#again- please read it if you havent

[malk-with-tea]

@queruloustea's fanfic that makes two of us, then recently hit 100k words and I had to make a piece for such an occasion :) also chapter 26 is SO good and it makes me SCREAM

either way, please read the fic if you haven't- it's the best :}

(text-less version of this piece under the cut)

I love them

[scruncheduppaper]

i find it interesting that this little revived dsmp era doesnt really talk about c!wilbur as a character anymore because obviously the issues with cc!wilbur (ALSO FOR THE RECORD I DO NOT FUCKIBG SUPPORT HIM AT ALL)

but like genuinely he’s actually one of the most interestingly written characters on the server (might i say the most interesting?) and like. even though cc!wilbur is a piece of shit i still think he was a brilliant writer and his character on the smp changed my life kinda

i think people tend to conflate character morality/character writing flaws/character likeabilty/creator’s status and while those things can influence each other its not like those are the same thing

i definitely feel like after his revival he became a little bit less interesting, i think ghostbur was kind of unnecessary and i also think his ending was incredibly underwhelming, but the recontextualisation of his character and relationship with quackity with tntduo was an absolutely insane move

honestly i kinda also feel like cc!wilbur being a dick irl makes me kind of reexamine c!wilbur’s character and overall arc in a whole new light, like both within his character flaws and writing flaws — i wouldnt call it wasted potential because i genuinely dont think this could have gone any other way

anyways all im saying is, if you truly want to make dsmp separate from the ccs, please dont be afraid to make more content of c!wil lol. like. dont rewrite history or whatever. i hardly even think abt cc!wilbur these days and i didnt really care for him back then, but just because hes outed as a dick now doesnt mean his art didnt have an impact on you back then

sometimes bad people make good art and thats okay

what matters is what you take out of it

[heres-someart]

He said he loved me, and it was like a dream

Click for better detail. ID under cut. Reblogs are better than likes

ID:

A digital drawing of Juno Steel and Peter Nureyev, both in profile. Nureyev has his hand on Juno's face, bringing it up. Their faces are near each other but not quite touching. Peter is seen from the shoulders up and Juno from the neck up. Juno is a black person who wears a dark eyepatch. Peter is an asian man and is wearing a sheer red shirt. He has on dark red lipstick. His mouth is open slightly, making his sharp canine teeth visible

End ID

[lucksea]

i love u dungeon meshi thank u ryoko kui

[amelia-yap]

The sound of White Rose by @powertaco

[britneyshakespeare]

you: nicholas alexander chavez, the actor from ryan murphy's recent work

me, a mama's girl and daytime tv viewer:

[ganondoodle]

got visually spoiled on the literally last thing i was still actively missing and working towards in totk but i dont think im gonna like it anyway ...

if it is what i think it is, and what it looks like to be, its just yet another nail in the coffin (or however you say that) as to why the lore sucks in this game even tho it had such good setup and so much potential

[dyingturn]

Yttd au idea where somehow the trials for the ai of the participants were leaked to many Internet platforms before the participants were kidnapped.

I just think it would be fun. Imagine if it got leaked and before they could delete everything, the netizens that have seen it just started spreading it. Mostly because q-taro, kurumada, reko and alice wrre there and everyone speculated that they were somehow casted to this movie?

Random person: nah, it seems to be a small project tho? How did they manage to cast reko damn.

Random person 2: does anyone know who these people are? Because that blonde guy looks really hot.

Random person 3: agree agree! Holy fuck.

Random person 4: before op deleted everything, from what I know it was made from AI

Random person 5: Holy shit, this looks interesting. Why are there so many takes of this?

Random person 6: ai??? Wtf???

And many more people started chiming in, before

Random user: hold on, one of the characters looks like my classmate?

And that's how the trials of the ai for the death game got spread and soon it got to the actual participants.

(I just think this would be a fun for an au because this somehow becomes the reason why everyone tried to find each other so that they can solve this mystery.)

