#all that effort. days of work. for 20 points. lmao.

[tinypigeonlord]

love how you get 5x as many reputation points for beating up a ruin hunter who’s being a nuisance versus saving the world by helping the aranara defeat Marana

[ghostmoon1]

You know what, to start the year off, Imma make this lil appreciation post.

Now it's only been like, less than a year since I joined Tumblr about, I've been writing and drawing for years before this point, but the community here, especially the CoD community which I am mainly apart of just made me feel amazing. Everyone I've met here are some of the nicest people.

I have gotten my old hobbies back, giving me reason to write and draw again which have majorly helped with my own mental health, and now I just wanted to give the amazing people a shout out to start the year off, to hopefully make peoples days, and to just let them know that I appreciate yall!

In no specific order :3 and if you don't wanna be pinged again by me, please let me know and I won't!! No harm done, I hope this is okay :) and this is prob gonna be cringe or smt.. all sappy but like.Yeah here yall are lmao-

Putting them under the cut as there are a few :3

@gomzdrawfr - You've been a massive influence since I joined the CoD community, I adored your art from the very start, and your just such a sweet and kind person, one that I'm so thankful to have met, and so proud to be able to call you my friend. You're the first proper friend I've made here, and I can't tell you how much our talks make me smile every single time. And I'm also so thankful for the community you have sorta helped me get into, you've helped me feel comfortable interacting with more people here :3

@shadeops21 - You were honestly the person that got me to join Tumblr! I was looking for something to try and make my own Konig cosplay (that's been given up on bc motivation and Tik Tok just. yeahhh) and I found you, and all your amazing work! I basically made my account to see if you'd make any more, cause I just love what you do so much, it's got to be so helpful for so many people!!

@sleepyconfusedpotato - After Shadeops, you were the very second person I found here! And oh my gosh how much I obsessed (and still do) over your art, especially Jade. You inspired me to write my first ever fic on here, actually, where I made my first CoD oc ship with Soap, your art and what you do honestly helped me feel comfortable making something like that for myself, cause some of the toxic people on Tik Tok made me uneasy and unsure about that lol- And now, I finally have an OC I'm working in depth on, and you're my biggest reason to thank for that.

@soaps-mohawk - Your writing has inspired me so much, and I couldn't thank you enough for making your wonderful fic. I may not be like, a OG, but I've been there since around chapter 20 I think? I could be wrong, but half way through sorta. You are the biggest reason I started writing again here, you just create masterpieces. And this is the first time I've ever been hooked into a fic so much, and what got me into liking the Omegaverse (you hooked me and I can't let go of it now...) Thank you for taking your time with your writing, and thank you for all the inspiration you have given me.

@on-a-lucky-tide - Oh my gosh how much you have yanked me into the Nikprice community. I adore every single one of your writing pieces, and honestly, you are another who has helped inspire me to write more. All your writing is so filled with emotion and love, I want to be able to do that as well. Your a wonderful person, I've seen you interact with this community and everyone, and I just adore you as a person and all the hard work you put time and effort into creating.

@rainyrambles-overcod - I adore your oc's and rambles so much!! And I couldn't tell you how happy it makes me to have a friend that is okay with the tag games, I never know who to tag for those sorta things, but I actually feel okay tagging you and they are so fun and always brighten my mood :3 Keep creating, I can't wait to see what else you come up with. Thank you for all the tag games and fun!!

@nekrosmos - Yet another that has helped drag me into the Nikprice community or cult ig that too. Your art is absolutely amazing, I truly want to be able to draw like you do. Just everything about your art has me in awe, the emotion, the style, the love everything. Seeing your art brings me so much happiness! Oh and your writing is BEAUTIFUL. That also brings me joy to take a little time out of my day to sit and read the time and effort you put into everything, and how kind of a person you are. I always hope you'll keep creating, and always remember how much joy you bring both myself and others.

@daredaredoodles - I know we don't interact a whole lot, but you honestly mean a lot to me still. You were my first ever mutual on this site, and I will be forever grateful for this. Personally its anxiety that stops me from barging into peoples Dm's and talking, but yeah. Thank you for that, even if it is only a small thing.

@cricricorner - you were my first follower, and I still see you in my notifications from time to time, which always brings me joy! It's wonderful to see your followers still interact with your content, and I couldn't say how grateful I am. I couldn't tell you how happy I was to gain my first follower here, so thank you for taking your time to read my writing and see my art.

@daydreamsareallineed - You were pretty much the first person to show so much interest in my main fic!! And oh my gosh I couldn't ever tell you how much joy it brought me to read your comments, to have someone so interested in my writing, that personally I didn't even think was that good. I haven't given up completely on the fic dw, I'll hopefully update it soon! Motivation just go brrr. Thank you so much for all your support, it means the world to me.

And another shoutout to everyone who supports me, who follows me, and to every single one of you that like and reblog my content. I look through every single note I receive, I assure you none of you are left out.

And my final shoutout to everyone that creates on this site. The community here is like nothing I've ever experienced before. I adore scrolling through everyone's art, it all makes my day. I've never felt so comfortable and unjudged before. Thank you to everyone who contributes to this, you all make my day <3

This turned out a lot longer than I meant it to be- but I just wanted to share how I felt with this new year. I'm sorry if you'd rather not be pinged-

But have a lovely day :3 I love you all!!

[lizardperson]

lizardwriting wrapped 2024

because this whole thing deserves a little yearly review too...

after not writing anything for the public in sooo many years, i actually wrote quite a lot this year. only had to overcome the initial feeling of "cringe omg i can't post that 😬", and now have lost all shame and am enjoying myself immensely, subjecting the world to my bullshit. i think i actually improved quite a bit over the whole year.

AO3 STATS [link]

28 works 48,102 words total 18x ocworld: 17 short bits + 5 chapters Dark Lights, Shine Loud 7x fallout: 6 of those Courier Mika including 20 oneshot chapters Come All Sufferers (#fnv au) 2x star trek disco

---

SPOTLIGHT some points stolen from this list

.characters i thought most about: mika - light of my life, bane of my existence. the ultimate blorbo from my brain, bouncing around in there 24/7. she's terrible and i love her so much. (#mika tag) gabriel - grew SO MUCH this year, mostly thanks to the silly little fallout au. i have a lot of thoughts but not enough words. i love him so much. (#gabriel tag) special mention: fiona - what started out as daria's nameless dead backstorywife somehow turned into an actual character that has been living in my brain now extensively. little miss tortured poet. i love her. (#fiona tag)

.favorite title And there are days like this, too because it's the perfect throwback to the kinda-first part 4261 days. and i wasn't even the one who came up with it, that was @voidthing special mention: The Hills Have Eyebots. because it's just funny.

