#(no one has to read this - this is mostly just a stream of consciousness type thing but yeah idk i'm thinking abt this tonight)

[theha1r]

hm doing some thinking & being all introspective tonight & just ... thinking about my blogs & what i wanna do & what will ultimately be the best for me. like i'm def just staying on steve's blog for a while but when i start to get stir crazy over here & shit ...

idk i love my multi (like pcetstcrtured), i love having a multi like that but sometimes i do think trying to run a large multi with (literally) over 100 muses ends up being detrimental to my writing time & time again. like, it always is a pattern over & over again - i take a break from the multi, come back to it, 'cut down' my muse list, end up adding back all the muses i cut & then getting to a point of being tired, stressed, & overwhelmed & having no muse or motivation for tumblr on any of my blogs ...

it's happened so many times. & so idk. i'm just thinking & thinking maybe i really need to try to set a boundary with myself & genuinely, for real, actually, take a step back from running a big blog like that for at least an actual extended period of time (like ... longer than a month or two) & just maybe try to see if that's better for me. i don't know ...

[demi-shoggoth]

2024 Reading Log, pt 2

006. Gardening Can Be Murder by Marta McDowell. I honestly thought that this book was going to be about something else. With the subtitle “how poisonous plants, sinister shovels and grim gardens have inspired mystery writers”, I thought it was going to be about, you know, that. True crime themed to gardens, discussions of poisonous plants, that sort of thing. The book is actually about the mystery books that have gardening as a theme. And while the author’s dedication to not spoiling anything (seriously, anything, even 150 year old stories like The Moonstone or “Rappacini’s Daughter”) is admirable in its own way, this leaves the book feeling like endless buildup without any payoff. Big fans of murder mysteries might enjoy this—especially the last chapter, which interviews writers about their gardens—but I found it more boring than anything else, and finished it only because it was very short.

007. Antimony, Gold and Jupiter’s Wolf by Peter Wothers. This book is about how the elements got their names, and most of it deals with the early modern period, as alchemy transitioned to chemistry and then into the 19th century, when chemistry was a real science, but things like atomic theory were not yet understood. The book goes into fascinating detail, and has a lot of quotes from primary sources, as scientists then were just like scientists now, that is, opinionated and bickering with each other over their preferred explanations. And names! Many of the splits between elements and their symbols (like Na for sodium) are due to compromise attempts to appease two different factions with their preferred names. A book covering arcane minutia of history always has the risk of feeling like a slog, but this is a fast and fun read.

008. Doctor Dhrolin’s Dictionary of Dinosaurs by Nathan T Barling and Michael O’Sullivan, illustrations by Mark P Witton. This book is an odd concept, but one that I was immediately on board with—a D&D book written by paleontologists with the intention of bringing accurate and interesting stats for prehistoric reptiles to the game. The fact that it’s mostly illustrated by Mark Witton definitely clinched my backing that Kickstarter. And this book is a lot of fun. So much so, that I read it all in a single sitting. I don’t know how accurate the stats are (like, a Hatzegopteryx has a higher CR than titanosaurs or T. rexes), but they seem like they’d be fun in play, and the writing does a good job of combining fantasy fun with actual education. Even for someone not running a 5e game, the stuff on how to run animals as not killing machines, and the mutation tables, could be useful. There are multiple types of playable dinosaurs, all of which seem like they’d work well at the table and avoid typical stereotypes, and a lot of in-jokes and pop culture references (like the cursed staff of unspared expense, which looks like Hammond’s cane in the Jurassic Park movie).

009. Romaine Wasn’t Built in a Day by Judith Tschann. I’m a sucker for books about etymology. And this one, on food etymology, is a pretty breezy read. I had fun with it, and it even busted some misconceptions that I had, etymologically speaking. Like, there’s no evidence that “bloody” as an explicative originated from “God’s blood”? Wild. Etymology books tend to be written in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, where talking about one word may lead down a garden path to the next one. The book also has a couple of little matching quizzes, which is something I haven’t seen in a book since like the 90s.

010. The Lives of Octopuses and their Relatives by Danna Staaf. I was previously a little disappointed in The Lives of Beetles, another book in this series, but I knew I liked Staaf, who wrote the excellent book Squid Empire about cephalopod evolution and paleontology. I’m pleased to report that this book is also excellent. Staaf takes the “lives” part seriously, and the book is arranged by ecology, looking at different marine habitats, the challenges that they pose to living things, and the cephalopods that live there. Cuttlefish get slightly short shrift in this book compared to squids and octopuses, but that’s about the biggest complaint I had. I like how the species profiles cover more obscure taxa, and information about the best studied (like Pacific giant octopus and Humboldt squid) is kept to the chapters.

[xf-cases-solved]

i'm aware that ACNH hasn't been relevant since the plague, so i'm not really sure why this headcanon even came to me in the first place--mb it was gifted to me by god like a prophecy or some shit idk--but i came to the sudden and unrelenting realization the other day that, if given the opportunity, scully would get WAY too into animal crossing

[this ended up being a ridiculously long stream of consciousness headcanon ramble, so i'm putting it under a read more bc it is silly and self-indulgent, but i had to write it out somewhere 👇🏽]

to clarify, the scenario i'm specifically picturing is if switches existed in the 90s and original-run scully got to play new horizons

she would never pick it up on her own accord, but imagine her at her godson's birthday or something and he introduces her to this silly little game that has cute animals and "oh, that's nice and wholesome, glad there are at least some video games out there that aren't all about violence" etc etc

but then somehow she ends up with her own copy. mb she does it for the social aspect of having something to share with her godson or whatever, the why of it doesn't matter. what matters is that, due to some series of events, scully ends up with a copy of animal crossing that she then proceeds to lose her entire sense of self inside of

it's the literal perfect game for her! first off, it's incredibly chill, and lord knows she can never get enough chill time. second off, the little quests in the game would stimulate the parts of her brain that like Tasks and Puzzles and Validation. she'd get a huge kick out of figuring out how to breed all the different types of flowers, and knowing during what time of day/type of weather/time of year certain bugs or fish were around. the good grades she would get on her house and island would fuel her. she would have the EXACT right amount of trees. no weeds. all the fruits. she'd find the most logical way to terraform her island so that it was both cute and efficient. she would lose HOURS to this shit, ok?

and it would take mulder a little while to notice

bc scully obvi wouldn't play at work, and also would be kind of embarrassed that she was spending so much time with a video game, so she'd hide it. but the longer it went on, the more there would be slip-ups

mulder asks her one day when they stop for gas in some random town how much the sunflower seeds she grabbed for him cost, and she says, "75 bells," before immediately correcting herself and saying, "cents! 75 cents!" (this wouldn't be the last "bells" slip)

mulder's on the phone with her one night rambling about a case, not really noticing that she hasn't been listening to a word he's been saying until he hears her mutter, "oh fuck you, astrid," and when he questions her she hastily explains that astrid is her annoying new neighbor (who is decidedly NOT a kangaroo, obviously)

she's always been brilliant, but suddenly she knows a lot of seemingly random trivia about different types of beetles and butterflies for some reason

he wonders if she's always had such a strong aversion to sea bass

eventually he catches her in the act, probably when he bursts into her hotel room through the adjoining door one day to tell her a new theory, only to find her curled up in her bed wrapped in her comforter, clutching her little yellow switch, and staring at him like he just caught her with a vibrator

and ofc he makes fun of her a little, but mostly he thinks it's cute

until

she makes him get a copy so they can trade items

which he does, bc 1. he always likes to have a reason to spend time with her outside of work, and 2. he cannot tell her no

which is how, on nights when there aren't any monsters to chase down or aliens falling from the sky, he finds himself lugging virtual supplies to scully's island (bc "i need more hard wood, mulder" and like, it's not the type of hard wood he wants to give her, but ya kno), and getting chastised for how cluttered his dumb animated house is ("you won't get a good ranking from the happy home academy if you don't coordinate your wallpaper, carpet, and furniture, mulder"). he hasn't picked a weed on his island the entire time he's had the game and it drives her Insane, which is why he does it, bc watching her silly little character running around his island in a frenzy plucking weeds is adorable (and god, how pathetic is it that he finds her adorable even in animal crossing character form??)

