#I can't believe this novel has me posting Thoughts on Tumblr again

[spiderwing-nightman]

I think there's a lot said about Richard never being able to fit into the Greek Class fully, but I don't think there's enough said about how the three that remain are the three that, for some reason or another, were never going to be able to be treated as whole members. There was always going to be something causing tension between them and the rest of the group that Henry, Bunny, and Charles would never have. For Camilla it's her status as the only woman of the group, for Francis it's the fact that he's openly gay character (yes, the rest of the group have their sexualities seriously in question and we know Charles slept with Francis, but Francis wasn't hiding that he was gay, so it wasn't ignorable the way the others' sexualities may have been), and for Richard it's his financial status (no the twins and Bunny were not rolling in money the same way Henry and Francis were, but they were still raised around it, and, unlike Richard, had a safety net of some sort). This is also what allows Henry, Bunny, and Charles to influence the group as much as they do. Francis, Richard, and Camilla rarely make decisions that send the entire group into crisis. Even Camilla moving out isn't so much an independent action as it is a reactionary decision to Charles' drinking. There is a reason why it's always Richard driving Francis to the emergency room and it's because Francis simply doesn't and will never have the same influence over the group Henry, Charles, and Bunny do.

tl;dr Henry, Charles, and Bunny influence the group more than Camilla, Richard, and Francis (who are regulated to pawns, voyeurs, and reactionary beings) ever will and that's why Camilla, Richard, and Francis are the three that remain in the end

[studioeisa]

KAEEEE congratulations on 1k omg i can't believe i'm just finding out about this now??? i literally thought u had like 10k ndjdnjd your writing is novel worthy i cant believe you aren't running tumblr already 😔

📱 i would pretty pretty please love to hear more about actor jun if u have any thoughts to spare :3 and congrats again!! here's to many more hehe 🎉🫶🏻💓

high praise coming from one of the best writers on caratblr 😳 and i will always give jun to the world's biggest huihui <3 mwaaa!

📱 boyfriend actor!jun x reader (part one, part two). part of my follower milestone celebration. word count: 676.

Jun has started doing his own stunts.

A part of you knows that your fear is misplaced. He’s training with the legendary Jackie Chan, of all people. Your boyfriend is in capable hands.

Still, you can’t help but worry.

It had always been this way even before he dipped his toes into the action genre. Texts of have you eaten? during long shoots. Encouraging Post-It’s snuck into his coat pocket pre-flight. You worry, and you worry, and you worry, and Jun loves you for it. 

He’ll smile at the texts and force himself to eat something small. He’ll keep the notes in his wallet and reread them when he misses the sound of your voice. He lets you fret over him because you give as much as you get, and he would never say ‘no’ to you.

Even if it can be a bit— overbearing, at times. Jun keeps his eye rolls and scoffs to a minimum as you lather his body in efficascent oils, as you slap pain relief patches on his aching joints. 

“Bit of an overkill, no?” he mumbles. His supposed distaste is betrayed by the way he practically preens when you begin to knead at the knots in his shoulders.

You can only sigh at his attempt to be nonchalant. “My boyfriend is an action star,��� you say, your teasing tone edged with admiration. It makes Jun want to swoon. “The least I can do is make sure he’s being taken care of.” 

“You can take care of me other ways.” 

“Shut up.” 

“How about you shut me up by—” 

There’s bickering, and teasing, and your fingers dancing along his sides to get him to laugh, to stop flirting. Jun is bone tired and every part of his body hurts, but he’s never tired of you. Nothing ever hurts when it comes to you. 

Jun can be a hypocrite, though. 

You realize this on an unassuming Saturday evening, a rare weekend where the two of you can just stay in. You’re reading a book by the couch while Jun is absentmindedly scrolling through SNS. When you let out a low, unbidden hiss, he’s immediately snapping to attention. 

“Babe?” he calls, his attention leaving the TikTok on his screen. 

“‘S nothing,” you huff. 

Your boyfriend sets aside his phone and leans forward from the other side of the couch, crowding into your space. “Liar,” he says. “What is it?” 

You extend your hand in response. In the low light of your living room, it’s almost invisible, but Jun doesn’t miss it. The raised, reddish skin on your index finger, put there by the corner of your page. 

“It’s just a paper cut,” you’re saying, but Jun isn’t about to have any of that. 

He’s on his feet before you can complain. “Come back here,” you whine. 

His response of “no!” is muffled as he makes a beeline for the bathroom. He emerges moments later with your First Aid kit, his eyebrows furrowed with genuine concern and determination. 

“Junhui,” you say exasperatedly. 

He doesn’t listen. When has he ever? He kneels at your side and begins to rummage through the kit, mumbling about antiseptics and cotton balls. 

You two could have been done much faster if you didn’t resist him here and there. By the end of it, though, you compromise to a Sanrio adhesive bandage despite the absence of any blood at all. 

“Be more careful next time,” Jun says as he snaps the kit close. He poses the words as a joke, but you can hear the hint of worry in his tone. (He gives as much as he gets.) 

You close the distance to kiss him, and his expression smooths out at the familiar affection. “Overkill,” you tease, murmuring the words against his mouth.

Jun worries. You love him for it. 

At your peck, his lips curl up into a smile that you can almost taste. He doesn’t answer— just grabs your arms and pulls you down on top of him. You go down squealing, and then you’re both laughing until your sides hurt.

It’s the good kind of hurt, though. 

[queer-reader-07]

a love letter to trans romance

because i can't be normal about media and i'm making it y'all's problems

hi hello and welcome to my mildly unhinged ramblings about love and gender. this post comes to you in three sections, enjoy <3

--

t4t romance novels made me believe in love again

the first romance book i ever read was The Feeling of Falling in Love by Mason Deaver. TFOFIL is a t4t (trans for trans) romance that follows a teenage trans boy, Neil Kearney, and a figuring-out-their-gender teen, Wyatt Fowler, as they get themselves wrapped up in peak YA romcom shenaniganary and eventually fall in love. cute, right? just a fun little romcom, not much more to it?

yeah well that's what i thought going in, but coming out of that book i was in tears. tears because i'd never read a story about trans love before. tears because at that point in my life i'd never allowed myself to fully claim the word "trans." tears because Wyatt made me feel so seen and so real.

there's this one scene where Wyatt is talking to Neil and they describe themself as being the kind of person who sometimes wants to wear makeup and dresses, but other times they like their body hair and scruffy beard. and i just remember nodding along and then absolutely melting because Neil takes it in stride, he comforts Wyatt and let's them know that they don't need to have it figured out just yet. Neil makes it clear that he's there, and that Wyatt doesn't need to come out to anyone unless they're ready.

Mason Deaver has another t4t romance, Okay, Cupid. and that similarly had me in my feels because there is something so special about finding people who embrace you for all that you are.

every t4t romance I've read has one thing in common, the fact that the love interests do not love each despite the other's transness. their transness is not an obstacle to love or to attraction or to adoration, it is an object of it. their transness is something to be admired and to be loved and to be cared for. it is not something the other has to "get over."

reading The Feeling of Falling in Love was the first time i ever thought to myself "maybe, just maybe, i can call myself trans and still be loved." because up until that point i hadn't let myself accept that i was some flavor of trans. up until that point i'd said "not cis" without ever saying trans because i was so scared my being trans would make me unlovable. t4t romance books showed me how wrong i was. they showed me that my ability to be loved was not dependent on my girlhood.

ha you thought i could write something this long on tumblr and NOT mention good omens? think again bestie

i have held a trans reading of crowley since i read the book and the show only solidified it for me. crowley canonically plays with gender.

he's dressed femme during the crucifixion scene, his modern look is a mix of men's and women's pieces, his hair is a Whole Thing in and of itself. i could go on but i digress.

but it's not just the way he plays with gender that informs my trans reading of him. it's also how his character arc can very easily be read as an allegory for transness.

an angel who falls (a girl who isn't a girl anymore)

a fallen angel turned demon (a girl who is a boy now)

a demon who isn't really a demon anymore (a used to be girl, a thought to be boy, is now nonbinary)

girl = angel and boy = demon is entirely arbitrary in this please don't read into it

now, you may be thinking "A how in god's name does this apply to trans romance?" to which i say, aziraphale falls in love with every version of crowley. aziraphale beams heart eyes at angel!crowley before the beginning and loves crowley as a demon for millennia and is so deeply and unabashedly in love with crowley in his not-quite-demon form of s2.

aziraphale loves all the versions of crowley because crowley's angel or demon-ness (gender) is not the reason aziraphale loves crowley. aziraphale doesn't love crowley because he's a demon or because he used to be an angel, aziraphale loves crowley because it's crowley. crowley in whatever clothes he chooses to where, crowley with whatever hairstyle he's fancying at the moment, crowley as he inhabits the shades of grey just a little more.

to me, that is so easy to read as a trans love story. you could argue it's t4t depending on how you read aziraphale, but to me, it's at the very least a love story between a mostly-demon who gets down to some gender fuckery and an angel who loves him very much.

fuck it let's talk about fanfiction

i don't think i could make this post without mentioning @ineffabildaddy's fic I'm Beginning to See the Light.

i have a complicated relationship with my body. i don't plan to ever medically transition because i don't want to make any permanent changes to my body. but there are days where all i want is to have a flat chest and hips that are flush with the rest of my body but instead i'm stuck with tits and an hourglass figure cis people always seem to focus on.

i don't hate my body, but the idea that anyone could look at it and not just see A Woman is beyond me. i walk through life being perceived as a very feminine woman even on the days that i feel the most androgynous. the idea that a lover could look at my body and still see me for who i am feels like a dream that could never happen.

and IBTSTL slapped me (lovingly) across the face with the message that, actually, i can be loved as my whole self and that there are people out there who don't look at me and see A Woman and those people don't love me any less. IBTSTL made me feel safe in my trans body because it said "you are worthy of love and adoration because your transness is not something to get past it is something to admire. it is something to love."