.favorite opening line

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Mika cursed when her can of energy drink let out the familiar hiss of danger. Despite her best efforts and a few quick sips, she still managed to spill some of it on herself and the couch. Great, another point for Nic's long list of things to be pissed about. As if the general mood in this apartment hadn't been shitty enough those last few weeks. Oh well, let her bitch then. [Dark Lights, Shine Loud]

is it my best line? nah, far from it. is it the perfect introduction to Mika? hell yea - cursing, consuming caffeine, and making a mess. what more do you need to know lmao. i just really like that one, still. the whole first chapter, actually.

.favorite piece of dialogue

"You didn't answer my question - you think we're doing the right thing here?" "Yes." There was not a bit of doubt in his voice. "You believe in our stupid plan?" "I believe in you." [Doing The Right Thing]

just sums up the whole fallout au and their dynamic so well, and also *clutches chest*

special shoutout to the close second, the "I'm not a lesbian" bit in In Whiskey Veritas

and another special shoutout to the last bit of Left My Heart In The Sierra Madre because. T_T

.favorite ending line

Falling in love with her best friend was such a bad idea, July thought, and yet she didn't know how not to. [Viola sororia]

it's so sappy. but 🥺🥺🥺

close second for a completely different vibe:

Freud would probably have something to say about distracting yourself from your shitty mother by sleeping with a woman roughly that same age. Good thing Freud was dead. [Mommy issues]

.favorite text overall 4261 days i still think this is the best thing i've written. for someone who does not have particularly much experience with grief in general, i really really like writing a lot about it somehow...

---

OUTLOOK 2025

the big multi chapter thingies are very far up my to do list, but yknow how it is with adhd brains - ohhh lets do that quick short text first, and that one, and that one *procrastinates the big ones*

BUT that is the plan:

. finally getting some more chapters into Dark Lights, Shine Loud. there are a bunch lying around as first drafts, but they still need some work. soonTM

. continuing the way-too-ambition plotheavy heistthing What Happens In Reno, Stays In Reno after those first few intro chapters. this requires an extensive brainstorming session to get the actual plot hammered together.

. the shiny new wip that i am itching for (because shiny and new), because it's gonna be a bit different in various ways so that makes it excitingTM

....and of course just continuing to write, overall. gonna keep my #fff streak up.

---

SPECIAL THANKS

@voidthing for basically being my secret co-author. always improves the quality by SO MUCH and is the bestest anyway 💕💕💕

the whole @flashfictionfridayofficial community - turns out a regular thing is really good to get a habit going, and also y'all are so nice and cool and just 💕💕💕

everybody who reads my stuff of course :D yes, i mostly write for myself, but of course it's always awesome if someone else likes my bullshit 🙏

[whetstonefires]

I hope you're having an excellent day 😊😊😊 What about Wei Wuxian as Naruto?

Thanks! It was pretty good. I organized my embroidery floss and took advantage of being alone in the building to dance around like a maniac for about 20 minutes. My cat hated it. My knees aren't sure they approve either.

Wei Wuxian as Naruto has a lot going for it right out the gate. Orphaned sunshine boy protagonist types, now we're cooking with propane. They're even both fox coded!

However, at the risk of stating the obvious, if Wei Wuxian were Naruto he wouldn't be Naruto anymore. That is. Fundamental to Wei Wuxian is that he is brilliant and talented and he damn well knows it. He would excel without effort in ninja school--not as much as he did in Jiang Sect unless he unlike Naruto was still getting personal mentoring in honor of his late father, but still.

Difference is, when this Wei Wuxian slacks off in class and the teacher tries to embarrass him, if he reels off the correct answer and then reinvents senjutsu from first principles in a creepy-sounding way for a lark just to show off, the teacher is not going to think that he's just like his annoying late mother. (Though he'll still have one. Kushina and Cangse Sanren are fairly similar Dead Mom archetypes too.)

The teacher is going to think things like, no real child would say that shit and I'm expected to teach the monster fox that killed my family basic ninjutsu I hate this I hate this we're all gonna die.

So basically this Wei Wuxian gets his Yiling Laozu reputation mod as part of the starter pack. I don't think he'd handle it super gracefully! But not the worst, either.

Not even as badly as he did in the actual version, probably, on account of he doesn't know his own dark secret. So he can't self-isolate to protect it. Though him pulling away from people once he does learn would be cool.

He'd probably have forged slightly stronger social ties rather sooner than Naruto did, even if he was just as neglected and radioactive; Wei Wuxian doesn't care what people think of him nearly as much as Naruto does, but in some ways he's a more genuinely social person, and he's got much better social intuition, so it's easier for him to figure out what people want and either do that or not do that on purpose.

He'd have at least a bunch of casual friends. Mostly civilians, and other kids from ninja school whose parents told them not to play with him but they did anyway.

Wei Wuxian cannot do therapy no jutsu. He does not have that ability to confront and exist with emotional discomfort or that intensity of interest in what is going on with other people.

He does however have some level of Friendship Beam Attack (the plot to some extent hinges utterly on how effectively it hit Wen Ning) and it would presumably be more effective, in a shounen context.

But that's the thing, Wei Wuxian isn't really built to confront shounen manga style problems. Or, well, he is, but he's overbuilt for them; they're his bread and butter. One of Naruto's key motifs, early on at least before we got into the heavy power creep, is not being a genius.

Wei Wuxian, by definition, is a genius. He is the kind of guy who walks up to shounen manga sorts of problems scaled to what ought to be his level, handles them, and goes 'what, like it's hard?'

Wei Wuxian is designed to be destroyed not by external threats but by his own loyalties, politics, and lies. (Which was a point of confluence with Itachi I didn't really touch on because the flow was so different lmao.)

He's also, otoh, designed to be destroyed. Naruto is designed to start off artificially low and climb steadily up toward heaven. (Ymmv on how this worked out but he sure did escalate.)

You have to pick which schema to apply when performing the fusion--I mean, it's not either-or, the whole deal with Wei Wuxian is he goes through the entire arc of a tragedy and then comes back to life and stars in a romcom. These things can superimpose and stack. But there are structural decisions that have to be made early.

So anyway, Wei Wuxian as Naruto is not going to enter the Genin Team phase of life with the same priorities, even if he has largely conducted himself about the same way hitherto. 'Proving himself' so 'people will accept him' is not a motive that works for this character--you basically have to give him actual precious people earlier just to get him to care about attaining ninja rank at all.

Otherwise he would probably much rather loaf his way through his teens stealing jutsu and making trouble. Which is the well-adjusted reaction to the idea of becoming a child soldier, like. He likes recognition but 'showing off' is a reason he does dumb fun things, not difficult high-commitment ones. He's like if Shikamaru had ADHD and no parents.