he does find some personal entertainment from the game. he likes collecting shooting stars and swimming and trying to guess which pieces of art are counterfeit. mostly, tho, he just likes how much scully likes it; he likes how, when she's playing or talking about the stupid game she laughs easier. he likes seeing her do something silly, just for the fun of it, and he likes that she lets him be a part of it

she invites him to her island one night, and she takes him to the shore, where she shows him where she terraformed a little area with a bench, flowers, and a telescope, and tells him she made it for the two of them to go stargazing together

their dumb little characters sit next to each other and watch pretend stars in the dark, and they both feel immensely loved

(she'll ask him if he brought her that new seasonal wardrobe he got later. she needs it to complete the set, but she can wait. not like, a super long time, obviously--the happy home academy sends their letter tomorrow and she'll be pissed if she doesn't get an A--but they can stay out under the night sky together. for a little longer, at least ❤️)

[venomouschocolate]

Why Do They Talk Like That: a stream of consciousness

Fantasy linguistics are so hard like where do you draw the line... I mean none of my characters are referencing major theistic religions or using real life loanwords or expletives but then there's quote-unquote fun stuff like "sadism" or "lunatic" or "sinister". i.e the Marquis de Sade does not exist in this world, but the concept of pleasure from cruelty does... Latin is not a language there, but I, personally, am writing in English, which has much of its etymology rooted in Latin (as well as pretty much every other language ever), even if there is no hate for left-handed people or indeed the left in this world, so "sinister" is inexplicable in itself now (odd how the left has historically been demonised and that it's also the socialist side of the political spectrum. not that odd really. thank you robert walpole?). The same with "lunatic": the moon is literally worshipped in some areas of my world, but it's still a term characters use, despite the moon having positive connotations.

Where Do You Draw The Line... I can't write in a conlang because a) I am not masochistic but b) I want my work to actually be read. You can imply different languages with accents and word choice and compound words, but ultimately I am writing in the same language for all (despite being bilingual, go me!) and ultimately that language is one that exists only in our world and not in the one that I've created.

While we're here, let's talk about swearing (cursing if you're american?) in fantasy settings. I don't mean "oh my god/s", that's arguably blasphemy and certainly not explicit; I don't mean "bloody" (not really explicit either) because frankly that does tend to fit a fantasy vibe with the type of characters likely to use it (considering the real world stereotypes and thus the archetypes an author will write using it). I mean expletives like "fuck", "bitch", "shit": STOP USING THEM. you absolute buffoons.

Recently I read a fantasy novel which included a whole magic system and several countries with absolute monarchies, etc, and they kept using expletives and it just did not work, and it never does. A step back: I believe that using expletives when writing in a real world setting (provided it's period-believable, of course) can work, and often (not always, not even mostly) works - I do it myself. However, believable expletives and exclamations and intensifiers can and sometimes do make or break worldbuilding, at least for me. The worldbuilding in the novel was fine, good even! But every time the (twenty-eight-year-old) mc used "fucking" or "bitch", I was immediately yanked out of the story and into reality. It was like reading a period piece (say, in the 19th-early 20th century) and seeing "bitch" in the expletive (slur) sense. I don't care whether it would be used: I don't BELIEVE that it would be.

Suspension of disbelief is everything, which (as a theatre kid...) is, I suspect, why musical films don't work: we're primed for a more true-to-life piece, whereas in a theatre, we're prepared to cast a lot more aside. We KNOW they're actors, we know bursting into song is unrealistic, but it's the stage! We believe it anyway. Seeing a fantasy character, particularly one that was meant to be a minor royal, consistently THINK in expletives (and not just exclaim them!) felt to me like watching Mean Girls The Musical The Movie. I did not believe the magic (which was a major plot point so it kind of sucked). I did not believe that the characters saying "bitch" and "fuck" would say those words, especially since those characters were almost exclusively limited to the middle-aged queen, an almost thirty-year-old established to be groomed into mild-mannered obedience, the former queen's guard and a (bastard) prince. I did not believe that the characters whose thoughts I was reading would think them, and thus I did not believe in the story.

If you're going to create a prose-based world intended to be separate from our own in terms of religion/history/sociopolitical structure/magic/etc, you NEED to think about the linguistics. I'm not saying think HARD or be super mega creative: in my sky-worship country, a common exclamation is "stars-be", short for "stars-be-dimmed", ditto "skies-be" and "skies-be-felled". My sun-based little sillies go "be-set" as in "sun-be-set"; the only country in a technological revolution (also the only country with guns): "I'm not wired that way"; "he's gearing for a fight"; "I was shooting for you". Furthermore, when explaining their culture in other languages, they struggle for words, because, for example, a train is a monolingual concept (one falters when about to describe someone as a "train wreck" and just goes "sorry"). It's not clever, it's not particularly original, but, in my opinion, it makes the language, and by extension the world, more believable.

While I'm mid-rant: there's a marked difference between characters of different class and upbringing. My more religious, self-righteous queen of skycountry says "my stars": she rules the country, she is a little crazy insane, she feels that she owns the sky, too. A less-educated character uses slang like "lunar", "feared", "heartfulness" where his posh boy counterpart says "insane", "afraid" and "empathy". And yes, I am totally neurodivergent, and I think about details, and I also study the development of the English language and want to continue to do so at university, so of course I am more drawn to it, but at the end of the day if you're writing prose then the words are really bloody important.

TLDR: worldbuilding is hard; do your high fantasy (or even low fantasy) characters NEED to say "fuck"?

[caltropspress]

RAPS + CRAFTS #23: Sunmundi

1. Introduce yourself. Past projects? Current projects?

Peace. I’m Sunmundi. I started rapping a few years ago. Last year I released my debut album, Midnight Oil, produced by Āthmaan, through Damn That Noise, and my second album, Lived and Born, produced by klwn cat, just came out. I’m currently working on a project with my man Sasco for '25.

2. Where do you write? Do you have a routine time you write? Do you discipline yourself, or just let the words come when they will? Do you typically write on a daily basis?

I try to write every day. But I go through long bouts of writer’s block, in which case I have to force myself to take a step back and wait till I get inspired again. And I pretty much only write raps while driving. For the past few years I’ve had a really long commute to work, so I end up just listening to beats and jotting down lines in my car. Pretty fucking dangerous, but it is what it is.

3. What’s your medium—pen and paper, laptop, on your phone? Or do you compose a verse in your head and keep it there until it’s time to record?

I just use my phone.

4. Do you write in bars, or is it more disorganized than that?

Initially I tend to just focus on writing down as many thoughts and lines as possible when listening to a beat, then eventually separate them into stanzas where it feels right. I don’t count bars or anything—when a verse feels done, it’s done. 

5. How long into writing a verse or a song do you know it’s not working out the way you had in mind? Do you trash the material forever, or do you keep the discarded material to be reworked later?

When I feel like I’m forcing lines, I stop writing. But once I have a set of good/memorable lines and can figure out how I’m gonna rhyme, I know pretty immediately after that I’ll finish the song. I used to try and repurpose all my leftover lines, and a lot of them do end up in songs, but lately I’ve been finding that shit turns out better when I write the whole thing to a beat from scratch.

6. Have you engaged with any other type of writing, whether presently or in the past? Fiction? Poetry? Playwriting? If so, how has that mode influenced your songwriting?

When I was studying English in college, I enjoyed academic writing, so I got used to a certain command of language. I presented one of my papers at a literary conference (the paper was about Griselda and Machiavellian ethics, so I read Benny and Westside Gunn lyrics to a room full of academics and peers, which was funny). But I was never very interested in any creative writing before rap. I feel like my voice/songwriting comes down to my musical influences more than anything.

7. How much editing do you do after initially writing a verse/song? Do you labor over verses, working on them over a long period of time, or do you start and finish a piece in a quick burst?

I definitely labor over verses. I might take anywhere from a week to a month to get a verse done. I try to edit as I go, working line by line, but on the whole, I’m spending most of my time editing after I have a foundation set. I used to take way longer to write a single verse/song, but I’m learning that sometimes quick flashes of writing can yield good shit. 

