#For some reason I write different things on every platform.

[arvolna]

I bought bg3 and started playing and oh my god. I kick my feet, giggle like a mad man and for some reason slap my legs hard whenever I see him or hear him talk. And the line "Warm... Warm... Hot." got me off guard. SIR? HELLO? I'M BLUSHING RED AND BLUSHING RED WAS NOT ON MY PLANS FOR TODAY SIR. I NEED TO WRITE YOU A FINE. I'M GONNA REPLAY THE SCENE ON MY SAVES AND YOURE GONNA SAY THE SAME THING AGAIN AND AGAIN SIR. ENOUGH.

[seelestia]

✦ how can you tell? (of how easily i fall at your feet.)

⎯ oh, how love bleeds from just one gesture. ( some telltale signs that they might've fallen for you. )

#STARRING. neuvillette, wriothesley & lyney ft. gn!reader. { 2.4k words }

#TAGS. sfw, fluff & crack, major pining (!!!). more: neuvi has 1 extra part bcs i realized too late, wrio is a rascal /aff, lynette is a professional wingwoman here (everyone, applaud!!), mentions of various fontaine npc's.

#P/S. pardon my rusty writing and ideas but alas, may i entice you with some fontaine gentlemen on this fine day?? (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ) ੭

★ 〜 masterlist.

© seelestia on tumblr, apr 2024. please do not repost to another platform, plagiarize, translate, use for AI-related purposes or claim as your own.

⎯ neuvillette's love is subtle, hidden behind a veil of formal courtesy. the iudex is the nation's symbol of impartiality; personal relationships, a common factor of inciting bias in one's judgement, are to be sifted through wisely. he can choose which he ends up keeping, yet he cannot choose which he ends up wanting. what of a relationship he desires but cannot keep? a conundrum but still, his affections for you seep through the crevices.

it's in the way. . . your name becomes a beloved among the melusines, you wonder why?

it goes without saying that every citizen of fontaine acknowledges melusines to be friendly creatures. all of them are sweethearts! ...but is it you or is there some form of hidden favoritism here?

for some reason, they always seem to go out of their ways to greet you on the streets. a “hello, mx. [name]!” from the right then a “good day, mx. [name]!” from the left. maybe a “stay safe, mx. [name]!” on days when it's crowded too... you're starting to think the quota of greetings you receive is much bigger than everyone else.

before long, even your arms are getting piled up with favors. one ticket for a seat in the opera epiclese from aeife, a slice of cake from sedene, some high-quality butter from muirne, a free beverage from menthe — you lost count of the freebies you've received already.

what's going on? it is as if there's a badge of approval from someone just hanging over your head. visible to a melusine's eyes, but not to yours. (you've heard that melusines perceive things differently than humans, though.)

but who are you to complain? you're not immune to their contagious smiles each time you pass by. on some days, you even entertain the thought that they are more familiar with you than you are with them. all in a humorous sense, of course.

ironically enough, this theory wouldn't take long to ring true: having received a bouquet of your favorite dessert from café lutece on your birthday from kiara, this coincidence only feeds into your suspicion even more.

a considerate gesture but surely, they don't do this for everyone? you don't recall ever telling your usual order and birthdate to a melusine before. your mind scrambles around for a memory you might've missed. who could've—

“oh, yes... i almost forgot,” kiara holds her chin in thought. “monsieur neuvillette says to send you his regards,” she nods, relieved that the message did not make its narrow escape from her mind. but blissfully unaware of the impact her words have left on you.

“goodbye, mx. [name]!” the melusine bids you farewell with a cheery wave. you murmur back a response but it comes out incoherent at best — you are simply too dumbfounded by the realization.

...so, that's who.

(wait a second, is arouet in on this too?!)

it's in the way. . . he begins to take longer breaks, hoping to run into you in front of the palais.

taking quiet strolls just outside the palais is, more often than not, neuvillette's idea of rest from work. although some might expect the iudex to have chosen a more 'creative' or luxurious location, but he digresses.

this place is near his office so less time is wasted on the journey back, liath also patrols here so he has the opportunity to inquire about her well-being — and occasionally, he stumbles upon you as well.

'occasionally' is the keyword: neuvillette has always preferred order and routine above chances and coincidences. but something about this idiosyncrasy — the tendency to linger beyond his usual duration, the act of stalling to hold onto hope that you might pass by today — is a indication of hypocrisy he wishes not to comment on.

sometimes, he closes his eyes so that his ears may be more attuned to the sound of your voice. sometimes, he opens his eyes so that they may look around for a glimpse of your face. who's to say if he'll ever be graced by your presence? it is all in fate's hands.

call it an odd method of manifestation, a childish one that even neuvillette scoffs at himself for. sometimes, it doesn't work, of course. not that he ever expects it to — but oh, when it does.

“...monsieur?” your voice cuts through the silence in his mind. he takes the sight of you in; a polite greeting on your tongue, several grocery bags in your arms and that beam on your face as you say, “what a coincidence to see you here.”

the iudex finds that he doesn't mind having his privacy briefly interrupted. not at all. not when it's like this, not when it's by you. alas, it seems that fate has smiled down on him today.

“yes, hello. what a serendipitous coincidence indeed.”

neuvillette smiles, he can't help it. perhaps, he might grow a soft spot for coincidences, after all.

(you sneak a brief glance at the sky with a squint. ...is it just you or are the clouds clearing up a little?)

⎯ wriothesley's love is beguiling, the kind of adventure that keeps you on your toes. a forthright gentleman; he is the type to know what he wants and he wants you. with him, you'll taste whiplash like never before. butterflies in your stomach, the urge to throw a shoe at him, you'll get it all. but an adventure isn't an adventure without breaks in between and it's at that very moment where you'll find you adore him the most... when he rests his head on your lap, momentarily free from worldly titles, breathing like the man who longs for warmth that he has always been.

it's in the way. . . he always offers you tea when really, he just wants you to stay.

everyone knows that wriothesley enjoys his tea — but that's only because he sees no need to hide his preferences; not his craving for a cup of tea when afternoon arrives nor his fondness for you either.

he doesn't conceal it, but doesn't bring attention to it either. wriothesley likes to think that only those with discerning eyes can pick up on the miniscule (???) hints he drops. that is, if saying “why not stay for some tea?” is even considered a subtle clue at all... maybe, he's mixing up polite courtesy with flirting a bit too much.

but who cares? in the grand scheme of things, the fun is seeing whether you'll figure it out or not. and let's be frank here; wriothesley is a patient man in all aspects, able to play the long game like no other.

don't worry, you may take as long as you want to — ironic since you're technically the only player in this 'game' — but hey, he has faith in your abilities! besides, you get to enjoy a cup of free tea (and with his company, preferably). surely, you can't complain about that? ...hah, he's just teasing you.

tick-tock! tick-tock!

the clock strikes twelve in the afternoon.

“ah, finally a well-deserved break.” the tone in which wriothesley pairs with that grin on his face is nothing less than devious. the glance he throws your way as he set aside the documents on his desk is something. or rather, it's suggesting something.

and frankly, you've experienced this many times enough to know what the underlying meaning is. “let me guess...” you let out a sigh, “you're asking me to have tea with you again?”

the emphasis on the last word is definitely, wholly intentional. you're sure wriothesley knows that too — “bingo,” he hums at you, sounds almost like a whistle. “you're getting more and more clever. must be all the tea i made you.”

“don't flatter yourself,” you roll your eyes at his attempted jest but you take a seat on his office couch, anyway. your own unique and adorable way of saying yes, he learned. still, wriothesley thinks that exasperated look on your face is an absolute marvel... and maybe, that little smile tugging on your lips you're trying to fight, too.

“same as usual?” he asks, pushing back his chair with a proud grin still plastered on his face that you wish you can wipe off.

but instead, you shake your head fondly at his antics. “mhm,” and rest a cheek on your fist. watching him tiredly, you realize you could get used to this. maybe.

wriothesley smiles to himself. looks like you figured out the tea has always been an excuse, after all.

(you've won the game, congrats! a subsidiary reward is a comment from sigewinne about how this tea routine between the two of you bears a resemblance to an elderly human couple's. she means it, innocently sincere.)

⎯ lyney's love can be faceted at first, one with such a smooth surface that you never imagined there would be so many layers underneath. joy and bliss, sorrow and burdens; all cramped and stuffed together behind his mask of perfection on the stage, a mask akin to a child's treasure chest almost bursting at the seams. you can unravel him if you tried, you can take off that mask if you reached out. and when you do, you'll find beautiful violet eyes staring right back at you, thankful, imploring you to go further.

it's in the way. . . his bravado dissipates around you, nerves scattering like confetti that bursts from his hat on stage.

they say that the first impression is the best impression — or at least, lyney hopes that's the case with all of the interesting impressions he has left on you so far. his instinct by nature is to impress, to bedazzle and that hasn't stopped since meeting you for the first time.

trying doesn't always lead to success, however. you stuttered in front of them twice, lynette pointed out after the first time he spoke to you. that fact spooked the poor magician so much he stayed up rethinking the conversation under the cover of his blanket. lynette isn't wrong per se, but lyney firmly believes that he will leave a better impression... one day, somehow, no matter how many times it takes!

he is a magician; charisma and charms should have or rather, already have come easily to him. his persona on the stage is no lie — just a tiny concerted exaggeration, maybe — but you've been among his audience before. you've seen what he is capable of. so surely, you'd know that lyney isn't really as demure and easily flustered as you might think he is... because no punches held back, he acts like that every time you talk to him.

he can't help it and that, exactly, is what makes it worse.

how many times have he cupped his face and mumbled nonsense into his hands for failing to impress you yet again? you're so wonderful and he's just so... miserable. this is unlike him. he has to wonder why you still look for him after each performance when you know you'll be greeted by his being a wreck.

maybe they like you that way, freminet tried to help. or maybe they like you no matter what, lynette chipped in. that had lyney pondering for a long, long, long time which translates into weeks.

will the day come where he presents you with a rainbow rose and professes his feelings for you without losing his nerves? he can only hope (and try, one day).

it never gets old.

when his feet step off the stage and the curtains have fallen, the satisfaction that spreads all the way to his fingertips never fails to disappoint. but with that, also comes the imminent feeling of anticipation.

for each performance he delivers, a visitor is bound to linger. when all members in the audience would head to the entrance of the opera epiclese to leave, one of them would stay. waiting patiently to be beckoned to the backstage. it's been a routine for so long, after all.

“lyney?”

right on cue.

your voice greets his ears, a sound that he can admit he misses only to himself. he exhales, a placating act to shush his beating heart from growing any louder.

“ah, [name]!” the magician enunciates your name with a certain type of fanfare. “here to lend a hand again, i assume?” he tries to shoot you a confident grin, but you aren't gullible enough to not see the tint of red blooming on his cheeks.

you stifle a chuckle at his (attempt at a) bold opening. “of course,“ said with a nod and a silly thought along the lines of: he's cute.

your honest and calm response takes him by surprise. he blinks a tad. oh, it seems the thrill from the show a few minutes prior still hasn't worn off. perhaps, he's still all too used to the crowd's shouts and cheers... not that he expects you to start yelling, of course!

“i see,” lyney feigns a cough to recollect his composure. now that he is cognizant of the fact it's just the two of you, he shrinks down into a more casual version of himself with a nervous chuckle.

“will you... be staying for long?” he asks, bashful. the question sounds more genuine than just a mere pleasantry. his eyes look hopeful, twinkling at the thought of having your presence around. his fingers have even come up to scratch at the side of his neck, you don't think lyney even realizes he is doing that.

who are you to say no? you smile. “well, my schedule's pretty empty today.”

his lips instantly break into a grin, brighter than one he usually has onstage. “that's actually marv—” he starts.

“that's great,” a familiar monotonous voice cuts in. lynette peers from behind you with a hum, “we could use more hands to pack up the new props.” oh, and that brief glint of mischief in her feline eyes as she watches how lyney gapes at her sudden intrusion.

“sure!” you glance back at her, oblivious to it all. “thanks for letting me in, lynette. i'll try my best to help.” even if you admit that one of the reasons you're here is for lyney, but you can't discredit his twin sister for allowing you to enter here in the first place. a free backstage pass in exchange for free labor, quite a fair deal.

with your back turned to him, lyney takes the chance to mouth his own words of disbelief to lynette. incomprehensible except for that one i can't believe you're doing this! that she manages to catch.

“no problem,” she observes her brother over your shoulder with keen interest, “everyone knows how fond lyney is of you.”

there is a series of spluttering noises behind you. a certain magician finds himself at the verge of choking on mere oxygen.

“lynette!”

but really, she has no doubt that lyney has fallen head over heels for you. hook, line and sinker.

— thank you for reading! reblogs and comments are most appreciated. ♡

[les4elliewilliams]

bound by love // ex-girlfriend!ellie

☆・・・・☆ ・・・・☆・・・・☆

daily click・palestine masterpost・do not buy any game from naughty dog, neil druckmann is a zionist.

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT.

wc/warnings: 5.6k ; strap-on sex (r!receiving), tribbing, oral (r!receiving), cheating, use of names like whore, slut, baby etc. and toxic relationship. do NOT read if you're sensitive about this kind of stuff!! do not romanticize toxic relationships and run far away from toxic people.

a/n: also first time writing smut so please be kind😭. not proofread so i'm sorry if you find any mistakes

pairing: toxic!ellie, ex-girlfriend!ellie also stalker!ellie???(just ellie stalking your social media and location) and jealous!ellie ig.

☆・・・・☆ ・・・・☆・・・・☆

I know that you're shitty and you're bad for me

But I can't stop thinking 'bout it

✩ You used to console yourself by saying that the problem was not you but her. You believed that she was the one who caused all the issues in the relationship. However, as time passed, you started to realize that the situation was more complex than you initially thought. You began to question your own actions and words and wondered if you could have done things differently. You tried to stay positive by reminding yourself that sometimes things don't work out, and it's okay to move on. But you couldn't move on.

✩ Despite all your efforts to move on and forget about her, you always found yourself drawn back to her for some weird reason. You tried everything you could think of to let her go — you blocked her on every platform you could, hoping it would help you move on, but it never seemed to work. No matter how hard you tried to forget her, you always ended up unblocking her, usually within an hour of blocking her. It was as if you were powerless to resist the pull she had on you, no matter how much you wanted to be free of her.