Being twelve is going to make him dumber, but I can't see it making him not the kind of person who stops caring about his marks in school if the teacher is hostile.

If Wei Wuxian here isn't acting out of appreciation for the Hokage raising him, or something like that, you have to give him a practical motive to enter military service like 'Konoha stops supporting orphans out of the public purse at thirteen so he's got to get some kind of job and ninja is the least boring option' which. Is significantly less like either Naruto or Wei Wuxian in terms of reasons to do anything, and starts getting into solidly OC territory.

The whole fact that Konoha's worldbuilding centers around an attempt to move away from decentralized clannish social organization and promote the idea of shared, communal social institutions and (in theory) civil society, and the ways this does and does not work out for people especially considering it is still a relatively small military dictatorship, honestly interfaces super interestingly with how, in Mo Dao Zu Shi, one of the underlying challenges backstopping all character choice is that there is no feasible alternative to the clan system, and you have to pick a family-faction to depend upon and submit yourself to, or face the world with no safety net.

Like. Huh.

.....Kishimoto is honestly unusually-for-shounen well-grounded in the genres he's riffing on tbh, for all my bitching there were some very good reasons his work found such success; I would have liked to see what kind of story he produced without the insane pressures of the Weekly part of Weekly Shounen Jump. I wonder if he'll ever publish again. For all I know he already is lmao.

So anyway, however we manage it we get Wei Wuxian on his genin team with like. Lan Wangji and Mianmian or whoever. Actually that's hilarious. Yeah, make it lwj and lqy, both of them so done with his shit.

Setting up some wild role-reversal here--Lan Wangji being the one to go Away and Wei Wuxian asking him to stay? Or Naruto-person leaving into the dark, and Sasuke-person remaining and calling for him to come back? Either way. Getting some inversion. Tasty.

Where does this leave Jiang Cheng, though? Because in a lot of ways Uchiha 'Deuteragonist by Editorial Mandate' Sasuke is straddling both roles.

In many ways Wangxian is much more like if Naruto had an endgame romance with Neji. Which is a great ship tbh, I saw very little of it back in the day?? In a series with a smaller cast or with less Sasuke Creep (not sasuke being a creep, it's like power creep) it would probably have done numbers.

...Naruto going away for that timeskip really limited his opportunity to make connections in the village huh.

I guess it depends on the kind of narrative you're trying to put together. On one hand, you can do Jiang Fengmian as the rather-more-involved Third Hokage, with Jiang Cheng as an aged-up Konohamaru kind of figure. And then Jiang Yanli is standing in as both Iruka and. I know I know the ramen guy's name. Ichiraku. Soup! XD Emotionally significant soup!

But with a different backstory than either lmao. Kurama very possibly killed Yu Ziyuan in this universe, though I can't visualize her as a midwife.

[[[Why do I have so much Naruto lore on tap, there is no life value in knowing Sarutobi Hiruzen's wife was at ground zero of the Kyuubi attack because she was the expert overseeing Uzumaki Kushina's childbirth a;kdj;lafdks. I do not remember the things I was actually studying in high school nearly this well.]]]

(Actually Jin Ling is Konohamaru and Jiang Cheng is aged-down Asuma. But whatever.)

And in this case Wei Wuxian's genin team is Lan Wangji and Mianmian under idk who. Lan Qiren, possibly, although he seems more the Ebisu type. Lan Xichen? (It's not like he can serve as a plausible Itachi. Can you imagine.) Actual Kakashi, possibly; we can't replace everyone with mdzs characters; the cast sizes don't square.

Kakashi training Wei Wuxian is very funny to think about. He deserves this.

Or on the other hand for a different pacing and focus, the genin team is him, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli under Jiang Fengmian, who dies sometime after or probably during the climax of the chuunin exams. And Sarutobi stays Hokage, and probably doesn't die during the chuunin exams. And we aim for a Naruto/Neji kind of romance storyline lol.

What is the Lan Wangji equivalent of Neji exposing his caged bird seal in front of god and everybody and ranting (it is very unclear at what effective volume though you'd think the proctors would have shut him up if he could be heard from the stadium seating that shit was sedition) about his traumatic backstory and the deep injustices in his family's system of hierarchy? I'm gonna say Not That.

Wei Wuxian versus Lan Wangji important ideological-conflict bonding duel in the Chuunin exam finals sounds excellent though.

Either way Wei Wuxian is going to get much more thoroughly involved in the ugly ninja politics than Naruto ever did, and he's going to hate it so so bad and at least temporarily lose so so so hard. A likely story element is he becomes troublesome enough he winds up having to flee the village ahead of a scheme by Danzou to (fatally) rip the Kyuubi out of him and implant it in some thoroughly conditioned ROOT kid.

Maybe Wen Ning?? Idk. I'm mostly saying this because Wen Ning 1) canonically gets Victimized and Transformed and 2) shares some notes with Sai. And this means he's leaving, in part, for Wen Ning, which ties into some plot and character stuff from their original narrative. You could make it work.

Also him taking the replacement human sacrifice with him when he books it would be hysterical.

Anyway he's branded a missing nin and it is, canonically, illegal for him to tell anyone who doesn't already know about the kyuubi thing, so both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji are appropriately what the fucking fuck and receive no adequate answer. This is a workable plot element.

Either the Jiangs or the Lans are the Uchiha, here, which has its own story value, lots of fun to be had. Gotta engineer a way he's protecting Jiang Cheng--does Danzou want to make him the jinchuuriki? Is Orochimaru or his replacement making a play for Jiang Cheng's bloodline limit, whatever it is, fun if it's eyeballs, and Wei Wuxian bargains to give him a jinchuuriki instead? Hmmm.

You want an inside and an outside threat, the obvious viper and the political spider, so you can silo information and make sure nobody entirely knows what's going on.

If it's Jiang Cheng who's assigned the role of bloodline limit macguffin, I have the very wicked urge to cast Yu Ziyuan as some combination of Itachi and Obito. Very Vader kind of effect.

Jin Guangyao as Kabuto, excellent, I need that innocent smile and those torture skills. This may require making Jin Guangshan much smarter than he really is just to fill out the ranks, or again you can keep Danzou as himself.

Tsunade is amusingly enough occupying an overlapping Baoshan Sanren and Wen Qing position; given one of them impersonated the other that time you'd have to do something with that. She's also got some Yu Ziyuan vibe up ofc. Tsunade just contains an entire franchise's supply of girlboss tbh.