8. Do you write to a beat, or do you adjust and tweak lyrics to fit a beat?

I usually let the beat dictate the direction of a verse. I’ll occasionally write down lines that pop up in my head and put them in a song later on, but generally, I write to beats. 

9. What dictates the direction of your lyrics? Are you led by an idea or topic you have in mind beforehand? Is it stream-of-consciousness? Is what you come up with determined by the constraint of the rhymes?

It depends. When I was releasing one-off songs before Midnight Oil, they were mostly inspired by the beats producers would send me. Now my albums are becoming gradually more conceptual, so I generally have a pool of ideas to pull from in order to write a song. I don’t really make songs “about” specific things though—not that I have anything against that, but I like trying to capture moods and atmospheres in more general ways. That’s just more satisfying to me. And I won’t say rhymes are an afterthought, because I spend so much time thinking about them, but I think the content of what I’m writing is moreso at the forefront of my mind. And I believe there’s always some element of stream-of-consciousness going on as well. 

10. Do you like to experiment with different forms and rhyme schemes, or do you keep your bars free and flexible?

I feel like I’m still trying to solidify what makes my shit work, so I don’t experiment too much with form. Occasionally I like to try and keep one rhyme scheme for a whole song/verse, but otherwise I’m sticking to the basics and going where each line takes me. 

11. What’s a verse you’re particularly proud of, one where you met the vision for what you desire to do with your lyrics?

The verse on “Harbingers” off Lived and Born. It’s the last song on the album, but it feels like it’s opening a door for the listener as I’m closing one for myself—“It’s goodbye for now, hello forever.” Also the whole verse feels like a major catharsis, which is becoming a habit of my outros.

12. Can you pick a favorite bar of yours and describe the genesis of it?

I don’t think I can pick a favorite, but one couplet I love is, “From now until my voice drown, I vow to hold it down / Say Holden, don’t you wait around, say, Scout, take me out.” I just dig the wordplay on the first line, and the second line references Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye and Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, two books my dad and I share a love for. I feel like by contextualizing myself with those two characters, both of whom are kids, I’m crediting my dad for teaching me to appreciate reading while also reflecting on my own nostalgia. So it feels like a nice shoutout to him.

13. Do you feel strongly one way or another about punch-ins? Will you whittle a bar down in order to account for breath control, or are you comfortable punching-in so you don’t have to sacrifice any words?

I try not to punch in. I think I’ve only done it on two or three songs before. It’s common for me to write myself into a hole, where I don’t have the breath control to rap what I wrote, but I think I’m getting better at knowing my limits and writing around that by condensing lines. Plus the challenge of writing more concisely makes you a better writer, in my opinion. 

14. What non-hiphop material do you turn to for inspiration? What non-music has influenced your work recently?

I’m not as big a reader as I used to be, but when I get writer’s block, which is common, I try to get back into it. Some writers who have inspired me are James Baldwin, Dostoyevsky, David Foster Wallace. But I dig movies too. I find David Lynch, Bong Joon-ho, and Robert Eggers to be inspirational. And lately I’ve been trying to give my albums more of a thesis of some kind, so I’m trying to do more reading and studying topics to put into the music. For the project I’m working on right now I’m thinking about media overconsumption, the perils of technology and its impact on communication, etc. 

15. Writers are often saddled with self-doubt. Do you struggle to like your own shit, or does it all sound dope to you?

I’m full of self-doubt as an artist, but I think that mindset leads me to only release music I can be content with. I listen to my stuff pretty frequently before releasing it, then when it’s out, I tend to move on to the next project. I feel like I need to live with the music before I can really claim it as my own and be proud of it, you know? 

16. Who’s a rapper you listen to with such a distinguishable style that you need to resist the urge to imitate them?

Definitely woods. Obviously his style can’t be copied (he takes care of his words—Munchausen by proxy), but when Aethiopes dropped, I had to stop listening to it after a few weeks because I didn’t wanna start biting. His tone, humor, and flow are infectious. I’ll put Starker in that category too—I think he has one of the best flows I’ve ever heard.

17. Do you have an agenda as an artist? Are there overarching concerns you want to communicate to the listener?

I don’t have an agenda that extends to the listener. I try not to be didactic, or preachy, or purport to know more than anyone else. My writing is mostly very internal, personal, emotional. It’s common for me to speak in the second person in rhymes, but that’s just a device I use to tell or ask myself something. I’m my own target audience. That being said, I do feel like I tend to write from a very zoomed out perspective, and if that happens to be relatable or evocative to a listener, that’s tight.

RAPS + CRAFTS is a series of questions posed to rappers about their craft and process. It is designed to give respect and credit to their engagement with the art of songwriting. The format is inspired, in part, by Rob McLennan’s 12 or 20 interview series.

Photo credit: Andi June

[joviantwelve]

okay you said you had a pokémon fanregion in your head, and now i gotta hear all about that, is the thing

OH god actually it's really funny how much shit that was in it has come to pass in canon by now, because I originally conceptualized it circa gen 4. It's usually what I think about if I think of like pokemon fancharacters or whatever. here we fuckin go

It was based on the Holon region in the TCG which has pokemon with funny types. we have Tera types now... the idea was that it would be begin further expanding and adding its own League and whatnot. I put it as above Johto/Kanto so relatively gen 1&2 selection of mons. keeping it simple.

it was more about the Weird Type Shit, which the pokemon prof of the region was studying under an organization she was a part of (the evil team, which was not branded as "Team (x)" just like Aether Foundation lmao). anomalies to track down and whatnot. but they were also inducing it themselves and studying other detected anomalies in the region. or sometimes the experiments they did created new, unintended anomalies of their own

this was mostly to make Missingno canon. which is like the only thing that hasn't still come to pass yet (BUT IT SHOULD!!!!!!). my dearest darlingest Missingno, the entire reason I love glitches today, was effectively my box legendary. the backstory of the prof was much like Lusamine in that she saw this Fucking Weird Pokemon a long time ago due to her Experiments and it fucked her up and she became a weird bad anime mom afterward. SHE EVEN HAD A DEAD HUSBAND!!!!!!! I FUCKIN INVENTED LUSAMINE FIRST

oh I should mention the "protag" analogue of the region WAS the professor's child. SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you had to fight your mom. who is the prof. who is also the evil team leader. and corrupted by some messed up videogame code. damn that sucks

later when we started getting more AI-feeling Rotom characters, I imagined a Rotom in a more robot/android body as one of the team underlings. he was the protag's buddy back home but now he has to fight you :( sorry i dont wanna do this but my programming is telling me to (throws a pokeball out halfheartedly)

(ASIDE: I remember in the first movie when they were like flabbergasted at Mewtwo technically qualifying as a pokemon trainer. that was kinda fucked up and weird, can we go back to that? tbh when I think about it, a lot of the vibe of my fanregion is based on how Weird early pokemon gens felt. they really dont make it like this anymore. Ape Inc became Creatures, I'm certain some EarthBound talent factored in)

I think I was also imagining weird-typed versions of the legendary birds for a trio, which is funny cuz we got Galarian versions of them now too....

Hooke was originally a Pokemon OC and was my first one actually, he ran a Dark-type gym because one didn't exist in canon yet. he was ex-Team Rocket and moved up north to turn a new leaf. thought it fit Dark's vibe as like the Schemer Type. I had to wait amazingly long for an actual Dark-type gym in canon which is kinda funny. it actually felt a little sad when we finally got one because it had been 11 years since I had made Hooke in protest of this

if you remember my OC Serafine (she doesnt have a TH SORRY), she was also an evil team exec.

she doesn't have a modern analogue but another one of the fancharacters was the rival-type one and she was Lt. Surge's spoiled neice

the Ghost-type gym leader I can describe as a Super Nerd with the constitution of the Hiker. can see ghosts but is a social outcast but more in a nerd sense than a goth sense. I liked him a lot but I haven't had anywhere to put him :(

the Psychic-type leader was extremely tsundere and her mind reading helped her out with all those tsundere insecurities (now she's just paranoid and preemptively reads people's minds)

the Fire- and Steel-type leaders were a duo battle of "smoke and mirrors" themed magicians. and also married

this is largely stream of consciousness I hope this post makes SENSE

[vollzz]

as promised, here’s a scene from blackflame (very much in the conceptual phase), from the third arc/book. it’s ~1k words and will be below the cut! appreciate being indulged for my silly idea heehee.

brief context: Eves and Calliope are conducting an investigation into [redacted]. they’ve just spoken to someone and Eves has whisked them away to a remote forest-y location to debrief and discuss next steps. I’m writing this in the present tense because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . also HUGE NOTE: so I wrote this in google docs where each paragraph was a bullet point but they didn’t paste as such >:( I’m on mobile and I’m too lazy to re-add the bullets sorry. this is very stream-of-consciousness so definitely do not read it as a polished thing, lol. the lack of description is mostly because I don’t even really know what they look like at this point -_-

welcoming any and all comments/questions/reactions. even if you hated it, that’s valuable insight for me when planning for the future arcs!! :)

“It’s imperative that we consider-“ Eves whips their head towards the empty clearing, which has suddenly become occupied by two extraordinarily muscular women. The shorter one stands a few inches smaller than Calliope, while the other is about the same height as Eves, perhaps an inch or two taller.