--

i think the point i'm trying to make here is this: trans love stories are so special to me. they've been so vital in my own journey to love and accept myself. they're the reason i can imagine myself maybe having romantic love in the future.

representation matters, it can quite literally change your life.

[capricioussun]

I don't know if I or another person have asked but what's your interpretation of Fell Papyrus?

I swear I'm going to try and keep this from becoming a novel but I can't be held accountable for if I fail.

Edit post-typing: I failed. Anyway

So, similarly to the US boys, I started off basically taking the UT boys (as I see them) and going all the way back to the beginning and seeing how the changes would ultimately affect them. This pretty consistently has a bigger impact on Papyrus than Sans because I've always seen Papyrus as very...sort of impressionable? Or reflective. A lot of his behaviors come from those around him and their expectations.

To me, he comes across as the type of character to try to mold himself into a specific shape because he sort of lacks his own sense of self. I've always headcanoned this as coming from my standard lore of being like, partially synthetic and receiving a larger part of Gaster's soul than Sans in their creation, meaning he takes more after someone with low empathy and serious issues with derealization, and only became even more sort of..."detached" from himself after Gaster shattered and it damaged his and Sans' "code" (Papyrus more so, again, because of having a larger percentage of Gaster's soul).

In UF, because of how Gaster was, and because of how much fear he semi-unintentionally instilled in Sans, that Sans then went on to try and teach Papyrus through the lens of, he wound up with a tremendously overzealous responsibility complex. Gaster had impressed on the boys how important they were to his plans to free monsterkind, all the way up until shattering when the boys were still young. And then Sans tried desperately hard to teach Papyrus how to be entirely self sufficient and survive in a world as cruel as theirs because he believed he'd get killed or Fall Down at pretty much any moment (Sans was a very, very stressed out kid/teenager).

So Papyrus essentially learned Anything can be an exploitable weakness, not to show emotions, do anything for the sake of surviving, and above all else, protect those that need protecting, with Sans, and eventually Undyne, at the top of the list. This is also where his deeply secretive nature really settled in, and also why he struggles so much to accept...really anything good that's offered freely. Kindness, friendship, help. He has to remain untouchable, unreachable, the one to provide and not take, because if he messes up, if he lets the wrong person in, he's not just risking his own well being, but by extension, everyone who's depending on him.

It's also a really good way to distract himself from the crushing loneliness. Saw a tumblr post the other day that resonated so hard w/ my ideas of him that said something along the lines of "if I cannot be wanted I will be needed, and if I am not needed then let me be used until there is nothing left". He was never really allowed to develop himself as a person, not fully, so he completely filled himself with what he thought he had to be. When those things are taken away, he has nothing, and he’s too terrified to let that happen.

It's also why I hc he, in some ways, winds up having a really really hard time after surfacing in some of my ideas/aus/stories. He was needed underground, Sans needed him, Undyne needed him, Snowdin needed him, and by extension the whole underground did, to keep the balance. Above ground, everyone calming and becoming happier, Sans and Toriel settling down, Undyne and Alphys settling down, being a replaceable member of the ambassadorial team, he's hit with this just...utter loss of self.

Getting carried away on the specifics. He and UT Papyrus actually align in a lot of ways it's hard to see at first glance. Both have their "roles", both have a specific sort of "bit" they do with their brothers, both let Undyne believe she knows what's best because they believe it's what best for her, both, despite knowing better, desperately want to believe in the greater good. Despite all the aforementioned problems, despite preparing his whole life to kill humans, he's the first to give up and try to help Frisk. They're just a child. A child who wants to help, who's scared, who doesn't even have a brother to look after them.

In reality he’s a nervous wreck. My man is TIRED. He puts himself under tremendous pressure and doesn't know how to express nor understand emotions. His schtick is so well rehearsed anything that goes off script completely blindsides him. The soft, silly, bratty goofiness is really only under a very thin layer of ice. It doesn't take much to crack it, but that only makes him that much more defensive and paranoid. He can't risk anyone knowing how "weak" he truly is, even if most anyone who's been around him any amount of time can see it clear as day, because he’s about as good at hiding it as UT Papyrus would be lol

At least they don't know about the [REDACTED]. That, he’s actually really good at hiding.

I do wish I'd given him a different nickname than Edge looking back, but back when I'd nicknamed my main guys I just went w/ the fandom usuals so now he’s forever cursed to be Edge bc I associate it too strongly lol

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

Feel free to ignore if this is unwelcome, but have you ever thought about publishing traditionally to sublimate your income and draw in new readers? I know you've self published two books already and that you didn't feel like they did very well, but maybe the experience would be different if someone else was in charge of marketing and all the other business stuff?

Obviously everyone's experience is different but as an author myself who's published both trad and self, traditional publishing has been a completely different experience and has allowed me to focus more on writing because I'm not the one responsible for advertising/marketing/financing anymore.

There are a ton of literary agents nowadays that want to represent diverse and lgbtqia+ fiction, some of them even in Australia.

Websites like Reedsy, AgentQuery and Jerichowriters have extensive directories to find literary agents.

(This is lengthy folks so I'm putting the other two parts (and my response) under a read more! Also putting it under a read more so the anon can skip my response since it's very 'here's all the reasons I can't do this' and they just might not want to read that, lmao)

(continued -> )

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

Obviously most authors, unless they're really prolific, don't get a huge advance (the average is between $1000 - $5000) but getting your foot in the door or on the traditional publishing "ladder' so to speak can have a huge benefit for your serials. Because it gives you more exposure. Plus it's in the agent's best interest to find a publishing house that accepts stories that contain darker themes and negotiate the best deal for you.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses? I have no idea. But you could use this to your advantage. I think I remember you mentioning that writing novels felt quite isolating to you? But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

You already have a loyal readership and that's very attractive to trad pub houses and agents.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance. It could be just a landing page that says something about you and then has links to your tumblr and patreon where you're more active. That way you increase the chances of getting your serials found by additional readers and also come across looking more "professional". Not that you're not professional now. You are and I admire you greatly, but the unfortunate reality is a lot of people still judge by appearances and some will be more drawn to an author's website than a tumblr page, at least at first. So I think having a simple landing page would open up another door for you to benefit from.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

These are just suggestions and thoughts and like I said before, feel free to ignore. But I know you've mentioned wanting to grow your career in the past and I genuinely believe you can do so with some of these pathways.

~

Okay, my response. Posting this because firstly I think the suggestions could work very well for other authors reading this! And I hope they take the advice to note, and secondly because I haven't talked about this for a hot minute so let's talk about it again.

So the TL;DR is yes I have considered traditional publishing. I have actually been traditionally published in short stories, poetry, and also had my art published on covers and re: interior illustrations. But my Fae Tales works got soundly rejected when I sent them to publishing houses that were doing open calls for that sort of material. I've never heard back from an agent and I never expect to, heh.

~

Now for a bit more detail

I have been traditionally published before (it's how I got my writing out there long before I ever wrote serials), and yes, I have approached publishers with my writing since then. In fact Tradewinds was written for the traditional publishing market, and it got soundly rejected, and then shelved. The reasons it was rejected ran the gamut from 'I don't like that these fae eat humans no one is going to relate to these people' (while the editor then went on to publish vampire books idk) to 'There's too much worldbuilding you can't expect readers to keep up with this' to 'Your stories are too long, no one wants to read characters talking all the time.'

Meanwhile in my online serials I was getting feedback like 'my favourite chapters are the ones where the characters just sit in a room and talk' lol.

The traditional publishing world is also not quite as utopian for most authors as you make it seem. I'm friends with a lot of authors who are traditionally published because that's the world I came from, and unless they're solely in KU and doing generic rapid release formula romances, none of them are making that much money. Certainly not enough to live off. It may have been that you were very fortunate, anon, but I know hundreds more traditionally published authors that left trad pub to make money, and I know about 5 in trad pub personally who are making enough to live off of.

Only one of those is really writing what she truly loves to write, and even then, publishing houses have refused to commit to her entire fantasy series (and she's regularly in 'Top 10/20 Women Fantasy Authors in the World' lists) and forced her to finish the series prematurely. Something I never ever have to worry about in self pub.