✩ You were the one who broke up with her, claiming she was too toxic for you. However, you cannot deny that you also had your fair share of faults. Both of you were aware of the toxicity in your relationship, but still, it lasted for three whole years. You often wonder how you were able to tolerate her for so long. She always seemed to go out of her way to provoke you and get a reaction out of you. She would intentionally make you jealous, making nasty comments about other women's bodies to make you insecure and maybe even cry. She loved it when you got possessive and jealous; that was the only way she felt cared for and loved. She constantly needed reassurance, and her overthinking would stop only when you got possessive of her or extremely jealous; it didn't make sense, and she knew it wasn't normal, yet she couldn't help herself. But it wasn't only that. She was also extremely manipulative and a liar. It was a never-ending cycle of negativity, and both of you were caught up in it.

✩ If she was a toxic girlfriend, imagine how toxic she was once you two were broken up. When you broke up with her, you thought you were better off as friends, but soon enough, you started to realize how wrong you were.

✩ Even though she treated you poorly throughout your relationship, you always returned to her. Your love for her was strong, and it seemed as though returning to her was the only thing that felt right. Even though she was responsible for causing you a significant amount of emotional pain, she still felt like home to you — like the person who you could always run to whenever you needed it. She always knew the right thing to say to calm you down, cheer you up, and sometimes even make you cry. That was the thing about Ellie that confused you the most; She could be either the best person ever or the worst.

✩ When something big goes down in your life, she's the one you call up first. It doesn't matter if it's something totally dumb or something that seriously ticks you off, she's the one you rely on for comfort and support, and she's always there to baby you.

"S'okay baby— mhm, you got this," whispering sweet nothings into your ear as you rambled about your day "Want me to beat them up for you? You know I would," and she wasn't kidding, sending whoever made you mad to the ER without you even knowing it. You have always been someone who disliked violence. In fact, you were never the kind of person who would resort to violence, no matter how heated a situation may have been. You've always been the rational one between the two of you, thinking things through before acting. On the other hand, she was more impulsive, acting without much thought or consideration for the consequences of her actions. Anyway, you would find out what Ellie did to your coworker when he showed up with a cast around his arm, threatening to take legal action against her. You always found yourself in the middle of the conflict, pleading with your coworker not to sue Ellie and trying to smooth things over.

✩ Lots of

"you're the hottest girl i've ever dated" "i would take you back in a heartbeat" "i still have a soft spot for you" "best pussy i've ever had"

✩ She'd randomly show up at your place in the middle of the night, pounding on your door, little did you know she'd be pounding into you the second you let her in

"nfuckk— my pussy…s'all mine" Murmuring nonsense into the crook of your neck as she fucked your tight little hole with the new strap she desperately wanted to show you (which became your favorite for obvious reasons). "think anyone else can make you feel like this, hm?" and she wouldn't let you cum if you didn't reply, she wanted to hear you say that you belonged to her and her only.

✩ She constantly checked your social media accounts like a fucking maniac, fearing that you may have moved on or started spending time with other girls. This behavior was not healthy, and she was aware of it. Despite that, she couldn't help herself and even had access to your location, which she used to stalk you whenever you didn't respond to her messages or calls quickly enough. On two separate occasions, she unexpectedly showed up while you were on dates with other girls. At first, you brushed it off as a coincidence, but after the second time, you realized that she still had your location and that her sudden appearance was not coincidental at all. Therefore, you turned off the location sharing. and in no time she was blowing up your phone with texts

"why the fuck would you turn it off?" "moving on already?" "where the fuck do you even think you're going?" "try all you want, but you know who you belong to"

✩ It became increasingly clear that you and her were not meant to be friends. You still belonged to her in her mind — and perhaps it wasn't just in her mind. Deep down, you knew that she was right even though you were no longer together.

✩ Although you had repeatedly told Ellie that you wouldn't get back together, she remained convinced that you would eventually return. Instead of giving up, she actively pursued ways to reconnect with you. She would often surprise you by showing up at your apartment with a bouquet of your favorite flowers or things she knew you would like.

"Ellie, what're you doin' here?" you asked as you saw your ex-girlfriend holding a lovely bouquet of flowers in her hand. You were taken aback as you looked at the bouquet  — it was a Hello Kitty bouquet. You had mentioned this type of bouquet to Ellie before you broke up, and you were surprised that she even listened to you when you kept rambling about how cute it was. You had seen it on Pinterest before and never thought she would remember. Her green eyes met yours, and she scratched the back of her neck before flashing a warm smile your way. She knew you'd love it.  "Hi, angel," she said. She handed you the bouquet and planted a soft kiss on your cheek. Her free hand quickly found its way to your waist. She leaned back enough to gauge your reaction and asked with a cocky smile, "What d'you think?" The sudden appearance of Ellie took you aback, but you couldn't help but admire the bouquet in your hands. The Hello Kitty plushie and the colorful flowers were so cute. You didn't expect her to remember your love for this particular bouquet, but you were grateful that she did. "May I come in?" Her tone was confident, and her eyes shone with a mischievous glint. You couldn't help but wonder what she was up to, but you stepped aside to let her in nonetheless.

✩ She would listen intently to everything you said during your relationship and make mental notes of all the things you wanted or needed. However, she never acted on them until you broke up with her. Suddenly, she would start getting you those things, being the girlfriend you always wanted her to be, trying to convince you to give her another chance. But you weren't stupid; you knew that as soon as you let her back into your life, she would go back to her usual self, and her toxic behavior would come out once again.

✩ She showered you with compliments, gifts, and attention, making you feel like you were the only person in the world that mattered to her. When she realized that her love bombing wasn't working on you, she changed her tactics. She began dating a girl she had always insisted was "just a friend," even though you had always felt insecure about her because you thought she was prettier than you. But Ellie was using this girl only to get to you. She wanted to make you jealous and make you feel like you were missing out on something she could provide. She hoped you would come back to her, begging for another chance. You were devastated and couldn't help but compare yourself to this other girl, wondering what Ellie saw in Dina that she didn't see in you. But as time passed, you began to realize that Ellie was playing games. She didn't care about this girl, or about anyone else for that matter. To her, you were the one that got away, the one that she couldn't have. And so she used this other girl as a pawn in her game, hoping to win you back. But you didn't fall for it.

✩ She just went ahead and started posting pictures with her new girlfriend on Instagram to make sure you saw them and felt like shit. And, well, it worked like a charm. Even though you knew she was doing it on purpose to upset you, it still hurt like hell because she never posted pictures of the two of you together on social media, claiming she preferred to keep things private but as soon as she started dating her new girlfriend, she suddenly started posting about her non-stop, which made you feel even more hurt and insecure.

✩ You realized that cutting ties with Ellie and blocking her from all platforms would have been the wise thing to do. but let's be honest, getting revenge felt much more satisfying than being wise sometimes. You wanted to show her that you were not someone to be toyed with cause that's what you felt like: a toy. You started seeing a girl you had recently met, but you made sure not to make it too obvious. You didn't want Ellie to think you were only doing it to get back at her. Of course not, it had to look natural. You wanted to show her that you had moved on with your life and that you were over her. Even though it was quite the opposite, you weren't over her.

✩ When you began sharing pictures of your new girlfriend, she dropped her fake composed demeanor and started bombarding your phone with messages. You finally had her exactly where you wanted her.

2:33 am "who the fuck is that girl in your story?" 2:34 am "hello?" 2:36 am "answer your goddamn phone" 2:37 am "Why do you even care, Ellie? you're in a relationship." 2:39 am "what the actual fuck" 2:42 am "tell me" 2:46 am "who is she" 2:53 am "My girlfriend."

✩ After that, she vanished from social media and every other platform for nearly a week, leaving you on read. You had mixed emotions about it. On one hand, you felt a sense of pride for getting back at her. It was working because she seemed jealous. On the other hand, there was a part of you that couldn't help but miss her. You longed for her presence and wished she would come back. Her presence wasn't the only thing you longed for; you missed her hands all over your body, touching you just in the right places. She knew you like the back of her hand. She knew exactly how to make you arch your back and make you scream her name.

✩ You couldn't cum. It had been weeks, maybe a month, and your little friend down there was starting to ache. You were horny, so fucking horny, but you couldn't cum. All you could think of was your fucking ex-girlfriend almost as if your pussy had a mind of her own. Not even your favorite toys were helping. it felt good, but you felt like something was missing. You reached out to the nightstand and grabbed your phone, unlocking the screen with a swift gesture and opened the messaging app. It was wrong, so wrong and you knew you would regret it the next day, but you needed her. Your fingers moved effortlessly across the virtual keyboard as you typed a message to her.

 1:15 am "Els, I know it's wrong but"  1:15 am "I'm horny"  1:16 am "I need you, please"

You let out a deep sigh of frustration as ten long minutes ticked by, convinced she wouldn't text you back. The last conversation you had hadn't gone well, and you were starting to think it was all over between the two of you, for real this time. Just as you were about to give up and put your phone back on the nightstand, you heard a familiar chime. Your heart leaped into your throat as you saw that it was her.

1:27 am "lol your little gf can't make you feel good like i do?" 1:29 am "omw"

In just 10 minutes, she was back in your apartment, in your arms, and inside you. It was almost like nothing happened like she hadn't just made you cry for a whole month for getting with the girl who made you deeply insecure. All her 8 inches buried deep into your soaked hole, stretching it out and making it hurt, but it felt good. "Is this what you wanted, hm?" she kept mumbling random things into the crook of your neck, not that you were listening to anything she was saying; she was fucking you dumb, and you couldn't seem to focus on anything else but her thick strap pounding into you relentlessly, hitting your cervix just right. You were a mess, literally. "Ellie...nngfuck.. slow down" you breathed out between incoherent moans, panting like a fucking dog in heat "Take it, slut. Show me how much you missed me." She hissed, thrusting hard into you, all your juices spilling out of your pussy, making a mess on your pink sheets. All she wanted to do was destroy you, mark you as hers.

"C-can't," you whined as pornographic moans left your throat. She groaned deep in her throat, savoring the sounds of pleasure falling from your lips, almost as if her life depended on them. She missed this so much. She missed you so much. She increased the pace, pushing deeper into you each time. Her hands moved to your hips, gripping them tightly as she continued to thrust her hips against yours, her thrusts becoming faster and harder, your breath coming out in heavy gasps. "So fucking tight, baby," she panted, her voice hoarse with need "You belong to me, don't you?" She bit down on your neck, her teeth grazing lightly against your delicate skin, leaving behind a mark as evidence of her claim over you; you whimpered at the sensation. You were hers, no one else's. She wanted to mark you all over, hoping your girlfriend would see the hickeys on your breasts and neck the next day.

All you could do was nod frantically, "m'yours, all yours" you babbled out, painfully arching your back. So fucking incoherent. Especially after promising yourself that you would never let her lay a finger on you ever again. But you were desperate, you needed to cum, and you needed her right now. "That's my girl, only I can fuck you like this, yeah?" Her hands roamed all over your body, pinching your nipples and rubbing your throbbing nub harshly. She wanted to hear you beg for her and admit how much you needed her. She needed you to need her.

"Tell me how much you missed my cock." She demanded, slamming into you again and again. Your high-pitched moans filled the room, each one driving her wilder. She could feel her own climax building as her clit bumped against the back of her strap with each thrust; the sound of your pleas combined with the tightness of your pussy around her strap-on were enough to push her closer and closer to the edge. You felt that familiar sensation build in your stomach; you were close. "Soo much, ahhh!...missed it, yeah.." you couldn't even put together a proper sentence. Her grip on your hips tightened, tugging slightly as she continued to thrust into you, hitting the spot that had you rolling your eyes into the back of your skull, over and over until you couldn't hold back anymore.

"That's it, whore. Cum for me. You don't belong to anyone else," she snarled, her voice laced with possession. She knew just what to do or say to push you over the edge, and it worked every single time; that's why you ran to her whenever you needed a good fuck. She could feel your body tensing up and your pretty pussy clenching around her strap-on. You came simultaneously, your combined moans filling your cozy bedroom, her well-defined abdominal muscles glistening with a thin layer of sweat. She rolled you over, so now you were on top of her, riding out your orgasm on her silicone cock as she ground her clit against the back of her strap.  "Oooh fuuuck!" you cried out as pretty moans left your mouth. She took in the sight of you on top of her, her strap still buried deep inside you, riding her cock; your tits bounced as you did so, a sight that she loved. No one did it like you. No one was remotely as good as you. She took a glimpse of your cum sliding down the strap, you were so fucking wet, and nasty wet sounds filled the room, but she loved it. "Fuck, baby," she groaned, clenching her teeth tightly together, causing her jaw muscles to bulge prominently. Her hands gripped your hips, guiding you as you moved your hips, setting the pace, your eyes locked on hers the entire time. Her fingers dug into your skin, leaving small marks that she knew would fade within hours but would always remind her of this moment. Her veiny hand reached up, grabbing one of your breasts, squeezing it firmly and twisting the nipple between her fingers. Your breath came out in ragged gasps, her eyes never leaving yours as she watched you take her cock like the fucking slut you were. "Taking me so well, such a good girl f'me, aren't ya?"

"El..." you whined as she toyed with your nipple. You weren't going to last long; you were still sensitive and your pussy couldn't handle it. "'m gonna cum again!" you cried out once again, bouncing faster on her thick strap. She watched you with unabashed hunger, her eyes never leaving your body as it moved above her. She thrust up, meeting your movements, pushing you closer to the edge. The sight of your tits bouncing in time with your thrusts and the strap disappearing inside your juicy-coated pussy almost made Ellie cum right then and there. Your thighs started to tremble, and she could feel you clench around her dick; your gasps and moans becoming more frequent. She wasted no time, her fingers digging into your hips as she slammed you down on her strap, making you cry out her name, "Just like that, yeah...take it."

When you finally collapsed against her, panting heavily, Ellie couldn't help but smile. "Mine," she rasped, her voice thick with possession and satisfaction. As your bodies finally came down from their highs, breaths slowly returning to normal, she pulled out of you, leaving your wet and sore pussy gaping open. You whined at the sensation, suddenly feeling empty.

