Going back made me a little nervous but– as I mentioned in an earlier post– I’ve found it's much easier to go back to previous games when playing online. We also added a fifth, new player which added a great dimension to the play. They had a unique perspective on divinity and the characters’ role in that.

Had a great set of epilogues and we tied the finale into events from the Mountain Home game. I like the world we’ve built and will probably go back there again. I used some of the Thousand Thousand Island bits early on, but there’s still a ton of that I could integrate. (ten sessions)

Hearts of Wulin: Ageless Sin (not recorded): A solid four-part HoW series using the supernatural set up. I ran for three folks I hadn’t before which was great– and everyone really leaned into the genre. Big, hot tragic ending in the last session. (four sessions)

Hearts of Wulin: 3 Mountains, 1 Heart: A great series. This is what we transitioned into when Dreams and Machines collapsed. We used the fantastical materials, even doing an initial playtest of the Celestial playbook (which needs some proofing and tweaking). We had some great characters, including our Celestial. The Fox-spirit PC from Ageless Sin returned and I integrated several elements from that story into this one. We also had a really fun take on the Aware and a PC who used music in a unique way. I’ve had players run musician characters, but I don’t ever think I’ve seen someone lean into performance and musicality like they did. (five sessions)

The Hunted: I need to write up a review of this. It’s one of the best one-shot frameworks I’ve ever played. It uses Forged in the Dark to create an amazing, tense, and propulsive game of characters being hunted by something terrible. Great play structure, dynamite tools for collaboration, and just dripping with atmosphere. Highly recommended. (one session)

Imperium Maledictum: 3 Cycles from Retirement and Plausible Deniability: So I have been running this to justify buying the core book (and the GM screen as it turns out). This is a newish 40K game, clearly intended to be a kind of follow up to Rogue Trader– though it is both narrower and broader than that. It uses the same mechanics as the latest version of Warhammer Fantasy, creating some consistency between the games.

I’ve enjoyed both series– despite the tradness of the system. There’s enough interesting flexible choices for success and combat to make it really interesting. But it's abstract in a lot of places (like zones for movement and influence as a resource). I originally planned to just run one series during the day, but I had enough interest that I put another on the calendar for the same day in the evening. I’d always planned to do different adventures for the two groups, but having one player in both confirmed that for me. I’ll admit I had some worries going in, but I’m having a great time running this and leaning into slightly-satirical grimdark combined with the 40K elements which attract me. (seven sessions)

Mecha Hack: The only rpg I played besides the newly starting Bounty of the Week campaign. I thoroughly enjoyed this OSR game which combined a dynamite GM with a great group. I had some of the most tense moments I think I ever have. The combat clicked, exploration merged tension with narrative, and the final fully role-play session tied everything together. Plus I learned about Owlbear Rodeo which I’ve been using in a couple of campaigns. (nine sessions)

Murder in the Jedi Temple: I ran this one shot for our Star Wars mini-con. I’d playtested the scenario with a group which helped me trim and fix a couple of things for play. While the playtest went OK (pretty clear one player hated it), the game went well at the table and we managed to get a full, rich story done in four hours. (two sessions)

Pressure: One of the two newish Osprey rpgs I did a two-shot of. I found it decidedly mid but I had a really good time with the two adventures I ran. In particular I dug my set up for the second session and how wild things got. You can check out my review of it here. (two sessions)

Pulp Cthulhu: I did a short series of this by way of justifying my purchase of the Humble Bundle for Call of Cthulhu 7e. I enjoyed the play which adapted and drastically changed an adventure from the book. Pulp Cthulhu is pretty much CoC 7e with a few talents and more ability to spend luck. It’s a minor adaptation. It reinforced for me that if I’m going to do trad-ish Cthulhu I’m pretty off running Trail.

It’s probably the last time I run CoC, given that Chaosium decided that their best move was to hire an unapologetic shitheel who doxxed folks who were already subject to harassment. After this, despite my love for Glorantha, I’m done with their stuff. (three sessions)

Star Trek Adventures: We wrapped our multi-year 13th Age campaign in 2023– we’d started it well before the pandemic. I pitched out several concepts and this one tied for first. Since I’d already invested in the books I cast the tie-breaking vote. We have a big table (six players). I was worried about that originally but it has been fine. We’ve done four “episodes” so far, each split over two sessions. I’ve encouraged them to keep thinking of this as a TV show– with that kind of dramatic logic.

One of the challenges has been that we have two people who really know Star Trek, two who know Star Trek, and two who don’t know Star Trek.

Of course shortly after I started (and picked up the last of the physical books) Modiphius announced Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition. I don’t think I’ll switch over– in part because I spent a bunch of money buying sets of Effect Dice which the new edition doesn’t use. (face to face, ten sessions)

Tomb Raider: The Last Guardians: I ran a short playtest of this last year, but only a few sessions. This time I’m running in the Open Playtest with more room, trying out a new adventure and team playbook. I continue to dig the mechanics here– and the character interactions work throughout. I’m hoping that after the playtest period I’ll be able to post the videos. (three sessions)

Tomorrow City:The other Osprey RPG I ran. I did a two shot of this (you can see the review here). I liked the system and the setting’s solid. It’s not a bad start for something simple and dieselpunk. But it is one of those cases where you have to decide if the setting’s something you really want to lean into and learn. If not, then the evaluation’s really on the strength of the system. (two sessions)

Veil: Iterations: This is our every other Sunday game. I started this last year to playtest some of the new elements. However we had a bunch of bumps in 2024 and only got in a few sessions. Right now it is on hiatus until after our Bounty of the Week game, when my time frees up a little bit. (not recorded, three sessions)

#ttrpg #rpg #age of ravens #rpg actual play

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outoutdamnspark · 11 months ago

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I just found this in my drafts and I don’t remember writing it or where exactly I was going with it, but hey! Have some random Gardenshipping thoughts!

(cw: none. one minor suggestive mention of office stuff. under cut for length)

For all the silverfox!Emmet x Reina stuff I’ve thought of, for some reason I’ve never thought of Reshiram!Emmet x Reina before? So...

🔥 I imagine Emmet is an aspect of Reshiram - not the god-dragon in full, but a piece of it. He’s probably reincarnated several hundred times by now, as the mortal aspect of Truth, and has memories of all his previous mortal incarnations as well as Reshiram’s memories and probably even a good chunk of Kyurem’s. The man is A Mess™️, especially after Ingo, his twin, his brother, his other half (platonic, don’t make it weird), vanishes. After all, what is Truth without Ideals to give it purpose?

🔥 That’s why, when he meets Reina and she becomes his personal assistant at Gear Station, he gravitates towards her. Just like in Gardenshipping canon, he starts to fall for her because of her genuinely kind and caring nature; she also has no idea he’s a piece of a fucking god, so she just treats him like a normal person. Not a celebrity trainer, not a deity, just. As Emmet. And he soaks it up like a man dying of thirst. Here’s this beautiful young woman who truly doesn’t care what or who he is, she just wants to make sure he’s eating and sleeping and taking care of himself. How can he not be intrigued by her?

🔥 He can also smell dishonesty a mile away and he can tell Reina is just actually that good of a person. Sure, she lies about her living situation (she doesn’t tell him that she’s unhoused for the longest time), but I’d imagine Emmet can also tell the intent of a falsehood, so he probably picks up on the fact that any lie she tells is born from the need to survive, rather than malice or the desire to mislead. She isn’t hurting anyone - she just wants to keep her misfortunes private, and Emmet can... sooooort of understand that? (He might not like it, it makes him worry about her, but in the end it really only affects Reina herself, which makes Emmet bound and determined to get to the bottom of her problems and help her in any way he can. The man is SMITTEN.)

🍃 On Reina’s side, I honestly don’t think she’s all that religious; Reina is from Kanto originally, and she has a lot of internalized stuff from the local belief system (i.e. she’ll say things like “Legends” or “Birds” in place of “Arceus” or “Dragons”). She’ll probably still have a subconscious desire to believe in something, but she doesn’t actively practice anything. Also, having only been in Unova for a couple of years at most, she might not really understand the region’s religion all that much. She probably doesn’t really think about it - which. Valid.

🍃 That being said, she would probably not know how to handle being face to face with a literal piece of a deity. For starters, her entire worldview would be - at the very least - a little bit shaken. After all, if you go from nearly thirty years of disillusionment and not fully believing in anything because you’ve been through absolute hell, to suddenly finding out the man you’re in love with (and who’s been railing you over his desk every day) is the Incarnation of Truth, you miiiiiight need a moment to process.

🍃 (That last part, especially, because how on earth do you reconcile the fact that you’ve had an actual god between your legs?)

🍃 Reina already has hella self worth issues, so to find out that her boyfriend isn’t even human, she might not handle it well for a while. In her eyes, what could a god possibly see in a lowly human like her? She still loves him, that part will never change, but she’ll have to take some time to try and reorient before she can even work up the courage to go near him again.

🔥 Emmet, in the meantime, is going to be utterly distraught. He’ll put on his trademark Subway Master Emmet smile, but it’ll be hanging on with a hope and a wish, because he is not doing okay knowing that the love of his life might be terrified of him now. He can’t lie, no, but he’s gotten really, really good at talking around the truth after countless lifetimes, so anyone that asks how he’s doing is getting a series of non-answers until he can slip away. Reina makes him feel normal, human almost, which is something he’s never fully gotten to experience - because while he might be a shard of a Dragon, he’s still somewhat his own entity, since he’s, you know, actually out in the world of man and not sitting dormant in a rock somewhere. He’s constantly torn between two halves of his own existence, and the thing that made it bearable all this time was his twin; with Ingo gone, however, Emmet has been feeling the extra weight of responsibility around his shoulders like a yolk for damn near a decade.

🔥 Until Reina.

🔥 (Like in regular Gardenshipping canon, one of the reasons Emmet falls for Reina is because she just treats him like a person. Doesn’t fawn, doesn’t get close to him just to challenge him, doesn’t pity him; just sits with him and lets him be a regular guy.)

🔥 I’m also imagining the way Reina even finds out Emmet is one of the God Dragons of Unova is uhhhhhhh not the most pleasant of circumstances. Probably Team Plasma, but I’m picturing there being some sort of siege on Gear Station or an attack somewhere that requires Reshiram’s attention, and somehow, someway, Reina winds up witnessing Emmet with his more draconian features and spewing ethereal fire. Get that sweet, sweet ‘oh shit’ moment with Emmet turning around, eyes slitted and glowing, claws out, wings sprouting from his back, fire still trickling from between fangs too big for a human mouth, only to see Reina standing there, completely frozen, just staring at him.

🔥 The follow-up conversation is gonna be... a lot.

🍃 I feel like it’ll take about a week or so for her to be able to talk to him again

#gardenshipping #subway master emmet #emmet x oc #oc reina kageyama #reshiram!emmet

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stiffyck · 2 years ago

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i feel like I spend 80% of my time in your askbox lmfao but I do have scar hurt/comfort ideas (if you get to project so do I >:D)

scar, in last life and double life, gets yelled at and screwed over so much that he starts to believe that it’s his fault and that he deserves it because he puts so much stress on everyone else’s lives

so, what can he do? he can’t keep hurting his friends like that, but everything he does seems to make it worse! he doesn’t think there’s anything he could do

except leave hermitcraft. for good

so he isolates himself until he can find a way to convince xisuma without letting him know why he wants to leave (he doesn’t want to make x worry about him, besides he’s fine it’s everyone else he needs to worry about)

he spends all day all night holed up in his tree (everyone looks in scarland, unbeknownst to him. they don’t consider his tree—no one lives in starter bases anymore) writing drafts of letters and debating ideas that span from burnout to his identity as hotguy is actually real and he needs to go fight crime

one day when he finally leaves the tree to get more paper, squid ink and cat food for jellie, someone stumbles across his tree and decides that looking for him in there can’t do any harm

they find the letters and ideas and feel awful—scar has been feeling this way, this whole time? because of them? well this will not stand

they gather together everyone who has even vaguely wronged scar and altogether they write such a heartfelt apology (they’re not sure if scar wants space or not, they make sure to let him know that he can find them if he wants to) that scar starts to realise that, oh. it wasn’t his fault.

he plucks up the courage after a couple days to knock on grian’s door, where he’s met with grian looking so guilty scar starts to apologise before grian shuts him up by stuffing a cookie in his mouth and sincerely apologising for absolutely everything he’d done to scar. he makes sure scar does not apologise for anything he shouldn’t (“are you sure?? I mean I definitely think I should be sorry for that.” “absolutely not, it was not your fault in the slightest.”)

grian lets people know that scar is okay to talk (after clarifying so many times, scar can’t help smiling) and it ends in everyone telling him off for apologising in unison when he bumps into someone

they all have lots of cake and hugs and they’re all best friends again but now with more understanding of each other and what they need from one another

YES! YESSSSS!!! COMFORT THAT MAN! THROW ALL THE COMFORT AT HIM! WHOOOOO

#asks #stiff talk #this was so sweet omg #made me smile #gtws #goodtimeswithscar

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deadveiled · 2 years ago

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𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐈 𝐑𝐔𝐍 𝐌𝐘 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐒.

ꜱᴘᴇᴇᴅ. as of right now, my blog runs (almost) fully on a queue, which is a decision i made earlier in the semester since i want to focus more of my time on school work, practicing, graduate school applications, and taking care of my mental and physical health, which can often involve extended breaks from the rpc. with that said, i do try and queue up at least one response every time i find myself on here, which is usually a tiny bit at the middle of the day and mostly in the late afternoon and evenings (when i’m not dicking around elsewhere or watching shows). weekends and US holidays/school breaks are a different story, where i’m around more often but still trying to focus on myself.

ʀᴇᴘʟɪᴇꜱ. i tend to draft all of the thread replies that i owe and queue up at least one response for whenever i’m online and feel like completing something from my drafts, as i mentioned in the last section. i also tend to queue these responses in the order that i receive them, but it depends on how much i’m feeling a specific thread and if i’m mains with the other or not. if it’s been around a couple weeks since you replied to a thread we’re doing, please feel free to send me a gentle poke, and it would be helpful to provide a link to the thread since sometimes things tend to get lost in my drafts. i don’t use banners or any fancy graphics in my responses, just still icons.

ꜱᴛᴀʀᴛᴇʀꜱ. i don’t post a ton of these, but when i do, they’re usually inspired by songs (as per usual). not very many of them tend to get a lot of notes, sometimes none at all, so if it’s been a while where i’ve had a starter and i want to write whatever that one is about, i’ll likely just reblog it again instead of making a new one. my opens are generally always open, and any of my mutuals are always welcome to respond!! c: i use banners for starter calls.

ᴀꜱᴋꜱ. like thread responses, in-character responses to things in the inbox tend to be queued, and i also like to publish them in the order i get them, unless if it’s some prompt or starter that i’m really excited about. anon asks are currently closed at the moment due to both anxiety from a very brief harassment incident that occurred over the summer and because i get anxious about having anonymous messages, particularly with the astounding degree of hatred towards marginalized folks like trans people at the moment, of which i am. i’m also never really in the mood to see people arguing with me in my inbox about my character and my writing habits, which have happened on other blogs before. so i decided that it’s best to not have that option at all. that topic aside, if it’s been a while since you’ve sent in an ask, please feel free to give a gentle poke, and if it’s from a meme, it would be helpful to specify that as well. i use banners, dividers, and still icons in my ask posts, which i tend to just copy and paste from the ask itself into a new text post (which you all probably already know).

