#From Inspiration to Publication

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Substack Mastery Boost Submission Guidelines

A New Publication for Freelance Writers on Medium.com From Inspiration to a Business Hub Publication Welcome to Substack Mastery Boost publication initially created on Medium.com which will expand to multiple platforms! This is your guidelines for writing business success. Substack Mastery Boost is is not a usual Medium publication. We have 15 publications serving this purpose on Medium. This…

[mythicalcoolkid]

You don't wish your disability was worse or more visible, you wish your disability was taken seriously. Please stop confusing the two, I guarantee you would not get the support you need JUST by being more severe or more visible. Please listen to visibly disabled people when we tell you it isn't better on our side

[marzipanandminutiae]

Of course, the burkini ban is messed up on grounds of religious freedom and racial discrimination. But also

Under any other circumstances, people would be HORRIFIED at a government mandate that women have to show a certain amount of skin. Like. That’s fucking dystopian, and the absolute opposite of feminism. If a government tried to pass a law that all women had to wear tube tops and miniskirts to go outside, people would rightfully be up in arms demanding blood

But because it’s targeting a marginalized religious group, many folks are lauding the blatant forced sexualization of women. Appalling

(apparently the ban also outlaws things like sun – protecting bathing suits if they cover too much skin. Which like. Yes, let’s give everyone skin cancer just so we can spite a religion we’ve decided to hate. Sounds like a good plan </s>)

[luetta]

[neoluca]

darbie no! that recipe is reserved for kids at least thirteen or older!

[senditothemoonn]

This started as me wanting to draw them as old men and kind of spiralled from there…

[riicky-ye]

Guys, we don’t talk enough about the depth of Furina’s grief over Focalors. Allow me to fix that.

Imagine: you wake up in the middle of an empty stage, a voice calling you. You don’t know who or what you are, you don’t know where you are, but the voice calls you Furina and you know it’s your name.

Then you see the mirror and there’s you, too! Your name is Furina, then there’s a mirror — the Mirror — talking to you, and of course there’s the lines of a prophecy carved into your very being. You know absolutely nothing besides that. How and why did you get on this stage, how old are you, what’s your favourite colour (you wear blue tailcoat so it must be blue), who named you Furina and where you’ve been before.

Everything is blurry and fogged and your head hurt thinking about it. So you stop thinking. You brush those questions off and try to never recall they exist somewhere in your mind — you have a more important thing to do.

That’s right, your name is Furina, and the Mirror talking to you says you were invited to avert the inevitable doom. She says it in Her soft and compassionate voice, like it’s truly an invitation — but you know you’re meant to take the task. This is why you’re here, on this stage, and how did you get there — it doesn’t matter anymore.

Not long after that, the Mirror turns empty, and now there’s only your puzzled face in the reflection, not the perfect, precious, darling She you just saw. Then you feel it. A weird thing in your chest, chilly and uncomfortable. You don’t know what it is but since then it doesn’t leave you.

You live, you play your part, you learn. You actually like the colour blue, and desserts, and you have a beautiful singing voice, and this it, an unsettling feeling behind your ribcage, is called emptiness.

You accept it as a part of yourself. Just like the way you like the colour blue and the way you can’t die and the way eyebags under your lower lids, already heavy when you wake up on the stage, turns heavier and heavier and darker.

Then there’s a trial — a trial of our god, ladies and gentlemen! — and it means you failed. You look at your people and at first you see their suspicious, hostile gazes, but then you see them as puddles of water on the luxurious opera floor, and it doesn’t matter anymore how much they hate you. They can hate you all they want, just please let them stay alive.

Now you know what the Mirror meant when She said about a magnificent and dramatic trial. You were diligent in your duty, you made sure every proceeding ran in this nation was dramatic enough, you dragged the Witness of Teyvat in court, and then, when it didn’t helped, you did the same with the 11th of the Fatui.

Now you know it wasn’t enough. Now you know why. Now you know…

this is why you’re here, on this stage.

It all makes sense now, and for once in your 500 long years you realize with crystalline certainty what you’re needed to do.

It all makes sense now, so you play your part.

You play your part and you fail. No matter how good you argue, how quick you are to find answers, Witness of Teyvat, the damned Traveler, just overpowers you with the force of their charisma and people’s already existing resentment towards you. You fight, and then you ask, and then you plead, and then you beg them to believe you, and they don’t.

They just don’t believe you.

It seems you spent all your parlour-trick smokemirrors pseudo-magic, and none is left.

It would’ve been such a fitting end for a deceiver such as yourself, if not for the fact that your exposure doomed all those who you loved and cherished. All their precious, darling lives will be lost to the Primordial sea. Your knees give up, and you fall back on your fancy — stupid — chair. The Oratrice stirs alive, ready to deliver the death sentence. You don’t have enough willpower to care, not anymore. You sit and cry on your throne, just as it was foretold . Is this why you’re here?