The smile plastered on her face faded as you pulled away, the coldness in your voice seeping into the air between you two as you told her to return to her girlfriend. She reluctantly mimicked your movements and sat up, breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her eyes met yours, searching for any trace of warmth or affection, but all she found was distance. She grabbed her clothes and started to dress herself quickly, trying to calm down, her movements precise and controlled, hiding the hurt and anger she felt at your words. She was confused. You had called her, and she thought you were ready to take her back into your life. She wasn't expecting you to discard her like a toy. "I see how it is," she muttered, her voice cold and distant. She gathered her belongings, not meeting your gaze. "I shouldn't have come here." When she was fully clothed, Ellie turned to face you, her eyes filled with regret and anger.

"Yeah, you shouldn't have," your tone coming off as sharp and cold. You put your shirt on, struggling to process what happened. You missed her so fucking much, and the sex with her was also something you missed a lot. You knew she was right when she told you that no one could fuck you like she did; your girlfriend couldn't even make you cum, while Ellie knew precisely how to touch you to make you feel good. "Can't believe it...Dina, really?" you muttered under your breath as you got dressed, catching her off guard. Your outburst was so sudden neither you could understand it. She could sense the jealousy in your voice and knew exactly what was going on, and the realization made her feel a twinge of satisfaction. "Is this what it's all about? Me fucking with Dina?" she scoffed, her eyes rolling in annoyance. But despite her outward annoyance, she was secretly glad you still cared and got jealous. It meant that you had never indeed gotten over her. You struggled to maintain eye contact with her, the words "Just…get out" barely escaped your lips. You felt a burning sense of shame for letting your jealousy get the best of you, but at the same time, you couldn't help but release all the pent-up emotions you had been holding in for so long.

She snorted from her nose, shaking her head in disbelief, almost amused by all this "Just say the word, and I'll dump her ass," she said in a flat tone, her emerald green eyes staring right back at you as she placed her hands on her hips. You could tell she was serious, as there was a hint of desperation in her voice. She was hoping you'd ask her to drop Dina's ass and come back to you, but of course, you didn't. "I would do anything for you" desperate, so fucking desperate. You let out a deep sigh and firmly shook your head, looking into her eyes. You could see the pain and desperation in her gaze, but you couldn't just let her back into your life like that. "Go," you repeated yourself. "Fine, whatever," she sounded so pissed, disappointed. For a moment, you wanted to take your words back, but you knew that letting her into your life again was the worst idea ever.

✩ That night only made it incredibly difficult for you to move on from her (not that you could before), but she was all you could think of. You found yourself constantly yearning for her at every moment of the day. You'd often text her, and she would always come over, no matter what she was in the middle of. She was willing to drop everything to be with you and 8 inches inside you or between your thighs. Even if she was out with Dina, she didn't seem to care — it became obvious that something was going on between you and Ellie. You couldn't understand how Dina couldn't tell that Ellie was cheating on her with you.

6:34 pm "Baby, need you" 6:36 pm "I'm so wet, been thinking about you all day :(" 6:37 pm "proof??"

✩ One of the things you used to do quite regularly was sending her nudes. You would send her nudes on Snapchat unexpectedly, mostly to surprise her or get some sort of reaction from her. Sending snaps to tease her was one of your favorite things to do. Whether it was a picture of you in sexy lingerie or a video of you playing with your pussy, riding the purple strap she had left at your place weeks ago. You loved making her horny, and it always worked. She would always end up knocking at your door, eager to fuck you or eat you out.

"Teasin' me like that in public — tsskk," She mumbled against your throbbing core as she teased your clit with her tongue. Your legs were on her shoulders, and you watched her head disappear between your thighs. Your fingers tightly gripped into her auburn hair as she devoured like a starved animal, so pussy drunk. But even in that state, she was such a sight.

✩ You were the only one she could think about, even when fucking her girlfriend. Her mind too fixated on the cute little whimpers that left your mouth when she was inside you or sucking on your clit. The way your legs trembled when you were close, your hips jerking away from her when it became too much for you. No one could make her wet like you did, it was a fucking curse having to fuck someone else while thinking of you, hoping that would be enough to trick her brain into thinking she was fucking you instead.

✩ She would save each of your snaps into her phone's gallery and meticulously organize them into a special and hidden folder she had created just for you. This folder contained not just your nudes but plenty of other stuff — from intimate pictures you'd send her to videos she'd take while fucking you. She would go through the folder occasionally for personal use (iykwim).

✩ Your girlfriend was quick to pick up on something odd going on. She'd notice how you would turn your phone upside down, making sure the screen was facing whatever surface to make sure she wouldn't see your ex-girlfriend spamming your phone with texts (she would do it on purpose, by the way). That's how she knew something was up, but for some odd reason, she brushed it off.

✩ She was fed up with your stupid girlfriend constantly in the way. Why weren't you breaking up with her already? She couldn't understand; she was trying to be the best version of herself for you, yet you were still not hers. She tried everything to get you caught, like texting you while your girlfriend was around, sending you risky snaps, calling you...but nothing seemed to be working. So, she decided to hurry things up by texting your girlfriend and sending her some evidence.

She selected a video from her gallery to send to your girlfriend, writing a text message to go along with it before hitting the 'send' button "is this ur girl?" In the video, she was strapping you from behind, and you were telling her exactly what she needed to hear, "Better than your stupid girlfriend, yeah?" "Y-yes. Oooh fuckk. nhhmmm...faster, please" "Can she fuck you like this, hmm?" "No one can fuck me like y-you do...pleaseplease faster"

✩ Your girlfriend felt hurt and betrayed after realizing that you were using her to make your ex jealous, and she ended things between you two. You didn't seem to be affected by the breakup significantly, as if you had been expecting it all along. Honestly, it was almost as if the relationship never existed to you.

✩ Despite feeling indifferent towards your recent breakup, you were furious that Ellie had been the one who caused the end of your relationship. Who was she to control your life in such a way? Well, she couldn't give a fuck, to be quite honest. Seeing you with other girls consumed her from the inside. Nevertheless, she did not break up with Dina.

✩ But of course, you couldn't just let it slide. You already had a plan.

You were at Ellie's place, your back pressed onto her messy blankets, your leg on top of her shoulder as she held the other one firm, adjusting herself on top of you, to be more precise... on your pussy; grinding her wet pussy against your dripping cunt as filthy wet sounds and whimpers echoed in the room. Her hips moved in a slow motion, her green forest eyes fixated on yours. You reached to her nightstand to grab her phone, "Can I...nghhm... record us, baby?" you managed to utter between soft moans as she rode you, her movements became more desperate, chasing her own orgasm. "Record how good m'fuckin' this pussy?" her voice was husky, her breath ragged. Her head rolled back as she continued to grind against you, moaning at the friction, and her eyes fluttered shut. You unlocked her phone and quickly went through her contacts, pressing on Dina's name to start the call. Although the plan seemed foolish and overused, it worked out perfectly.

Dina appeared at Ellie's doorstep in no time to shout at her while you listened from her bedroom. You were amused by the drama that was unfolding before you. It was entertaining to watch Ellie deny the evidence. Dina's voice rose higher and higher as she accused her of sleeping with her ex. When Dina stormed out of the apartment and slammed the front door behind her, you emerged from your hiding spot and leaned against the doorframe, gazing at her with a mischievous grin on your face. Your arms were crossed over your chest as you watched her, waiting to see her reaction. When she turned to look at you, her face etched with confusion and surprise. You shrugged nonchalantly and said, "My finger slipped," with a lopsided smile.

She snorted and shook her head, but you could see the amusement in her expression, "Such a bitch," she said, though you could tell she was trying to suppress a smile. For some reason, she couldn't help but find it funny, she knew she deserved it.

✩ She gradually made her way back into your life, taking slow but steady steps to regain your trust and affection. And before you knew it, she asked you to be her girlfriend again. You hesitated at first but eventually gave in to the strong feelings you still had for her. The first few months of your second chance together seemed to be going smoothly, or so you thought. Then, one day, out of the blue, she broke up with you, claiming that she needed a break from the relationship.

✩ Your heart was shattered into countless pieces, struggling to comprehend where it had all gone wrong. And to make things worse, it seemed like you were the only one suffering, while she appeared to be completely fine, almost as if she were unbothered by the whole situation. You had poured your heart out, begging her to give your relationship another try, but she seemed to be holding back, almost...distant.

✩ But that didn't stop you; you were determined to win her back. You tried everything in your power to get her to love you again, just like she used to do when she wanted to win you back. You started showing up at her place unannounced, always with little surprises for her: her favorite snacks, flowers, handmade stuff, and love letters. But unfortunately, all your efforts seemed to be in vain. The more you tried, the more she pushed you away. You couldn't tell how she had switched so fast and went from doing anything to get back with you to this. 

✩ When you asked her for an explanation, she said she felt emotionally unavailable. She went on to say that she wasn't sure if she still loved you and that she needed a break. You could see the hurt in her eyes and feel the weight of her words as they slowly sank in. It was a devastating blow that left you feeling utterly destroyed. The pain you felt was almost too much to bear.

✩ She promised to come back to you once she felt better. Months passed, and she didn't return. You were left feeling lost and heartbroken, struggling to cope with the pain of the breakup. To move on, you tried to distract yourself with other things, keeping yourself busy with work, hobbies, and spending time with friends. As time went on, you slowly began to heal and accept that it was over. When she unexpectedly came back, you were already over her.

"im ready to give us another try" "Ellie, it's been a fucking year." "and?"

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dirty words are politically potent

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Making up words is a perfectly cromulent passtime, and while most of the words we coin disappear as soon as they fall from our lips, every now and again, you find a word that fits so nice and kentucky in the public discourse that it acquires a life of its own:

http://meaningofliff.free.fr/definition.php3?word=Kentucky

I've been trying to increase the salience of digital human rights in the public imagination for a quarter of a century, starting with the campaign to get people to appreciate that the internet matters, and that tech policy isn't just the delusion that the governance of spaces where sad nerds argue about Star Trek is somehow relevant to human thriving:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

Now, eventually people figured out that a) the internet mattered and, b) it was going dreadfully wrong. So my job changed again, from "how the internet is governed matters" to "you can't fix the internet with wishful thinking," for example, when people said we could solve its problems by banning general purpose computers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

Or by banning working cryptography:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

Or by redesigning web browsers to treat their owners as threats:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

Or by using bots to filter every public utterance to ensure that they don't infringe copyright:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back

Or by forcing platforms to surveil and police their users' speech (aka "getting rid of Section 230"):

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Along the way, many of us have coined words in a bid to encapsulate the abstract, technical ideas at the core of these arguments. This isn't a vanity project! Creating a common vocabulary is a necessary precondition for having the substantive, vital debates we'll need to tackle the real, thorny issues raised by digital systems. So there's "free software," "open source," "filternet," "chat control," "back doors," and my own contributions, like "adversarial interoperability":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Or "Competitive Compatibility" ("comcom"), a less-intimidatingly technical term for the same thing:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/competitive-compatibility-year-review

These have all found their own niches, but nearly all of them are just that: niche. Some don't even rise to "niche": they're shibboleths, insider terms that confuse and intimidate normies and distract from the real fights with semantic ones, like whether it's "FOSS" or "FLOSS" or something else entirely:

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-difference-between-foss-and-floss

But every now and again, you get a word that just kills. That brings me to "enshittification," a word I coined in 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

"Enshittification" took root in my hindbrain, rolling around and around, agglomerating lots of different thoughts and critiques I'd been making for years, crystallizing them into a coherent thesis:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

This kind of spontaneous crystallization is the dividend of doing lots of work in public, trying to take every half-formed thought and pin it down in public writing, something I've been doing for decades:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

After those first couple articles, "enshittification" raced around the internet. There's two reasons for this: first, "enshittification" is a naughty word that's fun to say. Journalists love getting to put "shit" in their copy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/crosswords/linguistics-word-of-the-year.html

Radio journalists love to tweak the FCC with cheekily bleeped syllables in slightly dirty compound words:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/enshitification

And nothing enlivens an academic's day like getting to use a word like "enshittification" in a journal article (doubtless this also amuses the editors, peer-reviewers, copyeditors, typesetters, etc):

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=enshittification&btnG=&oq=ensh

That was where I started, too! The first time I used "enshittification" was in a throwaway bad-tempered rant about the decay of Tripadvisor into utter uselessness, which drew a small chorus of appreciative chuckles about the word:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1550457808222552065

The word rattled around my mind for five months before attaching itself to my detailed theory of platform decay. But it was that detailed critique, coupled with a minor license to swear, that gave "enshittification" a life of its own. How do I know that the theory was as important as the swearing? Because the small wave of amusement that followed my first use of "enshittification" petered out in less than a day. It was only when I added the theory that the word took hold.

Likewise: how do I know that the theory needed to be blended with swearing to break out of the esoteric realm of tech policy debates (which the public had roundly ignored for more than two decades)? Well, because I spent two decades writing about this stuff without making anything like the dents that appeared once I added an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable to that critique.

Adding "enshittification" to the critique got me more column inches, a longer hearing, a more vibrant debate, than anything else I'd tried. First, Wired availed itself of the Creative Commons license on my second long-form article on the subject and reprinted it as a 4,200-word feature. I've been writing for Wired for more than thirty years and this is by far the longest thing I've published with them – a big, roomy, discursive piece that was run verbatim, with every one of my cherished darlings unmurdered.

That gave the word – and the whole critique, with all its spiky corners – a global airing, leading to more pickup and discussion. Eventually, the American Dialect Society named it their "Word of the Year" (and their "Tech Word of the Year"):

https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

"Enshittification" turns out to be catnip for language nerds:

https://becauselanguage.com/90-enpoopification/#transcript-60

I've been dragged into (good natured) fights over the German, Spanish, French and Italian translations for the term. When I taped an NPR show before a live audience with ASL interpretation, I got to watch a Deaf fan politely inform the interpreter that she didn't need to finger-spell "enshittification," because it had already been given an ASL sign by the US Deaf community:

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/go-fact-yourself/ep-158-aida-rodriguez-cory-doctorow/

I gave a speech about enshittification in Berlin and published the transcript:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

Which prompted the rock-ribbed Financial Times to get in touch with me and publish the speech – again, nearly verbatim – as a whopping 6,400 word feature in their weekend magazine:

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

Though they could have had it for free (just as Wired had), they insisted on paying me (very well, as it happens!), as did De Zeit:

https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2024-03/plattformen-facebook-google-internet-cory-doctorow

This was the start of the rise of enshittification. The word is spreading farther than ever, in ways that I have nothing to do with, along with the critique I hung on it. In other words, the bit of string that tech policy wonks have been pushing on for a quarter of a century is actually starting to move, and it's actually accelerating.

