#I am having thoughts and considerations

[feroluce]

When talking about Boothill's drink order in 2.6, like. Hoyo could have just glossed it over and described it as "a few" or "several" drinks. They didn't bother to program in the actual glasses or anything- it's not like any of us were gonna count them and notice if they put in the wrong amount.

But they specifically chose the number seven, and if it IS just coincidence, it is a very very fun one.

Hsr is also known to make tarot card references- we had the online event shortly before Penacony's release, I'm pretty sure there's at least a couple simulated universe occurrences and a curio, and then Black Swan's Everything.

The Seven of Cups is a card about dreams and making choices when you have multiple options it front of you. It represents resisting self-deception and false dreams, and not letting yourself be charmed by hallucinations. It is a warning to carefully consider what is real vs what is not, which is very important in Penacony as a whole, being the land of sweet dreams, and it becomes relevant to Boothill later, when Primon starts to fuck with his head.

It can also represent someone who is "deep in their cups," which is a more polite way to refer to someone who uses alcohol as a coping mechanism to an unhealthy amount.

I hate that this could be a serious comment on Boothill being an alcoholic to cope with how much horrifying trauma he's experienced...and I have to discuss it looking at Primon's ridiculous fucking face fjkdslajldk

The overall message of the card is to stand fast, keep a clear head, and make your decision. Which suits Boothill beautifully even outside of this patch, since he is the very picture of ruthlessness and straightforwardness- he is able to see that bright clear line between action and result, and he follows it doggedly! Everything he does, he does wholeheartedly and decisively! And we see it especially well when he fights through the partial regression Primon leads him into!

Straight and clear and sure as a bullet, baby!!!

[triglycercule]

killer being like "yeah i know every single little thing about horror and dust" (because he watches them as a part time hobby (freak) (find something better to do)) and then he acts surprised when they do something that he wouldnt expect them to do in his little predetermined absolutely perfect concept of them

like what do you MEAN horror licks spoons clean when he's using them so he doesn't have to get a completely different one for the main course and the dessert. what do you MEAN dust has a lisp even though he speaks fluently and uses even more complex words than killer himself. horror knows how to sew and he often patches up their things without either of them noticing?? dust always wears oversized and clothes that cover him up just because he finds it comfy?? what??? out ra geous???? these guys have small little quirks to them that killer doesn't already know about???? killer immediately wants to know more. so he can expand his internal profile of them of course. not for any other more endearing and sweet reason. not at all,,,,,,,, (:3)

[ryllen]

alex who is good at heart & said  “good luck” when he rejected you after  “nah... I'm gonna ask someone else” on flower dance festival

and actually care about having friends,

that he has been acting friendly to u even at 0 hearts, in seek of new friend opportunity.

[13eyond13]

underrated funny thing about lawlight is they never actually did get to confirm that 100% of the time they were basically thinking exactly what the other person thought they were thinking every single time

[krispiecake]

tell me why i can hear another tenants fucking music from my flat. HE DOESNT EVEN LIVE IN MY BUILDING. HE LIVES IN A COMPLETELY SEPARATE BUILDING ON THE SECOND FLOOR AND I CAN HEAR HIS MUSIC FROM MY FLAT. MY FLAT WHICH IS IN A DIFFERENT SEPARATE BUILDING.

[massivementalitynut]

My Werewolf Couple Comm from @iwanttobeaseme

[sunnywalnut]

Me, sitting with my keyboard and an extremely detailed layout of my OC's house: ok how do I describe a room

[ghostwise]

character descriptions that are like 'she is quiet but she can open up when she's around people she trusts ... she can seem rude sometimes but she's got a softness under that rough exterior ... he usually comes off as serious but believe or not.. he told a joke' 😏

middle-slider ass character building, COMMIT damn it

[dreamlogic]

a stupid pet peeve about my housemate that makes me irrationally furious is that she always uses these cute little delicate ceramic dishes as spoon rests when she's cooking.

because the thing is, she's a really messy cook. like idk how she manages it, but if she cooks a single fried egg on one burner, there will be a 1 ft blast radius of grease splatters & spices & egg bits around that burner that she never seems to notice & therefore doesn't wipe up. heaven forbid if she cooks a larger meal that uses multiple burners.