The reality is that in trad pub these days, you're still in charge of most of your marketing unless you're one of the big earners for the publishing house. In fact I'd be expected to keep even more of a social media and marketing presence than I do now. I don't do almost any of the things you're supposed to do as an author in marketing to be appealing. I don't have a Facebook author account. I don't have an Instagram author account. I don't maintain or regularly send out newsletters (which automatically puts me in the like 0.05% of authors who make money doing this lmao).

I don't know if you ever have looked that closely into what m/m publishing houses expect from most of their authors, but the newsletter swaps, cover releases, review circuits, interview circuits and more are fucking grueling. We're expected to be responsible for our advertising and our marketing to a fairly massive degree. Some traditionally published in m/m still have to pay for their release blitzes out of pocket. These publishing houses, by and large, do not offer advances. You say most authors don't get large advances. I don't think most authors in this arena get offered advances at all unless they're somehow miraculously acquired by a Big 4.

We're expected to have an already established social media presence because of that (that's why it's so appealing to publishers that we have social media presences already, anon, so we can market, they can save money, and we still see only a minimal cut from the royalties).

And you still have to focus on your finances, because publishing houses like Dreamspinner straight up didn't pay a whole bunch of authors for so long they destroyed careers. They still haven't paid some of their authors. And they're still running a business and people still buy their books.

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

This is true if a) they're a big publishing house and not an indie publisher of which most LGBTQIA+ publishing houses are and b) they're willing to use them on you.

The authors that make the most money get the most resources. If they believe you're going to earn back your advance and move thousands or tens of thousands of units per book, then yes, you will get those resources.

I have been told so many times now - even from friends who run publishing houses, including one who works at HarperCollins - that my work will never be mainstream enough to have broad appeal. They literally told me not to keep trying re: trad pub, because that was my dream for a long time. These folks have given me rock solid advice in the past, it's one of the reasons I'm doing so well now via Patreon + Ream. But they were like (paraphrasing) 'you don't write 60-80k romances and you don't want to and that's not your strength anyway, you're multi-genre which makes you hard to market, you write psychological and literary trauma recovery which is hard to market, you write character studies which are hard to market, publishing houses often don't commit to series anymore if the first two don't move units and if they pulled the plug you'd be contractually obliged to never finish that series until your contract was up.' I could go on, but it was like yeah...actually. Fair.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses?

They do, but most publishing houses want very formulaic dark romance which is not what I write.

I have a 300k omegaverse slowburn that still hasn't had any penetrative sex in it, anon. Publishing houses don't want that. They don't expect anyone will wait 4 full length novels to get to literally a single penetrative sex scene.

But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

If I rewrote them to my liking, trad pub wouldn't want them. They'd be too long! I think agents etc. take one look at me and go 'oh god, no thank you!' I'm not an easy sell, by any means.

Plus I'm very e.e about all of that with the knowledge that they then give me only about 10-15% of the royalties on the sales, vs. self-pub where I get around 70%, or subscription where I around 80% of it. When someone subscribes to me, they don't have to worry about 85-90% of their subscription fee going to a publishing house. I don't have to think about how many thousands and thousands of books I'd have to sell to make the same amount that I do now via subscription.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance.

If it was that simple, I'd be doing it. I don't mean this in a facetious way, I mean it in a: I've made a lot of websites, in fact I run one at the moment not connected to my writing (I've been running it for so long it's now in its 20s and can probably has a driver's license). I find it so tedious that I barely remember to check in on it. But forgetting about it means there's always maintenance to keep up with when I get back to it.

Running websites is simpler than it used to be, but it's still not simple. There's hosting and hosting costs, there's server changes, there's back-end maintenance etc. I'm considering it for down the track, but there's a reason I decided to go the route of Patreon over my own site. There are authors (like Christopher Hopper) who actually do subscription through their own domain, but it's a lot of work.

Even placeholder sites are still work. They need updating, details change, story titles changing etc. Maintaining my Patreon + Ream About pages is enough, they're always both a little out of date, lol.

Not that you're not professional now.

Oh no, I mean from a 'traditional publisher looking at me to see what kind of candidate I am' I'm really not though. Like I said, I don't have the newsletter (100 subscribers who get one newsletter a year is not really a newsletter), I don't have the Facebook/Tiktok/Insta/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads accounts, etc. I write multi-genre across multiple steam levels, and I'm allergic to writing serials shorter than 150k. One of my best performing original serials was an 800k contemporary story with no sex in it but a lot of BDSM. It can't be marketed as clean or sweet, it's not high steam, an entire chapter is 'boy saves snail from rain.' Also he was cruel to animals, so not exactly what I'd call a sympathetic main.

And yet that story did so well for me via Patreon + Ream, because people want the kinds of stories that publishing houses generally don't want and I happen to be writing them.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

Anon I just literally do not believe an agent would want to represent me. I have 0% belief in that. Not from a self-deprecating angle but from a 'I am not a good bet for the trad market' perspective. From a 'I have so many friends who are trad pubbed authors who stare at me like I'm insane for writing serials as long as I do' perspective. From a 'professionals in the industry have told me it's amazing I'm doing so well in serials because there's no way they'd take a risk on what I'm doing' perspective. From a 'just because it's queer and diverse doesn't mean it hits literally any other thing a trad pub is looking for' perspective. I've been doing this for 10 years. There are agents who represent work similar to mine who know what I'm doing and wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. They're not missing out on a trick, they know I'm not broad appeal, and they're right.

Also the only way I'd have the energy to manage trad pub is by quitting serials. And honestly, I never found trad pub all that much fun while I was doing it for non-novel stuff. It was fine, and it is nice to have my stuff out there, but it was a ton of admin and a lot of going back and forth between people who really only care about marketing a product, and that's great and what they excel at! But I'm too disabled to turn this job into something crushing just to potentially make more money, I'd rather just quit and go back onto a full Disability Pension. I can't see any way I still get to write the stories I want to write, in the way that I write them, and be remotely appealing to a single reputable trad pub or agent.

Also *gestures to everything in this article*

[spatort]

Hey I'm gonna take that opportunity to be nosy about your vampire novel bc anytime you mention it in your tags I'm sitting here like 👀👀 soooo if you feel like it tell me a bit about your ocs!! What are they like?

Hehe, glad you asked! (And noticed that I'm talking about it in my tags…)

Gonna put this under a cut just in case it gets long:

So my protagonist, lets call him J, was adopted by a vampire coven as a baby and turned into a vampire as an adult and because of that, pretty much everyone assumes that he is ~The Chosen One that has been prophesied to defeat The Big Bad Guy and save everyone. This presumed fate is kind of hanging over his head because it means he's basically a celebrity but he's actually pretty introverted and of course repressing loads of stuff (like his bloodlust. not only that of course, but he has the vampire equivalent of an ed). but also people are usually intimidated by him due to reasons, like the fact he has heterochromia like every good OC fantasy protag should. so, he's hung up about having to kill people and drink their blood (no vegetarian option here, it's either human blood or starve, no blood conserves or any of that shit either), but one time he spared the life of a guy he was supposed to kill and he's holding on to the thought that at least that means he can't be 100% a bad person.

as it happens, he runs into that guy again years after the fact, and this is my other major OC, let's call him E. He's a human and doesn't initially know that vampires exist, but he also has reason to believe that some kind of important fate awaits him. They pretty much immediately become friends, even though E is the polar opposite of J in many ways, he's the charismatic sunshine boy and ladies' man that everyone loves, essentially the dickie greenleaf of this story, and he definitely believes that he is the main character. So once J learns about E maybe also having a destiny of some kind, he starts wondering if E is the actual chosen one and he can somehow still get out of this whole schtick.

But in order to figure out who gets to kill the bad guy, they have to find him first, and here my third OC comes into play, G. I'm not gonna say too much about him because of plot spoilers, but essentially most vampires believes he is the ultimate bad guy that needs to be defeated and G's reaction to that is "You want a monster? I'm gonna be that monster alright". So he has this tough guy attitude and is prone to risky behavior, but he also has a super traumatic past and maybe there is another side to him? Wait and see I guess lol (if this gets ever written. But hey, I continued my current 35k ff wip after someone on tumblr made me talk about it, so who knows!! Definitely finishing that though before I can dive into these vampires again).

(I swear there are really cool female characters too, they're just unfortunately all supporting characters for reasons, I can maybe make a separate post about them? I should also definitely make fan art. But also I should write this instead of procrastinating lol)

[yujeong]

Random ass Porsche&Pete thoughts at 4pm while at work because KP has destroyed any resemblance I might have had to being an adult.

Ok. So. May I suggest that the best scene in the entire show kind of came out of nowhere? I'm of course talking about the Porsche&Pete bathroom scene in ep13, yes it's the best scene, no I do not accept criticism.

What do I mean by that? Well, we as an audience member, who know what Pete went through, who know why he returns to the compound in ruins, understand why Porsche is questioning Pete and why he's heated.

But can I suggest that we see this from a different perspective for a hot second?

Why is Porsche so insistent in knowing what happened to Pete? Why is he so angry? Why does he want to punish the people who made him suffer?