The shorter woman seems to have an underlying complexion similar to Calliope’s, though it’s been deepened by years of standing in the sun’s grasp. She looks like a soldier, but her armor is surprisingly light - just a few pieces of worn-in leather cling atop the clothing on her shoulders, thighs, and midsection. The other woman wears a flowing long-sleeved shirt and pants in a matching emerald green silk, no armor to be seen. Deep brown hair is bound atop her head, the length of it stopping to hang just below her shoulder blades.

They’re both armed to the teeth - blades, knives, a sword in scabbard each. Though the taller one also has an enormous bow strapped to her back. Calliope realizes who she must be when the shorter woman brushes a lock of black hair from her face, revealing glowing green lines on her left forearm. Samira.

Eves doesn’t speak; as soon as they realize who it is they turn and disappear, clearly about to appear before Calliope and whisk them away. Samira, gigantic bow somehow already in hand, lets loose an arrow aimed at the air next to Calliope.

Eves appears, is blown backwards as the arrow pins them to the trunk of a tree, having landed just under their right collarbone. They grunt in pain through gritted teeth, staring daggers at Samira. Calliope is freaking out but rooted to the spot, unsure of what to do.

“Next time I aim for her head.” Samira’s voice is deep, brutal, commanding.

“Eves?“ It’s frantic - Calliope still hasn’t moved, her eyes glued to Samira, who has an arrow already loaded and aimed at her. Eves scoffs, wincing as they remove the arrow from their body and toss it to the ground. Despite the injury they languidly return to their previous position, keeping a healthy distance from Calliope.

“Not to worry, young one,” Samira says to Calliope as she slowly lowers her weapon. “We cannot truly kill one another.” Silence falls for a few moments.

“What do you want?” It’s Eves - Calliope hasn’t heard them this pissed in a long time.

“I come to propose a duel.” The bow has now been stowed away, though Samira keeps a watchful eye on the two of them as she gestures to the woman beside her. “With me is my champion, Maia. Calliope, given what I’ve heard, is to be yours.”

Eves pastes on that calculated sneer of theirs. “Have you gone insane?”

“We have honor and glory, Eves, unlike your assemblage of prostitutes. I have need of something, and very well could simply take what I want. A duel, however, is far more equitable.”

Equitable is not what Calliope would call a duel with someone granted blessings to excel in every type of combat imaginable. She’s not going to say that, though - she’s not going to say anything.

“We refuse. Take your leave.”

[there is a conversation here that would be 90% redacted. instead, just know that Samira successfully goads Eves into attacking her in a blind rage.]

Eves extends shadows along the ground surrounding Calliope - she uses them to cloak herself with invisibility as Maia approaches. They launch themselves at Samira, who is clearly enjoying the altercation. The two trade blows, but a sense of unease settles on Calliope in the way Eves seems to be putting far more effort into their assault than Samira.

Calliope, on the other hand, has begun to dance around Maia, largely unheard due to her silent steps. Maia doesn’t seem particularly stressed, which is rather unnerving. She’s drawn her sword but stands largely still, balanced on the balls of her feet.

Calliope tests a blow. She strikes Maia with a kick to the back of her right knee. It connects, causing her to stagger momentarily, though Maia nearly instantaneously whirls to swing her blade towards Calliope, missing her by a hair’s breadth despite her invisibility.

That’s a bit stressful, but Calliope’s been training a lot recently and has some newfound confidence. Once again, she circles, and this time drags a knife along Maia’s side. Maia jumps from the blow the moment it touches her skin but doesn’t fight back, her eyes and head now scanning the shadows surrounding her.

Okay. I can do this. I’m silent and invisible. I’m a predator. I don’t have to kill her, just incapacitate her.

Calliope is wholly focused on her battle - she can’t pay attention to Eves right now but hopes they’re doing alright. She dives again, this time hoping to sweep Maia’s feet out from under her, knock her to the ground and take the advantage from there. She strikes.

Maia sidesteps, dragging her sword upwards with the movement. The dagger in Calliope’s right hand falls to the ground, and suddenly Calliope feels a blinding pain. Her grasp on her shadows fades and they scatter from her body. She looks down to see that the four extended fingers on her right hand are now bloody stumps. There’s a noise from behind her-

Eves turns, feels the tug of blinding pain in their consciousness. They meet Calliope’s widened, bloodshot eyes. Gleaming silver dripping with scarlet sticks out from Calliope’s chest before Maia swiftly dislodges it, kicking Calliope to the ground.

Samira takes the opportunity to strike Eves - their head hits the grass just as Calliope does. A heavy boot pins Eves’ head down. Eves cannot stop screaming Calliope’s name, extending a mangled, jeweled hand towards her choking body.

“You’re to do intensive training tomorrow morning, Maia,” Samira’s voice booms from above.

“That was far too sloppy.”

—-

I will not add the tag list because this is just, like, so far removed from the story as I’ve painted it right now; instead I shall allow the winds of the algorithm to bring this to whoever shall see it. but I will tag @space-writes because your reblog comment made my day :)

[crowlore]

complaining about tristamp under the cut so if you liked it just keep scrolling. it’s not going in any tags because this isn’t an invitation for discussion, just venting. i’m not pulling my punches with this and i am not looking for a rebuttal if you felt differently. warning: this will be a Very Long Read, and probably contain trimax spoilers. now that the boundary’s placed, let’s go.

this is gonna be pretty stream of consciousness, so i’ll type as i go and then double back to break up the walls of text for easier reading.

now. i’m very critical. i criticize the things i love, mostly out of love, because i want them to be better! so just keep that in mind whenever i talk shit about this show. i don’t like to post when angry, because i think i get a little too mean sometimes and have to walk it back a bit later, but my god. i can’t say i enjoy this as an adaptation, or retelling, or reboot, or what have you. it’s gorgeous, there’s clearly heart in it, but it’s just some incredibly sloppy narrative composition/pacing, blatant disregard for the emotional impact of the original by chopping it up and rearranging the pieces, watering down of the characters, like. this feels like lazy fanfiction.

it’s just like... maybe if i grab some things out of the discord server that i wrote when more level headed my point will come across better. this should cover my issues with the entire season as a whole, not just the finale (cause honestly...i haven’t been able to fully articulate my problems with it yet). to preface this, i DO have good things to say about stampede, and you’ll probably catch glimpses of it in some of these screenshots (i keep 99% of my discussions of trigun contained to the Greater Gamer Polycule in order to avoid internet strangers who think a differing opinion is invitation to debate someone). but we’re not here for praise. we’re here for criticism.

so, i had some speculations about the reworking of the timeline we were seeing in stampede, and now that the season is over i can concede that they really did waste an entire season of my time to set up trigun proper. i say wasted cause like. nothing happened lmao. we got hardly any real plot and ZERO character development. these people are not friends. it’s aggravatingly bad character writing. i originally thinking they were ‘remixing’ the plot because they did just move a bunch of mid/late game trimax plot points up into their drawn out prologue. it...does not sit right with me, because it makes these plot points, which were very impactful in the manga, feel unearned.

as you can see, it’s NOT that i’m close minded to the potential of the reboot on principle alone. i have found some joy in the (very rare) moments of levity, intentional or not, that we did get in stampede. but overall. you know. just some bad adaptational changes.