so when she uses her stupid adorable spoon rests to keep her utensils from dirtying surfaces, the effect in practice is that there will be a thick layer of caked on cooking detritus covering the entire vicinity, with a perfectly clean 2 inch circle underneath the spoon rest.

and lord help me, the sight of that single tiny dish on the stove top, having utterly failed in its duty except to highlight how greasy the rest of the kitchen is—

[mermaidsirennikita]

People are ridiculously entitled and it’s genuinely so disheartening. Books are someone’s ART. You don’t just get to alter a name in someone else’s creative work. (I’m appalled people out there think this is remotely acceptable - writers are not court jesters nor do they exist to please everyone - no human being nor their creative work does, in fact!) Thanks for putting your various responses out there! Here’s hoping people learn to respect and appreciate artists and creators once again

Quoth Nora Roberts:

I am not here to be a slave to certain reader’s wants, needs, whims. Again, I write what I write, and these are MY characters, in my books. Not yours. They are yours to enjoy or not, but they belong to me, they come from me...

You don’t have to agree, but I’m not writing for your particular point of view. Again, I’ve explained my reasons for this. I won’t do so again. My characters, my books, my decision. If you want something else, read something else.

And yes, I said that, too. Blast away, it changes nothing. I am not obliged to meet an individual’s demands.

So.

First off:

If you're really super chill about the idea of being able to change what writers write just because you didn't like a detail you think is small and irrelevant, I would sincerely encourage you to read La Nora's full thoughts on similar issues... and yeah, I'm gonna equate something as "small" as a name with what Nora's talking about here. Because it is ALL the author's domain. I've never personally subscribed to the idea that a work "isn't yours anymore" once it's out in the world. The way people interpret and interact with it isn't yours, sure. But it's still your creation, and you should be the only person with control over the content.

... and sometimes, I, as a reader, don't like what authors do with their content. I get it. I don't like that Lisa Kleypas edited her work years after publishing it, because I'm big on the "own what you wrote originally even if it's uncomfy" train... (for the most part--editing the fetishization of Cam and Kev would've made sense to me). And I don't think there's anything wrong with readers pointing out problematic shit in a writer's work, offering critique in an open forum, as Smart Bitches, Trashy books did when reading Hello, Stranger, which I speculate may have prompted some of Lisa's edits.

But! I can't say that it would ever be my right as a reader to, say, use future technology to tell my reading device "edit out the times Cam says shit that reads super fetishized". It's just kind of repellent to me to imagine rewriting someone's work in any way without their permission. Fuck, I don't even like the idea of estates releasing sequels or revised versions of books unless the author indicated that such was in their wishes in their will. (See: the TWO official Gone with the Wind sequels/prequels/whatever authorized by Margaret Mitchell's estate.)

We, as readers, have our lanes. The writers have theirs. And sometimes, as writers, they do tiny things or BIG things in their lanes that we dislike. (I love Tiffany Reisz's Original Sinners series, for the most part. I really, REALLY hate the most recent book in the series. HATE. IT. But the only thing I can do about that shit is just pretend that book never happened, which I actually can fairly efficiently because I do in fact control what my brain does. Or, seek out books that give me what that series didn't with that most recent book. Sierra Simone's do a bangin' job.) But you know... Not only do I not think it is safe for me to merge into their lane... I don't want writers to feel like they have to submit to demand and give away pieces of their work in order to keep selling.

(And honestly? For the vast majority, I don't think it would make enough of a difference anyway--writers are often sold bills of goods with new strategies or tech. "This will change the way you sell books". Most writers won't ever be able to write full time anyway, and I find the way that this fantasy that you'll be able to do otherwise with THIS TECH optimizing your writing time, or THIS SUBSCRIPTION increasing the eyeballs that will see your book... Scammy. Not all of it's bad! But the selling strategy that you'll make more money... If you're selling on KU, if five extra people buy your book you're still making pennies, so it's gotta be more than one thing that converges to create the sale, and a lot of that, I gotta say, is word of mouth and people just LIKING YOUR SHIT. And I'd argue that they're more likely to like your shit if you're invested as a writer.)