ᴏᴏᴄ ꜱᴛᴜꜰꜰ. sometimes i often take more time to answer ooc stuff and chat with you guys than i do for threads or asks & other in character stuff i owe you guys, because i love to talk to y’all and get to know y’all as people since i think it makes us better writing partners. i also love getting asks for ooc stuff, like from memes. for ooc posts i use banners.

ᴍᴇꜱꜱᴀɢɪɴɢ & ᴅɪꜱᴄᴏʀᴅ. mutuals are always welcome to dm me here on tumblr to ask questions. most ooc interactions i prefer to have on discord, where you can find me at dumb bitch energy#7000. i personally find the platform a lot more accessible and easier to use and has statistically been less fucky with me than tumblr messaging. for things like further plotting and discussion, i strongly prefer discord, but if you don’t have a discord, then tumblr messenger works just fine.

ʜɪᴀᴛᴜꜱ. whenever i take a hiatus, i will make both a public post and mark my blog as such in the current pinned post. the only roleplay blogs of mine that are not currently on hiatus are this one (even though i’m admittedly on a semi-hiatus here), @titxxn, & @cybermarked. speaking of this blog being on a semi-hiatus at the moment, responses are going to come a lot slower than the responses on other blogs, and my activity will be a lot spottier. when i’m on any kind of hiatus, all rules regarding sending me messages about asks and replies that i owe you are rescinded. i’ve done all i believe is necessary to notify you regarding my absence, and i expect that you respect my decision and my space and not continuously hound me.

ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ʀᴘ ʙʟᴏɢꜱ. all of my other rp blogs can be found here.

#( i only decided today that i was gonna post about hiatus )#( but it's in my pinned post so i guess this is your announcement if you weren't already aware c: )#noah rambles. >>> 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑

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titxxn · 2 years ago

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𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐈 𝐑𝐔𝐍 𝐌𝐘 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐒.

ʜɪᴀᴛᴜꜱ. whenever i take a hiatus, i will make both a public post and mark my blog as such in the current pinned post. the only roleplay blogs of mine that are not currently on hiatus are this one, @cybermarked, and @deadveiled (although it’s kind of on a semi-hiatus). when i’m on any kind of hiatus, all rules regarding sending me messages about asks and replies that i owe you are rescinded. i’ve done all i believe is necessary to notify you regarding my absence, and i expect that you respect my decision and my space and not continuously hound me.

ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ʀᴘ ʙʟᴏɢꜱ. all of my other rp blogs can be found here.

#noah rambles. >>> 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 #( saw this on the dash a lil earlier today and figured i should share too c: )

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crownedhopelesss · 2 years ago

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WELCOME TO #CROWNEDHOPELESSS !!

this is a hub blog for a oc/canon multi-muse that is semi-selective, para/plot heavy and canon-divergent. this is the hub blog which means i won't be doing any writing on this blog and rather be writing the corresponding characters on their respective blogs which are listed below. i would highly recommend following this main blog and any of the canon side blogs i have that you would like to write with which will make interacting and plotting a lot easier! i'm more than willing to talk/plot on any of my blogs, though.

for ask memes, i'll mostly be reblogging them on this blog rather than on multiple blogs to avoid cluttering everyone's dashes. but, if there's a specific fandom/canon blog i'm really feeling, i'll reblog them on that specific side-blog. same goes for starter/plot calls!

my name is raquel but you can call me rapookie! i'm twenty8 and i'm in the gmt-7 timezone! i'm really big into supernatural, horror, angsty, and action plots but i also enjoy fluff, romance, and everything in between! slow burns are also my absolute favorite! FILL OUT MY INTEREST TRACKER! ONE OF THE BEST WAYS TO START WRITING WITH ME IF WE ARE MUTUALS!

ALL THE CANON BLOGS !! FOLLOW WHICH ONES YOU'D LIKE TO WRITE WITH !!

starter calls. / ask memes.

affiliated with : @fortunefavours / @thatslayer / @xxgotthedevilinsidexx would you like to become an affiliate with me? if we're mutuals and we write frequently, you're more than welcome to message me and ask!

OTHER BLOGS : OC VAMPIRE | PEACEFUL OC WOLF PACK | RUTHLESS OC WOLF PACK

drafts : 18 | asks : 23 | queue : 11 | open for plotting !! / updated : 9/24

under the cut are my guidelines! please take a small gander so we can have a better writing experience together! there is no passcode, but i'd appreciate it if you read them!

i. introduction time: rapookie or raquel. i'm 28 years old. she/her. i'm a single mother that has a full-time job with a heavy car hobby and is obsessed with cats and has the best boyfriend on the planet. basic shit: i only write with 21+ rpers (i'm willing to write with 18-20 years old but will be very selective with the themes we write. i.e. no smut or trigger heavy content) because of graphic threads that are trigger heavy and quite possibly nsfw heavy. all basic content and triggers are tagged. i don't write a whole lot of smut. in fact, you probably won't see much of it on here but i do write it occasionally and i don't mind at all. if the thread heads there, i go with it but please tell me if you rather fade to black or move it to discord or even do a read more! that won't bother me! i do read everyone's rules; especially re-familiarizing myself if the thread heads into a smutty direction to make sure if it's something you're comfortable with. if i'm not sure, expect a message from me! last thing i ever want to do is make anyone uncomfortable! if you need something tagged, just let me know and i'll be happy to do so. i've been rping since 2012, i'm an old-timer. i took a break for a couple years and have just recently returned. i used to be selfishsoulstm and witheriingsouls so if you know me, say hi! minors and personals do not interact or follow, I WILL HARD BLOCK.

this is also a PRIVATE, MULTI-MUSE, CANON/CANON-DIVERGENT is MEDIUM TO LOW ACTIVITY. private means i only roleplay and write with mutuals. i do follow people first but if i don't receive a follow back, i'll unfollow and no hard feelings! i just want my dashboard to be mutuals so i don't have to second guess on messaging or sending ask memes! you're welcome to follow me without me following you but please don't message or send ask memes. please do not message me to rp or ask me to follow you back. i check my new followers/activity tab every day so i will have seen it! thank you in advance! what does hub blog mean? it means this main blog is just going to contain ooc posts, ask memes, starter calls, etc and all of my actual writing will be done on the side blogs mentioned above! i encourage you to follow which fandoms interest you and following this one, if anything follow this one! my hub blog is where i will reblog all memes and posting starter calls! each blog has a different level of activity, depending on muse, and you're free to message me on any of them, i'll see it!

ii. i like to write paras to novellas. those kind of threads are my absolute favorite but i also don't mind having short paras or even occasionally the one-liners. i do a little formatting and i use icons but if you'd like for me to match your formatting or media, i don't mind doing that, just let me know. as long you're literate and i can read your replies, we'll be gucci. thread length is a big thing for me. i lose interest if our threads continue to stay very short or the plot isn't developing. i especially lose interest if i give you a reply that has a lot to go off of and i receive only a few sentences. i'll most likely drop the thread or message you and try to develop the plot more. if you're feeling the same way with me, please feel free to message me, i'll be more than happy to plot and throw ideas at each other! this does not mean we always have to have multiple paras all the time, i just don't vibe with replies containing only a few sentences. as long as you're giving me at least a paragraph with enough content within it for me to give you a quality reply, we'll be good! also, if you're lost on where to go in the thread, this goes back to just please message me! i love plotting and brainstorming!

iii. don't godmod, don't be rude to me or fellow rpers, don't start ooc drama, respect others, don't copy any of my writing or characters, and overall just be a decent human being and we'll get along just fine. i love plotting and talking ooc, i think it gives ships/threads more flavor if we get along well ooc so if we're mutuals, always feel free to pop in my dms, ask for my discord, send me memes/asks, send me random starters or respond to my opens and i'll definitely return the energy. ps, i do love sending memes so you'll probably see me pop in your inbox to help break the ice by sending ic memes. i don't write greeters but i do post starter calls and post random opens! ask memes are my favorite because i think they're an excellent way to break the ice between our characters! so if you want to write (and we're mutuals) but don't exactly have a plot in mind, send me an ask meme! speaking of ask memes and other random posts: i practice reblog karma! do not reblog memes from me if you don't have the intention of sending me one. no harm no foul but please reblog from the source! this goes for anything really: photosets, memes, etc etc please reblog from the source! i don't want my activity blog clogged by the notifications and i also don't want personal blogs to find me if one happens to follow you and see my url! it's mainly for privacy reasons! if you break this rule, i'll probably just message you and gently remind you! thanks in advance!

iv. mun does not equal muse and i do not condone anything malicious or evil that my muses may say or do. i write a lot of fucked up canons and even ocs because i like to explore out of comfort zone situations to expand my writing ability and experience but don't think i ever condone it in real life. that being said, none of my ocs or even canons are their face claim! don't use them for shipping purposes just because they have a pretty face. most of my muses i decide to write are not easy to love or don't love easy. i've had bad experiences in the past with people using my canons and ocs just for purely shipping purposes whether it be their face claim or otps they have that i didn't vibe with. i'm all about crossovers, aus, and the like but let's plot, create a dynamic and see if our characters have chemistry and us as writers as well! let's plot out something and have fun with a diverse bunch of characters! don't use me just for my males either, my females deserve love as well and we drink the female muse stan juice on this blog!

v. i'm super open to crossovers, aus, canon divergent, and overall shit that is totally outrageous and senseless! this is fiction and i will make two vampires fall in love and have a baby if i want to! i love exploring themes i don't get to write much and if you have an idea with one of my muses, you're so welcome to share it with me. let's create something totally wild! i promise there is little that i wouldn't be willing to write, especially if we have written before!

vi. i have multiple blogs that i write on (feel free to follow them and write there with me too!), i have lots of other hobbies, i have a full-time job with a beautiful son and an amazing boyfriend that i have a lot of my time devoted too (obviously). my job consists of 3am-12pm shifts then picking up my son from school, doing motherly things and the like. i don't usually get to sit down and have time for myself until the late of day unless it's my day off. so i may not always be here but i have the tumblr app on my phone and i also have discord (which mutuals may ask for!). with that said, i'm a medium to low activity blog so replies may not always be super quick. i utilize the queue a lot and queued posts will be tagged so you'll know if i'm here or not! just as i expect patience from you, you will always have patience from me. if you ever are wondering who owes who, you are free to ask nicely! only thing i ask is to please not pester, then the whole thing just doesn't feel fun anymore. i will never pressure you for replies so if i ever ask you, it's only to keep track of it myself so i don't accidentally lose it. please ALWAYS take your time with replies. you will never bother me with how long you take and if time passes and you want to scrap it and do something new, that is also a-okay by me. i'm a really chill and laid-back person. it's pretty difficult to actually be successful at bothering me.

vii. honestly, that's all i can think of! if you ever have a question about anything, i'd be happy to answer! let's write and have some fun and be friends!

#( ooc. )#pinned post.#PERSONALS AND MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!

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iznsfw · 3 years ago

Text

Fair Share

Kwon Eunbi x Kang Hyewon & Male Reader

Categories: Rough sex, rushed editing

This was difficult to write, not because of the substance, but because Tumblr deleted the draft twice and I had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. It lost some of the funny parts, but I was determined to post it because I feel it is good. Hope you enjoy it anyway!

You and Hyewon have been best friends for as long as you've remembered. Probably since third or fifth grade? Whenever you became friends, it didn't matter. You both loved each other as friends do. You are probably one of the only friends she has who have stuck with her till she joined Produce 48 and became an idol.

Yeah. Friends. Just friends.

No, seriously. This is one of the little friendships thay never go any further than that, and both of you like it that way. People who would look at you would assume you were a couple, and you'd kindly correct them, saying you are just friends. They'd look unsure after that, but truly, you and Hyewon are only friends because both of you have a crush on the same person:

Kwon Eunbi.

That's right: Kwon Eunbi. Anyone would fall for her, really; who wouldn't love a sweet girl who is also pretty? Hyewon has had a crush on her since Produce, and you developed your own feelings for her after seeing a few of her fancams.

Those fancams.

You and Hyewon are mature enough not to fight over her. Why would a little crush break your friendship? The two of you actually bonded by thirsting over her in the dressing room, when the girls would have their outfits and hair prepped up by the stylists.

Right now, you and Hyewon are bonding again. The two of you stare hungrily at Eunbi, who is the last one to have herself styled for the performance stage. The other ten girls have already gone onto the stage for a short rehearsal, but Hyewon has stayed back just for this.

Drool almost drips out from Hyewon's open mouth. "She's so fucking pretty."

"I know," you respond, equally stunned by the leader. "You know, I'm quite jealous of those little shorts. I kind of wanna—"

Hyewon slaps you across the face playfully. You groan, clutching your jaw in mock pain.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You're so thirsty for her."

"As if you aren't?"

Hyewon huffs the strands of hair hanging down her forehead in the air. "Touche," she says. "But my point still stands."

"I'm actually very jealous of you too, you know."

"Oh? And why is that?"

"Well," you begin, "for starters, you two are very close. Closer than she'll ever be to me. And she likes you best."

What you are saying is actually true, and not just a delusional figment of your mind made out of jealousy. Hyewon has always been there for Eunbi. Eunbi likes her best because she doesn't put the burden of being a leader onto her shoulders, and lets her even be as childish as Yujin around her. With Hyewon, she has nothing to worry about.

You would never let your friendship with Hyewon be ruined by just a crush, but sometimes—all the time—you long for Eunbi to be as herself as she liked around you too. You aren't going to judge her or anything.

"Oh, I know." Hyewon flips her hair in your face, putting a hand on her hip.

"Lucky," you mutter. You gaze longingly at Eunbi's pale, strong thighs. "You're the one whose head is most likely to be crushed by those damn—"

"Hyewonie!"

Great. Here comes Captain Bunny who always seems to only hang out with Hyewon. You watch her leap into Hyewon's lap, cheerfully embracing her and giving her a chaste kiss on the cheek.

Watching them, you wonder if Eunbi might have been faking being oblivious to your feelings for her just to make you jealous. If she is, she is doing a pretty good job.

"Hyewonie! You look pretty today!"

Hyewon sticks her tongue out at you surreptitiously. She faces Eunbi again and greets her with her usual small Hyewon smile. "You do too, princess."

The moment Eunbi turns her back to you, you mock throwing up just to annoy Hyewon, clutching your throat and pretending to retch on the black sofa. Eunbi would have noticed if she weren't so engaged in a conversation with Hyewon, which somehow makes you sadder.

"And oppa?" Eunbi turns back to you.

You immediately stop your 'retching' and flash Eunbi your finest smile. "Yes?"

"You'll be there to watch us, right? On the stage?" she asks expectantly.

"Of course. I wouldn't miss it for the world!"

A light happy conversation births between you and Eunbi. You are glad to see her smile and giggle cutely when you slip a dumb joke in between sentences, and feel her laugh against your chest when she laughs too much and has to lean into your chest to calm down.

It would have gone on if it weren't for Hyewon bringing her hand to caress Eunbi's sharp jawline. It distracts Eunbi, who cuts your conversation short to squirm under Hyewon's tickling fingers.

Talk about foreshadowing!

Great. Just great. Everyone give Kang Hyewon a round of applause and an Emmy for stealing Eunbi's attention from you—again.

Way to go, self! you think sarcastically. Way to go for letting your best friend get the girl from you again!