^ me explaining the concept of stampede to a friend thinking of looking into trigun for the first time, as secondary evidence that i don’t hate stampede at all, especially not on principle.

i had hope! i wanted to believe this would be a version of trigun i could love as sincerely as i loved the manga and 98 anime (we’re not gonna talk much about 98 in this post, because i recognize stampede as being more of a retelling of the manga, and my complaints today are centrally about the narrative structure, emotional tone, and characterizations of the cast, etc)

speaking of narrative structure! here’s one of the pitfalls i found in how stampede handled its pacing and character dynamics

more of what i had to say about the characterizations just being...off, alongside the mismanaged (imo) emotional tone and pacing of relationships. this example Does mention the 98 anime but was part of a larger discussion comparing all three versions of the story. overall we just don’t get to see these characters being given room to breathe and really get to get to know one another, have fun and bond on an adventure. and that consequently has a severe negative effect on the weight of their interactions the deeper we get into the show. these people just aren’t friends.

lucian’s gay ass summoning the horrors moment... but yeah. let’s lean into this topic actually. because i’ve had a LOT to say about how important vash and wolfwood’s relationship is for both their characters in the manga and how my knowledge of the manga and 98 anime has to do all the emotional heavy lifting for me to feel anything when watching their stampede iterations interact.

got a little mad about this one, huh!

to wrap things up here i’ll leave you with one of my longer rants from after episode 11

so. yeah. i’m like super mentally and emotionally drained after this finale.

[daredevilexchange]

Want to be featured here? Head to this page and fill in the form!

See what this is about here, or if you’re using the app here.

What’s your fannish ID? Udekai! Friends call me Stu. Stu came from the first OC I ever had- which was essentially just a blue scribble with a bowler hat.

What types of fanworks do you create? I've done mostly art throughout my whole campaign, but fic has become a bigger and bigger thing over the years. I've always been good with literature, and when I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. The only reason art got so big was because it's easier to doodle on the margins of your schoolwork than brainstorm a story. That turned into dabbling in animation; I only have the energy for a couple of those a year, but I feel like I've gotten pretty good at it!

What are your favourite types of fanworks, when you’re not creating? Nothing- and I mean nothing- beats a good AMV. Fics are a close second, but something about seeing something move in time with the beat of a good song is just beautiful.

What do you like in particular about this fandom? I definitely should have watched Daredevil sooner. I've been keeping up with the MCU since the first avenger and my cousin said "watch Daredevil." I said I love angst and my cousin said "please watch Daredevil. I started kickboxing as a means to cope with stress, and my cousin fell to his knees and begged me to watch Daredevil. I didn't actually watch it until I was reading Deadpool fics after reading all his comics, and found Team Red. I was enamored immediately. I came for the show and stayed for the people. So far, everyone I've met is an absolute peach. Everyone's extremely accepting, mature, and communicative. I'm partial to Mattfoggy as a ship, with some dabbling in Kastle. Best friends to lovers has always been my favorite trope, followed closely by hurt/comfort, so there's no wonder why that one spoke to me.

Do you like participating in fan events? I do! I didn't use to, because deadlines intimidate me, but that is a great motivator to actually. Yknow. Finish things, which I can have a little bit of trouble with. They've been teaching me to be okay with publishing things that I haven't had the chance to pick apart and overthink. I'm also making way more than I would be without somebody offering ideas and schedules to work on. I've never done a con, nor do I really see myself doing one in the future, just because I get so flustered when fawn over my work.

What about your creating process? It's a different story every time! I live in a kind of chaotic environment that I have very little control over, so I tend to opt for headphones to keep out noisy distractions. Sometimes, though, even that's a little much to work around, and I have to go find somewhere quiet. My process with fics would make every literature teacher I've ever met weep. There's a fic I have right now that's 250k words, and the planning document reads like I just scrawled it on the walls of my living room. It helps with writer's block sometimes to just type out a stream of consciousness, all of the "uhms" and "no that doesn't make sense" included. As for inspiration, half the time I start out with a single scene in my head and build around it. That goes for fics, animations, and art. I like to get heavy with parallels between canon and whatever I'm doing, and by the end, I can almost guarantee me brain's a massive cobweb of ideas. I find being comfortable is also really important. And I mean physically comfortable. I steal the computer chair to write at the kitchen table for its back support, because when I create, I do it for literally days on end. I try not to begrudge myself the 20 minute scrolling breaks; pressure to work on something always has a way of taking away the enjoyment, and by extension, my ability to actually think creatively. And coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

Do you interact a lot with other fans? I do! I've always been in a lot of discords, but now almost half of them are Daredevil related. I've got my beloved mutuals on Tumblr, and all these people who participate in events. I'm not exactly wanting for company, but anyone who knows me can vouch that I'm a little bit of a social butterfly.

Is there any particular piece you'd like to showcase for this post? That 250k fic I mentioned earlier: Incarnate. I mention it because it's my pride and joy and because I need to finish it.

Do you have other fandoms you'd like to talk about? I tend to do one fandom at a time. They take up my entire headspace. No vacancy.

Where can your fanworks be found? I can be found at Udekai on Ao3 and Tumblr! https://archiveofourown.org/users/Udekai/works I only post fics on Ao3, but you can find art of mine under #my art!

Thank you, @udekai !

banner by @context-is-for-kingpins !

[dead-not-done]

purely self indulgent but,,,, i did a very quick thing in the sims

meet my fake evajacks kids! left to right starting on the top row they’re: ambrose (he/him), twins leander (they/them) & liana (she/her), dorian (he/him), merrick (he/him), and rosalina (she/her)!

im gonna be honest i dont really think they’d actually have six kids but consider: jacks corralling a bunch of little kids in the hollow is a fantastic image and evangeline would be such a good mom. also yes ambrose and merrick are nearly identical but i didn’t realize that until i was like mostly finished and i dont feel like going back lol

see below the cut for a couple sentences about what i came up for their personalities :) they also have outfits and i made evajacks in the sims, so if anybody wants to see either of those things just let me know lol

Ambrose is super energetic and a total people person. While Jacks and Evangeline raised their kids in the Hollow, he was always the most eager to get out into the world and meet new people. He’s incredibly confident, reading as cocky sometimes, and optimistic. Think golden retriever jock type.  

Leander is more of a loner, but they’re extremely loyal - particularly towards their twin, Liana. Leander is content to curl up in their father’s library and read for hours on end without even realizing the time had passed. Most of the time Liana is the one dragging them into public. They’re a total mama’s kid. 

Liana is a total romantic and incredibly affectionate. She’s somewhat insecure and seeks a lot of reassurance from those around her, despite her parents’ very attentive parenting style. She loves to bake and tends to just pass out treats to people when she sees them, she enjoys the fact that the person she’s given them to has tangible proof of how much she cares for them. She’s super sweet, the kind of person that nobody really dislikes. 

Dorian can come off as a bit standoffish because he is very anti-social. He’s the most like Jacks out of all the kids, doesn’t like to interact with a person unless it’s really necessary. He’ll hem and haw about spending time with his family (particularly Ambrose) but he loves them deeply, and his love language is acts of service so it’s not rare to find that he’s fixed some problem one of them may have had without ever saying anything. 

Merrick is an artist, and he’s sort of the stereotype of an eccentric artist. His brain moves at a million miles hours, constantly jumping from one subject to the next, total stream-of-consciousness style of speech so he’s just going, like, all the time. He’ll hole himself up in his own art studio for days at a time though, then come out with an absolute masterpiece. He loves his family but he’s usually the first to disappear from gatherings with everyone - he can tend to be a lot, and competing with everyone’s energy to be heard gets draining really quickly. 

Rosalina is the youngest and while she’s definitely spoiled, she’s not a brat or whiny or anything. She is really feminine, she never leaves the house without looking her best and her whole wardrobe is dresses and skirts. She’s sort of quiet, but she’s really friendly and has a small but close group of friends. She loves to be around her family but more as a passive observer, she enjoys people watching and there are a few big personalities in her family that she likes to watch.

[dapper-nahrwhale]

📥📚💖

What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?