Obviously he would, right? Pete is his friend and he came back home in shambles. The people responsible need to pay.

But why is Porsche paying attention to Pete now? Why does he care now?

Think about it. Has Porsche ever done that in the show? Has he paid ANY attention to Pete prior to episode 13, when he realized Pete might be in danger? Because I can't think of anything at all.

I've rambled about their relationship before - it was actually my first post on Tumblr lol, crazy - and it continues to haunt me. How complex it is and not just "a friendship".

I wholeheartedly believe that what drives Porsche to push Pete so hard during their talk in the bathroom is guilt. He would never admit it, he doesn't even realize it, but that's what it is.

Because he forgot about Pete too. He may have gotten mad at Kinn for sending him to the minor family compound- you can see his fiery expression for a little more than a second when Tankhun talks to them both in ep13 - but he shares the blame too. Not as much as Kinn, but as his supposed friend, he does. And he knows it.

We never saw if Kinn told Porsche about Pete's mission so we can't know if Porsche knows about its significance (in the novels he knows and gets extra mad at Kinn for it, but the novels have different context altogether so we'll ignore it). I'd like to think he did, because Porsche as a character demands explanations constantly throughout the series.

Take all of the above I've mentioned and try to remember the scene again (if you've managed to forget it because I sure af haven't). To me, that's Porsche trying to correct a mistake, not him being a good friend.

Because Porsche was a lot of things but a good friend wasn't one of them.

Pete may have not thought of that, because he had other things to worry about at that moment before he'd even think of questioning Porsche's motives, but I want to believe that he eventually did wonder about them. Especially when Porsche suggested they go to Hum Bar.

It may have been a fleeting thought. It may have been just a couple of seconds of his bodyguard instincts kicking in before they were drowned in his despair. But I want to believe it happened.

What I'm wondering is what interpretation he gave to Porsche's behavior. I'm sure it was the most logical and not at all him dismissing his own self worth :)

[Shameless self promo of my Heroes and Villains series that touch upon this very concept through an alternate canon that manages to emphasize the sacrifice Pete made and Porsche's guilt about his mistake, because I'm working on the 3rd installment which I hope will get posted before 2024 comes.]

[obsequence]

hi i hope this isn't weird askdjfksdksl, you seem to be much more active on twitter but i REFUSE to make an account on that website BUT a mutual of mine just said something to me about the idea of an au where the rattlers run like. an apocalypse gladiator ring instead and ellie eventually gets caught and stuck there with abby and this is just actually insane we can't believe no one else seems to have had this idea yet??????? my first thought was tell the only ellabs person i know of who is in any way active on social media idk you can tell twitter about this or whatever i just think you need to know. i think ellabs nation (ellabs village really lol) needs to consider the possibilities

1) come to twitter i promise it’s like not that bad i just get into fights a lot 😭

2) i have a new tumblr but it’s under a pseudonym because i’m literally writing x readers and i know people will clown me and think i’m doing it in the “y/n” way (nothing wrong with that) and not the “x readers are a great way to character study without making whole ocs and you’re able to share them with a large audience” way

3) honestly , i really hate fics that have like . anything to do with the rattlers . because they’re just , like , EXTREMELY miserable (hypocritical coming from me , i know) and i deserve a speck of dopamine every now and then . but i will spread the idea ! because tbh it’s pretty good and not done before . just not my thing

4) i’m going to take this as an opportunity to explain why the fuck tl2 isn’t out yet , but it’s going to be a very longwinded self-psychoanalytical bananza , sooo . .

so , tl2 isn’t going to be a multichapter , if it ever gets put out . it’s gonna be a really long oneshot , because if i post it , i want it to be FINISHED so i don’t leave anyone waiting again .

the reason why i have a mental block against writing it right now is because i’m really unhappy about where tl1 left off . i never really liked it honestly , i just felt a bit pressured to get it out asap so i could be done . i reread the first few chapters all the time , and i really consider that its peak , because it started to feel like a chore after chapter six .

it’s hard to write the sequel to something you don’t like . it feels like you can only disappoint (if not others , yourself) and expand on its horribleness , which sounds so melancholy , i know , lol , but it’s the truth . like , how do you fix what’s broken on something you can’t touch ? by adding more that’s broken ? nuh uh . it’s a lot of stress .

also , i just . . need a creative recharge . “spencer , it’s been like five months since you finished tl !!” no i mean like . a year . before i even poke it with a ten foor pole again . LOL it’s that bad . this might change , but that’s how i feel right now .

i’ve been really insecure about my work lately , and i’ve never been able to read original novels or other fics without feeling incredibly envious of others’ talent , and it has sowed a lot of discontent inside of me . so i stopped consuming others’ work for a bit , but that just left me uninspired and in an echo chamber of my own writing without any improvement , so it became hyper-stylized and odd to read , especially months later . i don’t even know what i was trying to accomplish at some points ?? it’s all very odd and tryhard and makes me cringe .

so , right now , my goal is to read more published work lol . i’m reading my childhood favorite “daughter of smoke and bone” right now , and it’s even better than i remember . highly recommend

but yeahhh that’s why tl2 isn’t out sorry 🌸🩷🩷💕🥺🥺🥺

(but like fr i am incredibly sorry)

[arrow-dodger]

I have been spending increasingly less time on social media. I basically don't even use Twitter anymore and haven't for like at least this entire year so far. I mostly open Facebook to look people up for things or keep track of events, and I basically never spend time scrolling on there because videos autoplay with sound enabled and that's fucking insane to me.

I'm on here sometimes, if this even counts. I kinda don't think so. I only have TikTok so I can view things people send me, but I actually legitimately hate being on there for more than a video or two at a time. It gives me anxiety.

When I open my phone for mindless scrolling I actually typically end up on reddit now. And I was a reddit hater in the past, believe me. But the idea that I can follow pages for all the different things I'm interested in, and those pages are what make up my entire feed, is so novel amongst all these other sites that constantly push OTHER shit in my face. I know there's an algorithm there, but it's kind of fine? I mean I'm still just seeing fandom discussions, posts of cute animals, uhhh kinda everything tumblr was for me in like 2012, if I'm being honest.

One thing I do that is probably actually bad for me though is read those "relationship drama" kinds of subs. There are a lot of those and I kinda can't get enough of them. They definitely make me think deeply about human relationships and how complicated that shit is, and playing thought experiments like that is fun for me I think.

And man, I used to think that the people writing posts on those subs were the people with issues, but the people who frequent those subs and COMMENT on those posts are the ones with the worst issues, I'm finding. Every single post has at least a couple of people very concernedly explaining to OP some variation of "your boyfriend is an abusive narcissistic sociopath and is going to murder you and you need to get out YESTERDAY," no matter the conflict. It's actually wild to me to see people talking so confidently and prescriptively about the lives of strangers they've only read a few paragraphs about. It's like they're trying to explain to the poster what that person's own life is sometimes. The lack of nuance and critical thinking often startles me, but the patronizing tone REALLY does me in.

It reminds me of the black and white thinking of a teenager (which I was guilty of a thousand times over, as evidenced by this blog), except it's way worse because everyone these days fancies themselves some kind of psychology expert because they've read and watched things on the internet. They've read all the pop psychology "facts" and articles, they listen to true crime podcasts, they watch youtubers and TikTokers spew psychology jargon with the confidence of someone with a PhD even though they're like 22 and probably work at like, Target. So now everyone knows all the big fancy words and uses them freely.

But I personally can't get past the idea that being overly clinical and pathological about every human interaction or characteristic just leads to a lack of real empathy, self reflection, and accountability. If everything everyone else does that is bad or harmful is because of some disorder you are deciding they have that makes them Evil, then they're irredeemable and you can write them off entirely. You can take yourself completely out of having contributed to any conflict you had with that person. And if you have some self-diagnosed disorder that is an untreatable innate part of who you are that you can use to attribute any bad behaviors YOU have to, that means you may get trapped in a cycle of feeling like you never have to grow or work on yourself ever again. Which is... bad!

I dunno, it's like, sometimes people just suck. There doesn't have to be anything deeper to it. They're selfish, maybe, or a bad communicator, or they have trauma they've never worked on, or something "ugly" like BPD, or maybe you and them aren't compatible honestly, or in VERY few cases in my personal opinion, yeah, they're just vindictive. I think less people are truly cruel and vindictive than we like to think. People aren't sitting out there in armchairs with their fingers steepled, plotting evil plots about how they're going to next ruin your life. And if you think they are then consider that you're not the main character. They're usually reacting to things moment to moment just like you, and they're the hero of their own story, even if they're a shitty hero. A Game of Thrones tier hero. Hot take, but even people who are abusive are usually not evil fucking masterminds.

We should, uh, cut each other more slack. In general. We're all out here learning how to person, together, in a world and a society that is constantly trying to crush us. So yeah. Also, existing systems of classification are not the end-all-be-all and are not meant to be. Those evolve over time, and I truly think we're seeing at a rapid rate these days how a lot of our current ones are broken as fuck.