"Eunbi?" Hyewon begins after she stops tickling her.

"Hm?"

"Who do you like more, him or me?"

Wait, now what the fuck?

What is Hyewon thinking? Is she trying to ruin your friendships with Eunbi? Or sabotage any chance of engaging in a normal conversation with her?

You surreptitiously mouth a frustrated "Are you out of your fucking mind" to Hyewon, who responds with a nonchalant eyeroll.

What's the worst that could happen?

"Um…!"

"Choose wisely."

Eunbi smiles at the two of you. "Why would I even choose? You can both have me!"

Cue to Hyewon quickly locking the door, and you pinning Eunbi against it. She suppresses a muffled scream, shyly looking around to avoid eye contact.

When she tries to make eye contact though, it only lasts for five seconds. She shifts in her place at the door. "What are you going to do to me?" she asks nervously.

You take it that Eunbi is a visual learner. Your answer, therefore, comes in the form of you gathering her trembling hands in one of your and pinning them above her head. She squeals in both excitement and fear.

You crash your lips against hers. Eunbi's lips are soft—so soft you couldn't actually believe heaven could be found in just a pair of plump pink lips. She moans softly. Though she's a little overwhelmed by what's happening, she attempts to kiss back just as enthusiastically.

Hyewon pushes you off of her. "My turn."

"But I barely even—"

"Suck."

You're left stunned as Hyewon inserts her thumb in between Eunbi's lips. Eunbi, obedient as ever, follows what she orders, sucking on the offered thumb like a toddler.

You're convinced Hyewon is evil. How does a twenty-year-old bisexual girl with little dating history know how to work up a girl more than you do? You watch as Hyewon presses on the flat of Eunbi's tongue so that she gags and opens her mouth wider, letting saliva drip from the corners of her mouth.

Holy fuck.

You've got to take pointers from her, seriously.

She turns to you with a confident smile, her thumb still being sucked and gagged on by Eunbi.

"Fuck this slut till she can't stand."

All this feels like a lucid dream.

But that is all you needed to hear for you to scoop Eunbi up. She immediately buries her face in your neck and tangle her smooth pale legs around your waist.

Your heart is so soft for her. Your love for her is divided between wanting to tell her you love her every five seconds and wanting to fuck her till she can't come anymore.

Hyewon pushes all the makeup brushes, palettes, and bags on the dressing table aside, not caring if they loudly fall off the edge and onto the floor. She climbs onto the surface and leans against the mirror, then pats her hand on her lap.

You place Eunbi on Hyewon's lap as requested. Hyewon immediately traps the poor girl with a strong arm, and uses the other to help tug off the tight black shorts that hug Eunbi's plump ass.

Hyewon kisses the leader's blonde hair, minty breath hot against her ear. "You're nervous, aren't you, baby?"

Eunbi nods truthfully. She snuggles up further against your best friend, shaking when you completely tug the black shorts off her legs. She is left with thin white panties, the center of it obviously damp with arousal.

"Don't be," Hyewon cooes in a singsong voice. Her soothing voice is quite the opposite of the evil smile she's wearing. Her hand slowly slips beneath the underwear. "You're gonna be just fine."

A scream pierces the air.

Eunbi's hips buck into the air messily as Hyewon gently rubs tight circles on the wet clit with just her fingertip. You pray to God the walls are soundproof because this girl is definitely a screamer.

Maybe a squirter too? You're willing to bet on it.

The sight of Eunbi squirming and moaning under just a touch of Hyewon's fingers makes the blood rush to your dick. You quickly unzip your jeans and let them fall around your feet on the floor. Freeing your erection, you tug the white panties to the side and—without any warning, finally shove your dick into her.

"Agh—ahh!"

Once you feel Eunbi's warm velvety walls clench your dick, you know very well which place you would cum on later.

You immediately settle for a quick, rough pace. Not allowing Eunbi to accomodate to your size, you fuck her as if it is the last time you will ever see her, the last time you live on this earth, the last time you'll ever feel this kind of tightness massage your walls.

Hyewon drags the hem of the white royal-themed blouse upwards, revealing Eunbi's large tits held back by a white lacy bra. "Oh, I knew these were huge. You've got quite the assets, princess."

You'd expect Eunbi to be sensitive when just a few minutes of massaging her clitoris has her riled up like this. But you discover, as Hyewon gropes one breast in her hand, that if her clit is sensitive (supposedly the most sensitive one), her breasts are even more so.

"Oh, I'm gonna—ahh, Hyewonie!"

With just one knead, Eunbi sobs loudly and squirts all over your length. And it doesn't stop; each jackhammering thrust earns a cry of your name or Hyewon's.

You win the bet.

"Holy shit."

Tears run down Eunbi's face, but she doesn't tell either of you to stop. If anything, the tightening of her legs around your waist and her hand pulling Hyewon's face in for a kiss beg you otherwise.

Alright then.

Eunbi sobs against Hyewon's lips as you don't let up your thrusting. Her body is too sensitive to even caress; when Hyewon tries to, her palm meets goosebumps on quivering skin.

She bites softly on the girl's earlobe.

"Does it feel good, unnie?"

"Y-Yes!" Eunbi's eyes seal shut. "So good. P-Please don't stop. Please, please—"

You drill harder into her pussy. You are rewarded with another round of squirting and shaky incomprehensible strings of words from Eunbi.

Gasps and moans echo in the room, accompanied with the sound of skin slapping against skin and pleads for more—and less. You're sure not even soundproof walls could handle how loud Eunbi is. Her cries and sobs make your dick throb with need.

You could feel your orgasm arriving. You try to decide if you should go with cumming inside her as you've always wanted to, or on her stomach for the lewd view of your load messing her outfit.

Second choices are always the best.

You pull out. Your hand quickly comes to replace Eunbi's core on your dick. Although it isn't the same, you know you'd enjoy the view.

You finally explode.

Cum shoots from your dick and onto Eunbi's torso. Some go onto her blouse, and a little on her pretty face.

You've definitely chosen the right option.

What makes up for not cumming inside her is the view of Eunbi stained with semen from her stomach to her face, gasping exhaustedly in Hyewon's arms.

She is certainly not going to be able to join the other members in the stage, that's for sure.

"Fair share?" you ask Hyewon.

"Definitely."

#kpop smut #izone smut #eunbi smut #hyewon smut #male reader

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 4 years ago

Text

A chatty writing update | novels, short fiction, etc!

Hi folks!

It’s been a while since I last wrote an update on this blog! I thought it’d be fun to go back to basics, and just talk about writing. This post chats about: new plans for Feeding Habits, my newest novel, my short story goals & growing collection, along with process reflections.

(image description: a photo of green leaves with the text “writing update” in a white font written on top. /end image description)

Post starts under the cut!

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed)

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting, @aetherwrites, @avakrahn, @maisulli

What have I been up to?

For starters, I finished my second year of my Writing undergrad last week and got two of my final grades back today (A+ baby)! For anyone who has taken online university, y’all already KNOW, but this year was so difficult. Would not recommend! Really proud of myself to have gotten through this absolute rollercoaster of a school term and am excited to get into some writing. That leads us to:

What have I been up to (writing edition)?

2021 started off so fast. By the time January hit, I was so consumed in my new semester that I did not have time to write Feeding Habits (my novel). In the first few days of the term, I managed to write between class, until I could no longer keep up! Essentially, I did not write any of that novel until exam season (last week), where I did manage to get in about 3k words in ~4 days.

Feeding Habits

I’m currently drafting what I believe will be the last chapter of this book (chapter 10: Swan Song). This chapter is so bizarre for a few reasons. It begins the book’s third part and also marks the shift back into Lonan’s head from Harrison’s. I originally thought this part would be much, much longer, with at least another five chapters to go, but quickly realized the book’s content was nearly completed. In my 4 day 3k palooza, I hit 50k in the book (the word count goal), and couldn’t see myself extending past 60k. Since then, I’ve made the loose decision to write this final chapter as a ~novella. Here are a few reasons why:

1. This chapter is structurally very strange.

I unashamedly shift from present to past to present to past past, and so much more every 12 words. I mapped out the timeline on a sheet of paper, and there were over 20 shifts in scenes (the chapter is only about 4400 words at the moment). The fictive past is incredibly important to this chapter, more important than the present, and I thought it would make more sense to not break randomly for a chapter so I could upkeep the consistent inconsistency of the chapter.

2. The chapter is very abstract

This stems from the structural changes, but there are paragraphs in this chapter of the fictive present that are loosely based in reality. They’re more poems than they are factual paragraphs, and keeping them all contained in one place (so a mega chapter/ novella) would reduce the most confusion!

3. There’s not much left to cover

Like I said above, Feeding Habits is on its last leg, lol! I know exactly where the book needs to end up, which is very, very soon from where I’m currently at on the timeline. Swan Song should cover what 2-4 chapters would cover in terms of arcs.

Feeding Habits and I have a really weird relationship, tbh! When I realized a few weeks ago that it’d been over a year since I started the book, I realized I just needed to finish it. Not that I want to rush (because I’ve taken longer than a year to write a book in the past), but that in order to move onto another project, I’d like to put this one behind first. This book has been the hardest thing I’ve ever written, and has reminded me there’s always a time to let go. This sort of scrounges up a conversation about letting this entire series go, which is certainly something I’ve been contemplating doing soon(ish). If this spinoff series gets a third book, that may or may not be the last Fostered book for a very long time (or ever)! There are many complex reasons to move on, but the main one is that I have other projects I’d like to focus on. This is not a definitive decision, but something I’ve certainly been thinking about!

Here are a few excerpts I wrote recently:

(TW: death, gore)

Dying feels like being a trout dangled out of water. Clinging to a hook. Mouth open. Scales iridescent in a final death cry. It’s like blood spurting up the knuckles, drowning out the flesh. It’s that moment on the long fall down when the clouds cup the body. Easy drifting. The sound a skull makes when it cracks is really just the afterthought.

(TW: death, gore)

Kill shot. Death blow. Coup de grace. Right in the heart. He feels it. The blood swelling, slicking his palms. He can do it. Reach into the cavity. Feel for the ribs. Part each bone. Then cup the humming heart. Stay there. Right. It’s never been easier.

Look at this PURE moment of Lonan holding a baby I CANNOT:

The grocery store was a fifteen-minute walk away. With Olivia clinging to his shoulder, Lonan was acutely aware that she could feel his heartbeat. Open valve. Close. Repeat. Hers pulsed right above his, a miniature drumming. The sky had bruised purple, misted with clouds. The evening air nipped his cheeks, so he made sure Olivia was securely fastened between him and his jacket. With wide eyes, she absorbed the drowsy suburbia, all its family cars pulling into driveways, all its couples heading back home after a sunset walk. When Lonan passed a young boy walking two golden retrievers, Olivia giggled, and didn’t stop, even after he’d spent fifty dollars on groceries and nearly the rest on a red Corolla marked with a MUST GO NOW sign outside a convenience store.

Let’s move on!

Mandy and Cora

I said I wouldn’t talk too much about this project, but I just love it so much?? I wanted to share my SUPER early thoughts on drafting a novel, especially one that is SO different from what I’ve been writing recently. I talked about this before in THIS post, but the summary about this project is that it’s a YA contemporary novel! Can’t believe I’m writing YA again, it’s been so long, but I also think it’s going so well. Everything I’ve learned as a literary fiction writer has been a fantastic primer for transferring back to the genre. Admittedly, I have not written much, but I’m having a lot of fun diving back into a lighter project. This is the summary:

Cora and Mandy are identical twins who’ve always done everything together. But when Mandy decides to go to university out of province after graduation and Cora doesn’t, Cora takes this as an opportunity to “test run” life apart from her sister for the first time by spending the summer at her aunt’s house across the country.

I have come up with a few ~things since I last talked about this project, mostly how I’d like to structure it. As of now, I’d like the book to be structured super loosely. I’m really pulling on a lot of inspo from “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour (which is SO good), particularly how “nothing happens-y” that book is. This project (which I still need a title for!!) will be structured in short chapters that cover something Cora does on her own for the first time (without Mandy). For example, a few ideas are “Flight”, “Lunch”, and “Groceries”. “Flight” is the first “chapter” (they’re really kind of vignettes) where Cora flies to her aunt’s house. I still can’t determine if this book will take place in Canada. On one hand, I feel like there will be a wider audience if it takes place in the US (is that just an assumption??? maybe?? someone let me know!), but also: don’t really care too much about an audience at the moment! It could also take place in Canada (So Ontario and British Columbia). But if it does take place in the US, I think it may take place in NYC and San Francisco. The problem is: I really don’t like researching lol, and while I’ve been to NYC many times, I will definitely write it wrong! Does this really matter on a first draft?? absolutely not lol, but of course I am already overthinking!

But back to structure: I am looking forward to seeing what this looser structure will do. This is a story that is solely around one half of a set of twins learning to be her own person (and ultimately that she doesn’t have to completely forget her sister in order to do that), and as a twin who KNOWS this feeling, I think this structure of her doing things for the first time is SUPER relatable.

I was worried it might sound silly/worrying to others who are not twins that Cora hadn’t done things like “lunch” or “groceries” on her own, but I feel this so much as an identical twin myself! Not that she hasn’t done anything at all by herself, but as a twin, when you do something without your twin for the first few times, at least in my experience, you notice. If any twins are reading this--weigh in!

This story is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It definitely is an OwnVoices book! Usually, I avoid details that are remotely similar to me because they make me uncomfortable haha, but with this book, it’s all me, lol! The characters are all Guyanese, which is SO fun because I’ve been planning what they eat (my fellow Caribbean peeps know: the FOOD!), which is so fun (yes they have pumpkin and shrimp, yes they have roti, yes they have pera, yes they have mithai). Every time I’ve gone to dabble at this book, or even think about it, I get incredibly emotional for this reason? I don’t exactly know why. I think this is a story I just so want to tell, with the culture I love SO much that I definitely struggled to love as a child. This is reclamation bitchessss!

Not going to lie tho: the prospect of writing ~a book~ is kind of freaky! I’m going to make the minimum word count for this book pretty short (50k) and see where it goes from there. I think I will focus on this project this summer! Originally I was going to write a literary novel this summer, but I think this one’s calling my name!

Here’s a pretty rough excerpt:

Try. I remind myself that’s what I’m doing after the flight attendant fills me a disposable cup of Coca Cola and all I can think of is Mandy and I shoving Mentos into a bottle of the stuff when we were twelve. Just me, wedged in the middle seat between an exchange student heading out for summer break and a middle-aged woman sipping a cocktail, thinking of Mandy and I bursting whole oranges in a blender when we were bored one Winter break as the plane dips through a wave of turbulence. Mandy and I dying our hair neon green with highlighters (didn’t work—our hair is too dark) as the plane lands on the tarmac. Mandy and I arguing so loud last month, we both lost our voices as I lug my carry-on out of the overhead compartment and shuffle off the plane and through the airport, searching for Aunt Vel.

Short Fiction

I’ve written so much short fiction this year! I have a goal to write a short story a month (they can range in length, as long as 1 is “complete”), so my short story brain has seriously been soaking it all up lately. Let’s chat my month to month breakdown so far:

January:

I wrote four stories in January! The first is a flash fiction piece called “Shark Swimming” that follows a young woman who attends a shark swimming class after breaking up with her girlfriend. I wrote this story for a “test” workshop for my fiction class, and it was based off the prompt “think about something you’re afraid to do and make the character do that thing”. I’m not particularly afraid of sharks, but had been wanting to use the title “Shark Swimming” for AGES (literally since 2018).