Whichever is the most recent one (x men 1st 3 movies hehe) I've published lol, or older stuff, I def enjoy receiving any comments at all on anything, as long as it's not 'meh' like why would someone say that😭 its not even constructive its just rude.

Do you read your own fic?

Yeah, quite a bit, especially if I'm working on smth in the same series I'll go back and reread it so I know what I was going for and make sure I don't have any loose threads hanging out. It's pretty helpful for motivation too.

What do you like most about your own writing?

Hmm I like tapping into a specific emotion or feeling a character has and really tugging at it as much as possible to see what I'll pull loose. I like tapping into something and finding out some overarching themes and incorporating them, I like how I write plotless introspection and dialogue. I'm really not one for writing big story plots, so I like that I can do more stream of consciousness type stuff and it's still mostly coherent lol

Thanks for the asks! :3 !!!

[send more from this!]

[nelofairc]

i’ve cleared out an old account to try something different. i don’t usually post under pseudonyms, but things are what they are. i’m hoping this conscious effort will help break me out of a whackload of self-silencing while placing a few gentle protections around myself (curious to see if anyone twigs the username, too). the aim is to build more of a ‘window of tolerance’ around my words roaming out in the world, and to (attempt to) guard against those who type angrily into the void while forgetting their own, and their recipient’s, humanity.

idk if tumblr is the best place for it, everywhere seems so image/video oriented these days and i’m a words person (tl;dr mostly, soz/not soz). yeah there’s substack, patreon, medium, ghost, etc (and old versions of myself have all of them - i’ve been around the net for a wwhhiillee). but i’m here to build internal confidence, not income or vast follower numbers to become an ‘influencer’ (and definitely not to make profits for platforms who mostly seem fine with bigots). and i wanna say the kinda things which might feel a bit harsh to receive unexpectedly in your inbox. a while back i read that Neil Gaiman’s response to ‘why tumblr?’ was “because it’s quiet here”, and that stuck with me. i like quiet. i need quiet. so here we are.

let’s start with a biggie.

content notes: gender affirmation; breast cancer; suicidal ideation; death; trauma informed care provision; neuroqueering.

…

i found a lump in my boob a while ago. not my first - that one was when i was around 14years old, when i was referred to a specialist who happened to be the father of a friend i was at school with. the friend apparently had a crush on me, and was kinda pissed that his dad had seen my boobs when he hadn’t! the specialist described that lump as ‘gristle’, which i’m pretty sure wasn’t the scientific terminology …but i digress…

i don’t check for lumps often (*adds gentle nudge to encourage everyone to do it more often than me*) but for some reason i’d decided it would be a good idea since wintertime. my first thought when i found it was “oh cool! top surgery without the battle!” and then “…oh”.

i came out as nonbinary a couple years ago, having swirled with thoughts around it for a long time before that. i’ll probably write more about all of that another time, but for now the point is that… i didn’t think i was ‘there’ yet. i didn’t think i wanted top surgery, or any kind of gender reassignment surgery. i’ve never been particularly interested in becoming ‘more male’, and while there are myriad reasons why one might want or need top/reconstructive surgery which don’t involve gender, i had no idea any part of my consciousness was considering such concepts. so that was a thing.

i’ve been doing a LOT of trauma recovery work, especially over the last year+ having finally found a Somatic Experiencing specialist who i could actually afford (thanks, eventually, to PIP, although that’s a story in itself too). she is all kinds of affirming, and plain wonderful, and SE has been helping me to break through Interoception blocks and begin building an entirely new relationship with my body. i still can’t hear/translate everything my body has to teach me, but i’ve been listening out for its signals more, and have had some pretty wild experiences along the way.

i’ve been in extreme hermitude for years. there’s a long backstory (obvs), but cPTSD and the late discovery that your brain isn’t like other people’s brains can do that. i used to have a life, of a sort. i definitely used to have a career, which was my everything, my entire identity. i’d been swimming against the stream to hold either of them precariously together (fuelled largely by alcohol abuse, from which i’m now around 4.5years free), but there were reasons to keep going. just. over the last decade or so, those reasons have been getting harder and harder to find, or trust, or hold onto. the potential of a cancer diagnosis was, in part, a relief. suicide is ‘bad, yo’. cancer is respected, honoured, cared for. no one would blame me if i died of ‘natural causes’, but to choose to end one’s life, or even to talk openly about the endless pain of staying in a life you felt was no longer serving you: nup.

i found this lump shortly before discovering that an old college friend, who’s been through two rounds of chemo already, had a double mastectomy, and had been in remission for a year, was no longer cancer-free. hers had returned in a way which can be treated, but not cured. she is someone with a huge lust for life, her celebration of existence has been front and centre throughout her cancer journey. blessed with a loving family (including a young daughter), and with a huge capacity for social engagement and a friendship group i could barely imagine, it feels especially cruel. my sense of relief about my own potential diagnosis made this even more fucked up. why should she die so young, when she had so very many things to live for? and how could i be so cavalier about my own?

i don’t have the best relationship with medical services. i could recount numerous battles i’ve had with the NHS - everything from being denied any form of care due to being homeless (which i later found out was illegal); being denied a referral for an autism diagnosis because i had refused anti-depressants (resulting in an 8page letter to the NHS Trust which my autism assessor later described as “the most autistic thing you could have done”); being sent on countless infinity loops of waiting lists which ended with “your needs are too complex” (when i’d already told them that CBT was not gonna work for me and been promised that ‘no, this one really does offer trauma support’); and being denied HRT when i hit perimenopause because i identify as nonbinary (um, whut?). i can go mute when activated, and with all this (and more) medicalised trauma, all medical anythings are activating for me. so phonecalls Do Not Work for me, and the NHS is obsessed with phones, and their staff apparently unable to receive or read or reply to emails. so it took a while for me to gather the capacity to book an appointment with the GP to get the lump checked. typically, i just don’t bother unless it’s desperate, but with my friend’s situation in mind, i figured this one might need to be taken seriously.

i’d requested the appointment through yet another new GP, to me. i’ve now been through every single General Practice local to where i live. each one has caused thoughtless and unnecessary problems at best, and downright discrimination and harm at worst. i’ve often wondered what it might be like to have had one GP your whole life - or even for a few years. durational care, with a trusted someone, who knows your history because they have lived it with you, and who cares about you not just because it’s their job but because you’re a member of the community they are part of. jeesh, that’d be nice, eh? this being a whole new faceless entity, and this being my boob, and my having a bunch of #metoo amongst the trauma, i’d specifically requested to not have a cis male GP for this one. lo and behold, i arrived to find a cis male inviting me in for the consult. sigh. (eventually, after i’d dropped into total meltdown, he went to find a female Practice Nurse who did the consult instead… but WHY won’t they listen?)

the Nurse confirmed that she felt what i felt, and that as the lump was neither moving nor painful, it was enough to merit a referral to the Cancer Clinic. after YEARS of begging for some form of text-based comms system, the impact of receiving an invitation to join an entire cancer comms platform was… huge, and not in a good way. this platform held every single correspondence between every single clinician, all test results from every department, and the ability to book or change appointments, with easy-access messaging between everyone, and the promise of an appointment within a fortnight. ooft. while i am clearly extremely grateful to see the depth of care which goes into cancer support… i was left feeling enraged. WHY is this not available for everyone, for all conditions, all the time? why is cancer the most funded medical need in the world, when all conditions can cause equal suffering and deserve equal care?

when i arrived at the appointment, the primary clinician asked me what pronouns i use. i almost burst into tears. the only medical anyone who has ever done that for me before was the incredible Menopause Specialist i was able to access when i was a temporary patient in Wales last year (who had no qualms giving me all HRT, including Testosterone). this is Not Common, folks. while i was recovering from the shock of this empathetic offering, she told me they were a gender affirming practice. i started to tell her about my first reaction to finding the lump, and she said “i bet i know what you’re going to say; it’s more common than you’d think”. blimey. and then she offered me a quiet room to hang out in between the various tests, instead of having to sit in the waiting room, where they kept checking in on me to offer a cuppa or to just make sure i was okay. and at the end of my various tests, she told me there’s a gender-affirming service in my city where i could discuss any thoughts around top surgery, should i choose to go that route. This Is What Gender- and Neuro- Affirming Care Looks Like, People!