Who could possibly stand in for Jiraiya, nobody, but at the same time. Wei Wuxian (with internal sapient asshole nuke) apprenticing under Jiraiya of the Sannin sounds like enough problem-creating goofy jackass genius clown energy in one place to open a singularity. That's too much. No narrative could survive.

Anyway someone please feel free to write this, I am intrigued but also will 100percent never ever put in the time it would take to realize any version of this concept.

[cuephrase]

20 questions for writers

tysm for the tag @crows-murder!!

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

seven, but two of those are site skins

2. what's your total AO3 word count?

51,455, which is. so little. omg

3. what fandoms do you write for?

rn, exclusively batfam. i've also posted fic for bnha, and while i do think there's a solid chance i'll post more my hero fic in the future, idk when. i've also written for tmnt, voltron, and spn, but most of those never left my notebooks lmao

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

penance - ghost!robins au where tim dies + meets ghost!jason, and metric tons of emotional devastation ensue. MCD tagged bc yk. tim wakes up dead.

adds up to less - my sole bnha fic, platonic bakudeku that spans from childhood to after their fight post-all might vs. afo, centered around the fact that izuku knows katsuki's mom is abusive

despite all his efforts - whumptober fill for solitary confinement, dami and dick!bats and pain

bile is sweeter - whumptober fill for safety net, dick & tim where tim gets seriously injured on patrol. ambiguous ending as a standalone, but also ended up becoming the prelude to penance.

i know (do you know?) - whumptober fill for delirium, jason & dick, jason & bruce, bruce & dick sick!fic where jason is sick and bruce and dick are at odds but trying not to be.

5. do you respond to comments?

yes!! i love responding to comments. i am really behind atm, bc 1) penance got way more attention than i expected and 2) the comments are so frickin kind and like i short-circuit.

planning on responding to some more tonight, i want to try and wrestle my inbox away from hitting a like critical mass point

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

hmmm. i think it depends, especially on how you interpret the end of 'bile is sweeter', but my gut instinct is 'despite all of his efforts'.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

mmmm. none of them? jk jk, kind of. i think they're all bittersweet is the thing. maybe 'penance'? or ik(dyk)? actually no, it's def 'penance'. neither of them end super fluffy, (or fluffy at all? fuzzy at best), but like i personally think, as hard won as it is, 'penance' has a happy ending.

8. do you get hate on fics?

i have not yet!! shockingly.

9. do you write smut? If so, what kind?

cuephrase on ao3 does not have any smut posted

10. do you write crossovers?

no, at least not yet. i don't think i will?

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of 🤞

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope!! i don't think i've written anything popular enough to warrant a translation haha

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not yet!! i think it would be super fun tho

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

uh. hmm. i don't know if i have one?? ships rank pretty low on my overall interest, relationships that stick with me forever and a day are siblings lmao. but okay.

overall, like regardless of fandom it's probs a tie between kyo/tohru from fruits basket and kabakura/koyanagi from wotakoi.

rn my top ship is timkon, no contest. love those two very much. platonic or romantic i am sat.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

any of them? all of them? i have one fic with like actual words written, everything else is percolating in my mind. i have a decent track record of finishing stuff i start...but starting is difficult. i'm trying to work on that tho!! i really love writing and every time i sweet talk myself into it i'm like omg why don't we do this more often. baby cue would be horrified at how little i write.

16. What are your writing strengths?

making people cry. at the ripe-old age of 7 i decided the best writing was the kind that elicited a physical reaction, which to me was either tears or laughter and i don't think i'm funny. so bringing the pain it was.

and dialogue. i'm super picky about my dialogue and i act out convos + read exchanges out loud. i worry sometimes that i like have too many "blah blah bla-" type lines, but like when people are arguing, nobody is getting out full sentences lmao. there's a balance to it, for sure tho

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

setting/description. i have the worst White Room Syndrome ever i fear. like, okay, so writing for me typically feels like i'm watching something play out and just recording what i see, and uh what i see is usually characters interacting. sometimes they're interacting with their environment but ehhhhh. so i have to make a conscious effort to have my writing not be talking heads interspersed with chekhov's guns

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

i don't do it. too paranoid about it being wrong. i don't mind it when someone else does it, but if i was going to do it foreign language dialogue would probably be written like "<This is not English>." with a note at the beginning that dialogue in <> is X language.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

i was going to say tmnt, but then i remembered i wrote warrior cats fic way before i knew what fic was omg. stopppppp. i was like eight, i think? but like. consciously knew that i was writing fanfic? tmnt.

20. Favourite fic you've written?

hmmmm. this is probs a tie between 'penance' and 'ik(dyk)' rn, the former was just so much fun to write and the latter features robin!jason and dick bonding which i'm particularly fond of rn hehe this was sm fun!! no pressure tagging @androxys @librarylexicon @tevyaa, @coyote-nebula, @motleyfam and anyone else who sees this and wants to play!!

[ladysomething]

Hii!

Thank you so much for the last update, it was again amazing!!!

I saw that you thought the next update would be in a fortnight what made me wonder. How many hours do you spend writing in a week? How long does it take to write a chapter?

I have thought about writing some fic myself too, but honestly I just don’t have time for it. Since I have too many other hobbies hahahaha.

Once again thank you for all your time and effort for this wonderful story that I (and I think so many others) can’t get enough of!

oh jeez. too many. way too many.

I was telling somebody the other day that it's getting really out of hand, too, because I find time to write just whenever I can, and that has meant some really weird places. the two worst I listed were at a GP (yikes) and also as hospital lmao. sitting in amongst all the chemo patients, sitting in my big lounge chair, kicking my feet and writing my freaky smut lol. (also bc I know that sounds bad - no, I'm not sick, I just participate in a drug trial).

I spend probably ... fuck. I don't know. maybe 20-30 hours a week working on wygig? including editing, talking to @saiyanwitcher about upcoming plot points, answering asks, and, of course writing. honestly, it might even be more hours than that. it's a lot.

and I totalllyyyyy get that. this is probably going to sound insane but I've actually sacrificed a lot of other stuff in my effort to spend as much time on this fic as I need to. which I do so willingly - nobody made me do it - but yeah. I've neglected a lot of other stuff for this fic lol.

I try to stack stuff now so that I can make time for everything - like I said, I write in weird places, but I also usually watch F1 while I write. I haven't watched a TV show in months, and only like 5 movies. I can't concentrate on both, and I don't have enough free time to watch and write separately lmao.

[welcometololaland]

20 Questions aka. Oversharing on the Internet version 92840938

Thanks for the tag @rmd-writes - how did you know i didn't feel like doing work?

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

excluding the ones i've flagged for deletion (when i get around to it) - 46.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

972,000 and i'm going to hit a million by the end of the year! i have one co-written collab so we can subtract about 30k (ish) from that total (but with ALTA i'll still make a milly woohoo).