This story is one of my favourites. It’s only about 900 words, but I think there’s something profound in how mundanely specific it is. The entire story doesn’t even see the narrator swim with sharks once; it actually takes place fully in the sanctuary’s lobby. But I really love this narrator. This is the first story I’ve written in second person in a while, though I felt really connected to the unnamed narrator. She struggles with accepting that she truly is a “boring” person, and there’s something about the final image that really gets me!

I’ve been submitting this around, though it’s been rejected a handful of times. Hoping I can secure it at a magazine one day because I really love it!

The second story is “Joanne, I’ll Pray for You” which is actually a rewrite of one of my very first short stories (the first story I did not write for a class haha), “NYC in Your Apartment”. I LOVE this rewrite a lot, and also learned the original is not a very good short story! Revising this story taught me just how much I’ve learned in the 2 years I’ve been writing short fiction. Seeing the 2019 version versus the 2021 version side by side is fascinating because I essentially “gutted’ the 2019 version of its beginning and end until all that was left was the middle of the story (aka the actual story). AKA: this is the only story I’ve ever written with a hopeful ending and I cut out all the happy bits lol I am SO sorry (that arc is more for a novel or novella). That’s how this went from a 5k word story to an 1800 word story (my Submittable thanks me for this lol). A lot of details and scenes I included were more pertinent to a 3 act structure/novel, which of course short stories don’t often have because of their brevity. I love rambling about writing theory, and seeing that actually pay off is so fascinating!

(TW: trauma)

Like the original, this story follows Joanne, a woman in her early twenties, who spontaneously breaks up with her boyfriend. She claims the poltergeist haunting her drove her to this decision. The original draft focused a lot more on the traumatic events Joanne survives, but this draft really loosens them up. It focuses less so on the events themselves, and more on how Joanne’s life is affected. I found the details of these events were less important, and even sort of contradicted Joanne’s insistence she is being haunted. Instead, the poltergeist really takes more precedence in the new draft as a force Joanne doesn’t understand. That ambiguity, I think, is what the story truly needed.

I also centralized Joanne’s relationship with her boyfriend, Julian, here. Now don’t get me wrong, I really didn’t add anything to this draft. It was a matter of trimming the fat around it to leave the lean “meat” in the centre. But by removing that fat, I was able to emphasize what was most important here, and that was her relationship. Julian always played a really big role in the original draft, but I feel like his role as both a friend and partner to Joanne is much more emphasized since this draft literally is only two scenes now. Because there is less, there is more room for Joanne to reflect, which I’m happy about!

A final change I made was the setting and therefore the title. The original, which was “NYC in Your Apartment,” I couldn’t keep because I shifted the setting to Toronto (this is how I originally saw it, but in 2019 I just?? couldn’t?? write?? canlit??), and “Toronto in Your Apartment” sounded sort of gross LOL. The new title comes from a line in the story which I think is more relevant to the themes!

The next short story I wrote in January was “How to Spell Alpaca.” This one is super fun because I wrote it SO fast (in about 15 minutes or so). THIS is the writing update if you’re interested in learning more. I talked extensively about this one in that update, but some developments are that I dove into an edit a few weeks ago to really understand the core of the story. I’m still not quite there (this is just an intuitive feeling; I know not everything has “clicked), but I am really intrigued by the two mothers in the story, the narrator, and her newfound acquaintance, Violet. Both really struggle to understand their place as mothers (the narrator even declares she isn’t a mother anymore). The narrator, who is in her 50s, sees herself in Violet, who is much younger (~20s), and so she views Violet’s relationship with her daughter in a cautionary, yet mournful way, like she can see it will end up like her own relationship with her daughter, despite wanting the opposite. This is a really subtle story. I feel like if you blink, you’ll miss the message. But I think it’s compelling for that reason. It’s really a portrait of parenting and how to grapple with mistakes you may make that inevitably affect your children. Wow just unlocked the theme writing this lol.

The final story I wrote in January is “The Party,” which may be in my top 3 faves I’ve ever written. This story follows Aida, a recent divorcee in her ~40s. The day her divorce turns official, she moves into a new house and receives a party invitation addressed to the previous homeowner, yet RSVP’s anyway. At this party, she’s hoping to find some sense of noticeability, having struggled with being nondescript her whole life. Things seem quite normal at the party, until it gets bizarre.

I LOVE this story, y’all. Like “How to Spell Alpaca” it really delves into motherhood. Aida, our narrator, is incredibly hurt after her divorce. She now lives farther from her children she struggled to feel connected to in the first place, and doesn’t really know how to reignite her life. This party is a means to do that. This is the first story I’ve written that contains a “twist” which is strange because I really prefer stories that give us as much info as possible upfront, but yes, this one sort of twists.

February

I wrote one story in February, and that was “Protect the Young.” This title is SO changing when I think of a new one because it’s thematically incorrect, haha, but this story follows a woman in her late 40s whose daughter, Lindy, announces she is married the same day all their backyard chickens turn up dead. The discovery of dead chickens prompts our narrator to recall her ex-husband’s murder and the role her daughter may have played in his death.

I love this story so much! I think this would make a great closing for my short story collection. It just has that vibe! I wrote this for my second fiction workshop. I thought I had to hand in the story a week earlier than I had to, so I panicked and wrote this in one sitting! Little did I know, I did not need to do that lol but I’m very happy because this story is so fun. We get to learn more about Arnold (her ex), his relationship with Lindy, and how that translates to Lindy’s relationship with her new husband, Malcolm. I LOVE true crime (I listen to about 3-4 hours of case coverage daily), and this is my first “true crime” story. Because of that, I’m very sus of a few details that probably wouldn’t slide in actual investigatory work, so I’ll also be working on that in a revision. My professor also gave me a great suggestion that may alter the story’s structure a bit, though I look forward to toggling with it in the future.

March

In March, I was really on a Criminal Minds kick lol. I’ve been watching this show since I was seven (oops), and dove into a rewatch since it hit Disney+! This story, “Where to Run When the Lamb Roars,” is very clearly Rachel watching 5 episodes of CM a day. Oops! We follow 14-year-old Astrid as she and her older half brother kidnap a young girl to sacrifice for their yearly ritual.

I knew a few things going into this story, but the main thing was that I did NOT want to show any details of a potential murder (if one even occurs). I really wanted to keep all of those elements off the page because this story is not about those events, but about Astrid’s relationship with her brother. They are a murderous duo, with Astrid actually being the dominant partner. I wanted to explore that. I knew her brother, Fox, was more of a submissive partner in their team, even when he used to do this same thing with his father when he was much younger (chilling!), and so it was a task to explore how this young girl’s desire for violence works. The end actually comes right before the story starts, one could say, but I like it for this reason. It really made me contemplate the story by the time I finished it, and helped me examine what it really was about versus what it appeared to be about.

April

(TW: sexual content, non explicit)

I was so busy this month! Who knows if I’ll write a story last minute, but I did write one story this month called “Five Times Fast.” I wrote this during a “writing sprint” that was being hosted at a flash fiction workshop I recently took with one of my favourite writers ever, K-Ming Chang. I learned so much from this class, and am so happy I came out of it with a draft! This story is just over 300 words, so the shortest flash I’ve ever written, but I’m really happy with it. It was based off the prompt “describe the last time you or your character was naked.” In this case, the narrator has a “friends with benefits” relationship with Ricky who works at a laundromat. This story highlights a moment in this relationship (and also Ricky’s goofy personality lol). I really like it! Hopefully I’ll submit it to some magazines soon.

My short story collection

Very briefly I wanted to touch on my short story collection which I’ve titled “She is Also Dead.” I’ve been meaning to make a blog post on this, so look out for that in the coming months, but this collection is already at around 35k words (about 14 stories so far). The collection also surprisingly has a solid amount of flash fiction which is kind of fun! There’s definitely a range here, which is what I personally love in short story collections.

I feel very professional now that I have a ~collection chart. This is her:

(image description: A chart with the title “She is Also Dead.” It is broken into four columns: Story, Status, Word Count, and Published. Entry 1 - Story: Slaughter the Animal. Status: Revisions, Word Count, 3982, Published: N/A. Entry 2 - Story: Joanne, I’ll Pray for You, Status: Polished, Word Count: 1809, Published: N/A. Entry 3 - Story: Primary Organs, Status: Published, Word Count: 2342, Published: The Malahat Review. Entry 4 - Story: Faberge, Status, Polished, Word Count: 619, Published: N/A. Entry 5 - Story: The Wolf-Antelope Will Not Come for Us, Status, Polished, Word Count: 1556, Published: filling Station (forthcoming). Entry 6 - Story: How to Spell Alpaca, Status: revisions, Word Count: 1327, Published: N/A. Entry 7 - Story: Blink Twice for Final Judgement, Status: Polished, Word Count: 6572, Published: N/A. Entry 8 - Story: The Species is Dead, Status: Published, Word Count: 1208, Published: Minola Review. Entry 9 - Story: Shark Swimming, Status: Polished, Word Count: 907, Published: N/A. Entry 10 - Story: The Party, Status, Polished, Word Count 2339, Published: N/A. Entry 11 - Story: Fig, Status: Polished, Word Counter: 947, Published: N/A. Entry 12 - Story: Protect the Young, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4128, Published: N/A. Entry 13 - Story: Where to Run When the Lamb Roars, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 2174, Published: N/A. Entry 14 - Story: Phantom Limbs, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4844, Published: N/A.) /end image description.

This order is DEFINITELY not permanent (at this point whenever I write a story, I just fit it randomly into this chart lol), and some of the info is outdated (for example, Slaughter the Animal is now polished!!! thank god!!!). But just an idea of what I’m thinking of including.

This is the summary so far:

In SHE IS ALSO DEAD, characters are pushed to act on their gravest impulses. A small town turns murderous when their local invasive species, the Janices, begin dying. A child struggles to understand her mother’s suicide. A college dropout who insists she’s being haunted by a poltergeist unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend. A mother acknowledges her daughter’s murderous tendencies after her backyard chickens mysteriously die. A young girl caters the funeral of a girl rumored to be killed by a wolf-antelope. A newly-divorced mother RSVP’s to a bizarre party she was not invited to, and a murderous brother and sister upkeep their yearly tradition of abducting a young girl. These stories follow characters who navigate death, violent desires, womanhood, and loss, both self-imposed and otherwise.

This is also so subject to change as I may pull and add stories to the collection!

I think I’m going to leave this update here for now! I’ve written TONS of poetry too, but I honestly ~hate my poetry right now lol, so! Hope you enjoyed this chill rambly update. Hope writing has going well for you all! All the best!

--Rachel

#writing #writeblr #writerblr #amwriting #writingupdates

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dropofgoldensun · 3 years ago

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omg hiiiii i am here from cat (@luvdsc) wondering if you could offer any advice about college apps 🙏 especially about the uc piqs? thank you so much i hope ur doing well!!!!!!!!

yes yes hello friend !! 💝 miss cat directed you to me because i did my college apps last year !!! (yikes one year passed already?? why does that feel ages ago 🤧)

first of all, congratulations on making the decision to apply to college !! i know it’s been hard for a lot of people our age to figure out the college situation recently, so i’m proud of you for choosing to take the extra step this summer to buckle up and write those essays 💞

i’ve compiled a few tips on answering the PIQs (i was actually in the middle of typing this up when i received your ask haha), but some of them can be applied to other essays, as well !! they’re all under the cut (because, unfortunately, being brief is not my forte) 😊

(and for reference, the prompts i chose were #2 (creativity), #6 (subject), #7 (community), and #8 (anything) !!)

tip #1: understand the prompt.

before you even begin writing, it’s important to understand what the question is really asking. for the UC PIQs, this will look different depending on which four prompts you decide to do.

in question one, for example, they want to know about your skills in leading others, but notice that they’re also curious about your resolution abilities and teamwork experience. or in question two, they don’t want to know that you paint and that you love painting—they could be asking how resourceful you are, how you think outside the box when you have an idea.

once you know the question you’re going to be answering, you can move on to brainstorming!

tip #2: write down three (3) key takeaways.

these are like the most basic, not-even-a-sentence answers you would give to each question. so for me, in response to question eight (“what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for the UCs?”), my answers were perseverance, courage, and character. i had a story about that, so i wrote about my experience with martial arts.

i recommend you do something similar. decide on three things that you want to communicate to your audience, and write them in the footnote of your document. your goal is to cover all three points so that, if anyone were to read your essay, they would walk away understanding those three things about you.

i found this strategy really helpful for keeping my essay streamlined while writing—if a sentence didn’t relate to any of those main points, i would cut it since those words would take up valuable space in the word count. stay focused on what needs to be in this essay, and if you have extra words left in the word count later, you can add those details back in.

and once you’re done with your essay, make sure to refer back to your takeaways and check that you covered all of them sufficiently!

tip #3: highlight your stories.

i sent cat an ask a couple days ago with a few pictures of my response to an end-of-year college counseling survey that referenced this tip (you can find it here). basically i said that, when choosing what topics to write about, pick things that interest you! if you get excited talking about it, your audience should get excited about reading it, because they’ll pick up on the passions you have and then everyone’s excited !!! :D

i’ll tell you a secret: everyone you meet, everyone you see, has countless unique experiences that few others may have. me? i spend hours making mashups out of kpop songs. i earned my black belt years after a traumatizing experience during training. i get russian harry potter and spanish dr. seuss books from the library. and i created a collaborative online google photos album for my classmates that now has thousands of entries. although these aren’t necessarily unique to only me, they’re still special enough to the point where, when you put them all together, you get a better image of the person i am, and what i value.

so find a story, a habit, a hobby that makes you different, because i believe that everyone has them. give them some food for thought, or that one-liner that sticks in their brain and won’t go away. and remember: these stories don’t all have to be extraordinary—they should be about people or moments of special value to you, because that’s what matters.

personal tip: when i was brainstorming ideas, i decided that the best way to get ideas out there was to go on a rant (because sometimes it helps to just have a conversation with yourself !!) and i recorded myself, so i could replay what i said !! this was so so crucial to me finding my own voice for writing essays. notice the way you word things when you talk—a good line or two may make it into the final draft :)

i found it helpful to read sample essays as well! they give a lot of great ideas on the kinds of topics people write about. (also, it’s kind of fun, because who doesn’t love a good story?)

but the people reading your essay won’t be there to just enjoy your story; what they really want you to do is to tell them what you learned from your experience. they want to know whether you’re teachable and willing to grow both as a student and as a young adult. so make sure to take note of the life lessons you learned, experience you gained, character you built, etc.

minor tip on ending your essay: if you’re telling a story that happened in the past, then close with what you learned and how you can apply that to your life moving forward. if you’re telling a story that has no definite end yet (like a passion or dream you have), you probably don’t have everything figured out (and you can say that in your essay!), so it might be better to close with your hopes for the future.

tip #4: ask your family for help.

peer-editing is one of the most effective ways to detect errors and inconsistencies in your writing, because, after staring at your essay for so long, you might gloss over glaring contradictions. for all of my essays, i printed them out and asked my parents to help me revise them. we’d meet every other night (or every night, depending on how much time was left) to review and discuss improvements.