Despite this (or more likely because of it), there's a growing chorus of "concerned" people who say they like the critique but fret that it is being held back because you can't use it "at church or when talking to K-12 students" (my favorite variant: "I couldn't say this at a NATO conference"). I leave it up to you whether you use the word with your K-12 students, NATO generals, or fellow parishoners (though I assure you that all three groups are conversant with the dirty little word at the root of my coinage). If you don't want to use "enshittification," you can coin your own word – or just use one of the dozens of words that failed to gain public attention over the past 25 years (might I suggest "platform decay?").

What's so funny about all this pearl-clutching is that it comes from people who universally profess to have the intestinal fortitude to hear the word "enshittification" without experiencing psychological trauma, but worry that other people might not be so strong-minded. They continue to say this even as the most conservative officials in the most staid of exalted forums use the word without a hint of embarrassment, much less apology:

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/chairman-of-irish-social-media-regulator-says-europe-should-not-be-seduced-by-mario-draghis-claims/a526530600.html

I mean, I'm giving a speech on enshittification next month at a conference where I'm opening for the Secretary General of the United Nations:

https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme

After spending half my life trying to get stuff like this into the discourse, I've developed some hard-won, informed views on how ideas succeed:

First: the minor obscenity is a feature, not a bug. The marriage of something long and serious to something short and funny is a happy one that makes both the word and the ideas better off than they'd be on their own. As Lenny Bruce wrote in his canonical work in the subject, the aptly named How to Talk Dirty and Influence People:

I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I'll spell it out logically to you.

Here is a toilet. Specifically-that's all we're concerned with, specifics-if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That's what we're all talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it's clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it's impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here.

Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.

https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/lenny-bruce/how-to-talk-dirty-and-influence-people/9780306825309/

Second: the fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a self-limiting move – it would be a self-inflicted wound. As I said in that Berlin speech:

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für englische Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

Finally: "coinage" is both more – and less – than thinking of the word. After the American Dialect Society gave honors to "enshittification," a few people slid into my mentions with citations to "enshittification" that preceded my usage. I find this completely unsurprising, because English is such a slippery and playful tongue, because English speakers love to swear, and because infixing is such a fun way to swear (e.g. "unfuckingbelievable"). But of course, I hadn't encountered any of those other usages before I came up with the word independently, nor had any of those other usages spread appreciably beyond the speaker (it appears that each of the handful of predecessors to my usage represents an act of independent coinage).

If "coinage" was just a matter of thinking up the word, you could write a small python script that infixed the word "shit" into every syllable of every word in the OED, publish the resulting text file, and declare priority over all subsequent inventive swearers.

On the one hand, coinage takes place when the coiner a) independently invents a word; and b) creates the context for that word that causes it to escape from the coiner's immediate milieu and into the wider world.

But on the other hand – and far more importantly – the fact that a successful coinage requires popular uptake by people unknown to the coiner means that the coiner only ever plays a small role in the coinage. Yes, there would be no popularization without the coinage – but there would also be no coinage without the popularization. Words belong to groups of speakers, not individuals. Language is a cultural phenomenon, not an individual one.

Which is rather the point, isn't it? After a quarter of a century of being part of a community that fought tirelessly to get a serious and widespread consideration of tech policy underway, we're closer than ever, thanks, in part, to "enshittification." If someone else independently used that word before me, if some people use the word loosely, if the word makes some people uncomfortable, that's fine, provided that the word is doing what I want it to do, what I've devoted my life to doing.

The point of coining words isn't the pilkunnussija's obsession with precise usage, nor the petty glory of being known as a coiner, nor ensuring that NATO generals' virgin ears are protected from the word "shit" – a word that, incidentally, is also the root of "science":

https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2019/01/24/science-and-shit/

Isn't language fun?

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system

[chaos-in-deepspace]

LNDS: Bongo Butts | 18+

I should be going to bed but I forgot to do laundry so here I am, writing more content that nobody asked for. Just like motorboating them...when I see them butts. Just. WHAM BAM. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Also hope you know I had to research different types of dump trucks for this fic.

Disclaimer: This is an original fan work for “Love and Deepspace”. Do not repost on other platforms or plagiarize. All characters shown in this fic is 18+. Warnings: Ass Slapping, Crack Fic, Playing their asses like they're bongos, Zayne's lost sanity, Rafayel is scandalized as per usual, you mentally scar Raf, Xavier is confused as per usual, but is he confused?, he does get you back tho

Blog Information | Masterlist

Xavier

Xavier really did need to be more careful around you. He was the one who wanted you to date him first, in your defense. He chose you. And you wouldn't let a single day go by that you didn't prove why that was a horrible decision on his end. At the very least, he could claim that he was never bored with you around.

Today was supposed to be a lazy day. You two had off from all missions and were relaxing around the apartment since it was too damn hot to actually go outside. It also happened to be laundry day for Xavier, so he was dressed in his workout attire while his uniforms were being deep cleaned from all the dirt that accumulated on them during his missions.

Those shorts. They were so damn short. You'd even call it slutty because hot damn. His ass was just right there. It was staring at you. Hypnotizing you like it was a snake charmer. Your hands were already twitching in a grabby motion as you stared directly at those perfectly rounded globes on his backside. His beautiful bubble butt.

Xavier could feel your stare burning into him as he looked over his shoulder. He was just sun bathing by the window, laying on his stomach. So vulnerable to your upcoming attack.

"Something you need?" Damn, he already sounded suspicious. It might've been by how you were practically drooling with your hands up, ready to grab at him. It was a slight give away. He should've been more prepared though, because you lunged at him in that moment.

He only had time to turn slightly when you pushed him back on his stomach, sitting on his back to pin him down. Your hands took a fistful of his ass before you began hitting them with little force. Just watching them jiggle with every little slap of your hands.

You were cackling like a maniac as you continued your assault until he managed to maneuver you off of him. You were laughing, your cheeks flushed as you almost teared up. His entire face was red as he stared at you in horror. Then you saw a flash in his eyes and you knew you were done for.

He grabbed you, pulling you onto his lap. Then you felt a harsh slap at your ass, making you squeal. It was so much rougher than you had hit him. He stared at your back side and did it again.

"I can see why you found this so entertaining. I think I'll play with this for now."

"Unhand me you creatine!"

"I think not, if I let you go, who knows what else you'll do to me."

Zayne

Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on Akso's best Cardiac Surgeon knew that one thing was a pure fact. He had an ass. His doctor's coat did a good job concealing it, but he couldn't wear it all the time. You had even noticed a few nurses who would glance down at him when he passed them in the hallway.

It was something you knew very well about Zayne, and something the man seemed oblivious to. The man didn't just have a dump truck as a rear end, it was a dump trailer. That shit could keep a family fed for an entire year. It was so perfect in every way. You could grab onto one cheek with both hands and you still wouldn't be able to capture the entire thing.

Yet for some reason, Zayne had no idea just how badly you needed his ass. You would often times find yourself staring at it when you hung out, had an appointment, or were just lounging at the apartments. It plagued your thoughts. You were losing sleep over this. It wasn't good for your health.

"Zayne..." You said as you relaxed on the couch next to him. You two were catching up on a TV show that you started well over a month ago but hadn't had time to really enjoy it.

"Yes, did you need something?" Oh how sweet he was, always looking out for you.

"Yes actually...can you lay down on your stomach for me? I wanna do something." You said, knowing that this man would do just about anything you asked. He eyed you for a moment, contemplating if he wanted to play this game with you.

"Might I inquire as to why?"

"That's for me to know, and you to find out."

Zayne took one more moment before giving in. He adjusted his position, laying down on his stomach just as you had asked. You decided to be subtle, leaning over his form and placing your hands on his shoulders at first. You gently caressed the skin there, massaging the muscles through his shirt as you slowly made your way down to the small of his back.

There it was. The prize. The holy grail of all asses. It was ripe for the taking as you looked over to see Zayne's closed eyes as he relaxed under your touch. You didn't hesitate. Your hands slapping down on his ass and grabbing it roughly.

His eyes shot open as he looked over at you. You licked your lips as you began gently slapping the flesh, watching the bounce as though it were made of jelly. It was a sight to behold and you couldn't help yourself. You had seconds before Zayne reacted and pulled your grubby little hands off him.

So you leaned your head in and bit down. His pants managed to cushion him from the force of your bite, but he sure as hell felt it. He sat up and grabbed you under the arms like a cat, stopping you in your tracks as you stared at him.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Playing with your nice ass."

"My butt is not a play thing."

You paused for a moment, eyes trailing down to the front of his pants, "If you aren't gonna let me slap your ass, can I play with your dick like it's a Bop-It?"

You watched Zayne go through five stages of grief. He sighed as he grabbed a blanket next to him, wrapping your entire body like a burrito so your limbs were no longer effective. He then sat back down on the couch with his legs open and placed you between, holding you tightly to his chest.

"I'm begging you, please be quiet for once and let's finish this show."

Rafayel

He should've known you were up to something if your gaze was anything to go off of. You had zeroed in on him the moment you had come over. Even during your little date as you two explored Linkon together, he knew something was up. Your not so subtle glances in his direction couldn't be considered innocent.

If only he knew why you were staring so hardcore. He had gotten a new pair of pants, or at least you assumed they were new. You were pretty sure you'd remember them with how good he looked at the moment. It was tight on him, accentuating his ass perfectly. You were pretty sure if you riled him it would also perfectly outline another aspect of him.

Still, you had a mission. Rafayel didn't know it yet, but the moment you had caught a glimpse of him this morning, you knew what had to be done. His muffins needed to be squished. His plump little cushions had to be properly admired and worshipped. You would be the one to happily give them the attention they deserved. An ass sculpted by the gods themselves were staring at you literally all day.

You closed the door to his home slowly, turning over to him. He was already heading to the living room. You slowly stalked behind him, and he could feel you were up to no good.

"Something caught your interest? I know I look good, but not even you normally stare at me this much."

"I just think you look particularly handsome today is all." As does his ass. You couldn't say that yet though, he would realize what your plans were if you verbalized it too early. Like a cat stalking a mouse, you followed him until he was in the living room. The moment he was by the couch you took action.

You rushed behind him and pressed down on the small of his back, making him stumble forward. He grabbed the edge of the couch, his body hunched over. Rafayel turned just in time to watch you drop down to your knees. Then he felt your hands harshly gripping his ass. Then the quick slaps in succession followed as you began laughing maniacally.

"Finally!" You said as you grabbed at them again. Rafayel finally reacted, rolling onto the couch to get away from your hands. You were practically panting as your hands twitched, "Come on Raf, lemme just squeeze em again."

"You are a psychopath." He said, hiding his ass from your view.

"I'm your psychopath though." Despite how horrified Rafayel looked, he was also amused by your antics. He grabbed at your arm, making you fall forward and your chest pressing against his own. His hands went to grab at your ass this time, squeezing them and laughing.

"You know, I think I'm seeing the appeal of this." He commented, his hands lazily hitting your ass cheeks like you had to him, although he was far more calm about it.

"See, it's amazing...now can I go back to playing with your butt? I wasn't done yet."

"I think not...although this has given me an idea. Do you mind if I paint your backside?"

"You wanna paint on my ass?"

"Perhaps."

"...I'll agree if you let me eat your-" Rafayel had never cut you off so quickly.

"Never mind."

The most accurate representation of what we're doing to these poor men. I will not be silenced. Their asses need to be slapped. And ate

[tuliptic]

Let Me Describe Your Aura

Hello, I'm back again. I have this in my drafts for a very, very long time (since last year), and I have finally completed it. This was meant to be a short reading for Instagram, but well, it ended up longer than what I expected. Tho I posted it there, you can still read it here. Honestly speaking, this reading ended up quite different from what I've expected and I don't really know what I was hoping to get from this. Maybe colours? And vibes? No idea. But still, I hope you all enjoy the reading.

As usual, close your eyes, breathe in and out, make sure your mind and heart is calm. Then, open your eyes to see which pile talks to you the most/draws you in the most. Once you’ve found your pile, scroll down to the respective parts to see what are the messages for you.

Pile 1    -     Pile 2

Pile 3    -     Pile 4

Disclaimer: This is solely for my entertainment purposes. Take only whatever that you feel like it. If it doesn’t resonate, it’s okay to just drop it. That aside, I do not consent to my work or here to be used by third parties on this platform or other websites.

Decks used: Luna Cat Tarot Deck  (Major Arcana), Linestrider Tarot Deck, Starcodes Astro Oracle Deck.

Pile 1:

For some reason, it gives me a very Uranus vibe? It’s like you’re a person who’s constantly on board with change as you constantly get involved in almost everything possible. You also give me the feeling that you’re… Not satisfied. You are not satisfied with a lot of things, especially with finances. Imagine the hierarchy of needs. Every time you fulfill one of them, you constantly seek to fulfill the other level.  You’re constantly pushing yourself to achieve better and achieve more, but with this, you’re unable to have some form of balance and may have some conflicts with people you work with. I wouldn’t really say it’s insecurity, but there’s some form of fear and being “not enough” for others that I’m seeing here. Perhaps you come from a big family, and you feel that you have the responsibility to feed everyone and to answer to their needs as well as wants.  There’s an inner child in you that is trying to nurture yourself despite all the rush that you’re putting yourself through, sending you messages so that you can take a break from time to time. You not only receive messages, but you also send them out as well. Some (or perhaps, most) of you may like writing memos or notes for your loved ones.

Tl;dr: Instead of saying aura, I would say that there’s this air of uncertainty that you bring with you. You wouldn’t be called a wildcard, because there’s still some elements of earth in you, aka a sense of stability. But still, many may wonder how to approach you without feeling threatened, I guess. For some of you, you may also have an air of authority, or maybe an RBF, hence the fear towards you too.