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Red, White & Royal Blue, 911 Lone Star, Top Gun Maverick (occasionally)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

ah man this kills me because it excludes my most beloved fic (love game lol). in descending order:

Speak for Yourself (RWRB, my very first fic for that fandom! 2021 me in her study writing a random 3k first chapter could never have imagined being this lucky)

The Ring-In (with @dustratcentral) (911 Lone Star, this fic makes me feel like my Tarlos writing has gotten worse instead of better lmao)

Fifty First Dates (RWRB)

(Not) A Cinderella Story (RWRB)

Cursed is a State of Mind (with @dustratcentral) (RWRB, just about to hit 1k! there's something magical about an ifyoustay collab apparently)

jeez i never realised how RWRB heavy that is...

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Always. You put in the effort to comment on my work, I'm gonna put in the effort to reply to you. I appreciate comments so much, even if they're just emojis or one line or whatever. I appreciate every single one of them (except the mean ones).

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't usually go here, but I think it has to be Contaminated (RWRB).

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

99% of my fics have happy endings (except for the fic above lol) but I'd say the happiest ending is in (Un)Professional Services because they're So. In. Love. and they just *spoiler* together and they're about to *spoiler*.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Rarely and I usually ignore it or delete it (so there's no point doing it).

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

A Lot. Usually served with a heavy side of feelings - I like it when the smut drives the plot, when it helps the characters have those Oh Shit realisations. I'm also a sucker for explicit, enthusiastic consent.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I have written like 30% of a RWRB/Lone Star crossover that may never see the light of day because I keep forgetting about it.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

If I have, I don't know about it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! I've had a few of my fics translated by incredible people! Phonography, Warm Whispers and Baby, Make Your Move have all been translated and can be found above. I'm fine with people translating my fics, so long as they're linked to the original and remain on ao3.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes and I love it. I want to do it more often! @rmd-writes collab was an amazing experience. i've also loved working with @dustratcentral on so many of my more unhinged works.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I don't think I can choose between Alex/Henry and TK/Carlos.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Probably that damn crossover, unless there's like significant interest in me finishing it lmao.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Oh no. giving myself a compliment help. I would say worldbuilding. dialogue/banter. gratuitous feelings during sex.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

exposition. being concise. overwriting to the max @three-drink-amy (this is an attack on you as well but we are we).

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

i've done it before but to be honest i'm scared to. 1) i don't want to get it wrong. 2) i don't want to annoy my very talented friends that can speak other languages by asking them 10 billion questions lol.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

...I plead the 5th.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Love Game. I don't care that it's not as popular. it's my child. Also, ALTA (because of the many tears that went into it). We are bonded by trauma.

open tag on this one and also calling: @reyesstrand @strandnreyes @heartstringsduet @alrightbuckaroo @three-drink-amy @goodways @iboatedhere @wandering-night19 @birdclowns @liminalmemories21 @indomitable-love @clottedcreamfudge @sherryvalli @cha-melodius @cricketnationrise @carlos-in-glasses @bonheur-cafe @theghostofashton @orchidscript @lemonlyman-dotcom @kiwiana-writes @freneticfloetry @sunshinestrand @nelsonnicholas @tailoredshirt @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut @lightningboltreader @hippolotamus @dumbpeachjuice @tellmegoodbye @ladytessa74 @louisii-reyes-strand @beautifulhigh @athousandrooms @villiageidiot @inflarescent @marjansmarwani @safeashousespdf @tintagel-or-cockleshells @sanjuwrites @lilythesilly @kiloskywalker @noxsoulmate

[marcholasmoth]

OSRR: 3799

good lord.

the last, like, 36 hours have been so fucking stressful.

tw: friendship problems, toxic friendship. end marked by a meme or something.

i have had a fandom friend for about two years. she's been sweet and fun and silly and good to talk to, but any time i have taken more than 20 hours to reply, she has some at me accusing me of abandoning her when i reply. so i have had to spend many days in the last two years stressing over how to reply so she believes me that i have been just BUSY and not ignoring her or abandoning her.

this has happened multiple times. everyone i have spoken to about it has told me to block her. i have always given her another chance to be kinder and more understanding while resolving to be more communicative. i have done so. but this was my last straw.

i have done my absolute level best to be kind, respectful, and pacifying in my responses to not set her off again. but she's taken my words and actions in bad faith time and time again and i got tired of it.

so this time i told her point blank a few things, like i have done nothing wrong, she has impossible standards (of wanting to talk to me every single day and never going more than a day without messages), she should get therapy, and that i am capable of and allowed to feel more than one feeling at a time (just because i went to bed happy doesn't mean i'm not fucking upset about losing a friend).

but i told her that her needs and my abilities didn't match. i would not be able to live up to what she needed from our friendship.

i have spent HOURS crying about losing her as a friend. HOURS. time i will not get back. effort i will not get back. and while im happy i got to be her friend, i wish she believed me.

i've had to block her on all of the platforms where she and i were connected. if she gets better and owns her own shortcomings, separation anxiety, and abandonment issues, she can contact me somehow. until then, it's not my responsibility to worry about.

and yeah, i'm fucking sad.

but i still wish the best for her. and she's a good person, but she needs to get help. she's been toxic for me. i don't use that word lightly. but us not being friends is probably for the best for both of us. (the good news is that she's been making more friends recently, so her ditching me because i wasn't capable of living up to her needs won't leave her friendless. and that's good, because i know she worries about that.)

so. that's been most of the last day and a half for me.

anyway, after dealing with that, joel and i spent the day playing arkham horror. we finished the campaign we've been working on for a while, and it was both exhausting and frustrating because joel's character was defeated during either two of or all three of the scenarios we played today. my character was NOT built for fighting, so being the only investigator left and getting all the enemies on me at once did not work well lmao

also tmi here lmao

but also today, i have been feeling pressure on my bladder ALL DAY. i've felt like i've needed to pee but i haven't peed much when i've gone. and i started bleeding today, but it's not like a normal period bc the blood is all fresh, so i'm super concerned that my IUD has gotten dislocated?? which could potentially be reeeally bad 😅 so i gotta go to the doctor and check with some imaging that it's in the right place. i hope they can get me in tomorrow or sometime this week/weekend.

done tmi lol

and joel and i went out this evening after finishing our games and went in search of card sleeves, chips and dip, and dinner. we were successful in our endeavors, and we came back around 10:45. joel requested i wrap the gifts he got for our friends and i very happily sat and wrapped a bunch of gifts. i did GREAT. really proud of two of them. it's pretty impressive, i gotta say.

and now joel and i are in bed. my heart is still sad but my shoulders are lighter. gifts are wrapped, i've got one thing to worry about, and that's about it because my insurance will pay for my doctors appointments.

and i did talk to leo today on and off - his shift was today, so i talked to him while he was there a tiny bit and then after he left. man's horny on main and i fully understand lmao

so that's been my day. i'm so tired.