i actually kept some of those printed drafts (only the first and the final ones for comparison), and let me tell you from experience—you’re probably going to have a lot of drafts (i think the most i did was seven? but you don’t need to go that far!). this part of the process does take some time, so remember to be patient and kind to yourself :) these essays won’t happen overnight!

enlisting the help of others also helps keep you accountable. one of the struggles many seniors face while writing essays is just... setting aside time to do them. and even though the constant reminders from your parents will definitely get repetitive and a bit stress-inducing, i can tell you from personal experience that i’m so glad they did; otherwise, i don’t think i’d have my essays done in time :’)

while writing college essays is challenging, your family will be there supporting you each step of the way. chances are that they’ll have their own pointers to pass on to you, since they probably remember doing this process themselves! and, out of everyone in your life, they probably remember the most about you (because you probably don’t remember much when you were four or five), so they might have a couple starter ideas for topics when brainstorming. you can rely on them for their advice and their experience.

tip #5: self-editing.

here’s the part that takes the longest time.

use action words. this is probably something you’ve heard all throughout elementary school where they didn’t like you to say “said” because it was “boring”… but honestly, the difference between “doing my own version” and “infusing it with my personality” could go a long way. also, use words that you would actually use in an essay—then it’ll have your own special flair, and not sound like it’s taken from some stuffy 80s textbook!

here are some of the words i used (once again, you shouldn’t use these words if they don’t sound like something you’d write/say): potential, overlay, wrestle, launch, analogous, weave, infuse, experiment, outlet, revel, fascinate, satisfaction, pursue, expand, distinction, capture, range, archive, engage, beyond, build, adversity, cultivate, preserve, commit, explore, convey, naturally

also, be on the lookout for repeated words. i once wrote an essay without noticing that i used “hope” three times in the same paragraph. don’t do that! use synonyms :) personally, i tended to run short on synonyms, so i always kept a tab or two open on my computer reserved for searching up new words.

side note: unfortunately, during my search for synonyms, i discovered that thesaurus.com just didn’t give me what i was looking for. i highly recommend using wordhippo instead; it has so many more options and they’re grouped by the different definitions of your word! i found the synonyms i needed really quickly and it was very satisfying!

avoid the passive voice! my teacher gave me this tip for theses or any other college-level writing. here’s an example of the passive voice: “there was a large part of me that wanted to turn back.” that’s twelve words taking up precious space in your word count! instead, say something like, “i considered turning back.” you’ve just freed up eight words :)

tip #6: final revisions.

this is the step where you fine-tune your essays. meet that word count.

read your writing out loud. does it sound like you? it should. every writer has a different voice, and you need to ensure that yours is pervasive throughout your essay. feel free to use contractions—not only do they reduce your word count (this was a good thing for me, since i had a problem with getting under 350 words), but they also give a more casual tone to your essay, as if you’re telling a story to someone in the room.

next, pretend to be an admissions officer and have someone else read your essay to you. do you get excited hearing about this student who shares your name? if you do, there’s a good chance the real admissions officers will love your essays, too. this also gives you a chance to review to your essay as a whole. pay attention to the overall flow. is there a clear beginning and end? do you resolve the issues and overcome the trials you brought up? listen to it as if it’s a story, and take this time to enjoy what you’ve written. you worked hard!

final thoughts / encouragements.

oh my goodness, did we make it to the end? honestly if you did, thank you so much 🥺

okay but despite my relatively optimistic tone throughout this post, i’m still going to be honest with you—the college essay writing process is difficult. it requires you to look inside yourself and analyze the “why” behind some of the things that you love, and that isn’t easy to do at all. it’s intellectually and emotionally challenging, because not only do you need to use so much energy writing, but you also have to dig deeper to understand yourself, and that’s not easy, either.

but i wanted to encourage you, too. no matter what you may think of yourself at 12am, 2am, 4am writing these essays, believe you have a personality that others love and will love when they meet you. you are an interesting person with unique experiences who deserves to share your thoughts with others. you have so many people behind you, supporting you during these next few months. and when you find that you can’t write any more, remember to take time to care for yourself. have a warm shower. go to bed early. i could go on and on about why sleep is good for your brain but i’ll spare you the details in this post 😉

one last thing: keep the bigger picture in focus. remember, by december or january, you will be finished with most of the application process. that’s no small accomplishment. you can do it. 💝

i really hope you found tips that you were looking for, and that they’re applicable to your own PIQs and other essays !! if you have any other questions, feel free to send in another ask (i promise my response won’t be this lengthy LOL) 💘💓

oh, and if you feel comfortable enough reaching out about anything in particular, i’m only a DM away 💕 i wish you the best of luck on writing your essays and i hope you enjoy your final year of high school !! 💗🌸💟💖

#asks #college tips

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actuallybarb · 4 years ago

Text

The Aftermath ~ Part 7

Summary: y/n goes to therapy, is a confirmed hoodie stealer, and gets a pep talk from sam wilson and wanda maximoff

Pairing: peter parker x reader

Warnings: swearing, angst, fluff, trauma, me attempting to write a therapy session

Word Count: 3850

A/N: so many things. 1) i’ve never been to therapy (even tho i desperately need it) so i’m solely basing that off of Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan. 2) i live for sleepy tropes and i hella indulged. 3) sorry not sorry

//////////

“Your projects are due next Monday. Have one partner email me who your group is working with, and no, Mr. Thompson, you can’t work with students from other periods. Class dismissed.”

“Want to work together?”

We had been going to class together for a month now, but it always seemed like Peter was surprised whenever he saw me sitting next to him. Maybe it wasn’t surprise...

“Yeah. When do you want to work on it?” I shoved my notes into my already disorderly backpack and slung it over my shoulders. It was starting to get colder in New York, but I was still wearing t-shirts and shorts (mostly because I could keep myself warm and also because I’m stubborn as hell).

“Thursday? Or do you want to start sooner than that?”

“No, I can do Thursday. Are you going to the compound this weekend?” It wasn’t more than a whisper, but I still checked who was around before asking. You can never be too careful.

“Yeah, May’s driving me up after school on Friday. Want a ride?”

I smiled. “That’d be nice.” People were slowly making their way out of the building to head home for the day, but I was heading to Manhattan.

“You going home?”

“No, I’m seeing my shrink. I’ll see you tomorrow, Peter.”

“Yeah. See you tomorrow, Y/N.” He turned right, I turned left, and I might have turned around and glanced back at him over my shoulder, just for a second.

But so did he.

/////////

Taylor’s office had a billion plants and as many windows in it. She always had a candle burning that smelled like clean laundry, and she liked to talk first whenever we met up. That’s why I liked her so much.

“Remember my crazy neighbor’s dog?” She was watering one of her plants when I walked in. “Guess who I accidentally ran over?”

“You ran over a dog?” I left my backpack by the door and grabbed my own watering can.

“No, not the dog. I ran over my neighbor while he was chasing after the dog.”

I laughed. “Like that’s much better.”

“Running over a dog is unforgivable, Y/N. A person is understandable.” We finished watering the plants then sat down at the huge floor-to-ceiling window that took up her back wall. Another reason I liked Taylor: I actually do stuff while I’m talking with her. It’s not like I’m sitting on a couch staring at her while I talk about my feelings, we’re on equal ground. The last couple visits I’ve worked on painting New York, but I haven’t made much progress because I’m a shit painter. “That’s not the point,” Taylor would say, “it’s all about going with it. Be a shit painter. Own it.” Yeah, we get along great.

“No more panic attacks since the first day.”

“Yeah? That’s great.” Unlike me, Taylor is a phenomenal painter. Her skyline had identifiable buildings. Mine had — I think one looks more like a tree than a building. (That’s one huge tree.) “Any nightmares?”

Oh. We’re going there today. “Just on bad days.”

“How often are the bad days?”

After the Blip and before Europe, my bad days went from every day to maybe once a week. Then Europe fucked me over. Now? I don’t know. “Whenever they feel like it.”

“C’mon, Y/N, you can do better than that.”

I rolled my eyes and groaned. “It’s not like it’s a cycle, like the moon or a period or our meetings. It’s sporadic, Taylor, and fucking exhausting.”

“Why? Why are the bad days so exhausting?”

I may or may not have angrily made a bird smash against a window in my painting. “Because I’m the only one who knows. Mom guesses, most of the time, but it’s like she’s still dancing around me. Dad sees it when he’s home, but he doesn’t know what to do. And—“ I almost said ‘and Peter.’ That would’ve been awkward. “And my friends make it better, but they’ve got their own shit to deal with, and I don’t want to dump any of my problems on them. And I know you’re going to say ‘Internalizing your pain is bad, Y/N,’ but it’s the only solution I can handle right now until I muster up the courage to actually talk to my mom again. I mean, last time I needed Jess by my side, how the hell am I going to handle it without her?”

“For starters, I’m proud of you for acknowledging the way to address the problem. And secondly, you don’t have to do it by yourself. I’ve actually been wanting to have another session with your parents, and now seems like as good of a time as any. Bring them around for your next session, and we’ll talk to them, together, about how you can get through bad days with their help. Okay?”

My lips quirked up, just a smidge. “Okay.”

“Now let’s talk about King T’Challa’s new suit, you can’t pretend you don’t have an opinion on it...”

///////

It was a bad day.

Which sucked, because it was also Thursday, and Peter was supposed to be over in half an hour to work on our project. And I was a mess.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Mom called from the living room. Her elementary school got out twenty minutes before Midtown, so she usually beat me home. “How was school?”

“It’s a bad day,” was all I said before I closed the door to my room. I didn’t slam it (not anymore) but I didn’t know anything else. I couldn’t tell if I wanted a nap, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to fly from rooftop to rooftop until I was too exhausted to come home; I didn’t know. Which sucked, because I’m the only one who could’ve told me the answer.

The was a light knock on my door. “Can I come in?” I didn’t respond, so Mom walked in. “Mind me asking why today was bad?” I still didn’t say anything, my face buried in my pillow. She sat at the edge of my bed, near my knees. “I can usually tell, you know.” It was a hushed voice that came out of her mouth - nothing like the loud and loving woman I’ve known almost my whole life. “You do a good job of trying to cover it up, but I can tell. Your shoulders are tenser than usual, and your eyebrows are crinkled together the second you step out of your room.” She sighed and put a hand on my back - her hands are always warm and usually smell like hand sanitizer from Bath and Body Works because she refuses to use the government-issued ones at school. “You dad and I have no idea what you went through while we were gone. We have no idea what you went through in Europe. But we’re here for you now, Y/N. You carry this weight around with you, and I just — I want you to know that you have people to share it with. Maybe not the weight itself, but the pain it’s causing you.” She removed her hand and set both of them in her lap. “I don’t know how to make the bad days better, so I need you to tell me when you’re ready. I’m here for you, baby.” She leaned down and kissed my head, then stood up and started walking toward the door.

When her hand was on the knob, I finally spoke up. “Thank you.” It was barely a grumble, but she heard it.

The door closed quietly, and I finally decided what I wanted to do.

Cry. I cried. For at least twenty minutes. I cried because of my abilities, I cried because I lost Jess as a mom, I cried because I went to Europe, I cried because Quentin Beck was an asshole that fucked up my mental state for probably the rest of my life, I cried because I killed a lot of people, I cried because now I was friends with Peter but at what cost?

He showed up, eventually. I heard him knock on the front door as I blew my nose. Mom, bless her soul, kept him distracted until I came out of my room myself. It took me another twenty minutes to finally convince myself to leave my room, and at that point I was too exhausted to keep myself warm anymore, so the cold breeze blowing through New York hit me in full force. I slipped a hoodie on, grabbed my backpack, and took a deep breath before opening the door.

Peter was sitting at the counter while Mom washed the dishes from breakfast this morning. She was back to talking loud, and he was listening with a smile on his face. My door closed and his eyes immediately darted to me. “Hey, Y/N.”

“Hey, Pete. Is it okay if we’re in the living room?”

Mom glanced between the two of us and tried to hide her little smile, but at least one of us caught it. “Yeah, of course. I’ll be in the office if you need anything.”

He must’ve noticed my bloodshot eyes; he couldn’t stop staring. “Is that my hoodie?”

Shit. Is it? I glanced down at the Midtown Tech logo and remembered getting drenched at the compound after the sprinklers unexpectedly came on. Then Peter gave me his hoodie. “Shit, yeah, it is.” I pulled on the sleeves to take it off, but he shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it, I have at least two more at home.” He pulled out his laptop and it was suddenly back to business. “Any ideas how we’re going to do this?”

We bounced ideas off of each other until we came to a rough draft, but it was getting later, and bad days always get worse at night.

“Shit, is it ten already?” Peter started gathering his things and stuffing them in his bag. “I told May I’d be home by ten, I hate being late.”

I pulled out my phone and sent May a quick text; we’ve had each other’s numbers since my first weekend at the compound. We lost track of time, he’s heading home now.

I figured. See you tomorrow :)

Peter stood up and started walking toward the door, and I followed him. I had spoken maybe twenty sentences the whole time (it’s a miracle we got this far in the project) but I couldn’t convince myself to say anything else before he left. And I wanted to. But I also wanted to cave in on myself — and we both know which option was winning that battle.

“Do you need a hug?” He basically had one foot out the door, but he turned around and asked me this.

“What?”

“Your heartbeat — it’s been off all day. And it still is right now, and — Do you need a hug?”

God, he was perfect. And I was so gone.

All I needed all day was a goddamn hug, and now he’s offering one, and tears started brimming in my eyes before I could even nod yes. He was so warm, and his voice flitted around in his chest, and I would’ve felt bad about getting tears on his shirt, except I didn’t care anymore. All I cared about was how the weight on my shoulders lifted when Peter Parker’s arms were wrapped around them.

“Are you going to be okay?” he mumbled in my hair. I only nodded again. “Okay.” He slowly loosened his grip, but not before he left a quick kiss on my head. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Another nod. “See you tomorrow.”

///////

Peter was going crazy. Since we hadn’t found any footage that could clear Spider-Man’s name without incriminating Peter he wasn’t allowed out as his alter-ego. And he was literally climbing the walls of the compound.

I was blowing gusts of air at him, trying to knock him down from the ceiling. We had officially finished our project only twenty minutes before, so I pulled up the EDITH footage from London, trying to think of how to clear Spider-Man’s name.

And then it hit me.

“Oh my god.” I ran to the computer and started typing away furiously. “I think I figured it out.”

He came back to the ground. “Figured what out?”

“We can just use the audio file from the video. Then your face doesn’t have to be in it at all.”

I found the file and played it over the speakers.

“EDITH! Turn off the drones.”

“Should I execute all cancellation protocols?”

“Yes, execute them all.”

It was perfect. Exactly what we needed.

“Peter.” I turned to him with a huge smile on my face. “This can save Spider-Man.”

“This can save Spider-Man,” he repeated. “Shit, Y/N, you just saved Spider-Man.” He wrapped his arms around me tightly and lifted me in the air, his laugh ringing in my ear. “I can still be Spider-Man!”

I laughed along with him. He set me down after a minute, but we were still standing unbelievably close together. One minuscule step forward and my lips would be on his. His heart beat jumped, and so did mine, but he didn’t pull away. Neither of us pulled away.

His tilted his head and kissed my cheek (which I still freaked out over) and then took a step back.

“We have to call Pepper and tell her.”

“Yeah, yeah.” FRIDAY started the call and Pepper was over the moon.