I'm thinking everyone would probably be mortified when they watch it, especially shin who just witnessed in every trial that he dies no matter what.

[hobimo]

see i don't even disagree w you, it's the specific jikook brand of omegaverse that is rly just an excuse to write straight romance undetected. like you can't convince me that if you replace jm and jk from the average jikook fic with a straight couple something would feel different. and please don't feel included in this because you know how to write a great plot and establish characters ok!!! actually i think i read a bakudeku fic once! it was superr popular and short i think? i tried reading some jujutsu kaisen ff and yeah there's some good stuff out there but nothing compares to the emotional attachment i have to bts so 😞 i need to fixate on something else asap❗

you would not believe. how many times i've tried answering this ask before i dissolve into Yapping. sorry. i have a lot of thoughts about the type of fic you're describing i really do. it's bothered me for a long time. my general thoughts are that. bts ao3 fic is a very short walk from wattpad band fic. so a lot of those sorts of people end up over here that dont have that Shame the rest of us nerds do who grew up writing cringey ass book and anime fic when we were teens that pushed us to experiment with writing in complete anonymity and write fucked up and shit stuff and we started Caring abt what we wrote. and also the wattpad band fic environment is so different to the ao3 m/m. but if you know a little grammar and you actually finish the fic the story just gets so unbelievably popular on its own.

that being said there are good fics still in bts jikook. i havent found them yet but i know they're in there. there's gotta be at least one brave soldier left fighting against swathes of people who probably unironically read colleen hoover for fun. there's gotta be. i refuse to live in a world where there isnt

[doomedclockworkdotmp3]

heyyy girl hyd

[todayisafridaynight]

Hey so Snap this is going to be so fucking weird, but honestly don’t care. So I was watching a clip of Drag Race Philippines and it was the make over episode and I think they were making over family members and this father was all about getting into drag. So, I just wanted to tell you never forget how much of a lovely loving kind and caring father you have, who loves you and protects you and makes you feel heard. That’s all.

i'd have to die before i forget how great my dad is thank you for the opportunity to brag about him again anon

[baby-xemnas]

this is kinda sappy but w/e!! U made my 2023 more fun and full of love for pairings I fell super hard for and ur art and ideas constantly brightened up my day or inspired me and I really enjoyed every piece!! So thank u for bringing a bit of joy into the year and I rlly hope u enjoy 2024. Happy new year!!!

sappy is good, i love sappy, im a very sentimental person and i value immensely any instance of emotion that i could bring out of anybody be it by art or words

so I'm very happy - i say it every time BUT IT'S TRUE EVERY TIME!

thank you so much for your message and im happy and grateful that you spent the time to express your feelings to me, it really does mean a lot

giving you a huge hug and wishing you the best in 2024!!!!!!!!

[wooltoesocks]

things i want to get answers to in the remaining episodes of four leaf: a very comprehensive list that must be missing some things i just cant remember at the moment (also soilers for up until ep 139):

just in general evrything about the bells, and more especiall like how is lina giving lupe her bells (because that is 100% gonna happen i think) gonna affect them, for example if they'll get lina's bell as like their own, and if that bell being kinda broken is gonna be any problem

will that be a permanent change, is lupe gonna give the bell back to lina after they deal with the wolf

what's gonna happen to cricket if they really do deal with the wolf? or how will tehy come to some wsolution that doesnt harm anyone

CARLA!!! is she gonna be okay? that wound looks very nasty. i hope they'll be able to cure it somehow, and if not, then chopchop there goes a leg :/

talking about carla, is she gonna give er bells to someone like she mentioned in 138? that is only in case she wont be able to continue, but it loks very bad rn, so my question is, is it gonnna be mercy? or in general, who is it gonna be?