[immobiliter]

VEILGUARD VERSE: VAL

pre veilguard

so following the events of origins + awakening, val continues to serve ferelden as warden commander in amaranthine, which becomes her home. depending on the arc, she either serves there alongside alistair ( her default romance in the case where no other romance has been plotted ) had he stayed a warden and not been made king during the landsmeet in denerim, or he is king and the two have cut all ties to one another aside from anything political that should involve the crown and the grey wardens

i'm still not 100% sure what to do with her absence in dai as she heads west to look for a cure to the calling, seeing as that's a plot thread that bioware conveniently dropped. my default for the dai timeline is that she's either absent or she can be called upon as the warden ally for the here lies the abyss quest

however, by the time that the exalted council has ended, the inquisition either disbanded or condensed into a peacekeeping force, and the years pass between trespasser and veilguard, val continues to serve as warden commander in ferelden as is her duty

by this point, she has rebuilt the wardens in ferelden to be a sizeable force, worthy of the numbers that duncan had under his command prior to ostagar. val employs many of the same methods that weisshaupt does in terms of recruitment, making arrangements with the crown in denerim for convicted criminals to opt to go to amaranthine and, provided they pass their joining, serve in the grey wardens for the rest of their lives. others, of course, can still join the wardens voluntarily.

during veilguard ( mostly under a spoiler cut ! )

the common fandom assumption is that veilguard starts in 9:52 dragon which would make val 41 years old, and a grey warden for just over 20 years at this point. wardens usually start to hear the calling at this stage in their lives and val is no exception, but Events that i will elaborate on below the cut force her to put those anxieties to the side for the sake of the greater good. again.

we don't know how the blight started or where it originated from in the south, and i am open to plotting depending on the thread etc, but i very much like the idea that it starts within the brecilian forest where we already know that the blight exists ( since it was a blighted eluvian in some elven ruins that corrupted val in the first place and forced her to become a grey warden or die ).

but regardless of how or where it starts, as soon as word reaches amaranthine, val has to mobilise her warden forces and work with the crown to try to get a handle on the threat. i don't like the implication in the inquisitor's missives that the south would instantly fall apart were it not for them lmao, not when we've spent three games trying to save the fucking world down there, and as the hero of ferelden and a senior warden who has served during a previous blight ( admittedly not a double blight headed by two of the evanuris lmao ), she becomes a figure whose word carries a huge amount of authority and weight as the resistance effort gets underway.

but she does struggle with the fact that she knows her time is almost up and her calling nears, torn between knowing that she must head to the deep roads soon or become a mindless darkspawn herself, but also knowing that ferelden still needs her. the only people who would know that she hears it call to her ( what we now know to come from the titans ) are those closest to her. this is not common knowledge.

being dalish, she is understandably quite shocked by the revelations that are coming out of the north regarding solas, the evanuris and the blight that they are unleashing across thedas, but val's sense of identity is very fractured by this point in her life. yes, she is dalish, but she is also ferelden, and she is also a grey warden. she is worldly enough at this point for the reveal that her gods might actually be the villains of the story to not entirely shatter her beliefs as they once might have done.

[agent-troi]

20 fanfic questions

thanks for the tag @randomfoggytiger!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

95.

2. What’s your total Ao3 words count?

368,619

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The X-Files, Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: Picard, the Star Trek novel-verse, and I just posted a fic for The West Wing

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Platonic Procreation, Eden, The MSR Files, Mother Knows Best, and Though the Heavens Fall (also I need to mention my current WIP Security Questions bc it's only three kudos away from a tie with fifth place!)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Most of the time! I usually respond to friends/ people I know well, or if someone pointed out something specific in my fic they liked. And I responded to every comment made on my West Wing fic so far bc I want the fandom to notice me😅

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

lol I don’t write many fics with angsty endings (I do like writing angst sometimes but I need things to end happily😅) but I guess this would be Baby Blue, If I Could Only Break the Sky, or When We Were Whole (not sure which one would be the most angsty)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

so many! lol but I wanna single out Coda bc it was my attempt at wrapping up the mytharc and giving Mulder and Scully a happy ending with William (and giving Samantha’s storyline some actual closure lmao) and I think I did a decent job of it🤗

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I did get a hateful comment on a fic not long ago (ironically, it was and still is my most popular fic by almost every metric so someone was clearly jelly lmao) and I’ve had a couple of comments in the past on different fics that weren’t quite hateful but more like critiquing/nitpicking character or writing choices.

9. Do you write smut?

no absolutely not never ugh

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I don’t think I’ve ever written one! But I have ideas for TXF/Star Trek and TXF/SVU crossovers that I might write someday if I ever find the time/energy/inspiration😅

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so but I hope not!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No idea!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! The gang and I have co-written quite a few fics, which can all be found in this collection🤗

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

MSR of course!! But I will always have a soft spot for Riker/Troi and joshdonna is beginning to take up more and more space in my brain lmao

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I have a Riker/Troi amnesia fic that has been sitting in my notes for three years, every chapter either written, partly written, or outlined, but I just can’t make myself sit down and sort it out😫 also I used to start publishing fics before I was certain where I was going with them, and For War Alone is a relic of that (and it has also been sitting there since 2020 lol)

16. What are your writing strengths?

I have been told I’m really good at dialogue, and I choose to take people at their word😅

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I’m addicted to adverbs, also I just love reusing the same words and phrases over and over- one time in a first draft I used the word ‘actually’ four times in a single paragraph!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I love reading that! I feel like it makes the setting and characters and everything seem more realistic, but for writing it I pretty much need to rely on google translate or multilingual moots lol

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I wrote a LotR fic a long time ago! But the first fic in my modern day stretch of fic writing was for the Star Trek novel-verse: Psi-Ops

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Oh gosh this is so hard but I’m gonna say Where A Million Stars Catch Fire bc I put in a lot of time and effort carefully constructing it as a tribute to Mulder’s birthday this year, and I’m really proud of how it ultimately turned out🥰

Tagging @tofuttim @katy-kt-katie @incidental-ao3 @cutemothman @mollybecameanengineer and whoever else who wants to do it!