“We’ll get a press conference set up for tomorrow, and I’ll work on a statement. Peter,” this was the sternest I had ever heard her - even more serious than when she was talking to Morgan, “I know this is all good news, but you have to wait to be Spider-Man still. All of this press has to die down first before you can go out in the open again, okay?”

“Yes, Mrs. Potts.”

“Okay. I’ll see you two bright and early tomorrow.”

She hung up and Peter hugged me again. This one was way more subdued than the last one. “Thank you, Y/N,” he mumbled into my neck.

“You’re welcome, Pete.”

//////////

The press conference went well, according to Rhodey. “I think most of them were relieved to know Spider-Man’s not actually a murderer.” Everyone was dying to have Spider-Man come out and answer questions, but Pepper insisted no questions were being taken at that time, or ever.

MJ called Peter after the press conference was released to the public, and they talked for what felt like forever. The second he got the call I went to the training room: to distract myself or actually train, well, it doesn’t matter because both were done.

A simulation droid was about to “kill” me, but red magic tore it apart at the last second.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because Peter’s been talking on the phone for the same time you’ve been in here.” Wanda gave me a knowing look. You forget that she can read minds because she’s not invasive about it, but she’s always there, holding the information to either back you up or tear you down.

I sighed. “He’s talking to MJ. And I know there’s a high possibility that they’ll get back together but a part of me is hoping they won’t.”

“So you can be with him instead.” I gave a small nod. “Don’t give up yet, Y/N. I see the way he looks at you. You might have more of a chance than you think.”

“She’s right, kid.”

I jumped in surprise. “How long have you been listening?”

Sam smiled from the observation deck of the training room. “Long enough. Boys are stupid, they need all the help they can get.”

“I’ve given him plenty of help already. Literally.”

“Haha, very funny.” He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. If it doesn’t work out with MJ, shoot your shot. I have a feeling you won’t be disappointed.” He winked before leaving, and Wanda followed suit.

I rolled my eyes before telling FRIDAY to pick another random simulation. “Make it a good one.” And, boy, did she. It was the hardest one yet, and all of my concentration was going into it. I was so focused I didn’t even notice Peter walk in until after I had won.

“Damn.”

I turned quickly to see him standing near the door, his hands in his pockets. “Hey. How’d it go?”

“It was okay. She saw the news.”

“But…”

“But it’s not happening. I-“ he looked down at the ground, “I can’t trust her. Not when she lost trust in me. And I- I think I’m interested in someone else.”

I nodded along. I tried to keep my heart as normal as possible but it was beating too hard from my adrenaline to be controllable; I’m almost positive Peter heard it jump at the news. “That’s understandable. Who’s the, uh, the someone else?” God, please be me.

Peter’s lips twitched up to a small smile. “You’ll find out eventually.” He stepped further into the room and relaxed a bit. “Want to do a round together?”

I wanted to. I really wanted to. But I was exhausted, and I think I pulled a muscle, and I could already feel bruises forming where I ungracefully fell on my side. So I just shook my head. “Some other time.”

My room had a bathroom attached to it, and that’s where I spent the next half hour, standing under the blazing hot water coming from the shower. Once I convinced myself to actually get out and change into pajamas, I grabbed my laptop and climbed into bed. I was going home tomorrow, I deserved a few hours of shuteye.

Then someone knocked on my door and ruined the whole ambiance.

“Oh, you’re - I was just - I’ll just go.”

“No, Peter, what’s up?”

He was standing there, hair damp from the shower, black t-shirt and flannel pajama pants on, looking hot as ever. “I was going to ask if you wanted to watch a movie, but you’re already in bed, so never mind.” He turned to walk away, and I almost let him because I was on-my-ass exhausted, but I didn’t. I couldn’t, not when he looked like that (soft, but also hot as fuck).

“Come on.” He turned, and I opened the door wider. “I was about to watch Gilmore Girls, but we can watch a movie if you want.” I pulled back the covers and left plenty of room for Peter to sit beside me.

“We can watch Gilmore Girls, I don’t mind.”

The second I pressed ‘play’ on the third episode was the second my eyes could barely stay open any longer. I tried so hard to watch Jess win Rory back, but sleep caught up with me and I let it win. I used Peter’s shoulder as a pillow and decided sleep was a battle I didn’t mind losing.

////////

I woke up to my alarm, but as quickly as my eyes opened, Peter’s arm pulled me closer to him. I was too tired to feel embarrassed or excited about the fact that Peter Parker was in my bed with an arm wrapped around me. All I wanted to was to turn off my alarm and go back to bed, but my dad was picking me and Peter up in two hours and I wanted to bully Sam into making me pancakes again.

“Let go, Peter,” I ended up mumbling, “I have to turn the alarm off.” He moved his arm off and I sat up and grabbed my phone. “I’m getting breakfast.”

It must’ve been my lucky day, because Sam and Bucky were in the kitchen. “‘Morning, sunshine. Sleep okay?” I looked at Sam with a hard glare, and he laughed. Of course he knew Peter was with me, FRIDAY knows everything.

I sat next to Bucky and thought of fluffy pancakes to ward off my burning hatred for Captain America. “Sam, how much do you love me?”

“Depends on what you’re willing to give me in exchange for the pancakes.”

Of course he already knew my move. Typical.

“I’ll delete half of the embarrassing footage of you saved in FRIDAY’s hard-drive.”

Sam looked at Bucky suddenly, extremely confused. “I thought that was done months ago.”

He just shrugged and drank his coffee. “Must not’ve gone deep enough. Good thing Y/N is here to catch it.”

Sam glanced between the two of us and sighed. “Okay, fine, I’ll make you some stupid pancakes.”

I smiled, then Bucky slipped me ten dollars under the counter and whispered, “Save me the footage.” I winked back.

“Can I have some too?” Peter, soft as hell, came into the kitchen and sat beside me. (His knee was brushing up against mine.)

“Only if you have something to offer.” Sam liked us, I know he did (that’s part of the embarrassing footage FRIDAY has saved) but he was usually a dick to us - anyone who wasn’t Bucky (and even then) - in the morning. It was always playful banter, but we knew not to step too far before eleven o’clock.

“I promise not to test out my new long-lasting webs on anything you own.”

“Deal.”

The pancakes were delicious (“hell yeah they were, I don’t mess around with pancakes”) but my dad was at the compound before we knew it, and it was time to face reality again.

“I saw the press conference,” Dad said when we sat down in the back, “and everything was very convincing. Congrats on getting to be Spider-Man again, Peter.”

He beamed. “Thanks, Mr. Y/L/N. Anything exciting happen at the hospital recently?”

They talked medical, while I sat back and listened to the engine. It covered up their hearts, but that didn’t matter, because both would’ve sent me right back to sleep. And it did.

We pulled up to Peter’s complex an hour and a half later. There were still plenty of daylight hours left, but we both left more homework to today than we would like to admit and neither of our parental figures would be pleased with that.

“See you tomorrow,” he said with a smile.

I smiled back, genuinely, (I was giving those out way more often now) and waved. “Bye.” Dad and I drove back and walked up to the apartment bumping shoulders. Our schedules didn’t line up very often because he was needed in the ER a lot of the time, but we always had a sort of silent understanding. He unlocked the door and let me in first, but when my eyes landed on the kitchen table, I stopped mid-step.

Blood. Everywhere. On the walls, on the floor, on Mom’s floral couch she claimed “added personality” to the living room. No one else was in the apartment, I could tell, but then it just raised more questions:

Who’s blood is everywhere?

Where the hell is Mom?

tags: @eridanuswave @vampirestrawberries

#peter parker #peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker series #peter parker oneshot #marvel #marvel comics #reader insert #peter parker x mj #ned leeds #michelle jones #flash thompson #spiderman far from home #mcu #spiderman #avengers

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green-blooded-computer · 4 years ago

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A Guide to RPing on Tumblr

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately, so here’s my complete walkthrough on how to create a Tumblr RP blog.

If you’d rather view on a Google Doc, here’s a link.

Enjoy.

Create Blog

Howdy, so the first thing you’ll have to do is click ‘register’ and make yourself a blog. You also have the choice of making a sideblog instead. I’m a person who likes to have this separated, so if you are only thinking of playing a couple characters, this might be the way to go for you. Here’s the difference between main/side blogs (taken from Tumblr’s help center):

Choose any url for now (we’ll talk about that later), and go to the next section.

Please note: When you make a new blog, it won’t show up in the search/people’s notifications for a bit of time (a day or so). Make sure you validate your email address asap.

Get xKit

If you haven’t installed xKit, I highly suggest it. Go to their blog here, and get it for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Opera.

What is it? A little toolkit to make Tumblr easier to use.

When you install it, it’ll pop up on your top bar thing next to the lightning bolt like this:

It’s that thing with the x’s on it.

When you click the x’s this pops up:

Brill.

You can click ‘Get Extensions’ at the bottom and basically choose whatever you want, but may I recommend the following:

1) Editable Reblogs allows you to edit reblogs. Right. This is good because when you are replying to RP threads they tend to get rather long. Some advice that was given to me when I started: when you add your reply, delete everything before your partner’s last reply. So you should have your partner’s post and your post and that’s all. You just click ‘reblog’ and it pops up like normal, except now there’s this little guy:

If you click that, it will make everything in your reblog box editable.

2) One-Click Postage gives you a little box if you hover over the reblog button. It lets you reblog, queue, draft, tag, and add replies right from that page. You can even choose which blog (main/side) you want it to go to. It looks like this:

The rest I will just say play around with! They are easy to add and take away.

Decide what kind of blog you want.

Multimuse Vs. Single muse:

Do you want to play one character or a bunch of them? If you choose one character, your blog icon and theme will presumably feature that character or something to do with them. If you choose to focus on one, you should have info about your character available on your blog somewhere. If you choose to have more than one muse, you’ll need a list of the characters you offer and some info about them.

When choosing a url for a multimuse, choose something that encompasses the spirit of you and your characters.

When choosing a url for a single muse, I go for quotes, nicknames, something about where they are from, what they like, their name, etc. Note: if you have dashes in your url (like mine @strings-have-been-cut) these won’t work with tags. People will have to turn them into separate words or one big word.

I do not have a multimuse, but I have seen them done all sorts of ways. Some people offer characters from all different fandoms, some are just one fandom, one genre, OCs, canons, a mixture...you can do what you like.

If your blog is not affiliated with any sort of organized game, this is referred to as ‘independent’ often shortened to ‘idie’.

Your blog description should mention which kind it is. For example: a sci-fi multimuse blog; a Star Trek OC blog; an indie Bill S. Preston Esq. from Bill and Ted RP blog. Details help sometimes.

Canon Character Vs. Original Character

If you decide to make a canon character, make sure you have it clear somewhere where they are from! Canon characters can be canon divergent (your own version), they can crossover into other fandoms, they can be exactly as they are in your favourite book/show/movie/podcast...each version of a canon is unique and lovely.

If you decide to make an original character, make sure you give plenty of info about them! You want to tell people what fandom they fit into or if they are fandomless. ‘About’ pages are really important for OCs because there is no fanbase for them (yet!).

What should be in your description?

When someone clicks your blog, they will first see a dash preview sort of thing. It shows a description and a small header, along with the posts you’ve made. This description also shows up somewhere on your actual blog and on the top of the page on mobile view. It’s a great spot to give all the info about your blog real quick. I always include the following:

What is it? (Independent Data from Star Trek RP blog)

Age restrictions (21+)

Who you will RP with (mutuals only is called ‘private’ and choosing who you follow back is called ‘selective’.)

Mun’s name (played by [insert your name])

Possibly a link to your about/rules for easy access on desktop and mobile. I’ll talk about this more below. I call this ‘navigation’, but it varies. Note: if you edit your icon/dash header, any html links seem to go away. I’ve needed to go back into the theme customizer and add them back in. To add a link to your description, go into your customizer, go to the description section, and add the html as follows:

So mine is: <a href=”https://data-all-in-one.carrd.co”>Indie Data from Star Trek blog.</a>

The description for my Data blog reads: ‘Indie Data from Star Trek RP blog. Click here for navigation. 21+. Private/selective. Played by Fool.

What should be on this blog?

In my experience, you need a couple of pages on your blog to get you started:

About the character - basically a biography

Rules - so people know what you are about

About the mun - so people can know about the person they are writing with

Possibly a link to your ‘ask memes’ tag - see below.

These can be organized however you like, but people tend to look for a few specific things.

About the Character

This should read like a biography. Back in the day, we used to call them ‘character apps’ and they had all your basic info about the character. Sometimes this section contains a subsection called ‘verses’ in which the mun spells out what universes they exist in. Say I had an AU where Data owns an arcade in San Francisco in the 80’s. I’d list that as one of his ‘verses’. This is extremely important for OCs, but very helpful for canons too.

Data has four: TNG era, TNG movie era, AU where he lives after Nemesis, AU where he’s around during Star Trek: Picard. I gave a little info about both.

Rules

Rules are usually organized into the things people are looking for before they start playing with you. Some good info to include:

Mun age

Your policy on adult content

How you deal with tagging triggers

Your policy on following back

Your policy on writing with mutuals vs. anyone

Do you allow personal blogs (non RP blogs) to follow you?

How fast do you reply?

How does your tagging system work?

How do you deal with shipping?

Here is a link to my usual Rules page for reference. Remember, it’s not wrong if it’s different than mine!

Note: People will look for how old you are. Many people in the RPC are adults, and they want to write with people their own age. If your age is not posted somewhere clearly, they may not follow you back.

About the Mun

This is really just a little blurb about you. Some people include their age here. Some people include links to their other blogs. Some people include their Discord info, as that’s really popular right now. It’s just nice to know who you are writing with.

It’s important to note that there are different ways to present all of these blogs. Some people have them as pages on their Tumblr blog itself, some people put all of this (Bio, About, Rules, etc) in a Google Doc and link it, some people use Carrd.co - there are a ton of ways. A friend of mine did this amazing post about some options out there. I personally go for Carrd.co, seeing as I am on mobile a lot and I find it very helpful, but it’s up to you.

Now I have a blog with all the info. How do I get started?

Well there are a few things you can do to get yourself out there.

Make yourself a promo. It’s basically an advertisement for your blog. If you aren’t good at graphics, you can head to an RP Resource blog and see if they have any you can use with their permission. You can also just post a picture with some info. For me, the info on this promo matches that of my blog description - I want people to know what I’m all about as soon as they look at it. Then you can tag for your appropriate fandom RP. Your mutuals will likely reblog to help spread the word. Yay.

Find a directory for your RPC by searching in the search. This will allow you to a) reblog your info and be listen in a place where people can find you and b) allow you to find others in your RPC in an organized way. Then you can go through, find people you think you’d like to follow, and follow them.

Make a starter or plotter call. This is, again, just a picture or graphic and some information about it. Here is one I made for Data specifically asking for Picard threads:

I asked for a specific universe and a specific character here. I also put all relative tags in case someone is just searching Tumblr (although I think it’s more for the people who follow me). Here’s a simpler one I made for B-4 that’s a lot more open.

They don’t have to be super fancy.

When people see a starter call, they can like your post. This is a quick an easy way to let you know they are interested in a thread.

4. Ask Memes. Asks are invaluable. There are whole blogs dedicated to ask memes that you can post to your blog, and these can be really easy ways for people to come up with plot ideas or just to read some of your writing. I always keep a link on my blog to everything tagged ‘ask meme’ so if people want to find a meme they have choices!