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Pile 2:

For some reason, the first thing I’m picking up here is that you like to present yourself as mysterious? However, there is some secrecy involved here that I’m seeing, and you may be good at redirecting conversations or attention to other people. Butterfly effect as well? It’s like you’re fluttering away and not caring about what you’ve done or what are the actions they’ll take.  You have swords and court cards here, and I’m feeling that you’re that person, providing mental insight and stimulation to people around you. Just that there may be some concerns with how you present yourself, how you word yourself, and how people can be easily offended by you. Honestly, I’d say that they’re more offended to you as a person instead of your words or what you do. It’s like… They’re threatened by your presence. Pile 1 makes people feel threatened by their nature, but for you, people are threatened by what you’re capable of bringing - an unwanted change. It’s like seeing you will remind them of what they’re lacking and how much comfort they’ll need to give up, and hence, you may feel like an outcast most of the time, feeling that you do not belong to anywhere.  Still, I’d say, people who are close to you, especially your friends will find comfort in you. You’re a good listener and will be able to provide valuable insights. They’ll be glad that you’re on their team with whatever project you’re working on. If you’re ever interested in working on a collab, do it. You’re meant for it. 

Tl;dr: For you, your aura would be swords-ish, sharp but clear. You know how a sharp and strong sword can be used as a mirror? Yeah that. That’s you, reflecting the fear of others. It’s difficult, but with time, I believe you’ll be able to work along with it.

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Pile 3:

Hmmmm. Harmonious, I’d say. That’s the first word I’m picking up. I kinda have an image of an orange cat sleeping in the sun, probably the warmth, coziness and fuzzy feeling that it gives. You may have heard your friends or people around you describing you as a fun or sunny person, or that you’re like the sun, bringing warmth to people around you. You may also have a lot of passion projects and most of them are incomplete as of current, the same goes with how your life is right now too. Remember to continue whatever efforts you’re putting in. The rewards will come at unexpected times. Another thing I’m picking up is that you like to go along with the flow. Good things happen? Great! Not so nice things happening? Aww sheesh better luck next time. Kinda feeling. Or perhaps, this is what you portray yourself as. I’m getting a weight on my chest eventho there are happy cards. Probably it’s because you put up that mask so that people around you won’t see the pain you’re in.  Vulnerability sounds like a theme that you’ll need to explore, understand, and wield. It sounds difficult and probably painful, but it is needed for you to be able to understand the various facets of life. You’re very perceptive, or perhaps, you have a gift in it. But then, to be able to utilize that skill of yours, you’ll need to expand your knowledge base, experience the various emotions, look into all the tiny things that life has for you. 

Tl;dr: Some may say that you’re a person of culture but you know you’re far from that. Still, people generally like you with how amiable you are, and how you put an effort to make people around you comfortable. However, people will not cross you because you have respect for yourself too. There may be some similarities to Pile 1 with the earthy energy here, so you may check out Pile 1 if you’re drawn to it as well, especially if you have Saturn energy.

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Pile 4: 

A Chinese idiom came to my mind when I see this pile: 与世无争. It means there’s no quarrel or argument with the society, but it generally means a way of avoiding conflict in a passive way. As though you want nothing to do with the current world. Not sure if it’s correct to say that you’re disappointed with the society but there’s some apathy in here, not having much hope with the people you’ve seen. With this, you may have decided to keep yourself closed from the people around you. Not to use strong words, but you may detest the world and build a utopia in your head, imagining a world that is ideal to you and the rules you live with. Majority of the cards here are in reverse, which explains the dejection and dissatisfaction I’m feeling here. I am having problems in describing this pile and it’s making me scratch on my keyboard because of how I’m unable to phrase words. Still, despite all of that, you’re a very capable individual, especially with the King and Queens in your reading. You may have more feminine energy or may present yourself in a more feminine way than others, tho there’s a chance of you rejecting it. People may come to you for help and advice not only because they trust you, but also your words are able to assure them that things will be alright. You have quite a lot of resources on your hands, may it be finances/monetary resources, knowledge, or even network/connections, and you use them according to your needs and values. There may be some… Unconventional skills that you have. I’m not sure what they are, but it’s up to you to figure out how you want to put them to good use.

Tl;dr: This pile is the most difficult pile for me to write as the energy is all around the place yet focused at the same time. It’s very conflicting and confusing, which may be the aura that you exude. There is no clear definition of good or bad in this reading, but more of what you want yourself to be and how you’re going to work on it. 

[thatsveryvortex]

Writing Tools for Planning Your Story

I've tried tons of writing apps and sites, so you don't have to. Here's a list of free sites to plot out your novel, with my review and some images of how I use it.

Milanote

Milanote is like having a giant pinboard with folders. You can upload anything onto it [yes even your main doc] and then draw over it or connect things with lines and arrows

Milanote lets you add up to a hundred things for free, not including drawing. This is one of the downsides of the site as I've found myself reaching that limit recently.

For me, the best part is being able to draw over stuff, and the color swatches.

Milanote is a lot less structured than other sites I've used, and personally, I don't think their templates are worth using.

8/10 overall, Milanote is what I mainly use. Here are some pics of how I use it:

Miro

Miro is a flowchart website mainly used for corporate jobs, however, it can be a great plotting tool for that reason

Miro has a lot of great starter templates if you are looking for a more structured freeform experience. It also comes with a blank page as well.

Unfortunately, I'd argue that it's a bit of a hard tool for beginners to use without a template, I've learned copy-paste is my best friend with Miro the hard way.

It's much better than most platforms at making timelines though.

It has a limit of three boards which is a bit disappointing but overall, I think it's worth the try.

5/10 Miro is very middle of the road for me due to the limited ability to customize things and the free limit. Here are some pics:

[I wrote that part weeks ago, I am now fully using Miro and believe it's the best for making timelines and charts, I just wish it let me make more boards 8/10]

Hiveword

This might be someone's jam, I can't really say it's mine though.

First off, the unpaid version is really just a few boxes saying "Write a summary here." which makes it just not worth it in my opinion

There really isn't any way to customise things which is my favorite part of most of these softwares

I've barely used this, so maybe there's something I'm missing but

1/10, Just use Google Docs at this point, here's a couple pics

World Anvil

People like this software, it's mainly used for tabletop, which is just a different way of writing adventure, and I've seen it recommended by authors.

Unfortunately, I'm going to disagree with a lot of people and say it's hard to use and isn't even really good at plotting.

I may be biased on this one as every time I've tried to use it in the past I've struggled. However, it seems like another just write it in a document and create a folder.

I'd say it's closer to an organizing tool, but even then just use something else.

3/10, I have nothing to say about it but maybe you'll enjoy it, all here are two photos

Campfire

This is the one I think I've heard the most about, but have never actually tried.

right off the bat, I'm going to say this is 100% worth it, you'll see at the end with the photos but this is like if Miro and World Anvil had an organization baby.

It's extremely easy to understand, and it makes timelines, it's more for writing your whole book but idk about that yet.

7/10, its themes are really pretty but it limits how much you can do to 20 I believe. Here are the photos

That's all for now, honestly, I think you should use Miro if you are looking to plot things out, and Milanote if you want to collect and organize your thoughts for writing, as that's what I do. Obviously what I like won't be for everyone, but hopefully, this helped you see some options

[maxwellatoms]

Do you think the new division of Cartoon Network Studios will end up exploiting and abusing AI to make new cartoons of their old properties?

I wouldn't put it past any studio to do this.

We're at the end of The Animation Industry As We Know It, so studios are going to do anything and everything they can to stay alive.

The way I see it is:

AI "art" isn't actually art. Art is created by humans to express ideas and emotions. Writing prompts allows a computer to interpret human ideas and emotions by taking other examples of those things and recombining them.

Just because something isn't art doesn't mean that humans can't understand it or find it beautiful. We passed a really fun prompt generation milestone about a year ago where everything looked like it was made by a Dadaist or someone on heavy psychedelics. Now we're at the Uncanny Valley stage. Soon, you won't be able to tell the difference.

It's not just drawings and paintings that are effected, but writing and film. It's every part of the entertainment industry. And the genie is out of the bottle. I've seen people saying that prompt-based image generators have "democratized" art. And I see where they're coming from. In ten years, I can easily see a future where anyone can sit down at their desk, have a short conversation with their computer, and have a ready-to-watch, custom movie with flawless special effects, passable story, and a solid three act structure. You want to replace Harrison Ford in Star Wars with your little brother and have Chewbacca make only fart sounds, and then they fly to Narnia and fistfight Batman? Done.

But, sadly, long before we reach that ten year mark, the bots will get hold of this stuff and absolutely lay waste to existing art industries. Sure, as a prompter I guess you can be proud of the hours or days you put into crafting your prompts, but you know what's better than a human at crafting prompts? Bots. Imagine bots cranking out hundreds of thousands of full-length feature films per minute. The noise level will squash almost any organic artist or AI prompter out of existence.

AI images trivialize real art. The whole point of a studio is to provide the money, labor, and space to create these big, complicated art projects. But if there are no big, complicated art projects, no creatives leading the charge, and no employees to pay... what the fuck do we need studios for? We won't, but their sheer wealth and power will leave them forcing themselves on us for the rest of our lives.

The near future will see studios clamp down on the tech in order to keep it in their own hands. Disney does tons of proprietary tech stuff, so I'm sure they're ahead of the game. Other studios will continue to seek mergers until they can merge with a content distribution platform. I've heard rumors of Comcast wanting to buy out either WB or Nick. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. The only winners of this game will be the two or three super-huge distribution platforms who can filter out enough of the spam (which they themselves are likely perpetuating) to provide a reasonable entertainment experience.

400,000 channels and nothing's on.

I do think that money will eventually make the "you can't copyright AI stuff" thing go away. There's also the attrition of "Oh, whoops! We accidentally put an AI actor in there and no one noticed for five years, so now it's cool."

One way or another, it's gonna be a wild ride. As the canary in the coal mine, I hope we can all get some UBI before I'm forced to move into the sewers and go full C.H.U.D.

[jetspikepub]

No one ever really talks about it in the fandom and it NEEDS to be discussed because it's hilarious to me. I have to ask where all the crazed spike x julia fans come from 😭 like say one thing negative about the ship or ship spike with someone else and there's this one person (who I think owns multiple spikexjulia accounts snd pretends to be different people😭😭) that starts sending their "CAnoN aNd facTuAL eviDencE" with so much hostility

I've also noticed that Julia fans either always hate Faye and/or don't give a damn about Spike's well-being and just want him paired up with Julia even if that costed him his life, which I don't even think Julia herself wanted for him to do in the end lol. It's a little disturbing

Oh trust me, this is a looong story. It's not like we don't see it, we just got tired of it. You're not alone, I give you a warm hug🫂

This user has been terrorising Bebop fandom across multiple platforms since 2022, I think. If you ever see this bitch harassing someone just flag the account or ban it. A collective appeal could do the trick, but it's gonna be like chopping off Hydra's heads. This pain in the ass keeps posting weird commissions on X (Twitter), Deviantart, Reddit, Pixiv (for Christ's sake, please DO NOT search Bebop tag on Pixiv, it's a total disaster in there right now) and edited Bebop wiki, describing Faye as Spike's no 1 enemy and Julia as a goddess of doves and roses 🤢 It's hard to track down every account, the only way to stay safe is to not interact with them and blacklist. "If I ignore it, maybe it will go away" tactics is the best in this situation, don't let them take away your time and emotions, they cannot be reasoned with.

Another thing that bothers me is that stupid localisation of guide books with SpikeJulia nonsence the translators added just because they wanted to and ruined the original idea that implies multiple ways of story perception. I've aready dispelled that "truest lover ever" myth by presenting the original texts from my collection of Japanese books. They fucked up with "love" kanji meaning in Eng and this changed a lot (I did some analysis here and here). Now we can see what happens when these love stories fall into the wrong hands: haters cite it like a Bible in each and every thread about SpikeFaye😩 Also there was a post about some Julia's love letter to Spike (wtf?) written on the back cover of the vol. 6.

I wanted to make a post about it and took pictures of a Japanese edition but forgot. Now it's the right time to dispel another myth.

According to quick translation results, this guide was made to inform fans about some Bebop episodes which weren't aired on regular TV and appeared later on WOWOW (premuim satellite broadcasting) because of censorship.

There was no mention of Julia writing letters to Spike in the original series. It was Spike who gave her a note describing rendezvous point or whatever and she tore it to pieces🤷🏼‍♀️

Just remember: Spike's well-being is up to the viewer. Noone can convince you otherwise if you don't want to and noone has right to insult you. Spike is for everyone 🌸

The situation is so annoying, those who loved SpikeJulia or didn't give a damn about them now hate this. If someone is going to use "SpikeJulia" as a safeword I will understand 🤣

[lurking-latinist]

How to Suck Less at Summaries

Probably almost anyone who's ever posted a fic to ao3 or a platform with a similar interface has been hit by that moment of panic, breaking in on the euphoria of having finished and polished a fic--"what do I put for the summary?!"

So much so, that "I suck at summaries" in the summary box has become something of a cliche. It's very understandable! You've already put all that work into writing the fic itself, and now you have to write ANOTHER thing with its own set of conventions and expectations? No way!

And I want to start by saying that that's absolutely fine. Fic writing is your hobby, your creative endeavor; you're not obligated to do anything in it that you don't want to. You can leave the summary box completely blank--ao3 will let you--and there's no reason you shouldn't, if that's what you want to do! If you're happy with your summaries, please don't change them. There's no wrong way to do summaries. This is your invitation to ignore the entire rest of this post!

However. My impression is that an awful lot of people aren't happy with their summaries. They would like to have summaries that catch a reader's attention, that fit common patterns, or that give a good representation of the fic; they're just not sure how to accomplish that, or what readers might be expecting. And the good news is that writing various styles of summaries, like other kinds of writing, is a skill you can improve--and that there are some tips and tricks that can help you write the kinds of summaries you may want to write more quickly.

How do I know? Well, on top of having read I don't know how many fics, I've published 200 of my own, with all different kinds of summaries. (In fact, writing this post is my treat to myself to celebrate publishing 200 fics!) So I have a lot of trial and error experience to draw on. I'll be using my own summaries as examples (plus some hypothetical examples), because I don't want to be nitpicking anyone else's!