it turned out that my lump was a cyst, which they expertly sucked out with a syringe, showing me the tiny globule of creamy gloop which had caused so much inner turmoil. even with the affirming care, after four+ hours of all this i had dropped into dissociation, exhausted. i think they expected some form of joy at this news that i wasn’t going to die after all (at least, not imminently). i didn’t feel joy, i felt disappointment. i took myself home and sobbed.

i struggle to let people in to my life. i struggle to receive any love i am offered. but with the threat of cancer looming over my head, i had felt brave enough to tell a small handful of people… except my sister. we have an amazing relationship, having been through a lot together (we share the same root trauma which we were dragged back through a few years ago together, the same neurodivergence, and she has a chronic pain condition on top). i didn’t want her to worry about me, especially while she was doing the biggest project of her life and somewhat overloaded herself at the time. so i’d decided not to tell her unless there was actually something to tell her. when i finally did announce the now-not-really-news, she’d said “oh i’ve had a few of those. i probably wouldn’t have been worried, they’re really common”. an anticlimax, to be sure. i didn’t tell her i hadn’t been relieved. that’s a kinda fucked up thing to tell people, right?

so why wasn’t i relieved? surely this kinda of experience gives people a new lease on life, a fresh beginning, a reminder of how precious our short existences are. i just felt disappointed that i didn’t have a ‘valid reason’ to stop fighting. dying of cancer is deemed honourable. struggling to live is deemed your own fault. i felt guilty that my friend is dying and i am not, furious at the inequality between medical conditions and their default care practices, and utterly, utterly gutted that there was still no end to my own misery. and i was also appalled at myself. i’d been able to reach out to people who have been trying to tell me they care, but only about cancer. that permission was now banished once again, all of my other chronic needs falling back into neglect and stigma. ugh. i realised that no matter how much work i’d been doing to ‘recover’ and build a new life, i really didn’t want one after all. i did not matter, to myself. and if you’re not in your own corner, there’s not much hope for your future, is there?

so that’s where my head has been for the last couple months. those are the kinda things i’ve been stuffing down inside. that’s the shame and guilt i’ve been holding onto, beating myself with. i’ve been wanting to get blind drunk and wipe it all out ever since (but i haven’t). begrudging the parts of me which are still ‘doing the work’ to get better, while hating myself for being so bloody selfish and ungrateful to want to throw away something so precious. it’s been… confusing. and it’s caused a major downturn in my recovery process, with me falling back into deep dark depressions and restricted eating patterns, and hiding myself away because who the fuck am i and what the fuck does anything mean, anymore?

the very lovely poet Tom Hirons has a writing exercise which starts with “what i want to say is…”, goes on to “what i REALLY want to say is…”, and ends with “what i really, really do NOT want to say is…”. he believes we sometimes need to get the stuff we’re avoiding out into the open, to clear the way for the stuff it’s blocking. so this is my current offering to the word-spirits. i really, REALLY, do NOT want to say that i am am cancer free and not going to die.

i wonder what happens next.

[pedgito]

okay, here's me popping in with my own messy thought process

when it comes to things i know are going to be one-shots/one-off type fics and i know i want it to be smutty in some aspect, i will typically try to base it around a kink, whatever this is is usually based off the vibe of that specific character and the dynamic that i'm creating between them. obviously darker things tend to take me a little longer because i like to put extra care toward that. but often it's just: okay i have a kink and/or base idea of how i want the scene to go step by step, and then it's mostly just riffing from there. i don't necessarily picture it as much. its like, getting from point a to point b. requests, at least now, often stress me out so i very rarely do them

i have heard some people tend to like, map those interactions out step by step and that doesn't work for me? i've even tried it with my threesome fics and it literally has my brain sprouting off in 50 different directions. if i lose an arm, i'll find it later when i'm editing lmao.

i typically use a mix of irl and just media (be it p*rn, scenes i've seen before, pictures that spark up an idea) but the great thing is that it truly can come from everywhere, so it's never just one place i'm pulling from.

when it comes to series and relationship building i do like to map it out a little. even if its just oh okay here's some light touching, kinda angsty and not quite to that point. and then next step would be fingering/oral and so on. it feels...so incredibly goofy to me as i'm working it out, but it helps me tremendously actually when i'm trying to write thoughtfully alongside the story building (and with picturing it in my head) without being a horny little gremlin who just wants to dive straight in lmao.

in short, i ramble too much and my thought process is all over the place when it comes to smut writing. i think anyone who has ever read an outline of mine would know that i literally just throw shit out like a stream of consciousness and then make it pretty later.

Question for Fic Writers

So I'm curious about something. If you write smut, how do you come up with the scene/scenario?

For me it just sort of comes to me when I'm thinking about my characters. Like especially for my chaptered series, I'll be thinking about the characters and their progression and then a smut idea for them will just pop into my head like a movie scene. I rarely feel like I'm struggling to come up with a scene bc my brain just sort of fills in the blanks if that makes sense?

But I wanna know about other writers. Do you have a kink/trope you want to write and just fit it in wherever? Are you writing from irl experiences? Do you just have a specific type of smut you want and then write for it? Do you see something on Bellesa House and want to recreate it (LMAO)? Do you have people requesting a certain fantasy/kink/trope and write based off that?

Please share bc I'm super curious!

Sound off in the comments or reblog with extended commentary if you're a yapper like me.

full pressure tags (if I forgot anybody I'm sorry!):

@frannyzooey @ezrasbirdie @joelscruff @atticrissfinch @perotovar

@swiftispunk @kedsandtubesocks @chronically-ghosted @ghostofaboy @ghoulettesinspace

@toxicanonymity @umnitsa @quinnnfabrgay @bizarrelove-triangle @ozarkthedog

@agentmarcuspike @beardedjoel @magpiepills @noxturnalpascal @beelzebeth87

@not-a-unique-snowflake-blog @sp00kymulderr @luxurychristmaspudding @janaispunk @max--phillips

@covetyou @strang3lov3 @iamasaddie @iamskyereads @cavillscurls

@hier--soir @romanarose @goodwithcheese @neverwheremoonchild @netherfeildren

@beefrobeefcal @for-a-longlongtime @burntheedges @missredherring @qveerthe0ry

@grogusmum @prolix-yuy @demonsandbullets @leslie-lyman

[gettingbyy]

3/16/2024

this post is for mouse, but you can read it, too, if you want.

i hope you like the random photos i've been choosing. xD you've probably seen them all before, but it's still kind of fun to try to match them up with how i think the current post might go. the magnolia trees downtown will be blooming again soon so this one felt appropriate. i had another idea of what photo i might've used for this one, but i can't remember what it was. maybe next time.

anyways.

things have been going okay lately, with spring getting here and daylight savings happening, i'm finally starting to feel like a human again. it's been getting a bit better since i started working from home anyway, but more light is definitely helping. that said, i think the time change fucked me up real bad. i haven't been able to get out of bed before 930-945 all week (yay for working from home and working in my bed), i've been exhausted and i still can't sleep at night. shit's problematic. hopefully next week is smoother, but if this is the price i have to pay for daylight, i'll gladly pay it 50 times over.