Gears and cogs and pistons of the intricate system that is the Oratrice work faster and faster, and your vision is suddenly clouded with black, so thick you feel blind, but maybe you just blinked because it doesn’t last more than a fleeting second, and right after that…

Something snaps deep inside your chest, like a string broken.

It hurts so bad you think you’re dying, and at the same time — it doesn’t hurt at all. You feel nothing, and yet, you also feel pain you never felt before, and this lingering emptiness, your loyal friend and closest confidante, it swallows you whole.

You stop breathing, because breathing hurts. You stop moving, and it still hurts. Your head, your throat, your chest, but what hurts the most is a fleeting concept of your useless heart, weeping for a precious thing you never knew, because She, the dearest, the loveliest person you ever saw, was never there with you, not really.

She’s dead, you realise with utmost confidence you always lacked.

She’s dead, and her death reverberates through your whole body like a march, like a tsunami, like an agonising crescendo of rainstorm droplets falling down and washing away all that you held dear.

She’s dead, and you’re not.

Why, you ask yourself, because now you have nobody else to ask.

Hours later, when waters give up on destroying the land and everyone is not dissolved, you meet Neuvillette. There’s no resentment in his eyes, no hatred. Only sadness and exhaustion, and something soft and tender, akin to a pity, so you scowl at him, because you can take his hostility, but he has no rights pitying you.

He tells you a story.

This story’s plot sucks, and the twist is the cheapest tears-squeezing crap you saw only in soap operas.

The precious darling goddess in the Mirror was You this whole time, and it’s hard to wrap your head around it, you’re not sure you understand.

It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?

Funny, you think.

I’m tired, you say. I need some rest, Monsieur Neuvillette.

You return to your suite to pack some of your belongings. You see the Mirror, the same one you ordered to drag all the way from the opera Epiclese to your personal rooms in the first day of your life, and there’s no You in the Mirror, only the same old you.

You’re suddenly reminded about the tiny snap deep in your chest, the mind-shattering non-existent pain. You cover the Mirror with your bedspread, and you leave the suite.

You cover all the mirrors in your new house first thing when you move in.

[valtsv]

disposability

The Silt Verses, Chapter 31, "Its Gaze Shall Fall O'er Trembling Plains" // The Silt Verses, Chapter 33, "And Where Once Its Howling Forebears Walked" // The Silt Verses, Chapter 39, "This Rotten World Shall Wheeze Its Last" // The Silt Verses, Chapter 40, "This Hateful Hymn Shall Cease"

[duketectivecomics]

‘Jason was Duke’s robin’ ‘tim was dukes robin’ YOURE ALL FOOLS

Steph as dukes most formative robin is RIGHT THERE

[bluecoffeebeanz]

I had to do training modules at work last week and all I could think of were these idiots

[bardsansa]

the last painted portraits of dowager queen alicent hightower and rhaenyra i

rhaenys and visenya, alyssa velaryon, the six wives of maegor, alysanne, aemma arryn

closeups n pfps if you please

[maslosstuff]

Mcfist industries the big bad incorporation (Hidden from the public)

[emperorofthedark]

The weather system is functional... I think. I want to include heat risks (sunburn) and storm risks (struck by lightning), but I haven't done that yet. I did figure out how to link temperatures and weather conditions to the different seasons, so it won't be cold or snowing in June. I haven't tested it extensively because there really isn't anything there yet, but I hope it's all good. Working on the river crossing system now. I think the frozen in winter bit works (it seems to reliably freeze when the temperature is under 32 degrees), and it would appear that the river conditions (safe, moderate, risky, deadly) work with a 20% chance of someone drowning in risky conditions and 40% chance in deadly conditions, and drowned party members are successfully removed from the roster.

Excited to move on to injuries and deaths.

Disclaimer: This is very basic placeholder shit ripped directly from Oregon Trail II, so that I can test codes. And of course there will be pictures, but I have to do some major CC shopping and decorating, so I don't have any taken just yet. I just wanted to share what I have done so far.

[flowerakatsuka]

honse.

[butterfly-ribbon]

been thinking of ppl saying that mizuena should've been in a yuri or josei manga that isn't popular which is a sentiment i understand bc yes a hypothetical mizuki akiyama that exists in a yuri or josei manga would probably have her transness made explicit i guess (absolutely not guaranteed tho imo considering the amount of transfem manga i've read that quickly veer into third sexing u_u) but even if i accept this premise at face value i'm not fully onboard with it bc i feel like her character exists best in something like prsk bc she exists as a response to trans girls being into things like love live, revue starlight, bandori, etc. it's in her metanarrative…

not saying gacha game writing is always good … a lot of ppl often say it's frustrating how much it expects you to fill in the gaps (bc that's part of audience engagement) and ena5 was arguably gachapilled abt it but i think it makes sense. gacha thrives on implied queerness bc even when the writers are passionate about what they're writing abt they can't risk alienating executives and wider audiences bc writing queerness in something 'mainstream' is often complicated? so it's not always the writers' choice? i think mizuki is pretty Explicitly transfem though. the only "issue" with her writing to me is that they don't let her say this, which i also only consider a problem /at all/ bc when she's outed it's pretty explicit? gacha often has very character driven writing … the queerness is often also an Audience Draw. i wish they would at minimum call mizuki a girl. textually. i want ena to call her a cute girl … though considering how many ppl go "ano ko", she's getting called a cute girl all the time lol.