also about the bells, i really wanna know how many bells each witch has!! it''s just something i think would be interesting to analyse. (i looked through all the episodes where a witch has their bells out buut i still now only know for certain the number of bels like 7 witches have (before 137 and emma giving up her bells): Erica 1, Emma 2, Socks 2 (most likely, unless she got mor after the prison break, that's when she at least shows only 2), Alishba 3, Linda 3 (both of whose bells were shown during the prison break), Carla 20, Lina 21.

also also (i use that word so much), the names of the witches! we now know there are 17 witches in the red hoods (+lupe +lina so maybe 19 but oh well) and of those 17 we know the names of 12 (episode 133)

what i wanna know too is like which bell belongs to which witch? we've seen some, for example in the flashback of when they first appeared, and also in the festival of roses we see some, but like i wnna knowww (ye sit's very trivial but that's what makes it fun i think)

the mom. what happened with her in the 8 months that have passed since lupe was last in their original world? did she just continue on like normal, or did she actually regret some of the things she's done? will lupe go see her again?

the inevitable. the thing i've been waiting for for like 2 years. the KISS! alvar mentioned the witch loking very mad and the also saying he's the kinda guy to ask twice before a first kiss and what i think will happen is that he is gonna ask. like he's just the kinda guy. but the thing lupe (most likely) will be "mad" about is just that al didnt tell about it (even tho he was gonna tell you lupe, you just didnt want him to). or they arent mad, but just like very confused/fristrated and Al just interpreted it wrong? i dont know. we'll see (hopefully tomorrow in 140 but at the evry least in 141?? like i dont think it will take so long that it would be 142? (i am delusional). also looking at the future chapter thumbnails (not a fast pass reader), it looks like someone is using some kind of reddish/pinkish magic / teleporting right next to him)

okay this isnt a theory or anything, i just know lupe's dad is gonna be so smug learning about lupe and al's relationship when they do get into one like judging from ep 116 and the "crush" i jut know

okay wow this is a long post but i need to get these out of my head and scream into the void and wait if it screams back

back to the bells, they'r gonna give everyone their own one back right? if they deal wit hthe wolf, there shouldnt be any need to hoard all the power, and i dont think it would be very fair to let 72 people just go on about life without really even knowing what's going no just because you wanna levitate. i know it's probably more complicated than that but yeah

also (fuck, this word again) what's gonna happen to the witchs' craving of gloom? is it gonna go away if there is no wolf (okay this is assuming that it's dealt with and they wont come to a peaceful comclusion but if that happens i just really hope cricket will be okay)

are other witches gonna wanna get rid of their bells and become human like emma?

i would like some more information about the different worlds, although i think it's unlikely tha will come up in the chapters themselves, but maybe as some bonus content somewhere?

okay so i already wrote about like if Lina's bell being broken is gonna have any effect on lupe, but will it affect Lina herself? i would assume not, but you never know

just in general, i cant wait to see how everything comes to a conclusion and how the ending is gonna be (even tho i would love for it to go on for longer). are we gonnna see another time skip?

man i just remembered there are alaso civilians in Garua at the moment too like the redhoods are gonna get the to safety right? maybe that will also help a little with the public's fear of the witches, the news that hey maybe they're not bad through and through (even tho that was never the case but most people still thought that so)

fuck this is long how many words even is this... 1005???? man that's like 2/3 of the essays we had to write in high school. yea it's easier to just put stuff from your mind into bullet points but this has taken me like maybe 45 minutes where as those essays took at least 5 hours. i bet i could make one from one of my interests in like 2 hours and i would be much better than any of those monstrocities i wrote

anyway back on track

actually those are the main ones i remember now, maybe i'll update this once more come to mind, but for now this is enough for today

pictured above is me falling for this series

wait one more thing: is it stated anywhere how much the bells weigh? i would assume they're more like incorporeal so they wouldn't hve any mass, and i fell like should know this i've read this series 5 or 6 times. but if they do infact hve mass, do the witches have to actively levitate them or are they jsut funky like that