A's internship/job is over now; she was hoping she could stay there, but long story short her manager and one of the HR people are both super ableist and discriminatory. she asked for disability accommodations (4 days of 8 hours a day instead of 5 days of 8 hours) and everything blew up in her face even though her request was perfectly legal and reasonable. i had just gone to a deep-dive webinar about the Americans with Disabilities Act a week or two before all this went down and i was appalled at the actual laws her workplace broke. to make it even wilder, she works at a community health center, doing things like, y'know, helping clients get accommodations at work for disabilities (among other things). the full story is kinda long, but i can tell you someday if you want. needless to say, she's back to the drawing board but has some prospects. fingers crossed.

my job is going okay right now. it's been a week since a bunch of articles came out saying we'll be declaring bankruptcy soon, but so far we haven't heard many peeps (other than a ton of us being anxious about it). allegedly, the type of bankruptcy we'd file would let us stay in business without making major changes, but we have over a billion in debt so....yeah. it's funny, on the website/earnings announcements they always say $1,xxx.xx million because it sounds a lot better than $1.1 billion. they're not really fooling anyone, though, or at least not us as the employees. they're especially not fooling me, because i know how far behind we are on paying our invoices.

i'm working on going through my books and sorting out what doesn't speak to me anymore. i have some of yours that you got when you were here last - i'm going to box them up and put them on a shelf in the basement so they don't accumulate cat hair like mine all are lmao. so far, i have about 25 books i'm going to be giving away or selling to a used bookstore i recently found. that's just the shelves in the blue room; i still have to go through the 9-cube white shelf in mine that's double-stacked.

where i'm at so far.

the main shelf in the blue room did have a couple double-stacked cubes, but mostly those were A's terry pratchett books. it's been an adventure. next step is cleaning my room (pack up unused bags, get my cameras and gear organized, etc.) and then i can use the space in here to sort out the other shelf. i'm telling you this to inform you of my life, but also to hopefully hold myself accountable. xD

this is pretty long so i should probably wrap it up. it was definitely way more stream-of-consciousness than the other one so hopefully it's not too rambly. miss you bbg, i hope you're doing a bit better now. <3

[lorelune]

hi lore im in your inbox again ✌️ bc i just like saying random stuff to you and reading everything you want to write about (your thoughts are as chewy as your writing, YUMMY) ✌️ i hope your migraine doesnt get worse over the week, i have smth similar that causes both headaches and jaw pain, chronic pain rlly testing my will to live sometimes ✌️ ✌️ ✌️

just wanted to take the time to ask about your writing process and some stuff about you!! if you tend to work consistently on fics or if youre the type to get inspired at 2am and binge write whenever it happens...if you prefer writing long fics or if you like short moments or drabbles...your fav tropes and your least fav? the genre of books,movies,shows,media you like!! the type of charas your eyes are drawn to...what can a chara do to make you immediately go "this man (neutral) right here" and add him to your collection...what kind of things do you like writing about the most, angst or fluff or stream of consciousness or unreliable narrator or-

those are a bunch of rando and specific questions, you dont need to answer all or any of them!! i just think its fun spamming questions bc im curious about what the lore is behind the writer :D (see what i did there)

i hope you have a fantastic rest of the week with no ailments or disturbances to your inner peace, and that you see your favs in your dreams!!

HELLO SLEEPY!!! THANK YOU FOR THE MESSAGE!!!

thank you for the kind wishes and questions!!!! my migraine has luckily been stopped for now :'^) it's been a rough few weeks but i'm hoping it turns around!!! the chronic head pain is no joke :(( truly wretched

and SLEEPY i did see what you did there :3c!!! here is some answers... some... lore :3c if you will :3ccc

as for writing, i tend to work best on fics in a fervor sometime after midnight :'^) it is my preferred time to write!! my creative time if you will. i prefer to write lengthier one shots, two shots, or three shots, though i LOOOVE a long fic and will strike a drabble down when i am Seized by A Thought. favorite trope...hurt/comfort or injury recovery, i looove to read and write both of them. the catharsis is so fun and sexy of it. least favorite is probably pregnancy it is simply not my thing!!!

the genre of media i gravitate toward is defs sci-fi or fantasy, depending on the day!!! my original writing is mostly fantasy!! my favorite flavor by FAR is beloved beloved kaiju films.

sleepy im staring at ur question about knowing kind of character i'm drawn too-- i do not KNOW. maybe stable men. women i would okay with calling mother. who is to say!!!!!

HMMM... i definitely love to write hurt/comfort. but like. truly anything indulgent. sometimes it is sticky gutrotting yan and other times that is tender wound care. or both!!!! honestly as long as i am following my lil whims i'm happy as a CLAM

[sluntch]

My Health Journey - A Writing Experiment - Day 3

Welcome back gang. Today's post is gonna be a bit shorter and probably more stream of consciousness as it's later, I spent 3-7 AM in the emergency room, and I'm high. I'll most likely save the specifics and stuff for later entries in this "journal", or whatever I'm calling it, though some may slip in during the natural projection of what I'm about to ramble on about. Thanks for showing up again, should you have read the previous two entries, and thanks for showing up for the first time if you've not been to this toilet blog before. See what's up under the cut.

So last time, I detailed some of my holdover issues from college and into the specific diet that I chose to use during my time attempting to lose weight. As a reminder, it's the one that works for me - Caloric deficit. I simply eat fewer calories than I expend during a day and then I lose weight. What I've found through this eating style is that I very much like planning out the menus of food that I eat during the week and that I very much like tracking numbers and seeing data points related to things that I'm doing. In particular, watching my weight graph over the course of the year has been particularly gratifying. Planning my meals out also allowed me to get into a routine, something that I could repeat each day. Data, planning, and routine. These are three things that no one who knew me in my college and early professional life would ever associate with me as a person. I was a guy who wouldn't even make a list to go to the store. I would simply walk into Giant Eagle and improvise until my cart was full of some necessities for the week but also just a ton of junk and snacks and other nonsense that I didn't need. As a middle child and only son who wasn't as put-together (in my own personal views on myself) as his type-A, organized, and successful sisters, I kind of just fell into the role of the "slacker who makes it through on pure bullshit and vibes" and assumed that's where I'd be for my life. Turns out, most surprisingly to me, that I love being organized, I love having a schedule, and I love having routines. Learning how to bring this kind of structure into my life allowed me to balance my days so that I wasn't tempted to binge eat food and I was able to provide a much more concrete answer to the question that always stuck at the back of my mind but I never chose to answer seriously in the moment - Am I hungry or am I bored?

If I were to write a book about this, that'd probably be what it'd be called. Now that I'm thinking about it, that should most likely have been the title of this project. I may retroactively go back and change it. We'll see.

My daily schedule and routine eventually boiled down to a few things after I had tried out some different combinations. The target time is when I do the task and any other time is up for grabs and mostly revolved around when I would eat during the day so that I could have concrete points where I'd be eating.

6 AM (or thereabouts) - Wake up

7 AM - Workout

8 AM - Breakfast and medications

10 AM - Morning snack, should I be hungry for one (usually a piece of fruit or something)

12 PM - Lunch

3 PM - Afternoon snack (usually something salty or veggie)

6 PM - Dinner

7 PM - Evening tea and dessert

10 PM - Get ready for bed

With my days structured in this specific way, I could mete out times when I would eat and times were I would do other things, such as focusing more on my work or my hobbies, and daily tasks that would distract me from (over)eating. I have two snacking styles - grazing and bulk. When I graze, I walk through the kitchen and have a spoonful or handful of something that is within reach. When I bulk, I get a large portion (abnormally large like a full cereal bowl of goldfish) of something and just pound it. The latter has been mitigated a lot as of late by me making my own healthy snacks and measuring out portions ahead of time. Grazing is something that I still struggle with daily, It's just so easy to grab a spoonful of the burrito bowls I made for dinner last night and then I end up doing that like eight times. Might as well have just had a bowl of it at a certain point. I feel guilty and bad when I do this even though I know that, in the grand scheme, it doesn't really matter all that much but I still wish that I was able to have more self control. Though I suppose there's always something to work on, right?

Making my own snacks has been, I believe, the most significant thing I've done to help with the "snacking issue". I discovered that all I really wanted was the crunch - the satisfying crunch of a crunchy snack. So I started with making my own popcorn. It was delicious. I then moved onto veggie-based snacks. I would slice up peppers or cucumber and have a sauce like Cholula or Buffalo Sauce on them. They were delicious. Then I started getting sugar snap peas. They were delicious. They were lower calorie, I could eat them in larger quantities, and they were crunchy. It was the ultimate combo that I had been craving. I was now eating more fruit and veggies and eating three square healthy meals a day. The routines and the efforts were beginning to pay off considerably.

That's where I'm gonna cut it now because I want to go sit on the couch with my wife and V I B E so that's what I'm gonna do. Next time, I'm going to get into the numbers. For real. Specifically the numbers regarding my caloric intake/output per day, potentially some of the workouts that I chose to do build into my routine, and my brush with danger regarding the process that almost put a brick through the whole venture. Thanks for sticking through this if you have. You are appreciated and I hope you return.

63 days to go.