[noelledeltarune]

What do you think are Ingo and Emmet’s eating habits when working the subway?

in my head i have always thought that emmet really likes cooking but he's also an early to bed early to rise kind of guy and i just can't really imagine him waking up earlier than need be to make food before leaving for work because he probably wouldn't be able to sleep enough if he did LOL.

i figure he probably makes food the night before or meal preps or something because he seems like a proactive guy like that. likes having things ready. also gives him something keep busy when he gets home that he also enjoys doing.....

in my head emmet runs doubles in the morning, he and ingo run the multi lines in the afternoon (most popular line + most busy time of day) and then ingo runs singles in the evening (with regular vs super lines running on alternate days) because i just feel bad imagining them overworking themselves so much even if it's a job they both love LOL

i feel like emmet is a person who generally strives to take good care of himself? he works in a team that puts in so much effort for him and i do think that like. i kind of think how it is in the anime right. when the pokemon are training ash is working out too LOL. it's a team effort in every sense of the word and he's very serious about what he does and takes a lot of joy in battling so of course i think he goes above and beyond in that regard.

i know it's kind of like. most people think ingo is generally in better shape (especially post-hisui) but i just don't believe it LMAO i have always imagined emmet as a guy who like. put more effort into his physical health than ingo

i also just think emmet likes to cook as a hobby because like. it's fun. good to imagine characters having random things they enjoy. with food specifically it's just good to know how to cook for yourself and know you'll enjoy the taste and texture of whatever it is you're gonna eat

in that vein though i kind of think ingo is like. same thought process opposite solution where he would eat out a lot if he didn't live with someone who likes to cook because fast food places always make food he likes and he knows it'll taste the same and feel the same every time. they are men of routine LMAO

i guess in my mind it's like. emmet wakes up, eats leftovers or makes something while he's getting ready for work, gets coffee or something on the way. goes on the train. when ingo wakes up, if there's leftovers he thinks he'll like he'll eat those, otherwise he'll grab food on the way after he leaves. i figure there's pretty lengthy waits at the station between each "run" of the battle trains because i have to imagine there's some kind of like. way they organize carts 1 - 20 / 1 - 48. since obviously not everyone on the trains works at the station. so like at some point while the train is like boarding before the passenger attempts start they probably both buy lunch. then after the multi line is done running emmet goes home and either makes food or waits until ingo gets home and then they order or something?? idk

this is also assuming they live together at all but 🤷‍♀️ idk i assume they both have pretty normal food habits i guess. i think emmet likes to cook more than ingo but i do think they both try to take relatively good care of themselves in general including their eating habits LOL. like i don't think either of them really have any issues with not eating enough to the extent that it would affect their health or anything

[eonars]

Any advise for applying to PhD programs? Congrats by the way!

thank you!! sorry this is so late my notifications are in an absolute state and this is the first time I've been on desktop all week

I'm not sure if I'm the best one to give advice for applying to PhDs cause I honestly got rejected from SOOO many before I got this one. I'd applied for maybe 15-20 (bear in mind, this was in the sciences so they were all paid positions in funded projects, if you want advice on self funded I'm not the one) and came in second or third place more times than I can remember, which is totally useless at the end of the day cause they're only picking one person.

By the time this one rolled around I'd more or less given up and was seriously considering just moving to LA and becoming a tattoo artist lmao. But on a serious note it's super easy to get discouraged, especially when you're regularly getting top 3 candidates out of like 100 applicants and STILL not managing to get the top spot, and I don't really have amazing advice for that because I did get entirely discouraged and had basically given up the ghost at this point.

ANYway though I got recommended for this position by my former master's supervisor and immediately thought I was way underqualified for it, but decided to just apply anyway cause it was really no effort and I had nothing to lose (except my remaining shred of mental fortitude after yet another rejection but whatever). I bullshitted a motivation letter using the main bit of advice my master's supervisor gave me (it needs to sicken you a little to read it, go in and write in such a confident voice that you're the only one for this position that it feels kinda gross to write it, can expand on this further if you want) and submitted that and all my other things and got selected to interview!

So at this point I'm still kind of in my fuck it we ball half given up state but even half given up I'm still an academic weapon so I spent hours reading and preparing (we were tasked with doing a 15min presentation and I godsweat everything I'm asked to do). I also came off a little manic in the actual interview cause I hadn't slept and after doing so many interviews that led nowhere my nerves were completely shot, but I think that ended up working to my benefit because I came off as really bubbly and personable? Which is always a benefit in science-oriented spaces because there's always gonna be a million guys who know all the science and techniques and theory but can't hold a basic conversation, and you can really set yourself apart by being an engaging even slightly jokey type character. So overall being in the fuck it we ball mindset and letting my kind of tweaky goofy not at all stuffy academic professional side out ended up working to my advantage I think because they seemed to really like me in the interview. I'm also generally good at presenting and making visually pleasing, clean presentations (if you can make something tasteful looking that isn't just blocks of black text on a white default slide you're gonna be cooking with gas here).

Like I said before my qualifications (as in actual scientific experience pertaining to this project) were lacking to the point where I was strongly considering not even applying, so I really think it was the interview that sealed the deal for me. I gave a well-rehearsed, clean presentation that I practiced countless times beforehand, and even though they gave me two publications to work off of for the presentation I did my own further research and included figures and information outside of what I was provided. I also found a way to spin this specific project into the exact logical next step for my career, tie it into my own personal values and the impact I want to have on the world, and just basically make it look like this one project was made for me specifically and I wanted to be part of it because of what it was, NOT because I was ready to do any project that was dropped in front of me at that point. Especially in STEM, I feel like coming off as personable, agreeable, and social is going to give you a major advantage. They're not looking for a science robot who never leaves the lab, they're looking for someone who can present at conferences, write effective and clear publications and communications, work in a group in multiple different settings, go with the flow, solve problems etc.

Reading back on this now I'm realizing "get to the brink of giving up, plan running away and joining the circus, and be visibly mentally ill in the interview" isn't amazing advice but I uh, hope this helped somehow. If I can do it anyone can do it man.