Second:

No need to thank me! I honestly think that the majority of readers do appreciate what writers do (or don't feel either way about it and just read like people have always read lol) but I don't know. I can't really tell what it is--the sort of "fandom" that's been created around books (and like, author fan clubs and such have always existed, but obviously the accessibility is so different), new tech developing very rapidly when for centuries books were relatively stagnant technologically speaking, the fanficification of EVERY type of media it feels like... But the sense of entitlement that certain readers feel does seem to have grown. Or maybe it's simply become more visible. I mean, Nora Roberts has from the dawn of her writing career taken off had fans that can communicate with her, and I'm sure many have written letters like "Go give these characters a baby :(".

My biggest thing is always going to be this: some books ain't gonna be for you. There are books that sound so Caroline. I read them, and for whatever reason--writing style, one character choice, something ephemeral I can't name--they aren't. Everyone else loves these books. I'd love to love these books. I'd love to discuss these books. I'm not in the party. And that's FINE. Not every party is going to be a party I'm down for! One of my best friends loooooves Tessa Bailey and Tessa-like contemporaries. Tessa, by and large, doesn't work for me. So my friend and I can't discuss a lot of books in depth. Do I wish historicals worked for her so that I could nerd out with her? Sure! But I can't make something that doesn't work for her work for her, and I can't make Tessa's books work for me.

And I know that people will be like "it's just a name bitch", but... it's a slippery slope to me, just like ALL of AI and AI-related tech has been a slippery slope. Like, y'all said AI wasn't gonna be a big deal and would just make things easier, and people are now selling AI-written books under their names. Everyone said that authors would have control over how AI interacted with their books, and books are being scraped for AI on the daily.

I do not want anyone to have final control over what is and isn't in a book but the person who wrote the book. I do not want writers to feel like they need to cede any amount of control over the copy in that book over to readers in order to succeed.

And I honestly think it would be a lot healthier for everyone involved if we as readers (viewers, general audiences) just accepted that we don't get everything we want, and creatives are not here to dance to our tune. They are people, and they want to tell the stories they want to tell. Your power? Is in your dollar. If you don't like that shit, don't buy it. If you don't want to support it... don't! Fuck, if you want to talk shit on the internet about how the most recent book in the series was absolutely not for you, that's your right, too.

I don't want you fucking with a single word on the page, though. Feel free to go write your own shit--prosper! But that part of what Nora said that rings true to me most is "they come from me". These books come from writers. You have them because of those writers. So, I don't know, dude. Just take what's there, and if you dislike it, spit it out and move on to the thing you will like. Authors aren't churn factories to produce what you want, and ROMANCE as a genre, however commercial it is and however much it does have that One Rule that defines it as a genre... Is still something that writers should be allowed to experiment with. That's the work writers put in. The work readers put in? Finding shit that works for us. And I'm telling you... With a little practice, it ain't hard. How do y'all think I have all these books to recommend? Lmao

[lerios]

the first 5 seconds of time war 2

narvin voiceover: this is how the world ends 😔

me, leela, the doctor, any non time lord that's ever been to Gallifrey:

[lovsome]

am i so hard to care about?

[noandnooneelse]

ive been digging around in the annotations on Madame Eulalie and found this and i think its cool:

that little hobby jeeves has that is mentioned once (as i assumed as a deus ex machina for plot reasons) already comes up in one of the first stories! that was 1922, and then it comes up again literally more than 30 years later and i did not make that connection at all, and now im kind of impressed by just how diligent a writer Wodehouse is

[dahldahlbills]

I really need to get serious about personal projects again

[sharpbluejay]

i cannot stop thinking about the horror of mary’s resurrection, she died with all those secrets and she comes back to life and her babies are grown men and they know! they know what she did! john raised them as hunters which was the worst thing she could ever imagine happening to her children, they’re attached at the hip, they’ve died or tried to die for each other multiple times, her first day back on earth and she watches dean go insane with worry for sam since he's been kidnapped, they’re friends with monsters, they kill without flinching. her sons are strangers with her children’s names and the man she loved is dead, and apparently he was driven by her death every day until he killed himself for dean, and while dean dances around all those facts in her first episode back, sam gives her john's journal which has to be filled with some sick shit because again, john's grief changed him fundamentally to the point where she wouldn't recognize him. everything surrounding her resurrection is just horrifying, its a gift for dean but literally plunges mary into her worst nightmare