I'm going to throw in a cut now because this is gonna get long.

What do you want to accomplish with your summary?

That's the first question you might want to ask yourself. And the answer really is up to you! The name "summary" suggests it's supposed to be a sort of short version of your story. That's one option. But summaries are often used to accomplish various other things, too: some of my favorite summaries don't really tell you anything about the plot of the fic, but instead give you a glimpse of the writer's style or lure you in with a question. It can also fill organizational purposes like commemorating the reason the fic was written (although author notes can also be effective for things like this).

Most fundamentally, I tend to think of the summary box as a place to manage your readers' expectations. I want them to have some sense of what the fic they're about to read might be like, and I want to present that in a way that highlights why it might be appealing to them. Of course, what I write won't be appealing to every reader--and an effective summary, plus accurate tags and ratings of course, allows a reader who won't enjoy what I have to offer to quickly keep scrolling and find something that fits their tastes better. But the way I think of them, summaries are really mainly for readers who will enjoy my fic if they decide to open it. A summary for a fic is like a pretty package for a gift: the gift is great in itself, and the nice gift-wrap makes it more eye-catching and more fun to open!

Sidebar: This "managing expectations" thing is, I think, the reason why authors sometimes add notes in the summary like "I'm sorry if this sucks" or "this is my first fic, it's probably terrible." I completely understand where this comes from--you don't want to make your readers expect some kind of genius literature and then only have something to give them that you yourself are still insecure about! But I really do think they're generally counterproductive. On the one hand, that kind of negative self-talk will tend to undermine your own confidence and make you more insecure about your writing, not less; on the other hand, they can subconsciously prime your readers to notice weaknesses and issues that they might otherwise not even have paid attention to! That doesn't mean you have to pretend you think your writing is perfect; very few of us do think what we post on fic archives is perfect. There's nothing wrong, even, with a note like "this is my first fic" or "this one is a bit experimental, I'm not sure how I feel about it" or "this wasn't written in my first language" or even "this is an old fic and I don't think it represents my best work anymore", although I tend to put that kind of commentary on craft in the author's notes rather than the summary, but that's just me; there's no rule. As an example, when I recently published my first fic in the Hornblower fandom, which has a historical setting I wasn't previously very familiar with, I thanked my beta for helping me avoid "historical howlers" and added "any remaining are my own responsibility." That made me feel better about potential mistakes in research by showing that I was aware I might have made some. I put this in an author's note at the end of the story. But, for the sake of you as a writer as well as me as a reader, I'm asking you--please don't start out our reader/writer relationship by telling me it's terrible! Give yourself a chance to shine. Even if there's a lot you're insecure about in your fic, there's something you love--maybe it's the premise, the ship, even one particular line--that makes you want to share it with the world. Use the summary to highlight that. As your reader, that's what I want to know about!

Anyway, now that you've decided what you want your summary to accomplish, there are a couple of very easy ways to fill the summary box that you might want to consider--if they make sense for your fic.

Just quote the prompt

When I write prompt-fic, often very short, I frequently just quote the prompt itself as the summary. An example would be my 3 Sentence Ficathon fic archived on ao3. Since the challenge in this event is to write a complete fic in only three sentences, a summary wouldn't be much shorter than the fic itself! So I just do summaries like

For reeby10's prompt: "Doctor Who, Clara/Twelve, unforgettable."

(Gaps)

This can work outside of prompt memes, too. If you're doing a monthly challenge, for instance, something like

Flufftember day 21, 'breakfast in bed'

might tell your readers all they need to know to be interested in your story and know what to expect.

Set the context

For some fic, the most important thing you want your readers to know going in is something about the fic's context. For instance, with drabbles I sometimes use the summary as a place to sneak in information about setting/what's supposed to be happening that I didn't have room for in the drabble itself. For Susan's Twist, a 100-word drabble, I set the scene in the summary:

Susan is grooving to the latest chart-topper of 1963. But for some reason, the song makes her grandfather uncomfortable.

which meant I didn't have to use any of my 100 words explaining "Susan was listening to the radio, when..." Since Susan's Twist was inspired by someone else's Tumblr post, I could also just have referenced that post in the summary. But in this case, I chose to phrase the premise in my own words in the summary, and cite the Tumblr post in the author's notes (I also tagged the OP when I shared the fic on Tumblr).

Flower Children is an example of a drabble with a not particularly effective summary where I could have used this strategy quite effectively. The summary is just

Neither of them wants to fight.

which is all right, but which doesn't do much to set up the (admittedly cracky) Eighth Doctor/Dalek Oswin pairing that motivates the fic. But then, I've always felt like I didn't have quite as much of an idea as I'd like about what the context for this fic is supposed to be. Maybe I'll write more about them sometime.

Setting the context can also be useful for summaries of AUs. Very often, what draws people into AUs is the AU concept itself.

For instance, the premise of my story te quaerens, Ariadna is that the events of the audio Zagreus go differently and the Doctor remains possessed by/transformed into Zagreus. So that's what I said in the summary:

The Doctor is still Zagreus, but he and Charley find ways to keep going.

In this case, the summary is accomplishing more than one thing; it explains the concept, but it also indicates a bit of the story's tone--it's fairly optimistic given its premise, and it's more about how their relationship evolves than any particular plotty event.

With setting change AUs--especially in familiar AU settings, like a coffeeshop, high school, or fantasy monarchy--often what readers will most want to know is what roles the characters are filling; in other words, how the translation from canon to AU has been made. For instance, my story Warmth is already tagged as a coffeeshop AU with the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan, and Adric, so the summary indicates that it's told from the perspective of Tegan as a new employee:

Unexpectedly stranded in London and looking for work, Tegan finds a place where she just might fit in.

If she had been a longtime employee or a customer, that would have changed the story's dynamics, and I would have wanted the summary to reflect that instead. I could have also added that the Doctor is the shop's manager and Nyssa and Adric are the existing employees, but I decided to let the story itself reveal that in this case.

With someone's planted a bath bomb in the matrix, which is a retail AU inspired by an incorrect quotes tumblr post, I just stuck the whole tumblr post in the summary box:

Romana: When you work at lush and a customer comes in and bites the soap because they think it’s cheese… this happens way more frequently than you think. Leela: If you stopped literally presenting soap as deli food this wouldn't happen. Narvin: Who goes into a bath store and thinks something covered in glitter is cheese? Brax: Who goes to the store and just takes a bite from the cheese? ~incorrectgallifreyquotes.tumblr.com

I might do that a bit differently now--maybe more the way I handled Susan's Twist--maybe something like this in the summary:

An uptight employee and a too-suave customer are making Romana's job managing a bath store way too stressful. Thank goodness--probably--that her best friend works for mall security.

And then I'd have put the tumblr post that inspired it in author's notes.

Thing is, though, that reflects my taste and what I think is effective now, but it doesn't mean I did it wrong the first time. People read and enjoyed the story, and it was fine!

Also I just showed this post to Moki and she said she thinks the first one's more intriguing. So that just goes to show, it's really a matter of taste.

This strategy is also useful for missing scenes and things like that. Something as simple as

While waiting for Z to return from the rendezvous, X and Y have a conversation.

can draw in readers very effectively, especially if X and Y's conversation was kind of obviously a gap in the story that they might already be curious about.

Use a quote

A surprisingly effective and straightforward way to create a summary is just to use a quote from the fic. I've seen tons of great summaries like this that hook me in immediately. I struggle with using it myself, because I want the line I quote to be powerful/impactful/intriguing and give some sense of what the plot is like and make sense out of context, and I don't often seem to be able to find lines like that in my own work. But I did for The Moon by Night:

It could not have been more than a day that we clung to the hull of that station full of troopers.

Since this is a space AU for a historical fiction novel, this line gives some sense of how the events of the story have been translated into space, and also shows the voice I'm writing in (I tried to follow the style of the original, which is first-person, which is unusual for me). If you can find a line like that in your work, it can be a great summary. You can even just put the first couple of lines of the fic, especially if you've already worked to make them an effective hook!

You can also use a quote from another source. Was there a line or moment from canon that inspired the fic? A poem or song that fits its mood? You can use the summary as a sort of epigraph. (I often use author's notes for this as well.) If your readers vibe with the quote that inspired the story, they're likely to vibe with the story as well.

I did something like this with Absent thee from felicity awhile. The title is a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and all I put in the summary box was another quote from a couple of lines later:

…to tell my story.

This is so short and contextless, though, that I'm not sure how effective it was. It maybe only works if you recognize the specific Hamlet scene that it's taken from and have thought about that scene in the context of a specific episode of Hornblower. (I promise that, if you do, it's heartbreakingly ironic!) This could have been a good opportunity for me to do a double summary (see below), especially since the story is epistolary and I could've established its context. Although I did kind of like revealing who was reading the letter and when slowly over the course of the story.

Okay, but I do want to explain the plot

Right, so we've established that effective summaries don't have to be in that "back of the book blurb" format. But sometimes you want them to be. Sometimes the thing you're most excited about is the story's plot or events, and you want to communicate that to the reader. But you already wrote the story in order to communicate the plot to the reader; how do you condense it into a sentence or two? Here are some tips that may help.

Are you using familiar tropes? If so, just mentioning them will likely tell your reader not only what the plot is, but that (if they like that trope) they're likely to enjoy it. For instance:

A and B are trapped in a snow cave/ice planet/walk-in freezer and must huddle for warmth.

That particular one will also explain a bit about the setting, if you want.

Relationship status/development is also something that many readers want to know, whether it's a romantic or a gen relationship (e.g. characters becoming friends or realizing they see each other as family). For instance, if A and B admit their romantic feelings for the first time in that huddling for warmth story, you might add:

They get a lot closer than either of them expects...

I rather like ellipses at the end of a summary; I think they imply, sort of, "read the fic to find out the rest." I sometimes use them to soften a summary that feels a bit abrupt. I feel like this might be just me, though? So if you don't like ellipses, nothing wrong with ending that same summary with a period.

If you have a fic where the entire content is some emotional development between characters, the entire summary can easily be that too!

I don't really write smut so I don't have good advice for summarizing it, but I get the feeling this might be a relevant strategy for it?

What changes in the story? This could be a change in characters' attitudes towards each other, in the information they have, in their physical situation, or anything else. A story doesn't have to be about one single major change, but there's almost always at least one. (Or a change fails to happen, but in an interesting way: "five times Lois Lane didn't realize Clark was Superman" would be a perfectly intriguing summary!)

What demands are made of the characters? Many stories involve a character overcoming some kind of challenge or meeting some kind of test. A summary can indicate what that challenge is--and you don't have to indicate whether or how the characters meet it! This can contribute to a feeling of suspense, so that the reader feels they need to read the story to find out how the characters react. For instance, I summarized my story Journey as:

The Doctor and Ace need to stop a dimensional leakage to put a life-sucking entity back where it belongs. But to do so, they'll each need to protect the other in their own way.

What are their own ways? Do they succeed? The reader can probably guess that they do--but how? Their attention is caught, and they'll have to read to find out!

Some notes on format and style

Summary style is as personal as the rest of your writing style, so this is only intended as a mention of a couple of trends I've noticed.

Sometimes summaries are 'in-universe'--i.e. they describe the characters and what they do, without reference to the existence of the fic itself as a textual entity--and sometimes, like the "five times" example I gave above, they refer to the fic's format, characteristics, relationship to canon, etc. in direct terms. (For instance, the example I gave for a missing scene was 'in-universe,' but I could just as well have said "While waiting for Z to return during Episode 3..."). Either of these approaches are fine, although I personally tend to incline more towards the in-universe style unless I have a particular reason to use the other, such as in Differences of Opinion, which took a lot of metatextual explaining:

When I read enough easily-crossed-over stories, such as for instance the Age of Sail books that I have been reading lately and also spaceship stories inspired thereby, what inevitably happens is I end up with a nebulous meta crossover setting where they can all hang out outside of their respective canons. Here's one conversation from that setting.

I keep wondering if something more terse might have been more effective, and I could have put all that in the author's notes. But I really think that for anyone who would enjoy this fic, the metatextual complication is a big part of the appeal. So I put it in the summary.

It's pretty standard to write in-universe-style summaries in the present tense, even if the fic is in the past tense. "The characters do this and that," not "the characters did this and that." You don't have to, but it's what your reader is most likely to be expecting.

It seems to be quite common to have a double summary: one that maybe reflects the style and tone of the fic, and another, more matter-of-fact one that explains the plot. They're frequently joined by "or." I don't typically use it--maybe because I rarely have the problem of having too much summary--but if you do, this could be a great solution.

Spellcheck and proofread your summary extra. Whatever strategies you normally use to make sure the words in your story are the words you actually meant to write, it's a good idea to turn those strategies on the summary with special intensity. After all, this is your first impression on your reader, so you probably want to look as polished as possible!

These are just a few things I've noticed that I tend to think about when staring at that blinking cursor in the summary box. I hope they may help you, too, to feel like you have something to say in that moment!