It seems like there’s a certain aesthetic on these new fangled RP blogs. Do I have to do that?

No! But you can, if you want. If you aren’t good at coding and graphics, there are a lot of RP resource sites that can help you. (Can I recommend this one?) It is nice to have things like a face claim, a nice looking promo, a cool theme, etc. but at the end of the day, we all just want to write and have fun.

Advice?

Look, I’ve only been RPing on Tumblr for a couple of months and I am by NO MEANS an expert. I have gotten all of this knowledge through the help of friends and nice strangers willing to answer questions for me. Here are a few things I have picked up:

Respect people’s rules - We are all shy and all have our own thing going on. If someone says they’re uncomfortable doing one thing, just like...don’t do it.

Talk to other people - Don’t ignore the mun! Unless they really want you to. It’s better to ask questions, compliment writing, talk about your plots and stuff...it’s so much harder than trying to figure out what the other person feels/wants.

Ask questions - I’m a 6th grade teacher, and I get a million and fuckton questions every minute usually. It’s been eye-opening, because now I’m all about asking questions about everything all the time. I think knowledge is amazing. People know all different things, and the most logical way to be a productive society is to share knowledge (that’s one of the main teachings of Surak) so ask some questions! Hell, ask me some questions! Reach out to someone who seems nice!

Okay, that’s all. Good luck!

#RPG #RPC #RP Resource #RP Guide

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halberdierminister · 4 years ago

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January 2021 Goals Check-In

Oh wow it’s already the end of January and I never even posted about what my goals for 2021 are. Okay let’s go.

Year Goals

1. Move Out I did not do this in January. In order to do so, I will need to find a job with either

1a. Better Pay or Different Location I applied for one job in January. That was not many. I kind of networked. A bit. Guh.

2. Get a Car I did not do this in January. I did take a preliminary look at the online inventory of the Carmax in Madison. That will require a GREAT deal of money. In order to do that I will need to make a

2a. Tighter Budget I am actually doing pretty well at this. What am I doing? Well for starters I have to

2ai. Make lunch at home I cannot keep eating out every goddamn day. In January, I only ate out maybe two or three times. The rest, I successfully brought lunch from home. I also am allowing myself a

2aii. Weekly nonsense allowance Every monday, I add a certain amount of money to my nonsense budget. If I do not spend the whole budget, it rolls over into the next week. I can also add to this budget by selling things I already own. I can then -- and ONLY then -- spend that money on nonsense. At first I considered buying lunch nonsense, but I figure that the lunch goal and the nonsense budget goal are two separate things, and as long as I break rule 2ai very rarely, I do not have to consider doing so as dipping into the nonsense budget. In January, I did not exceed the nonsense budget, which was so very hard to do because there are so very many frivolous things that I wish to buy. God I want to buy so many frivolous things, you guys. Oh yeah, I also need to get a

2b. Credit Card If I'm going to have a car, I should really have a credit card for emergencies. I've never had one. It will not be easy to get one, considering my credit score is the sound of crickets chirping uncomfortably. I did not make moves to get one in January.

3. Find a Publisher for the Poetry Manuscript I have a poetry manuscript. I submitted it to a publisher last year. It got rejected. This year, I intend to get it accepted. Except this month I also decided that it needed more poems in it. So I did not take any steps in January toward shopping the manuscript around, because I instead have been working on adding to it. It is still a work in progress.

4. Get Something Published Every year, I've gotta get something published. In January, and specifically today, the fifth issue of Fuckit: A Zine came out, and with it, an essay I wrote. So I did get something published this month! I also have been working on self-publishing physical copies of the two short collections I made back in 2018. Today, I finalized changes and ordered new proofs. Hopefully, these are the last edits I have to make.

5. Second Draft of either A Legitimate Businessman or Life and Love along the Fourth Wall Last year, I finished writing a novel-length fanfiction that I started writing in 2012. Coincidentally, 2012 was also the year I finished writing the first draft of a play called Life and Love along the Fourth Wall. This year, I want to write the second draft of either of these. In January, I took no steps toward this goal. Kind of forgot about it. Ah well.

6. Finish Writing The Knight out of Space This one shouldn't be too difficult. It's a longer short story I've been writing for the Archive of Our Own based on Homestuck. I have most of it outlined. There is no reason why I shouldn't have it finished by the end of this year -- ideally sooner! But I didn't do anything about it in January.

Month Goals

1. One Poem I wrote MORE than one poem in January!

2. One Short Story I TRIED to write a short story in January. Got a good distance through it too. Might have done more today if I hadn't needed to shovel. But I don't think I was going to finish it, even by first draft standards. I think I will consider finishing this first draft of it to be an additional goal in February, alongside writing February's short story. February's short story can be pretty short. Just gotta find a good short story that wants to be written.

3. One AO3 Post In January, I posted a couple times on the Archive of Our Own! These were pretty short posts, but posts nonetheless. I've got a lot of active fics on there. I have lots of options in terms of posting.

4. Promote My Writing I posted a little bit about it on my book Instagram, which I also promoted to more people. I have been more active on my author page on Facebook. I shared posts about Fuckit and my upcoming chapbooks. So I would consider that, in January, I succeeded at this goal.

#goals #goals check in #monthly goals check in #new years goals

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sadistic-second · 4 years ago

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HOW I RUN MY BLOG.

SPEED: What is speed? I’d like to believe things are done as quickly as possible. Written word says that I’m pretty quick about things, 1-3 days tops. But if you’ve ever actually heard be vocalize my “speed” then well. :fingerguns: I’m a lazy piece of shit. So, that being said, depending on motivation levels that I currently possess, that reveals the speed in which I operate things here. But a good baseline is still 1-3 days.

REPLIES: For starters, I use thread tracker for all the threads I currently possess. And if I haven’t replied to something then I sincerely apologize. I am not ignoring you. I either fucked up tracking it (which I’ve done before) or something happened to the tracker itself. I know it had some issues recently. Can’t recall if it got fixed or not, but I know for a fact it fucked some of my replies up.

On that note, if I have taken longer than seven (7) days to reply to something, hit me up. Let me know. Either the tracker or I fucked up and I need to be told. As stated above, I usually take 1-3 days to reply to things. So if it has been at least that long and you’re still waiting on me for something, chances are the above happened.

You’d never know it by looking at the lengths of most (all?) my roleplays here, but I am a novella roleplayer at heart. Love me some details, bro. Setting scenes, getting the atmosphere just right, making sure you know for a fact what I’m doing at any given moment. Why? I dunno. That has a story in and of itself that will not be disclosed here.

But don’t let that discourage you. I am adaptable and I can be flexible to what my partner needs/wants. Will I get carried away sometimes? Absolutely. Do you have to panic and try and match? Not at all. You do you. I’ll do me. We’ll work it out, don’t worry.

STARTERS: Don’t at me, I already know I’m stepping into a baited trap.

Starters are nice. However, they take time to write and think up. That being said, if I’m writing it, you best believe it's tailored to you specifically. Though I do enjoy at least a basic idea discussion beforehand so I know what direction I’m supposed to take this, I can wing that shit like no tomorrow. Again, not that anyone would know since I haven’t exactly, uh . . . Done it yet. Rest assured, I have the list. I will be doing something eventually.

You can also tag me in starters if you want. I’ll notice and I’ll get the idea and we can go from there. If it's just something you came up with outta the blue or it's from an ask or whatever, all fine by me. I’m pretty much open to any and all ideas.

INBOX: Ahahah, my inbox. Yes. That motherfucker. Look. I have at least one meme queued for every single day up until the first week of August. Not quite sure what possessed me to do this, but you know. At least you’ll always at least have one thing to choose from to send me every day. Old memes, new memes, random ass shit you just thought of at 3am because you figured I’d like it, send that in. I’ll answer it.

Sure, okay, yeah. I’ve currently got week old memes sitting in there right now. And there are at least month old memes sitting in my drafts that I haven’t posted yet. Doesn’t mean I won’t answer them. Just gotta wait for that good ol’ inspiration to kick in.

Oh, and I hear Tumblr still eats things. So if you’ve sent me something and its been quite a while and you haven’t seen an answer, chances are I never saw it. I sincerely apologize. Send it again. Send something new. Eventually, I’ll see it. Tumblr can’t eat everything, right?

SELECTIVITY: What is selectivity? I’d write with a sentient stuffed animal if it had a good enough idea. Yes, I’m very aware of what that sounds like. Does that make me any less of a person, a writer, because I said that? Fuck no. I am more than willing to give anyone and everyone a chance provided you aren’t cringey.

Oh but Asher, what does that last bit even mean? Don’t be fucking weird. That’s all I ask. If you’ve got an idea, come to me with it and we’ll work something out. Don’t have an idea? We’ll talk about it. I will roleplay with you. I am by no means selective.

WISHLIST: OH BOY! A WISHLIST!

Although, I suppose this would be where I’m supposed to give you some semblance of ideas or stories that I would like to give a shot at. :fingerguns: What is creativity? I will admit that I like to spout out about how creative I am and shit. However, put me on the spot and I will go blank and make myself a fucking liar.

I’ll give you some hints though. Love me some angst. I am one angsty boy. Do your absolute worst. It takes a lot to make me feel things and only two people have managed to get me to the point of tears thus far in my Tumblr career. If you think you got what it takes, bring it on.

I’m still exploring Reno’s drug habit(s). So I guess that’s sort of a wish list idea?

I want an excuse to be sadistic. My fucking name is literally sadistic-second and I cannot recall an opportunity in which I have gotten to display that true nature. I think I’ve hinted at it before? I know there are a couple shorts that I’ve written floating around. I think you can find them under “Asher writes” and uh . . . Fuck, what was that other one I wrote recently? “Raw meat” brings it up in the search so there’s that, too.

So those are kind of wish list ideas? I guess?

HONEST NOTE: :dogekek: Bold of you to assume I have anything else left in me to put here. Nah, but like it was 2am when I wrote this. And you’re seeing it now at whatever the fuck time my queue put it at. Early morning, I know that.

I’ve done a lot of changing, a lot of growing up in the last year or so. Big life changes happened and well. You gotta adjust or ya kinda sink. And boy did I sink. But I’m back now. I’m better. I’m getting the hang of things once again.

No, but like what the fuck is supposed to go here? Oh, wait. I have an idea.

You guys want a better way to communicate with me? Ask for my discord. Tumblr messages are great and all, but uh . . . You’re more likely to get more out of me on discord than you are Tumblr. Why? I dunno. I’m always on discord. I’m kind of on Tumblr? Granted, I’m always on both places, but discord is where its at, man.

TAGGED BY: @that-turk-laney

TAGGING: Uh. Steal it, fam

#Just Asher Things

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alchemyready · 5 years ago

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RULES UPDATE! Mostly just some rewording, but a couple of things have been added here and there as well. I will be putting this on the rules page, but I’m posting it here first.

Feel free to like or reply to this post if you read them, but it’s not required!

Under the cut ‘cause y’know, long post.

ILLEGAL THINGS ON THIS BLOG:

1. This blog is PG-13, meaning that NSFW is an absolute no and I would prefer swearing to be kept to a minimum in interactions directed at me. If you have either of these things on your blog that's fine, just please make sure NSFW is tagged properly.

As for swearing, I won't make you tag it (I have the words themselves blocked in most cases) but I would prefer that you refrain from heavy swearing when you're talking to me directly. This goes for OOC interactions and IC ones.

Both of these rules are for my comfort, plus I'm currently a minor as of 4/5/2020, and so is Varian in most if not all verses.

2. I'm currently not open to romantic shipping. I'm not neccesarily against shipping, but I'd rather not get caught up in some of the drama that goes along with it. There's certain ships and types of ships I'm not comfortable doing, so I've chosen not to do any at all.

This may or may not change in the future, but if I open myself up to shipping with Varian it will be slow and I'll want to come to you first.

However, one thing I will never budge on is that I do not ship Varian with Cassandra or Rapunzel. Both of them are far too old for him. I do believe he had a one-sided puppy love crush on Cass in season one, which will remain in my portrayal, but that's as far as I'll ever take it. Otherwise, it's just not happening.

3. Hate, drama, or rudeness is absolutely a no-no for me. Directed towards me or anybody else. If you're the type of person to send hate to anyone, or to be rude to anyone, this is not the blog for you. I won't tolerate that at all.

I ask that you not rush me for responses. I do my best, but my muse can be very finicky at times and as a result things may sit in my drafts for awhile before I can respond to them. When I have high muse, I'll usually reply the same day, but if I'm dealing with writer's block it could even take me up to a month in certain cases.

Now, I will say that you're free to ask me if it's been over two weeks, because sometimes I will drop things as well. I'll let you know if I've dropped our thread, just make sure you're being nice about it when you ask.

4. Please don't reblog my threads if you're not the person I'm roleplaying with, and don't like my starter calls if you're a personal. This is mostly just to keep things clean on the blog and in my notifs, and while I'm personally not terribly disturbed by it, most people don't want their roleplays spread all over the website outside of the RPC.

5. Normal roleplaying rules apply- don't godmod, powerplay, etc etc. Generally don't try and control my character for me (small things such as assuming mine follows yours are okay, as well as establishing the situation in starters) and please ask before you kill him.

(spoiler alert: nine times out of ten i'll say yes 'cause i'm an angst fiend, but i'd still prefer you to ask first!)

THINGS I WOULD LIKE FOR YOU TO DO:

These aren't really requirements, but rather suggestions.

1. I'd appreciate it if you'd cut your posts, and turn asks into new posts rather than reblogging them directly. This is just to keep my blog and dash clean. If you don't do these things for whatever reason, then I'll do it for you in our threads! But I do encourage you to do this.

2. I'd also highly reccomend you have some knowledge of Tangled the Series before following me. This doesn't neccesarily mean you have to watch it (although it's a great show and you totally should) but I would prefer you to know enough not to be totally lost when we try to RP. This is both for my sake and your own.

3. Read all of my about pages. Both my verses page and headcanons / relationships pages have some important information on them, and I would appreciate it if you would check them out. Obviously the rules as well, but you're already reading those!

WHO I'LL INTERACT WITH:

I consider this blog to be selective, mostly with crossovers and OCs. I am especially picky with fandoms I'm not in / familar with and OCs. Not to say I won't RP with them, but if I can't figure out how our characters might interact, I won't follow back.

THAT BEING SAID, I'm still not mutuals only. I may not follow you back right away, but we can still totally try out roleplaying with eachother. If it works out, I'll go ahead and follow you, and if not this may not be the right blog for you.

I also will not do threads with personals. You're always free to send me asks and such, but long lasting interactions are limited to roleplay blogs only. Please let me know if your RP blog is a sideblog, otherwise I will assume you're just a personal.

Also, on my end, I don't send in passwords. I have social anxiety and it makes me nervous. But rest assured I always read people's rules before I follow or follow back! I may even ask you for your rules if I can't find them, in IMs if you followed me first or in your asks on anon if I'm following first.

BLOG CONTENT AND TAGGING:

Okay so, one thing you should definitely know before following me: I'm an angst fiend. I always have been, always will be. Varian also tends to be a heavy character in general due to the things that happened to him over the course of the series.

I personally don't have any triggers, and will write things such as death and violence, and occasionally suicide / self harm IF my rp partner is comfortable with it and it makes sense to happen in the thread. However this is very rare and will ALWAYS be tagged.