with that being said, i think the picnic event is one of my main examples of things that make me go,,, mizuki's character works best in the context of something like prsk as a response to things like bandori bc it's about a tgirl vs cgirl idols. that mixed events inherently highlight mizuki's circumstances as "othered" by society around her and the inherent complications of her own life vs others. ppl compare mafuyu and toya sometimes also but it's so bare bones by comparison bc mafuyu is literally in a dissociative cPTSD fugue at all times. it's about so much more than being forced into a life goal she doesn't want. everything about how her mother has raised her has warped her as a person. made her unable to see healthy or more objective realities. mizuki and mafuyu both have wanted desperately to die and disappear. mizuki even now … struggles so much with that and being around "normal" ppl is hard for her bc of it bc no matter how she tries, she can't be a normal girl. an average girl. so she has to be abnormal or exceptional. no in between. how she exists in contrast to bandori is so genuine in that engagement with gender and i specify bandori bc it's colopales other game.

going back to the picnic event i love the moment when they're eating the food airi prepared and talking about how airi and shizuku are "idols who are capable of bringing others hope", but then mizuki quickly goes from admiration to somberness, wishing she could be the same as them ... and even when the others bring up the music she makes with her circle it doesn't do much to cheer her up? it reads so much to me as a trans girl struggling with an inherent sense of inferiority amidst cis girls who have never had their own girlhood questioned in the way she has and can thus take so much for granted! ena might be really ruthless and mean in a way that is atypical of femininity and airi may have struggled with not being traditionally feminine and was bullied for failing to act out "proper" girlhood, but she still has a very different experience from mizuki and neither can compare to the constant transmisogyny and degendering that mizuki constantly has to go through every day and having her identity denied so vehemently on a systemic level.

it's so pointed to me bc mizuki is an idol fan and has that genre awareness ... the way trans girls often connect with media like mahou shouio and idols but despite their love for it, still feel an inherent sense of alienation due to being an Other ... bc there's a separation between "liking these girls and these things" abstractly versus actually meeting them, and i think it's interesting that there's literally no way in the context of this game that any of these girls could be idols and trans, specifically bc mizuki is a trans girl who can't be one and this game predicates a major portion of its story around mizuki As A Trans Girl! if mizuki tried to be an idol, she'd be outed and harassed! that's a fear she already has to live with when she's making music with niigo even though it's safer due to its anonymity. transness and idols don't have to be disconnected of course, but her being a trans girl who's a fan of this stuff who's disallowed the opportunity to directly take part in them is So fucking important. her engagement with all of this.

this is an event about ena's relationships with other women but also how mizuki exists in the borderlines of girlhood ... how no one else is so prepared as she is for things going wrong and how much she has had to take on undue responsibility in the world at large just to "exist"... she's protected at home but everywhere otherwise, she always has to take responsibility for how others see her, how others project onto her, how others expect her to act, and the event ends with mizuki still declining ena's offer to join the group call with airi and shizuku bc it didn't resolve anything ... bc simply repressing her own insecurities and fears in the moment to rescue ena and airi bc it's more important to act didn't help in the grand scheme of things when this is something mizuki is always expected to do! ena did it out of kindness, but it's terrifying to be invited to a group trip with her childhood friend who is actually a cool and beautiful idol, and then for another beautiful idol to be there. and both of them are so pleasant and sweet and nice. how is mizuki supposed to interact around ppl like that, after all?

the mizuena in the picnic event is so fucking vital bc of ena trying to give mizuki comfort but making her more and more discomforted, which is good buildup to my footsteps, your destination. it's about how mizuki still exists on the fringes of girlhood even when someone is actively making effort to make her feel "included" and the invisible yet uncrossable barrier that exists between her as a trans girl who loves things like idols and idols themselves (who are predominantly cis girls). airi and shizuku are very sweet! but it's… kind of agonizing, bc airi was already ena's "friend" and mizuki feels like she has no place in the lives of others and wouldn't deserve to be ena's friend if ena found out about her transness, which is why she clings to the plausible deniability around her gender status. airi is someone who can bond with ena and be close to her much more easily bc of their shared experience with misogyny, but this is something mizuki has to struggle for much more even though the misogyny she struggles with is even more Amplified due to how the [trans]misogyny she experiences is often denied and erased even among other girls...