[invisiblegarters]

I agree with you about the actors - idt they really have the preference towards Khao that last anon said they did. If anything they seem pretty evenly split which is natural imo - like book is clearly closer to first than Khao, for example, but that’s normal in friendships. But anyways it’s so crazy you mention the gaipa crying scene because while I do think khaotung was INCREDIBLY amazing as gaipa I had the same level of shock regarding the reception to first as you did 😭 it’s especially strange looking back bc MLC is how I got to know Firstkhao and it was first’s performance as Alan specifically that made me interested in following them so I’m just?

About the directors - honestly, after seeing bts material it kind of feels like Nuchy is the only recent ish one who actually is aware of First’s abilities and what to do with them which is kind of sad imo.

On another note, I haven’t read the novel. Can you elaborate on the Kant thing? I’ve seen mixed thoughts but I’m leaning towards believing the bad reviews after the OF novel lol. If it’s rlly bad then that’s concerning - I was already hesitant about how he would be given Jojo’s general tendency to focus extensively on Khao but now I’m getting anxious LMFAO

That's hilarious because I would have said Book was closer to Khaotung if asked. But that said, I think that again, it might be because tumblr is where I live, and tumblr for whatever reason mostly brings me stuff about Khaotung. Can't see stuff if I'm not in the right places to look for it! But yeah I think trying to piece together who loves whom more in their personal lives is…a lot. I'm not going there. It's just none of my business.

I actually didn't say anything about Gaipa v. Alan, that was the anon, lol. I'm mostly pissed that Earth didn't get the credit he deserved for that series. The more I think about it the more it annoys me. I won't pretend I don't think that they tend to hand Khaotung the big, dramatic scene or scenes that tend to get people talking and win the awards and I'm not saying he's not good at them. What I am saying there's more to acting than that, and the fact that Earth's amazing, nuanced performance as Jim was not recognized makes me impotently furious. Like it's just a travesty what on earth (heh) is wrong with people.

This is not a diss against Khaotung, btw - I don't do that. His style of acting isn't my favorite but you'll never hear me say he's not good at it. It's just me lamenting that the style I tend to gravitate to seems to be considered if not bad, then less deserving. IMO Sand was a masterclass for First but most of what I saw while the show was airing was disparagement of either the character or the actor himself. It was a rough time for me, lol. I say again, people are really just casually really nasty about First sometimes and I don't get it.

I really can't speak too much to the director thing any more than I already have, but I keep bringing it back to being that for whatever reason, First's style of acting isn't it to them, and it shows. I don't know if there is anything that can be done about that.

Oh, the novel. The novel. Let's just say that finding out the author only wanted to do it because of Khaotung explained so much, lol. I got a little carried away, but in case you only wanted Kant spoilers I will post them first, with a warning about the rest.

And this should go without saying, but all these opinions and observations are entirely subjective, okay? Okay.

Kant: I wanted to like him, I did, but he's nothing. There's literally nothing to him. He could be replaced by a block of pretty wood and I don’t think anyone would know the difference. He has all the personality of a wet rag, and it gets worse once he "falls in love" with Bison. Has a little brother that he has two whole scenes with, one to establish why he needs money that he's being offered to track down and inform on Fadel & Bison and one that's mainly there to have Bison save the day and showcase how awesome he is. Please don't think I'm kidding that is it. And once he falls for Bison he basically just fawns over him and forgets how to be competent. Much is made of his skills as a thief but when it comes down to it it's basically Bison who has to do everything. The only emotion I could work up about this dude was rage that this is the character that my favorite actor is going to play. Feels like he's in the novel least but it could also be that he's such a nothing I've just forgotten times when he did show up. Block of wood, I tell you.  Khaotung's apparent obsession with this dude is incomprehensible to me (I still say he's attempting to gaslight us into thinking he matters at all).

And because I am on a roll, here' have impressions of the other characters, too. Feel free to stop here if you don't wanna know.

MORE SPOILERS BELOW

Bison: douchey in a way that I personally can't stand. Always made out to be the best and most interesting in the room, even when he's not. Also, not sure he even liked Kant much? Idk their dynamic bugged me. It wasn't the BDSM, it was just the way he thought about him and treated him. Once they get together Kant is fawning in a really cringy way and while Bison takes the praise he just seems to be like…above it, I guess you could say. Like he was there to be worshipped but not actually to return any of the devotion. In the end he turned out to be my least favorite character. I was relieved for the increasingly few chapters where he didn't appear.  Maybe he got better by the very end but frankly by then I was so done with him that I was just skimming to get to things I wanted to read.

Style: Fun but also…there are some questionable choices made about his character that got on my nerves.  His and Fadel's storyline is very school BL and parts of it annoyed the hell out of me. He is funny though, and I think if they tone down some of the more egregious childishness and relationship stuff, he will be a lot of fun. He's persistent and when he and Fadel really got going I liked the mutual devotion thing they were doing. Genuinely the one I would be looking forward to the most in the show.

Fadel: In the end, my favorite character. Funny enough I think that not being The Crush and not being The Designated Love Interest of The Crush really helped both Fadel and Style out, character wise, Fadel especially because thanks to being Bison's brother he gets more time devoted to him. I mean don't get me wrong it's still fairly shallow (as is everyone's, even Bison's although I'd say the author put the most effort into him), but he had a whole arc and everything, and his particular archetype is one of my favorites, I won't lie. I'm just a sucker for the dude who says he doesn't want a thing but it turns out he actually really does, he just doesn't think he can have it. I had the most fun with him and Style and if I were to watch (which to be frank I don't think is in the cards for me at this juncture, I'll wait to let my mutuals fill me in on whether First gets to do more than look pretty (he's so pretty but I also love to watch him do his thing, you know) and maybe either play catch up if I get intrigued enough or binge it when it's over) it would probably be for them.

Maybe I am being harsher than I should be, idk. Sometimes I get mad and when I do, I can become a bit of a dick. But the novel is up, you can read it for yourself. You tell me (and if you do read, please make sure to thank the person who translated it. They did it super fast and it was just a lovely thing for them to have done). Also apparently more extensive reviews than my ranting are coming in and they're…not favorable, although I haven't seen any myself.

Whether you think the show will be like the novel really depends on how you feel about everyone involved (I am a cynic from a long line of them, I am going to feel free to assume that while the story beats might not be entirely the same and while it will hopefully be better written, the care paid to the characters probably will be very close. I absolutely think we're in for The Bison Show, guest starring Fadel and sometimes Style. I don't really think they've been subtle about this lol).

But also, I think that there will be a lot of people who will like the show I am expecting. There are people who have already said they only want to watch for Khaotung, or are mainly here for JoongDunk doing a new thing, or to see First simp, and those people I think will be happy, and good for them, honestly. It's awesome when something you are looking forward to gives you exactly what you want. If the show felt like it were going to give me what I wanted I'd be there with bells on.

But since I don't feel that way, I can just not watch. Simple, easy, effective. Although I will be sad to lose my Wednesday watch.

[cherokeegal1975]

The original reposting of this video/audiobook did 8K interactions on YouTube. One of the older posts of this same video got a nice comment about this book being a wholesome movie. Another I won't even repeat on a different repost. It was rude.

This repost has only about 104 interactions and that's okay. I can see that it's taking views away from my first attempt to get more attention to it. Fine.

What frustrates me is that people don't comment and as far as I can tell, don't spend more than a half an hour with it before they drop it. It's like they have no patience. Or is it because I didn't have the time to do more than a few illustrations? (Each drawing took about a week or more to finish and it was a big project to take on illustrating a whole novel and it's a lot harder than I expected, I had to drop it at least temporarily and I don't know when I'll be able to come back to it.) Or is it because there's no kink? It's not gay? What?! Or is it because it's an experimental plot with mpreg in it? That last one I'd understand. It's weird and some people don't like weird. And the one nice comment I got I cherish it, but at the same time I wish there was something more in depth that person could've said about it. I seek more insight about my work though the mirror of other people. I don't know if I'll ever write again, it may have been a phase, but if I do, I want to know what people think because it has been useful in helping to improve my writing. The comments were rare and far between, but I never forgot the advice I did get or what people thought of the story. Usually I get them on DeviantART when I get them at all. I did get one nice comment here on Tumblr. I've got two reviews for this book on Amazon and the only one that counts is the one that's not in English. The first one being from my paternal grandmother and she's probably trying to spare my feelings. Trust me, so long as I'm not being trolled or being rude to, I'm willing to listen and I refuse to take offense if someone doesn't like my work. I'll understand because I don't like every bit of art or literature I come across either, so I can't rightly expect everyone to like mine unanimously. But I have reason to believe that my work has a chance if people would give it one. That's saying something considering that I'm my own worst critic. I use that to drive me to get better instead of letting it drag me down and I use it to try to take a more objective approach to judging my own artwork. I think I've got something worthwhile, but to make sure I'd like some feedback from a broad spectrum of people please!

Johnathan was a family man and cargo runner and had no interest in getting entangled in royal affairs. So, when a deposed and fleeing princess arranges a meeting to give him a package to keep safe, he was reluctant to take it. But she convinced him to hide the royal seal until she needed it back despite himself. Unknown to him, she had also ticked him into carrying another precious cargo.