I tag every common trigger with the 'tw: (trigger here)' format. If you need something specific tagged that I'm not tagging already, you're free to let me know! You're also free to let me know if I forget to tag something and don't fix it.

I'm only human, and things like that do happen sometimes.

While I personally don't have any direct triggers, there are a few things I'd like you to tag for my own comfort. These are:

NSFW, visual gore, politics, negativity / venting, drama, and discussions of serious irl diseases and conditions.

The only one of these that I will unfollow you for if it's untagged is NSFW. The rest I'll tolerate as long as it's not extremely frequent.

The only thing here that's close to a trigger is the last one. I suffer from hypochondria / health anxiety and occasionally discussions like that can cause it to flare up, but usually only if I'm already worrying about the thing that's being discussed.

- - -

And with that, you’ve officially read my rules! Congrats. Thanks for reading through them all, and I hope to RP with you soon!<3

#be very afraid | the queen has returned (ooc)#just a few lab repairs | blog update #extremely supervised lab tour | blog info #//me? posting important things extremely late at night again? MORE LIKELY THAN YOU THINK.#//it's okay i'll reblog it at a sane time tomorrow

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ducktales-wco-oo · 5 years ago

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✩ How I Run My Blog! ✩

Speed:

Slow As Hell, for the most part. True, there are times when I yeet replies out because me and/or my muse are ridiculously invested in a thread, or inspiration instantly strikes. However, my default tends to be Really Slow. Something I try to make prominent to everyone since I understand some people prefer to not wait months at a time for a response- which is something I often end up doing. For a variety of reasons: be it because muses are fickle, it tends to take hours at a time for me to craft replies, I literally have hundreds of threads... As a result of this, I don’t drop threads too often either? Usually, they're lingering in my drafts, and it isn’t uncommon for a hella old one to suddenly be thrust onto the dash.

Of course, I never expect people to reply to Old Threads if they don’t want to, and don’t mind either way! I just like offering a response so I didn’t just abruptly drop it. :3 But yeah, I am a very slow roleplayer and while I hope my writing is decent enough to be worth the wait, I’ve had experience interacting with others who obviously prefer things to be quick and constant. Which I am not. Not delving into THOSE experiences because yeah- They weren’t the best. lol But I just want to make it clear that my speed does not equate my interest in a thread or in interacting with others. I am just a hella slow person who wants to write about birbs.

Replies:

My replies tend to get L O N G. I am not adept at short threads, and even ones that start out as really small back-and-forth replies are pretty much guaranteed to get longer on my side within a few responses. My muses like to get introspective and I like to get descriptive- I’m talking several paragraphs before they start to talk or even get to the point where they aren’t thinking-about/reacting-to whatever your muse did in the last reply. XD I’ve noticed that my average seems to be three-to-five paragraphs, but it isn’t uncommon for me to break the double-digits at times. Of course, I never expect my partners to match length and as long as I’m given more than a couple sentences in return, it’s all good.

Starters:

Whenever I add a new muse, I often post a Starter Call for them. They tend to vary in length, but are often two-to-three paragraphs long because I’ve tried to make single sentence ones and it never seems to work out. Occasionally, I’ll throw out random Open Starters when inspiration or a random idea strikes. These starters are free for as many people to respond to as they want, and are ALWAYS open regardless of how long ago I posted them.

Inbox:

My Inbox is always open and I am constantly reblogging RP and Ask memes for it. However, again I shall bring up my Turtle-Like speed because my asks do tend to snowball. Right now I have 966 asks, so it’s no surprise that sometimes they can get lost in the pile. But I have a habit of answering random ones whenever threads aren’t working or I’m in a mood for something specific that a reply won’t give, so that’s why I continuously reblog things. I like having a healthy stash of stuff to answer when needed. So don’t be surprised if an ask you forgot you even sent is suddenly popping up onto the dash. XD

Selectivity:

I am semi-selective, meaning that while I am willing to RP with people I am not technically mutuals with, I won’t RP with everyone. I’m not trying to discourage people from approaching or make anyone feel poorly, there are just certain writing styles that I tend to gravitate towards and click more easily with. For example, if I notice that someone’s blog is filled with a surplus of one-liner back-and-forth, uncut replies, chances are I’m not going to follow because I don’t want my dash constantly cluttered. Maybe I’ll RP if they approach and give more than single sentences in our threads, but I’m not going to automatically promise to interact with everyone. Because I did that before and honestly, it’s not fair to me or the other person if I’m not actually enjoying replying to a thread.

I don’t take graphics or Aesthetics into consideration when it comes to following or interacting. After all, what is important is the writing and the fun. :3

Wishlist:

I have a tag for random things that I thought would be fun to explore- #Got The Quacking Craze || {Wishlist}

But if I have to state some specific things, I suppose that right now I’d enjoy threads in some of my AU verses. Specifically, the Siren AU for Fenton because I LOVE that fluffy fish and it’s a shame that I don’t often get to write in it. Another AU that I like is the Robo AU for Louie, and I’ve rarely used it as well. Not to mention, his negaversion Louis is a precious boi who I definitely wouldn’t mind more interactions with. Oh! It’d also be cool to have threads that take place when my muses are kids- particularly: Fenton, Gladstone, and Mark.

Or threads that take place during College/Teen years. Again with: Fenton, Gladstone, and this time Imma throw Panchito into the mix. Some College Caballeros, perhaps? Some Fenton-still-with-his-assnugget-bf Angst? Some glam-rock-phase Gladstone dealing with the jealousy of his peers, the still-lingering guilt of having ‘killed’ his parents, and crushing on his nerdy best friend all wrapped up in the facade of Teen Drama? JNFFJKSDFNDSF...

Honest Notes:

As well as being slow with Replies and Asks, I am oftentimes slow with my IMs. This is nothing personal against anyone! I just get overwhelmed at times and have the memory of a potato. Which means sometimes I’ll think I replied or just flat-out forget until days later. Plus Tunglr LOVES to screw with my messages, so more often than not I’m not even alerted of them until hours upon hours later... Long story short, I really do enjoy talking with all of you and love getting messages from my friendos. Seriously, I don’t mind if when I’m flooded with them. It just sometimes takes me a bit to gather up enough energy to reply coherently.

Random Side Notes:

My blog is pretty messy and while I’m trying to whip up bios that are more than just notes for my own benefit hastily scrawled down whenever I was in a muse-adding frenzy, lots of info about my muses tend to either be in my own head or jotted down on the random Headcanon posts I sometimes throw into the wild. XD I also have a habit of analyzing the HELL out of things when I get excited, so long-ass posts like those sometimes pop up as well.

Speaking of excitement, there WILL be times when I gush about the star of this blog- *motions at Fenton* and everyone must Accept That. Because he is my FLUFFY SON and I shan’t apologize for loving him with every fiber of my being. X3 Sometimes I’ll go off about other characters too, but more often than not it is HIM. OOC posts are a thing too.

Sometimes inspiration comes in bursts and muses take over the blog for a day or a few- like right now, how Fenton is dominating everything. My birbs are fickle bishes and I’ve learned to just let them fight over who is going to get the attention, then roll with whoever wins. This is why I encourage people to interact with as many muses as they want and start as many threads as they’d like. That way, no matter which muse is strong or what kind of thread I am in the mood for, there’s a chance something will Work With Me. Besides, I’m always up for new threads and ideas, regardless of how many things we are juggling already.

That being taken into account- Please understand that I oftentimes don’t know WHO the Hell I’m going to feel the muse for or WHAT threads they will be. So no rushing or nagging for replies because all that does is make my muses drag their feet. :’3

Tagged by: @soul-heart-and-beyond

Tagging: Whoever wants to! :3

#blog notes #ducktales-wco-oo #⭒ ˙ ˖ ✧ — ˗ˏˋ ❝ ᴡʜᴏ'ꜱ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴄᴜɴɴɪɴɢ ᴍɪɴᴅ ʙᴇʜɪɴᴅ; ᴛʜᴇ ꜱʜᴀᴅᴏᴡʏ ᴅɪꜱɢᴜɪꜱᴇ? ❞ ¦ 「 OOC 」

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folkelorde · 5 years ago

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ADMIN TIPS! WHAT MAKES OR BREAKS A ROLEPLAY?

this has been sitting in my drafts a while because with about ten years of roleplay experience, i’ve been in a lot of group and seen a lot of different kinds of admins. now, i can look back and see the point where things started to die or the point where a group was really saved – whether i was the admin or someone else was.

i know being an admin can be hard work and sometimes a group can die based on circumstances that aren’t in your control, so taking the initiative to start a group can be a big risk; a lot of work for little payoff, and i think it says a lot about the passion of the writers in our community that we keep doing it.

lately, i’ve been getting really frustrated with joining groups because they die so quickly. however, there are a few things i notice keep happening that can make a huge difference on whether a group succeeds or fails, so i’ve put some encouraging words and advice under the cut. please note that these are just my opinions and things i’ve seen that work for me.

1. SET AN EXAMPLE.

as an admin, it’s hugely important to take the leap! when your group opens, be the first to post and break the ice, be the first to post an intro, and be the first to reach out and message people. you can’t just open and then sit back and let people come to you. additionally, be sure to open the group or start events at a time that works for YOU. seriously, it makes a big difference when the admin can be online for those things. also, i find that as an admin, i have to be a little more active than what’s expected because i find it really important to create plots and connections with EVERYONE, respond to every starter possible, and make sure that i welcome every person into the group. if there’s a new member, be that person that reaches out to say hello and welcome them. be that person to post the first open starter, etc. essentially, be the sort of group member that you want to be the admin for and i think that goes a long way for creating an inclusive community. this is really the NUMBER ONE thing that i see makes or breaks a group – groups that i join where the admin is plotting w/ people, reaching out, and in on what’s going on always last longer. tbh, i’ve never been in a group that lasted where i didn’t have a plot with the admin, so make sure you have plots and connections with your members!

2. COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR MEMBERS.

i think it’s important that people know what’s going on, every step of the way. if you think you’re going to open at a certain time, tell people in advance. if you wish there were more open starters in the tag, tell your members. if you don’t have time to answer all the asks you have, let people know. tell people when plot drops and events are coming up and ask people what they want to see. let group members be part of discussions and your decision process. essentially, as an admin, i never feel like i have to build this big wall and filter information about the group. when i’m a member, i love when it’s clear what’s going on in the group when. there are definitely times where you should keep that wall up though, like when you’re dealing with any ooc drama. in my experience, keeping conflict resolution off the dash as much as possible is key to dealing with problems. i notice that unless the group has been around a long time, an ooc matter that’s dealt with really publicly usually leads to the death of the group. if you have to communicate about what happened with your members, it’s usually best to find a way to do that privately.

3. DO NOT GIVE UP.

this is the BIGGEST reason that rps die. almost every rp i’ve ever admin-ed has a “drop-off rate” after opening and sometimes it can be pretty large. the first activity check, for an appless rp especially, is almost always pretty brutal. however, if you can make it over that first “hump”, the odds of your rp lasting are a lot higher because i really feel like most rps die within the first week or two. if you lose a lot of members or activity slows after the first couple of days, don’t stop. keep promoting, keep posting (both in character and out of character). i find that it really helps to have a big event or plot drop within the first week to give characters something to start off with immediately and it also gives people inspiration for starters. regardless, activity on the main is going to slow after opening, that’s just inevitable. you’re going to get less asks or apps in a day, sometimes you’ll get none, and that’s okay. if it flops, it flops, but give it a week or so before you abandon the main and you might see the turnaround that i’ve come to expect. some of the most loyal members and best connections in my groups have joined in the second or third week or month.

4. HAVE A PLAN.

when i start a group, i usually have at least the next couple of plot drops and/or events planned out in my drafts when i start. give yourself goals to work towards and know where things are going. when i open a group, i usually have the first event or plot drop already written out and drafted, ready to post on the first or second day. at the very least, it’s good to have a little brainstormed list going of things you want to do at some point. i find that it never works to run in blind and expect that the plot will just go from there – even in a plotless town or school rp, you need to have a few plot drops or big events planned. for me, it helps to think of my roleplay like a television show and my plot drops/events are “episodes.” all the characters will have their own subplots, but there should be things that bring them together as one. additionally, once things open, it can feel like a bit of a whirlwind and you’ll be really excited about the subplots for your own character, so it’s good to have the overarching stuff planned in advance.

5. KNOW YOUR IDEA.

i really think motivation matters. i think if you’re like “i really want to be in a group like this but it doesn’t exist and i have so much muse” always turns out better than “i want to be an admin, what will people want to be in?” don’t worry about what other people want from you when creating your plot. focus on what you want and what you have muse for, otherwise it’ll start to feel like a chore. being an admin is hard fucking work, alone or with a few other people. the plot has to really matter to you and be something that you desperately want to do, don’t base it around what you think people will be interested in. DON’T SECOND GUESS YOURSELF. if you think it’s cool and you want to write it, other people will too. some plots are more popular or are in popular genres, so they might get more attention and kick off faster, but if you stick to it, either way you’ll find your people.

6. ESSENTIALS

these days, groups tend to have a few regularly scheduled parts of their structure needed to keep things going. these things are: honesty/meme days, tasks, events, and plot drops.

honesty/meme days should come either once a week or once every other week depending on the activity level and size of your group. when i ran a really large group, we had them every week because there was so much going on, but with smaller groups i tend to have them when it feels right or after a plot drop/event since that’s usually when characters have a lot of new material to talk about in their answers and asks. tbh, these are really fun and help character development, so i really think they should be an essential part of your group.

tasks for character development may seem tedious, but i do really find that they not only liven up the dash, but help people keep their muse! in a roleplay, i always make these optional, since no one HAS to do them, but it’s also a nice way to give people something to do if the dash is a little slow on a particular day or whatever. depending on the amount of effort the task takes and the size of the group, i’d say you can do these weekly or bi-weekly.

events should be done at least once a month! most roleplays now operate with “dash events” which seems to work best since people are in all different timezones and have lives so it’s nice to have the event span over a couple of days. i really think the sweet spot is about 4-5 days, but if you have a group that gets really into them (which i have, generally in a big group), you can make them a week, but no longer than week or things will definitely stagnate.

plot drops matter, even if your group is “plotless.” plot drops differ for events because they don’t always put all of the characters in the same vicinity and don’t have a time frame. essentially, plot drops just give characters something to talk about or make starters about. i’ve run groups with and without plot drops and without plot drops, i generally can’t keep things going for more than twoish months, so i’ve noticed the difference and they’re really a necessity for me. groups that are more plotless and character driven generally don’t need these as often as groups with a more central plot and worldbuilding.

i also really like to open the floor for members to suggest tasks, events, and plot drops – some of my best events have come from things that members have expressed to me that they really want to do. sometimes, members will send me something they want that i already have planned in my drafts, so that’s just some extra validation for me that i’m clicking with them.

YOU CAN DO IT.

if you wanna do admin stuff, i seriously admire you. it’s exhausting, it’s hard, and it’s stressful because you care about your idea and your characters so fucking much, but it can be so worth it. being a good admin is almost like having another job with all the tasks you have to do, but when you create a plot and group that people get invested in and enjoy being part of, it’s the most rewarding thing in the world. i seriously wish you all the luck in the world with your ideas and if you need any help or advice, i’m here for you.

#rpt #rpc #rph #rpcha #rpa #guide #advice

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