[weirdcat1213]

MXTX and Marie Lu: an unnecessary long post about writers I like very very much

spoilers for Heaven Officials Blessing and the Legend series but not that bad

tldr; They describe things and I like that but I had to make it this long and add some stuff about writing and cultural expectations cuz i guess ill always be an english major at heart

Ok so I need to get this off my chest so I hope youre interested in writing, describing things and cultural expectations

So I've started reading Heaven Officials Blessing cuz I like gay and sad people and I love the donghua so much but BOI THAT WOMAN CAN HURT ME SO GOOD >:D

The simplicity of her words may be due to translation, her own style or part of the normal style in China but it contributes a lot to the books in my opinion. It is because of her simplicity that the reader is able to follow her long and detail descriptions.

Now, a lot of writers like to describe things, and MXTX does this a lot. She describes clothes, places, faces, etc when it's necessary for the story. But what I love about her is how she describes certain actions and moments.

There are moments that just cannot be described in 3 sentences, they're too important. The example that I want to show has not left my mind since I read it because it was one of the best slaps in the face ever.

TGCF Vol. 2: (from the free version I could find but it'll do)

"Before he even finished, there was a loud scream, and Hong Hong-er leapt to his feet, running towards Guoshi to headbutt him.

His voice was young and tender, but his screams were filled with rage, as if his heart was filled to the brim with unspeakable pain and anguish, making many of those present shiver. That young child was covered in injuries, yet he tore and hit out at them like a red-eyed rabid dog, violent and aggressive.

The Deputy Guoshi blocked Hong Hong-er and Guoshi backed away, yelling, “MAKE HIM LEAVE THE MOUNTAIN, HURRY! Don’t touch him, I mean it! That fortune is too toxic, don’t touch him!”

The Deputy Guoshi hurriedly moved aside, and Mu Qing and Feng Xin didn’t know whether to act. Seeing that everyone was avoiding him like he was a poisonous snake, that child was

shaken and started thrashing even harder, biting and screaming.

“I’m not! I’M NOT!! I’M NOT!!!!”

Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped him around the waist, encircling his small form. A voice came from above his head.

Like look at this! This moment cant be longer than 2 minutes and its described in such way that breaks me. The voice and actions of the little kid (who is kinda doing a bad job saying "hey im not actually dangerous/toxic") get under your skin. The descriptions of his voice, his figure, how he looks yelling, how everyone reacts to this moment, how the MC reacts to this...its all just so amazing. The description grabs you by the ear and it makes you listen, it makes you watch. And thanks to that harrowing description the last bit really gets to the reader. Finally someone bothered to actually listen to the kid and console him. It's so fucking beautiful and it makes me want to eat glass. It really gives you the feelings that an angel really came from above to save a child from the pain in his own heart.

“You’re not. I know you’re not. Don’t cry, now. I know you’re not.”

That young child pressed his lips closed tightly, grabbing on to that pair of snow-white sleeves around his waist with a death grip. He forced himself to hold back for a long time, but in the end, he couldn’t. A stream of tears suddenly rolled down from that round, black eye, and he burst out crying."

And all this emotion, this care for the craft reminded me of something, of someone. The queen the legend Marie Lu.

Although I would say she follows the regular American conventions when it comes to writing (she is american after all), she also takes care in her descriptions. However, in this case I want to talk about how she describes feelings. Marie Lu's characters are not just happy or sad but they have Feelings that just need to be expressed on the page otherwise they will explode. An example:

LEGEND SERIES BOOK 4 REBEL:

I nod again. "I'm sorry. I-"

"I find myself nodding through my tears, wishing I could have turned to him sooner, wishing I could be more like him in every way. "I see them every night," I say to him, my words breaking. "They're there every time I close my eyes, I jump at every sound. I see a soldier in every person standing at a corner. I thought- I thought if I could just drown it all out in the Undercity, if I could replace it with something else so loud and overwhelming, that it might go away- I thought if I could just see the Republic again, return home and understand my past..."