When Johnathan learns of the trick, he’s furious. When he confronts the princess about it, he learns it’ll be impossible to return it before it’s appointed time. Then she tells him of an unbreakable bond between them and ends a long search for someone he had lost as a boy. So, instead of revenge, he does what he can to help her. He must also avoid capture; the King would execute Johnathan if he ever found out about his secret cargo.

Author's Note: I'm posting this again so it doesn't sink to the bottom of the pile. I'd really love some feedback and I really want to know what you think about my story. This project took a lot of work to complete and I may never be able to do it again. My current circumstances will not allow it...I will spare you the sad details. This story is based on an online dumpster dive I did some years ago. Worth exploring, but I generally hated how stupid, disgusting and poorly written the mpreg genera all too often is in every place I looked. It's not even my favorite genera, I tend to gravitate towards fantasy and sci-fi and sometimes mystery and suspense.

Just because I'm willing to explore out of my comfort zone in literature, doesn't mean I'll like everything I find. Anyway, all those awful mpregs looked like a challenge to me after a while. I wanted to see if I could write a good story in the mpreg genera. I figured if I could, then I really did have some talent in writing. So, let me know what you think about my story, I genuinely want to know. Even if you don't like it, I won't take offense, but please be polite. Constructive criticism is welcome, trolling is not. I never respond to trolls. This story does take some time to build, so please, have some patience. I did try to keep the pace up to a nice level for most of the book. Ages 15 and up should have no problem with this story, but I highly recommend earphones of some kind if anyone is within earshot, especially if you make it to chapter five. You can also purchase the book from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Cargo-Meriah-Smith/dp/1537355236/ref=pd_ybh_a_sccl_4/135-1912623-2050026?pd_rd_w=LbwU8&content-id=amzn1.sym.67f8cf21-ade4-4299-b433-69e404eeecf1&pf_rd_p=67f8cf21-ade4-4299-b433-69e404eeecf1&pf_rd_r=JH5E2XGTFGW23XPXB8TW&pd_rd_wg=OLxiR&pd_rd_r=188a9d3d-6bf9-4f7f-9e25-430cd3fa871f&pd_rd_i=1537355236&psc=1

[burningvelvet]

random excerpts from lord byron’s diaries that feel like tumblr posts from the 1800s

“My mind is a fragment.”

“I am too lazy to shoot myself.”

“Here I am, alone, instead of dining at Lord H.'s, where I was asked—but not inclined to go any where. Hobhouse says I am growing a ‘loup garou,’ a solitary hobgoblin. True.”

“Sleepy, and must go to bed.”

“Whether ‘Hell will be paved with’ those ‘good intentions,’ I know not.”

“Got up—redde the Morning Post containing [..] a paragraph on me as long as my pedigree, and vituperative, as usual.”

“I wonder what the devil is the matter with me! I can do nothing, and fortunately there is nothing to do.”

“Last night, party at Lansdowne House. Tonight, party at Lady Charlotte Greville's—deplorable waste of time, and something of temper. Nothing imparted—nothing acquired—talking without ideas:—if any thing like thought in my mind, it was not on the subjects on which we were gabbling. Heigho!—and in this way half London pass what is called life. Tomorrow there is Lady Heathcote's—shall I go? yes—to punish myself for not having a pursuit.”

“What a strange thing is the propagation of life! A bubble of Seed which may be spilt in a whore’s lap – or in the orgasm of a voluptuous dream – might (for aught we know) have formed a Caesar or a Buonaparte.”

“Oh that face!—by te, Diva potens Cypri, I would, to be beloved by that woman, build and burn another Troy.”

“I have found increasing upon me (without sufficient cause at times) the depression of Spirits (with few intervals), which I have some reason to believe constitutional or inherited.”

“I shall soon be six-and-twenty (January 22d., 1814). Is there any thing in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?”

“Past events have unnerved me; and all I can now do is to make life an amusement, and look on while others play. After all, even the highest game of crowns and sceptres, what is it?”

“Redde a little—wrote notes and letters, and am alone, which Locke says is bad company. ‘Be not solitary, be not idle.’—Um!—the idleness is troublesome; but I can't see so much to regret in the solitude. The more I see of men, the less I like them. If I could but say so of women too, all would be well. Why can't I? I am now six-and-twenty; my passions have had enough to cool them; my affections more than enough to wither them,—and yet—and yet—always yet and but—‘Excellent well, you are a fishmonger—get thee to a nunnery.’—‘They fool me to the top of my bent.’” (Quotations from Hamlet)

“I wish I could settle to reading again,—my life is monotonous, and yet desultory. I take up books, and fling them down again. I began a comedy, and burnt it because the scene ran into reality;—a novel, for the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought always runs through, through ... yes, yes, through. I have had a letter from Lady Melbourne—the best friend I ever had in my life, and the cleverest of women.”

“As to opinions, I don't think politics worth an opinion.”

“Tells Dallas that my rhymes are very popular in the United States. These are the first tidings that have ever sounded like Fame to my ears—to be redde on the banks of the Ohio!”

“This journal is a relief. When I am tired—as I generally am—out comes this, and down goes every thing. But I can't read it over; and God knows what contradictions it may contain. If I am sincere with myself (but I fear one lies more to one's self than to any one else), every page should confute, refute, and utterly abjure its predecessor.”

“Mr. Murray has offered me one thousand guineas for The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos. I won't—it is too much, though I am strongly tempted, merely for the say of it. No bad price for a fortnight's (a week each) what?—the gods know—it was intended to be called poetry.”

“I will not be the slave of any appetite. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at least, that heralds the way. Oh, my head—how it aches?—the horrors of digestion! I wonder how Buonaparte's dinner agrees with him?”

“If I had to live over again, I do not Know what I would change in my life, unless it were for not to have lived at all. All history and experience, and the rest, teaches us that the good and evil are pretty equally balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be desired is an easy passage out of it. What can it give us but years? and those have little of good but their ending.”

[thethirdromana]

I have a big clump of thoughts that have been prompted by reading the LOTR newsletter and Dracula Daily at the same time. I haven't quite figured them all out yet, but I'm going to see if writing them out helps.

Specifically the thing I'm interested in is how these books relate to the time at which they were published.

Let's start with the Lord of the Rings. No matter how much I know that the Lord of the Rings was published in the 1950s, there's always a record scratch moment when I'm reminded of it, for instance by discussion of connections to World War II or even World War I.

Because it feels older, right? That's not just me? It feels like it could plausibly have been published in the 1850s rather than the 1950s. A tweet that I now can't find claimed that the Lord of the Rings is among the only exposure that people today have to non-modern ways of thinking. It's a story that Tolkien consciously crafted as mythology. It should feel old, it's supposed to.

But there's also a relationship between this and the response to Tolkien. There's a quote which I also now can't find, which could equally plausibly have been from Ursula Le Guin or some random tumblr post, which says - to paraphrase - Tolkien is the father of all fantasy, and fantasy writers either accept that (Robin Hobb, Brandon Sanderson) or yell "you're not my real dad!" and write in conscious opposition to him (NK Jemison, George RR Martin, in very different ways). But there's no escaping him.

[Edited: @elven-child suggests this could have been Terry Pratchett, who said:

J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.

... which I like better than the Oedipal Tolkien-as-father version.]

Game of Thrones was published in 1991. Assassin's Apprentice in 1995. And those are just the examples I chose from books that I can see from where I'm sitting right now. The all-consuming influence of the Lord of the Rings happened very fast after its publication - again, being published in the 1850s would feel more reasonable for the depth and breadth of its cultural impact. It feels like that should take longer!

Then there's Dracula. Which is as consciously modern as the Lord of the Rings is consciously... historic? Medieval? It's remarkable how little effort it would take to move the story of Dracula to the modern day - if Dracula's castle has no wifi and dodgy mobile phone reception, the rest of the story can play out pretty much as-is, with WhatsApp messages standing in for the telegrams and emails for the letters.

(The only bit I would struggle to believe is that Van Helsing could travel back and forth to Amsterdam that often on the Eurostar or Ryanair without once being delayed.)

That's fascinating to me because Dracula is also a call-back to an older mode of writing, just as Tolkien drew on Norse sagas and Old English literature. An epistolary gothic novel is very 18th century. Even in terms of the late 19th century gothic revival, Dracula came along pretty late - Carmilla was 25 years earlier. But instead of the weight of the history of gothic literature dragging Dracula backward, it feels like Dracula drags the rest of it forward instead.

In some ways, I think this is literally what happened. The horror tropes of Dracula became the horror tropes of 20th century cinema, and the result is that the content and themes of gothic literature are familiar to us. We understand most of what Northanger Abbey is parodying even if we've never read the Mysteries of Udolpho or any of the other novels that Austen satirises. The effect of Dracula's popularity has been to keep itself current in ways that Bram Stoker could never have anticipated or planned.

I'm not sure I've figured out exactly what my point is here, but it was fun to think about anyway.