[sleepysnk]

there’s some things i really wanted to talk about especially regarding my account and tumblr as a whole, so i decided to finally make this post as a way to sort of vent out my feelings on some things.

i’m not gonna lie, tumblr has become a very different place from what it was. i started creating content 3 years ago and it’s gone through so many changes (much expected). however, i don’t think tumblr has really changed for the better, especially when it comes to content creators. this used to be a really safe space for me to come on and create works for fandoms that i enjoyed, but recently, that safe space hasn’t felt, well, safe anymore. there is constant discourse everywhere on this platform and i’ve found that many people here are just extremely bitter? it’s almost like it’s become a mean girl center and it makes it difficult to interact with others.

obviously, this doesn’t go for everyone. i’m not trying to come at people specifically or cause issues, but i have seen my fair share of problems with people on here and some of it is just completely ridiculous.

next, i’d like to discuss the elephant in the room and that’s the lack of interaction/support to writers. it is just mind blowing to me that we as creators have to BEG our followers to reblog or even send us asks. obviously, some people are new to tumblr and don’t understand it’s algorithm, but there are people on here who just simply chose not to reblog for some reason?? it’s not only discouraging, but it puts less confidence in writers and then we aren’t motivated to create content. i’ve said this before, but there is no reason why a 2k note fic should have only 100 or so reblogs. likes mean nothing on this platform. it’s not Twitter. i genuinely have gotten so tired of repeating myself that i don’t even say it anymore because i know it won’t be acknowledged.

i understand people have lives, i do too, but it isn’t hard to send an ask to a writer about literally anything. i think the last time i had an anon ask was weeks ago and i genuinely get disappointed when i ask for interactions just to receive nothing? no one is obligated to speak with me or send me asks by any means, but a little “hey! how are you?” goes a long way. i probably sound ridiculous, but it’s just how i feel about the matter.

another thing that bothers me is when a writer doesn’t write smut or suggestive content, they hardly get any interaction. i’ve seen it myself before and i’m not sure why people just ignore greatly written fics?? i understand that smut is the main appeal. trust me, i 100% get it, but fluff writers hardly get any attention and some of the best fics i’ve read weren’t even smut related. i’m not saying every person here has to read fluff or angst fics by any means, but it makes me sad that people write these fics to hardly get any interaction because it isn’t smut content. the least y’all can do is reblog it.

to discuss my account, i honestly don’t really feel the most happy here. i don’t have as much motivation as i used to and i have contemplated removing my account, but i have some great fics i’d rather not have be deleted. i might start a new account for a fresh start, but i’m still not 100% on it.

and if you read this till the end, thank you! i probably sound like a whiny baby but i just wanted to express some of my feelings because it’s been weighing on me a lot recently.

[kaelidascope]

Fandom and LGBTQ Hostility and My Experiences Trying to Exist in Both Spaces Online

I came into these spaces with a very strict rule that I would not react or do anything cancel-worthy out of an overabundance of caution. Digital footprints are dangerous. The things you say online will follow you around forever. I know that first hand. I’ve bottled up and stayed silent about a lot of things I’ve either witnessed first-hand or experienced because I was trying to maintain a clean online persona. I’m not an ‘airing out dirty laundry’ type person. 

In light of recent events however, it’s gotten so bad that I can no longer sit here and not say something about how I feel. I’m disappointed and frustrated with the experiences I’ve had both in fandom and LGBTQ+ spaces and I can’t be complacent. I’m tired of getting treated like this, I’m fed up and I’m not going to put up with it anymore. I feel it’s important I voice what I’ve been watching and what’s happened and how I’m not going to tolerate it anymore by calling it out first hand. 

This is a two-topic rant. They overlap in some instances, but it directly has to do with how fandoms behave in general towards each other on Twitter and Tumblr, and also how absolutely hostile LGBTQ+ individuals are nowadays to each other on the same platforms. 

I come from a different generation and a different social media platform. I wasn’t on Twitter and Tumblr until last year. I’m not dismissing the fact that I may have missed out on decades worth of culture and social expectation. The places where I come from aren’t exactly fantastic either, but at least here, more queer people are interacting with each other with shared interests much more widely than in places like DeviantArt. The amount of culture and information I’ve absorbed in one year is more than I ever had within the past twenty years. It should be a good thing, and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t. 

This is not the way I wanted to come out online to anyone. I’ve been figuring out where I sit on the gender and sexuality spectrum for a while now. I will not document a specific timeline for anyone because that’s nobody’s business but my own. Within the last year, I took a massive stride forward in exploring things I legally didn’t think I was allowed to. I expected backlash from cishets and the usual thing I see LGBTQ+ folks write essays over, about how the world hates us, but at least we have each other. Shockingly, the backlash didn’t come from straight people. It came from other queers. 

I am 27 years old and I am entirely self-sufficient. I’m mixed Puerto Rican living in a red state. English wasn’t even my first language. I don’t have a network, so I’m teaching myself these things. I'm asking questions. I'm reading materials and expressions of self-experience and self-identity through fanworks and other autobiographical content. I'm actively trying to seek community and support through transgender and non-binary individuals with shared interests and so far all I've been met with is hostility and assumptions. So much so that I've now been made to feel like I'm on a timeline to figure it out so I can have a well-practiced, short introduction to copy and paste to every person who comes across me. And the only reason I even need one is so that they can make the decision to pass judgement over whether or not I'm allowed to speak, write, draw, wear, act, breathe the things I do. I'm disappointed. I'm anxious. I honestly feel more shoved into the closet now than I ever did before and I shouldn't be. Nobody should be treated this way when trying to figure out who they are. I probably won't even get an apology for the things that were said to me, either. I pride myself on the extraordinary caution I take to be politically correct, vetted through reputable sources, and as close to authentic as possible. And yet somehow I’m still getting called things like terf, transmisogynistic, triggering, when I’m fucking trans myself and all of my content gets vetted/REQUESTED by trans individuals. I get promised up and down that people are kind and welcoming in these sorts of spaces and honey, they aren’t. The people you choose to be friends with aren't as inclusive and friendly as you think they are. You don’t even know me and what body parts I have. The fact that you need to know in order to decide whether or not to treat me with respect is telling of an internal issue that has nothing to do with me. 

I have no reference point. I live in a place where laws ban anything gender and trans. I have no local resources or community. I've barely met any LGBTQ people in person. If I have, they never came out publicly. Most of my queer exposure has been online, and the fact that I've seen nothing but angry, mean, exclusive and discriminating behavior without any sort of reasoning why other than selfish defensiveness, I don't know where else I'm supposed to go for support. Something a lot of you guys need to take into retrospect is anyone who identifies as LGBTQ gets shot where I live. We have sundown towns here. If you don’t even know what that is, good, but also that’s telling of your privilege that you need to consider when talking to others not from blue states. I didn’t grow up in an environment where we had these highly liberal culture points and the word ‘gay’ was never allowed to be said out loud. We did not have gay clubs in school. I'm about as fucking late to this as you possibly can get. The only reason I know anything about our history, representation, and barely anything about what's socially acceptable and what's not, is because of the internet. So many of you had the privilege of being exposed to this information as young as under the age of 10. I didn’t. Sue me for not immediately knowing what every gender label means right off the bat. Half that stuff isn’t even legal here. 

I can't believe it's boiled down to the fact that I have to somehow justify my existence on this Earth and give an explanation that fits into predetermined boxes just to do anything to engage with other people. I have no time or space to figure it out. I’m disorganized and overwhelmed because I can’t ask questions about ‘can butches do this?’ ‘How versatile is transmasc/transfem?’ ‘Am I more genderqueer or do I fit under the trans umbrella?’ Gender and identity is fluid and ever changing. I have actually seen people harp and attack individuals for "defaulting" or "detransitioning" when they change their mind after giving this big coming out speech. It’s like support on these platforms is entirely conditional and a one-time thing. Y'all really expect people to wear the first style of shirt they buy for the rest of their life? Are we not allowed to do anything unless we know for sure? How’s college working out for you, for those who believe this mindset?

The vocally aggressive ones who use big words that contradict their statements can do, say, and be whatever they want.  But people like me can't. The ones who have to straight pass in public to keep their jobs and maintain their life safely. Some of us have been on our own since 19 with no family support. Consider the environment someone lives in before assigning your harsh assumptions. I can’t just change myself on a whim without doing significant damage control. Half the jobs I work for don’t even allow unnatural hair colors. If we list our pronouns as anything other than our assigned sex at birth, it causes legality issues with taxes. The way I have to navigate how to explore my identity and also keep a roof over my head and my bills paid may seem highly conservative to most. It’s in no way shape or form meant to reflect disrespect on how others live and express themselves. I am doing the best with the environment I have. The way I do things is not meant to be read as a message of ‘you’re doing it wrong because you’re not doing it the way I do.’ None of us are wrong. That should not be the subliminal message here. 

You know someone actually challenged me on that? Saying I was being harmful for purposefully straight presenting in public? Please research your country and state specific laws before you say that to me. If I could afford to live somewhere safer and queer-friendly, this conversation would be different. I am working on getting the fuck out of this state. But I don’t have a partner or parents money to default on. I’m doing this by myself. It’s not impossible, just a slow process. 

I'm disappointed and fed up. I've reached my limit, and I don't really care anymore if someone uses this essay to try and cancel me 5 or 10 years from now when the world goes through another gender renaissance of terms and identities. I will not put up with being treated like this when you refuse to listen to anyone else other than the sound of your own voice. I’m trying my best to learn, adapt, and express myself. I do not need to be lectured or be called derogatory things just because you think I’m coming from a malicious place.  

It’s not just about the hostility and gate-keeping behavior exhibited in online queer spaces. The same exact thing happens in fandom spaces too. People get pissy about queer headcanons and presentations so much to the point of taking it upon themselves to police the fandom and scrub it clean of “impurities.” I’ve watched y’all go through people's social media pages for any type of ammunition for justification of a personal grievance. It shocks me how much hyperfixation gets put on specific and morally harmless things when there are people out there writing diabolical shit way worse than what I have to offer. And y’all happily support them too but bark at me about what I make cus that author fits your social criteria and you assumed I didn’t. Don't think I'm ignorant to every single scrap of hate mail and harassment I've gotten over the past year and a half in my inboxes. Including the passive aggressive posts about my work, vague tweets, and discussions about me in discord servers. Over what? Have you actually read my work? If it’s actually as problematic as you say it is, provide me with a modern and unbiased example why this particular scene and execution is harmful. And not because you got triggered or disliked the kink, or read the summary/tags and assumed it was something it’s not. I don’t know how much more caution tape, massive warnings, obvious clear-cut tags (that were provided to me by queer individuals to PUT on there in the first place) out of insane amounts of caution I can do. I have always been willing to provide spoilers and explicit details in case someone is unsure how they’ll be affected by something I make. If you already don’t like it based on my warnings, that’s always been more than okay! My work is not for everyone. I’m getting tired of politely and respectfully saying please move on, because the message seems to be getting lost in translation. So let me be clear; 

Get off my pages if you don’t like what I make. It’s not for you. It will never be for you. Dead dove. DO NOT EAT. PREFERRED DEMOGRAPHIC 25+ ADULT CONTENT RATED E FOR EXPLICIT. I can recommend so many other fantastic creators with better suited content for you! If I could hide my content behind a roped off section deliberately keeping you from seeing it, I would. BLOCK ME. 

If your response to this section is ‘well then just don’t write it’. Honey, there’s people out here in the RWBY fandom writing trans incest actively commenting on all your shit and you respond back. A magic grimm-goo strap and monster smut featuring a transfem character (again, requested by literally 3 trans people and WRITTEN by one) should be the least of your worries. 

I have actively chosen not to address the harassment and hate mail, because it's sad that half of you hate me so much you need to make a point of telling me so regularly. I sincerely hope moving on with your lives will grant you peace of mind. Truly.

This is why I barely interact with anyone. Nothing but hostility, harassment, and expectation to behave in ways I cannot emotionally commit to. I am exhausted, uninspired, and have such a bad taste in my mouth it's proving extremely difficult to want to do anything creative. It’s been worse with my recent exploration of my gender identity. Opening one door to write about certain things somehow, miraculously, closes ones I previously existed in. I’m practically getting kicked out if I’m not 100% one way or another. I don’t go out of my way to shove my content down your throats. Why you feel the need to come to me and tell me you dislike my existence because you read it, despite me stating this is not for everyone and probably not for you, doesn’t have anything to do with me. Idk what else I can do. Disappear off the face of the planet, I guess. That seems to be what the overall solution is when y’all find something you don’t like. I can't believe I witnessed grown adults in their mid twenties with self-proclaimed senses of rightness start a trend on Twitter to go through people's mutuals and their likes to see if they’re socially acceptable in Fandom spaces or not. That was fucking ridiculous. And especially not fair to those who had their private accounts leaked and put on blast when it was already behind an vetted follower wall. Believe it or not, people draw weird, lewd, diabolical shit. They’re actually being responsible by putting it behind a paywall, or some type of ‘proof of age before following’ requirement. It falls on the people who go on there, take screenshots, and post them publicly for minors and non-consenting individuals to see without filters what was previously hidden. It’s irresponsible and immature. 

For fear of getting canceled by the Fandom, I moved all 600+ accounts I was following onto a private alt. I don't interact with my main anymore. I went so far into hiding and didn’t dare share anything about liking content made by people I wasn’t allowed to like, because that’s how cruel it is out here. It's honestly stupid I even felt like I had to do that. For what? People glazed over the brief moment of drama within a few weeks and went right back to posting the same shit they always have. They find new things to gossip about on their privs. New enemies to cancel on Twitter. New things to deem problematic and attack. 

I will be heard with this letter. I don’t care to be associated with anyone who treats people like this. I don’t believe in it, I won’t support it, and I’d rather have a small circle of people who won’t be rude or attack other people for existing. I’m not going to sit here and take the abuse any longer. Leave me in peace. There is no reason any of this should be happening. 

This is not meant to undermine the support I have gotten from the few who know what I'm going through and have given me the space to figure it out. I appreciate every question answered and insight provided as much as your abilities allow. I'm so grateful for it. I just wish it wasn't 2 people while everyone else is an asshole.

[goodluckclove]

I've been meaning to say something. (100 follower hot take)

Hey! Thanks for stopping by. I hope you've had a nice day. Why don't you rest with me for a while? I made some chocolate chip cookies - with shortening instead of butter, so they're very soft and very chocolatey. I made way too many and they aren't my wife's favorite, so I could use some help in eating them.

You're probably a writer, right? Or maybe you think about how you could be. Browse the tags here, or on other social media platforms. Maybe you used to write stories as a kid. I bet those were fun. Teachers might've thought they were impressive, or they dissected them line by line until the words didn't make sense in your head anymore. Either way, if you're here you're probably here for a reason.

(rant alert)

I dipped a toe in online writing communities on and off. My last attempt was forty-five minutes scrolling through the writing hashtag on Youtube Shorts (so TikTok, I guess? I don't know). I didn't like it. I really didn't. The thing that sticks out the strongest in my mind is one particular video where a woman claims that every story needs a second act plot twist.

Huh? Every story? All of them? Why? Since when? Who are you? What qualifications do you have to make a statement like that?

That's the common thread that makes a lot of writing spaces very uncomfortable for me. Successful writers are really only successful in their genre and for the given moment, so they don't have that much objective authority in the craft. And yet I see a lot of people deciding the things that you can't do in writing. Or the things you have to do, and how you have to do them. It was so much of Writeblr at first glance that I almost dipped out once again. I didn't, though, and I'm glad I didn't because now I get to watch some of the next great storytellers from across the world grow and examine and forge their way forward.