The pain in Daniel's eyes is raw and real. The fear of this was what had kept me silent for so long. He nods once, his hands firmly on my shoulders. "I see them too," he says quietly. "I should have talked to you about my nightmares. I can't expect you to open up to me if I don't do the same."

"Don't be." His eyes soften, and he pulls me into a hug. "You didn't do anything wrong."

It is his embrace that finally breaks my last barrier. I cry and cry and cry. I cry because I'd never let myself truly understand my own brother, because I'd never understood myself. I cry for all the lives that our pasts have set on different paths- for June's loss of her family, for Tess's loss of her childhood, for Daniel becoming a parent when he was himself just a boy. I cry because I'm grateful that we still, in spite of everything, have all found each other.

Because sometimes, broken pieces find a way to make a new whole."

NOW WHY AM I BOTHERING WITH ALL OF THIS. A couple of days ago one of my favorite video essayist youtubers said that his best writing advice was to keep things simple, that that was the best way to write.

This is just one of my favorite moments ever. The MC has been bottling things up for the whole book and on that scene he finally let's everything go. His brother also finally let's go his own fear and allows himself to be soft with his brother. The scene, however, would not work as well as it does without the description of the moment right before he breaks down crying. The feelings he can sense from his brother, his own feelings about his own perceived weakness, etc. These descriptions just gives the reader a window to see how much the characters have in their hearts. Again, it's so many emotions they could explode. Like this scene could have cut short in multiple ways and if it was recorded for a TV show it would not feel as long as it does in the book. Lu bothers with these descriptions to remind the reader that the characters have real feelings inside. They twist and change as it would happen to someone real and that's amazing. I love how she does it every time.

So how come these scenes, really description heavy, are this fucking cool and a short and fast description would not have been able to make them justice?

It's because usually when we talk about "keeping things simple" or "show dont tell" we want to apply them for everything. We want to apply them no matter the author, genre, target audience, etc.

This book explains it way better that I ever could but basically, writing tips and advice are based on what we consider normal. Most people consider the american conventions the rule, so when someone doesn't apply them to their writing, the writing is flawed. In the same book it is mentioned how typical Chinese writing prefers telling over showing things. They just love the details and that can be seen in MXTX's writing. She is following conventions that usually would be deemed as "wrong." Going back to Marie Lu, I want to think that she knows a bit about Chinese writing but she also knows that, even if its not the rule, descriptions help her writing alot; which is why she does it.

This is a nice and long way to tell you that when you read something pls do it with an open mind. Please dont have a mental list of what makes good of bad writing ready to point out an author's flaws. You could be discovering a new convention from a different culture, a convention that can be game changing for the book.

[tennessoui]

Just to clarify, I was the one who was all "Wait, people LIKE WIPs??" and I am someone who for my mental health has to be really careful with unfinished stories. It's great for those of you who like them! It's just hard for me to understand in anything but the super abstract. :)

thanks for adding some context to that ask! it was a bit jarring to receive, as someone who continuously works on wips and has strong opinions about their importance to fandom.

i do think that not liking wips or not reading them is a worryingly fast, growing part of fandom which can spell pretty grim things for writers' longevity in fandom and even their longevity writing fic in general. we need to be encouraging and welcoming and reading fics that aren't finished; we need to get invested in fics that only have ~3k works so far; we need to recc wips to other people and cheer the writers on, or we're really not going to see a lot of people writing wips anymore.

[huntingatdusk]

Humanity means wearing your mistakes on your skin, means your body becomes a map, leylines connecting one trauma to the next and to the next, like stars in a constellation of pain. Immortals are supposed to be immune to that visceral sort of memory. 

“...why did that scar?”

“It was the greatest betrayal of my life; would you expect it to just fade away?”

- @etherati. Taproot.