[kates-sweet-escape]

KinnPorsche - It's all a ruse (a theory)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for KinnPorsche the Series. Read at your own risk. I haven't read the novel, only bits and pieces that I've found online so this is purely based on the TV Series. Also, this post is based on the work of other amazing Tumblr creators that will all be credited within this post. Brace yourself - this is a long one.

Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert, I am just a german romance-novel writer. Also, I come from a eurocentric perspective as I was raised in Germany by a British mother and a German father.

Additional KinnPorsche Content by me:

KinnPorsche: The question of true privilege (Meta - Episode 6)

KinnPorsche: Kinns Breakdown - I can't believe you still want me (Meta - Episode 7)

Hello everyone.

I swear to god, the things this show and this fandom make me do. I usually don't share theories. Or meta. Or anything. I left the active part of fandoms a long time ago, but here I am, typing away with a facemask on and a half-empty glass of wine right next to me, cause damn I need a little self-care after watching the emotional rollercoaster that was Episode 9.

Ever since Episode 9 aired I've read a lot of opinions about Kinn, his character, and his choice not to trust Porsche. Reactions within the fandom vary from genuine understanding to absolute outrage, a fascinating mixture of empathy and cancel culture.

And ever since that devastating moment at the end of the episode I've been thinking. A lot. Maybe more than what is healthy considering the fact that this is just a TV-Show that somehow managed to take over my life.

Things didn't quite add up to me. I was caught in this weird emotional limbo of I do understand Kinn as a fellow individual with massive trust issues caused by ex-lovers that betrayed us and After what they've shown us last week and with the emotional progress those two characters have made, Kinns reaction does not make that much sense from a writers perspective.

So I went back to watch those last few minutes over and over again (and before you ask me - no, I am not okay! Porsches pleading and soft "Ai Kinn" will haunt me tonight), took screenshots, read the previous meta while trying to fit the puzzle pieces together. And then the brilliant @moerusaii posts this amazing piece of meta that convinced me to share my thoughts with you guys.

Because I have the theory that this might be an elaborate ruse by Kinn and Porsche to trick Tawan and Vegas.

And here is why:

Kinn, Tawan and that one mirror frame

This is that one frame that kickstarted it all for me in Episode 9. @luckydragon10 whom I'm very much a fan of, has talked about what mirrors signify in this post, and ever since then I've been paying a lot more attention to the usage of mirrors in KinnPorsche.

We see Tawan and Kinn alone in Tawans old apartment to retrieve the evidence of who is behind the Italians (which is probably useless anyway - and YES all the shade for this b*tch). While Tawan is "remembering" the real location of the USB stick, this shot happens. We see the real Tawan, but we only see the reflection of Kinn, probably signifying that Kinn has a hidden agenda, keeping the truth hidden from Tawan while showing a side of himself that is not real and only a mere reflection of himself.

It's only a short frame but something about it feels so deliberate that I couldn't possibly ignore it.

Maybe it also means that Tawan is only seeing an old version of Kinn, feeding into the issues he had rather than seeing the real Kinn that has maybe gotten rid of them with a partner by his side he can truly trust, all without his vicious ex-lover noticing who is focused on the reflection he is familiar with.

Kinn breaking the fourth wall

Okay, I've already mentioned @moerusai and her amazing post but I still want to add a little bit to that. (And thank you Mo for sending me a DM so I could use your gifs that looks a million times better than my screenshot!)

When I watched Episode 9 for the first time, this shot made me so uncomfortable. Kinn looks straight at the audience, no filter, no mirror, no nothing. And for the first time, I felt like I am looking at the soul of this man, bruised and bare and begging to be understood and to be trusted. It felt like he looked at me to tell me that things are going to be okay, as long as we keep our eyes on him and see past what is shown, willing to stare into the shadows until we can see everything that's hidden in the darkness.

The lighting when Vegas and Porsche are alone is not green.

We all remember this scene from Episode 7. The scene where Porsche and Vegas stumble into the bathroom. The light in this scene is green, signifying danger as the amazing @antique-forvalaka has pointed out in her "KinnPorsche and the Use of Color" Series that I will mention again later on. It has been pointed out by @yellingaboutkp in this post that Porsche faked being drunk because he already suspected Vegas being shady and wanted him to show his true colors (no pun intended). If we assume this to be true, then Vegas should remain a threat to Porsche, his light remaining green.

Now look at this:

The color in this scene is teal and not green. We've seen this color before, in episode 5, and as @antique-forvalaka pointed out in this post this specific mixture of blue and green is used when there is a danger that Porsche is able to handle. When he is not as helpless as he appears to be. When he is forming a plan.

But Kate, what does Vegas have to do with any of this? He isn't Tawan! Yes, my lovelies, you are correct. He isn't Tawan. But ever since he doubled down on the Kinn Shot His Ex Rumor, I am convinced that he's got something to do with it. Especially considering his disgustingly perfect timing and his offer to Porsche to run away together. In addition to that, we know that he will storm the compound from the trailer. So he is most definitely one of the main villains of the show and just like a snake with its beautiful and shiny green scales, he is able to slither into anything just so he can poison it in one swift bite.

We are still waiting for that handshake (Trailer)

Yes, the trailer. I am even going back that far. I am sure that this scene takes place at Yok's bar (she's a true MVP) and I think it might even be a flashback where Kinn and Porsche talked about their plan, far away from prying eyes and ears. And what could be more romantic than a date night like that? A couple that schemes together stays together!

But all jokes aside, this scene might also take place later on when the two of them have drifted apart, signified by the fact that Porsche is wearing Jeans, something he stopped doing ever since getting emotionally closer to Kinn and adapting part of his style. So I might be completely wrong about this and it's not them scheming but instead reconciling.

When it all goes up in flames - Porsche remains (KinnPorsche: The Hidden messages)

And since we are already on a trip down memory lane, I am taking you guys back to "KinnPorsche. The Hidden Messages" when it was announced that we would still be getting KinnPorsche the Series after months of thinking that it might get canceled.

We see Kinn standing in front of a banner with the word TRUST on it. It goes up in flames, revealing Porsche waiting behind it.

This could mean a great many things, especially now that they've decided to give him a phoenix tattoo that he also adapted into his name as an underground boxer. It could mean that he is rising from the ashes after Kinn burned the trust they've shared. Or it could mean that he is rising from the ashes of the trust that Tawan had broken when he sold Kinns information to the Italians. That Porsche is the one rebuilding Kinns trust from the dustry crumbs that Tawan left behind, willing to survive in the heat of the flames that lick at his skin, threatening to burn him too.

Either way, I think we can all agree that Porsche is the only one that Kinn can and should trust, and I sure as hell hope that my theory is correct and that Kinn knows that too.

[joys-ramblings]

I'm going to assume that this is in good faith, but like, a lot of this has been discussed intensively before.

Long reddit post here: (3) Does SQQ love Binghe or not? A close reading and analysis : SVSSS (reddit.com)

A tumblr post here: Currently Under a Rock — Miss Faelicy I would love to get your opinion on... (tumblr.com)

There's more great posts around but they'll take a while to dig up.

I don't think you have to 'get it'. You're allowed to ship other things. You're allowed to prefer other pairings. But I guess if you want to see why people enjoy Bingqiu, I'll add some thoughts.

At least for me, the whole point of Bingqiu is finding ways to have healthy communication from rocky starting points. Look, of course a 'healthy', well-communicated relationship with equal balances of power from the outset is great. But for a lot of people, this is not how the world works. Not even getting into neurodivergence or trauma or things like this, the way that people experience attraction is extremely varied. Stray even slightly from the accepted mainstream, and you're quickly labelled 'weird', 'problematic', 'broken' etc. It's so easy to get into increasingly deep pits about how unlovable and broken you are, because e.g. the way you experience attraction is particularly intense, or you feel extreme anxiety about being abandoned.

Luo Binghe has trust issues in large part because of his childhood. Because he grew up in poverty, because he was deeply misfortunate, because Shen Qingqiu (for understandable reasons from his pov) acted in confusing and contradictory ways. And he knows this. He hates himself, regards himself as a monster, thinks it's obvious that Shen Qingqiu should hate him. He works around the clock to reign his worst instincts in, but he's hurting himself, and Xin Mo isn't helping - he can't do this own his own, and eventually he breaks.

The climax of the novel is Maigu Ridge, but the point of Maigu Ridge is Shen Qingqiu understanding that Luo Binghe is traumatised and desperately in need of love. He's not a overbearing dark lord or crazy yandere, he's not the Bingge from PIDW that he thought he knew. From that point onwards (well, earlier actually) Shen Qingqiu knows Luo Binghe isn't trying to harm him. And once Shen Qingqiu gives his speech (and afterwards, at CQM, chooses to go with him) Luo Binghe knows he is loved. That someone chose him, even throwing their life away for him (three people actually - his biological mother, his adopted mother, and Shen Qingqiu).

And the trigger of this entire sequence of realisations... was Shen Jiu and Yue Qi not communicating with each other. Shen Qingqiu saw what happened to them because they didn't talk to each other, then immediately went 'oh no, that's what Binghe and I are doing right now!', before going off to fix things. Yes there are things to sort out (the whole 'their story had just begun'), but the air has been cleared. They've made a fundamental step towards a healthy, communicated relationship.