No one can teach you how to write. No, that's not true. Teachers teach literacy. Handwriting. Typing maybe - do schools still teach typing? Let me try saying it in a different way - no one, not one single person on this goddamned planet, has the right to tell you how to make a story.

I was supposed to get my MFA in creative writing before my first breakdown. My uncle stayed in the program I was meant to be in, and a few years after I dropped out he graduated. Recently I had the thought to look up his thesis novella, and as I searched I found myself regretting my decision to leave school. If I stayed and got to develop my writing in an actual class, with other writers and a knowledgeable professor, how much further along would I be than where I am right now?

It was bad. His novella was terrible. It was so bad I had a small existential crisis for, like, three days. He spent so much money on years and years of professional education and came out with a truly soulless story that read as if you prompted an AI to write the next Great American Novel. So if you think you need a writing degree to be a legitimate author, it could help connections-wise, but it ultimately won't be the thing that does the work for you.

Not all advice I see online on writing is bad. I find the people who are able to capture the "I" statements of therapy and phrase advice as things that have worked for them, or things that they personally enjoy, to be fine. Some writing advice can spark inspiration.

But if someone is the type of person to boil every story down to troupes and cliches, and then immediately say that every story that uses the trait they don't like is automatically bad for everyone? I'm dropping the kindness for a second - that's trash. That's a trash take and I see far too many writers use it as a reason to stop before they begin.

I don't like whump. I say my reasons in previous posts if you go back through my blog. But you will never hear me say that any story with whump in it is bad, because I don't know that. You might prove me wrong. I am an adult human being and I have the humility to admit that I can like something I didn't expect to. I genuinely enjoy the direction of The Human Centipede (only the first one) and if you cringed just now that probably means you haven't seen it.

There are so many types of books and movies and plays and comics out there. To enjoy a specific genre is fine, to ignore the existence of everything else is a really, really, really odd thing to do. Maybe someone will hate your story because they think everything should be Neil Gaiman, and therefore have no way to understand your epistolary high-Western. You are not the wrong end of that situation just for existing.

And at there is a definite threshold on how many writing tips you can gather before they stop being useful. If you find them interesting, that's one thing. That's fine. But if the culture of creativity online has made you feel like you need to educate yourself on every possible angle before you can write a story, you are actively harming yourself.

Imagine taking the level of structure you put on yourself in that way and putting it on children playing pretend in the backyard. Oh, Susie, don't you know that it's overdone for your Kitsune have dead parents? Xyler, shouldn't you ask someone else before you decide how Spiderman would react to this? It would make no sense and they do not need it. Kids will make a whole world out of nothing and it's the most fucked thing in my heart that at some point they get access to Reddit and dipshits start insisting that's wrong.

They aren't wrong and you aren't either. Your favorite creative influencer can't tell you your story, strangers on the internet can't tell you your story, your teachers and loved ones can't tell you your story. They can influence it, but they can't write it honestly the way you can.

You do that. That's the thing you do.

Man that makes me upset. I can't tell you how to make a story, either. If anyone sends me asks for writing advice the most I'll do is say what I've done before hopping into your DMs and starting a direct conversation. it's so personal to each individual artist, and I'd like to think that the people selling these classes and software and promoting these platforms haven't thought about that before. Otherwise it does feel manipulative. If you have a willingness to practice and imagine and really experiment with the possibilities, you are ready to write your story.

And if it doesn't work? Try again. That's what you do.

Stephen King has written roughly a thousand books and maybe five of them have decent endings. He is unimaginably successful.

I'm rambling now. I think I got that out of my system. I was really worried to say this out of fear of being too weird or somehow reverse-gatekeeping so hard that it circles back into also being a bad thing. I've just spoken to a lot of people who I still think of throughout my day, and I truly ache for them to get past the fear of creation. Because it's worth it. It's worth it and it's fun, even when it's messy and you're tired.

Let it Be just came on. Beatles. I haven't listened to The Beatles in a long time. Feels a little apropos.

I love you, reader. Reader, Writer, Colleague. Take care of yourself. Especially the little you, still sitting there in the backyard of your soul, bathing in the sun with their bare feet in the damp earth.

Consider joining them, maybe.

[qqueenofhades]

I’m in undergrad but I keep hearing and seeing people talking about using chatgpt for their schoolwork and it makes me want to rip my hair out lol. Like even the “radical” anti-chatgpt ones are like “Oh yea it’s only good for outlines I’d never use it for my actual essay.” You’re using it for OUTLINES????? That’s the easy part!! I can’t wait to get to grad school and hopefully be surrounded by people who actually want to be there 😭😭😭

Not to sound COMPLETELY like a grumpy old codger (although lbr, I am), but I think this whole AI craze is the obvious result of an education system that prizes "teaching for the test" as the most important thing, wherein there are Obvious Correct Answers that if you select them, pass the standardized test and etc etc mean you are now Educated. So if there's a machine that can theoretically pick the correct answers for you by recombining existing data without the hard part of going through and individually assessing and compiling it yourself, Win!

... but of course, that's not the way it works at all, because AI is shown to create misleading, nonsensical, or flat-out dangerously incorrect information in every field it's applied to, and the errors are spotted as soon as an actual human subject expert takes the time to read it closely. Not to go completely KIDS THESE DAYS ARE JUST LAZY AND DONT WANT TO WORK, since finding a clever way to cheat on your schoolwork is one of those human instincts likewise old as time and has evolved according to tools, technology, and educational philosophy just like everything else, but I think there's an especial fear of Being Wrong that drives the recourse to AI (and this is likewise a result of an educational system that only prioritizes passing standardized tests as the sole measure of competence). It's hard to sort through competing sources and form a judgment and write it up in a comprehensive way, and if you do it wrong, you might get a Bad Grade! (The irony being, of course, that AI will *not* get you a good grade and will be marked even lower if your teachers catch it, which they will, whether by recognizing that it's nonsense or running it through a software platform like Turnitin, which is adding AI detection tools to its usual plagiarism checkers.)

We obviously see this mindset on social media, where Being Wrong can get you dogpiled and/or excluded from your peer groups, so it's even more important in the minds of anxious undergrads that they aren't Wrong. But yeah, AI produces nonsense, it is an open waste of your tuition dollars that are supposed to help you develop these independent college-level analytical and critical thinking skills that are very different from just checking exam boxes, and relying on it is not going to help anyone build those skills in the long term (and is frankly a big reason that we're in this mess with an entire generation being raised with zero critical thinking skills at the exact moment it's more crucial than ever that they have them). I am mildly hopeful that the AI craze will go bust just like crypto as soon as the main platforms either run out of startup funding or get sued into oblivion for plagiarism, but frankly, not soon enough, there will be some replacement for it, and that doesn't mean we will stop having to deal with fake news and fake information generated by a machine and/or people who can't be arsed to actually learn the skills and abilities they are paying good money to acquire. Which doesn't make sense to me, but hey.

So: Yes. This. I feel you and you have my deepest sympathies. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to sit on the porch in my quilt-draped rocking chair and shout at kids to get off my lawn.

[mitigatedchaos]

On Discourse

(~1,000 words, ~5m)

[ anon ]

[...] I only know like other early twenty somethings who are as clueless if not more than me. I then imagine said smart abstraction person inevitably getting frustrated with me and my inability to keep up with them or add on to their thoughts, per the inexperienced idiocy, and eventually blocking me in the middle of a discussion on how pro-sex work thought conflicts with modern feminism despite many sharing those beliefs. [...]

I know that in your ask, you said that this might be better left unspoken, but I'd like to share a line of thought that you might find useful.

One of the discursive norms that was weakened 2014-2022 was the idea of the separation between ideas and people.

Someone who is currently wrong, but who is honest, humble, and sincerely interested in the truth, is likely to become correct (or more correct). Someone who is currently correct, but who is dishonest with both others and with themselves, is likely to become wrong (or less correct).

Therefore honesty, humility, and a sincere desire to know the nature of the material world, are generally, though not always, more important than having a correct object-level position on every issue.

If methods are more important than just being correct, because methods are how you become correct, then we can view the nature of discussion differently.

You can have a discussion …as practice. It's OK if you're wrong, as long as the discussion helps you to become more correct, or become better at becoming correct. Breaking things down into their components, forming arguments, and weighing arguments, are skills, which can be practiced.

Now, regarding Tumblr...

In my opinion, people come to Tumblr to blog for basically two reasons. They want to learn, and they want to be heard.

To learn from someone, they must be similar enough to you that you can understand them, but different enough from you that they have something to teach you. Rationalists have a concept called "inferential distance," which refers to the gap in knowledge or reasoning between people. For example, to explain vtuber drama to Leibniz, in order for him to understand you, you would first have to explain computers and the Internet.

Inferential distance should not be thought of as a matter of supremacy or inferiority; two people might have equal shares of information about a problem that don't overlap with each other.

Due to differences in the knowledge and experience of people, there can be someone B in a chain A -> B -> C who understands both A and C, even when A and C do not understand each other.

In addition, if there is something you don't understand, it may be possible to ask a question and get an answer that helps you to understand. In this way, a conversation, which is flexible and adaptive, can reach people that a book, which is fixed, cannot.

Knowledge relationships may be hierarchical, in that I may know some piece of true information that you don't. However, from that perspective, there are multiple knowledge relationships between two people, and it is generally the case that you will also know some true information that I don't.

People also come to social media to be heard. It might be about a topic that doesn't have a large audience in their personal life, such as collecting Korean dolls. It might be to have a larger audience than they can access in real life. It might be to be heard by specific people.

When I came to Tumblr to write about politics in 2017, I did so because I thought that the quality of the national political discourse was quite poor, so that I could hardly do worse than what was regularly platformed by national outlets, but I felt that the quality of discourse in this area of Tumblr was fairly good, so that it was possible to have discourse that would generate light, not just heat.

I write to share information that I think others should know. I also write to gather feedback (and to practice writing). Rather than either-or, this can be thought of as a split, like 90%-10%, that varies by post.

Sometimes this means sharing information I know now that I think it would have been good for me to know when I was younger. Sometimes this means sharing information that I knew when I was your age, but which people who are currently your age do not know.

Tumblr has done something remarkable - it has restored intergenerational transmission of information. I'm not that old, but I believe that many of the more experienced users on this website feel the same as I do. We are all going to leave Tumblr at some point, either because we will become too busy, or because the isekai bus will finally catch up to us.

Confucius once said that, in old age, the best men guard themselves against acquisitiveness. As members of the forthcoming generation, your presence is worth more than gold. This is why, on Nov. 6th, I told you all to survive and become strong.

The next 50 years are going to see some major changes in the underlying dimensions of human society, with likely significant advances in AI (which makes capital more like labor) and in genetic engineering (which will offer an increase in health, but also poses major ethical challenges). You will likely live to make important choices about humanity's future, which will rapidly become the new present.

It is not necessary to become a master of abstraction. Rather, even a moderate improvement in the ability to think clearly, to weigh arguments, to evaluate evidence, and to see contradiction, makes it more difficult for others to lie to and manipulate you. When people are difficult to lie to, liars must proceed in uncertainty, and reduce the magnitude of their lies.

This creates a world which is safer for the weak, the busy, and the distracted. There are people who are too young or too old to seek out the correct information, or verify it.

There was a strain of thought over last decade that was suspicious of strength and agency, as only through strength is it possible to oppress others. The world, of course, is more complicated than this. It is only through strength that we can put compassion into practice, and it is only through agency that we can ensure that what we are doing is compassionate.

[justanoval]

Life Updates

Hey Tumblr gang!

If you've noticed I've been active less on platforms like Patreon, Twitch, Discord, and even a little less frequent with my YouTube uploads, this post will address that.

The biggest reason is that I simply do not have enough energy to delegate anymore. With my health issues progressing, I've been slowly losing my energy to give out to different areas, and I've had to decrease my focus.

My main focuses are now animations, music, merchandise, and Creeper County.

That's the jist. If you want more specifics, you can keep reading further.

Twitch

I really really struggle to have any energy for streaming. I can't keep up the hype and I feel like I am not doing anything by just being live. I want to have the freedom to do other things whenever I want, and I don't want to feel like I am being judged with every creative decision I make. A few decisions of mine revolving around how I built my audience is what lead me here, so while there's ways I can see myself coming back to Twitch, I just don't have the energy for it at the moment.

Discord

Discord was my biggest strategy to help grow my Twitch channel--and it worked fantastically. But now that I'm inactive on Twitch, I've decided to delegate the energy used on Discord for something else.

I don't expect myself to like, delete my Discord, but it's just something I am fine with being there primarily for announcements right now.

I'm focusing more on creating a smaller, more intimate community with Creeper County. This is what I've always wanted in building a community.

Patreon

I've made an announcement there already if you're interested in reading. The jist is that it isn't a reliable income source for me to dedicate that much time to it. It's just going to sorta stay as a donation platform for the time being. Not that that's bad (it's what most people tend to do), but I think it's still reasonable for me to make clear.

YouTube

I wouldn't say I'm too inactive here, I just don't upload as often. It's like, as opposed to once every 4-7 days, it's once every 7-10 days maybe now.

Big reason here is, of course the energy, but also I'm just exploring many different art forms right now. Had a dip in motivation with main channel animations and needed to figure out why. For the most part, I have figured out why, but there's still some direction I need to find.

Though you can look forward to a shrimp miku video coming soon.

Postmortem in Nuuspace

This isn't one I have really been inactive in, since I never promised an activity level. But still figured I can address that I am planning out a much larger story that will be based in this universe, which is why my current writing rhythm will be quite sporadic.

Not to say this will ever be finished, or published, or whatever (it might idk), but it's just what I am doing.

I know I didn't have to make this post, but it gives me some closure! I didn't want to leave anyone in the dark, and this way I know that I haven't (unless people don't read this, but that ain't on me).

In the future, I honestly expect that most of my energy will come down to video game development. It's like, all of these little things I am doing will just point towards one massive thing. And given my experience with Godot engine, making music, writing, 3d art, pixel art, animation... you see where this is going.

So, stay tuned.