On the other side, Shen Qingqiu is clearly closeted queer. He adamantly refuses to believe his attraction to Luo Binghe is real (and apparently refuses to believe gayness is real until it slaps him in the face). He is deeply entrenched in heteronormative views, and feels shame for liking someone. His attraction is clouded by artificial fear - fear that is ultimately dispelled, first in a realisation that Bingmei != Bingge, second in a realisation that Bingmei is the sticky child he raised. The internalised homophobia is still there, but again, 'their story had just begun'.

Someone has written about this, but Luo Binghe's stickiness allows Shen Qingqiu a sense of normality. In China, 'Sajiao' is the practice of deliberately acting like a spoilt child to get affection, typically done by girls. Binghe is 'playing the girl' in the relationship (partly) because it makes Shen Qingqiu feel more comfortable in his masculinity. It gives Shen Qingqiu a way of denying affection, while still gaining affection (note that when Shen Qingqiu told Luo Binghe to go away and he did, Shen Qingqiu got upset). Shen Qingqiu can spoil and be spoilt without feeling shame over it.

To demonstrate the change in Shen Qingqiu's feelings, note that at Maigu Ridge, when Luo Binghe was literally about to destroy Shen Qingqiu's home and was threatening to kill all of his friends, Shen Qingqiu didn't feel fear. He felt pain. Because by this point, he realised that this crazed state was something he'd led Luo Binghe to himself, that this wasn't who Luo Binghe was at heart. If only he hadn't misunderstood so badly, Luo Binghe might never have become who he was. (And also note that once Xin Mo was destroyed, Luo Binghe was no longer in this state, and very much willing to let Shen Qingqiu go) Contrast this to when he was terrified of a 14 year old.

Being abandoned multiple times as a child by the people you love. Having a heritage that makes you hated to the point people will kill you at sight. Growing up in a society that condemns you for who you like. Being thrown into a new life with the threat of dismemberment hanging over your head. These are not things anyone has control over, and whilst they might not be 'realistic' in the sense that svsss is fantasy, the things they represent are very much things that people experience. And despite their starting points, Bingqiu eventually took steps towards communicating with each other, setting boundaries, respecting each others' wishes, all of these things. In fact, by the end of the extras, they were better at it than a lot of other BL couples. These stories have meaning to us, because they say 'no matter how unlovable you think you are, no matter how much shame you hold because of your feelings, you can find someone who is perfect for you'. Because Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe are meant for each other. They are weird about each other in ways that don't have to make sense for outside parties.

Final note on power balance. Luo Binghe is big scary demon lord, but Shen Qingqiu is his teacher. What is that, if not true balance.

Breaking news: Bingyuan is more toxic than u believe?? (not clickbait) (reaL)

ok so ive been thinking long and hard about their relationship and it doesnt make sense to me its so toxic and idk why theyd be the main pair of svsss that has so much potential for healthy loving ships (re: liuyuan)

Firstly: their relationship as a whole Binghe is notoriously sticky, and because we are sort of reading the novel through shen yuans eyes its an endearing trait. But if you think about it isnt it suffocating? It also shows an innate lack of trust in SY to do his own stuff and come back afterwards because of Binghe’s trust issues (ofc id have trust issues too if someone pushed me off a cliff but still). Binghe needs to work this out because the smothering is so toxic…

Next: love bombing and semi stockholm syndrome? this relationship is so funny to me because its like stockholm but weirder. SY literally lived in fear that LBH would murder him in the future and this causes him to cling to any affection LBH is giving because he’s taking it as reassurance to himself that he’ll live to see another day. Also im going to be honest the way SY treated LBH is sort of love bombing. He acts like a stern shizun at the start of the novel to not be OOC, then suddenly starts treating LBH as the sole star shining in the dark, then throws him off a cliff… It really gives a guy whiplash yk? Especially when you consider that aside from the washer woman, LBH has never been treated with love in his whole life up till this point. Hes been bullied so badly and even his own shizun hates him. He’s a literal child at this point in time, he’ll crave any love given and it is easy to see how this thirst for love could spiral into the more obsessive tendencies.

Now: Binghe and Bingmei I think that as Demons, you could sort of boil both OG!Binghe and Binghe (Bingmei)‘s treatment of SQQ into the base 7 deadly sins. Binghe would be Ira (Wrath/Hatred) and Bingmei would be Greed (Obsession). Their growing years as children under their respective shizuns has shaped their views and their feelings towards said shizuns have been carved deeply into their hearts. You can see how strong these emotions are in both Binghe’s elaborate and drawn out torture of OG!SQQ and Bingmei’s stickiness and overall yandere tendencies towards SY. Judging from the scale of LBH’s hatred towards OG!SQQ and drawing a parallel, current Bingmei’s obsession and greed for SY’s love is off the charts.

So what would happen if SY didnt reciprocate these feelings? If he did something that made Bingmei irrevocably angry? Emotions are wildly changing and never constant, and thus Bingmei’s affections is and will always be a damocles sword above SY’s head. SY may think he loves Bingmei, but he clearly doesn’t trust the constancy of the reciprocated feelings, and he definitely thinks about LBH getting blackened.

LBH and SY’s befuddling relationship dynamics: Now, they started off as master-disciple. This may seem not as important, but in Chinese there’s this saying “teacher for a day, father for a lifetime”. Do you understand what this means now that theyre in a relationship? Its a really weird power dynamic. Not to mention the whole “Demon lord/Person who swallowed said Demon Lord’s blood”. As I mentioned previously, because we are seeing SVSSS out of SY’s perspective, the importance of this is sort of glossed over with a “but its Binghe! Binghe’d never hurt me…”. LBH is able to control the blood to harm on scales unimaginable. He can kill, torture, cause you to be in excruciating pain, etc. LBH forcing his demon blood in SY is equivalent to LBH ripping out SY’s beating heart and holding it in his palm. He can literally crush the heart at any given moment and end SY’s life. Much motivation to convince yourself that you are in love with the one holding your life in his hands, right?

Wrapping this up because idt people will actually even read this: SY and LBH’s relationship may look like love up close, but its really toxic and they clearly lack the trust needed in a relationship. If there isn’t mutual respect and trust, can you even call their relationship love? I personally am of the opinion that it isnt love, especially considering the obsessive tendencies of LBH.

Ofc I have more to say and I hope you guys will discuss with me, but its late now so im keeping this quite short. If you’ve read the entire post marry me and pls still read SVSSS its a gem :)

[hopeymchope]

The post was a few years ago (or last year) it looks like, yes, but basically you said something about what you thought the end of ‘Danganronpa Togami’ meant, then @drmedicsgamesurgery chimed in in the reblogs to tell you that your interpretation was wrong/invalid, then said their interpretation in a way that felt like the vibes of one of those Reddit “Um actually” posts, and I kind of felt bad about it for you just to read it, like it’s a fandom, we can be nice to each other and respect each other’s interpretations. Good to @drmedicsgamesurgery as well though if the two of you are on good/much better terms now.

Ohhh, okay. Thanks for clarifying this to me!

I can find a post or two similar to what you're describing related to Danganronpa Kirigiri, and I can remember some other disagreements —I know we've always disagreed on the characterizations of Jin and Fuhito, though I largely blame Takekuni Kitayama for that. :P But I can't find a post related to the Danganronpa Togami light novels that contains any major disagreements? Or maybe I just didn't interpret any of the disagreements in those posts as anything major

Admittedly, my Tumblr has been actively posting since something like late 2016, so I'm just gonna go ahead and believe you if you say such a post exists, lol. Six years worth of a blog that posts damn near daily is a LOT of posts to sift through. As it stands, I probably just don't remember this particular incident. Sounds like it leans towards being on the more recent side of the Hopey history, but it still isn't ringing bells with me, and I can't seem to do a search good enough to locate it... sorry. But maybe that's for the best, y'know?

I don't exactly have a direct relationship with @drmedicsgamesurgery beyond A) us sometimes commenting on or reblogging each other's posts and B) us weirdly getting mistaken for being the same person for some inexplicable reason.... but regardless, no worries there — I have zero beef with them at this point. I believe there's two (?) people who operate under that name as a team? And personally, I feel like they've proven to be a knowledgeable resource on some of the deep lore — most especially when it comes to the side content/spinoffs. Hell, they were even instrumental in bringing us the translation of Kirigiri Sou, and I believe they're still a major driving force behind the DR spinoffs wiki.

But if they seemed to previously sound snippy or derisive towards me? I remember a long time ago, I once used this blog to vent about my frustrations with the main DR wiki's content, only for them to swing in to reveal that they're one of the major contributors there, which meant I now sounded like I was bitching directly about them, which made me seem like a gigantic asshole. So yeah, I'm sure I've come off as a snippy bitch in the past in my own right. I'm just gonna choose to assume it evens out, lol.

At any rate, there's a decent chance they'll chime in on this post later, so maybe check the comments/reblogs for more. Thanks again for the additional context, your intention of support, and your overall kind words :)