[judgeverse]

thanks @bagheerita for the tag!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

91 for my SG pseud, 104 total

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

665,899. 276,600 of which were in 2023. lol

3. What fandoms do you write for?

stargate baby!!! specifically, stargate universe. occasionally also sg1.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

it's all old mortal kombat fic; the top two have 323 and 199 respectively (and the #1 is so successful because the ship got big after the latest MK game; given that I'd essentially made it up at the time of writing, I got lucky lmao). the others are double digit kudos :/

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

ALWAYS, at least for stargate fic. love to talk about the brainrot and make friends

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

probably this one, an installment of a rush/ba'al AU where ba'al dies for a while there. kind of a way to deal with grief about cliff simon too. hurts sometimes

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I don't think I have any that are legitimately happy endings and not bittersweet, but probably this one for SGU week, in which the crew actually gets to go home (and rush eventually finally realizes they don't hate him)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not yet lmao

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

yes, frequently. mostly rush/ba'al which is kind of my thing (and it's a trans rush AU, suggested by another nb sgu friend and it lodged in my brain and wouldnt let go). so that's pretty much all I write for the filth side of things now

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

not really. I figure if I'm putting in enough effort to cross something over and fuse the concepts, at that point I may as well write an original story instead (and often do)

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that I'm aware of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

no but I'm down to do it!!!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

rush/ba'al, their dynamic is [chefs kiss] and has made me write more this year than possibly EVER before (it kicked off my 2023 writing which is currently at about 418,000 words) so thanks boys

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

destiny ao3 au lmao where the crew all writes fic to pass the time. love it but other fics keep taking priority

16. What are your writing strengths?

DIALOGUE AND BANTER i could let them talk all day long and I usually do.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

generally speaking, anything that's action-driven with no dialogue. I always gotta let them talk. it's embarrassing how much dialogue my nsfw fics have

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I wouldn't tbh

19. First fandom you wrote for?

EVER ever? honestly not sure. current ao3 account? mortal kombat

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

this one's got it all - the SGU crew, goa'uld shenanigans, ba'al and rush being deliciously bitchy, just everything i write about is mixed together in this one lol

tagging @nonbinaryezrabridger @aintgonnatakethis @b2em-ho @galadhir @anomalousrobot @mx-seraph

[imanes]

I sent the previous spiralling ask and basically my point is how do you make time for your life and create the headspace to enjoy life when you're constantly thinking about ur professional career in you 20s?

hey angel! taking the context you're in from your previous message, it does seem like you have a lot on your plate and that the context in which you're in informs a lot of how you feel about your career. I completely feel you, because when I was fresh out of uni the first time around and only concerned with ensuring my subsistence, I used to be a stressed-out mess with a volatile mood and an inability to make space (headspace-wise and physically) for anything outside of work. I'd just go to work, come home, go through the motions, rinse, and repeat. and it's a far more common condition than what people make it out to be. everybody's bragging about where they are career-wise, how much they earn, the promotions they're up for, their five and ten-year plans, etc. It's nauseating and annoying as fuck, especially when they bring all their shit to social media too like girl we get it, keep this shit to LinkedIn!! anyway lmao, how do I make time for things in my life and create space in my life to enjoy myself? it comes with time, practice, and exercising your ability to take a step back and understand that to make time and space, you have to make an active effort. that first step is really difficult, and maintaining it is even more so. your early twenties and thirties and wherever you're in your life after a big transition (from education to the workforce for example) is an unstable and overwhelming period, but sometimes you just gotta think "i want to read a book", and then pick up the book, read a page, put it back down, come back to it the next day to read two pages, etc. it takes practice to normalize enjoying life again as lame and sad as it sounds. a few months ago I was so constantly busy and overwhelmed that when I stopped, I just crashed. I call it my yearly flop era but I really have to stop living like this lol it's a cycle that needs to be broken and it takes me so much time to learn to enjoy my life again even now. But it always takes me back to that one time in my life, fresh out of college and one year into my job, when I picked up "Big Little Lies" by Liane Moriarty. I barely even liked the book and it took me 4 months to finish it, but when I did, I moved on to the next, and over and over again until it took me so much less time and effort to read something. it might seem bleak and insurmountable at the moment, hence you reaching out to me, but there's definitely a light at the end of the tunnel, it comes with compartmentalizing and channeling your energy into doing something you enjoy even for a very little window during your day. it'll just keep getting bigger and bigger until the time you spend at work takes a backseat and what you do outside of work fuels you to keep going. literally the only source of renewable energy on this planet is joy. if your battery is depleted it's hard to get going again but once you do it renews itself more and more easily each passing day. wow this whole big ass incoherent wall of text just to promise you it'll get better!! i wish you the best of luck <3

[canmom]

Animation Night 149: Toei

Hi there. It’s Thursday. You know what that means (yes, it means i’m freeeeee)

Today we will be rolling back to some of the earliest days of anime!

The story of Toei goes back to 1946. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, there were very few games in town when it came to Japanese animation (or, to be fair, animation in most places). During the war, animators had been recruited to make propaganda films such as Momotaro: Sacred Sailors, among them Akira Daikuhara.

In the immediate aftermath, Kenzō Masoaka (of Benkei tai Ushiwaka, for anyone who remembers AN24) began the first effort to make an animated film post-war. This film was titled Sakura: Haru no genso (Cherry Blossom: Spring’s Fantasy); it was followed by a series of three films about a cat called Tora-Chan. But Masoaka’s studio struggled, constantly closing and re-opening. At the time it was operating under the name 日本動画映画 Nihon Dōga Eiga or Japan Animated Films, or just the abbreviation 日動映画 Nichidō Eiga. In 1956, they were bought by live action studio Toei (itself approaching 20 years old, founded in 1938) and renamed to Toei Dōga, where they started making increasingly elaborate animated films.

Toei of this era was sometimes called the rather patronising name ‘Disney of the East’. There is some truth to it, in that their ambition, especially in the early years, was certainly to make animated films as elaborate as those of old Walt. Their first feature was 白蛇伝 Hakujaden (1958), based on a Song Dynasty Chinese legend about a lost pet snake who transforms into a woman in the hopes of reuniting with her former owner, a monk who thinks that’s sus, and two pandas who try to sort it all out; in English it’s variously translated as The White Snake Enchantress, Legend of the White Serpent or even Panda and the Magic Serpent.

Part of the goal of the film, to Toei Dōga president Hiroshi Ōkawa, was a gesture of reconciliation towards China after the whole ‘invading and occupying’ thing.

The film was Rintarō’s first animation job; it also left a massive impression on a young Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote the following in Gekkan ehon bessatsu: Animēshon (1979), trans. Beth Cary and Frederik L Schodt in Starting Point:

What I’m saying here is that when young people feel attracted to the heroes of a tragedy [context: such as The Diary of Anne Frank], whether in animation or other media, a type of narcissism is really involved; this attraction they feel is a surrogate emotion for something they have lost.

From personal experience, I can say that I first fell in love with animation when I saw Hakujaden, the animated feature produced by Toei Animation in 1958. I can still remember the pangs of emotion I felt at the sight of the incredibly beautiful, young female character Bai-Niang, and how I went to see the film over and over as a result. It was like being in love, and Bai-Niang became a surrogate girlfriend for me at a time when I had none.

It is in this sense that I think we can achieve a type of satisfaction, by substituting something for the unfulfilled portion of our lives.

The feelings evoked by Bai-Niang may go some way to explaining the role of similar girls in Miyazaki’s movies...

Hakujaden has some curious properties as a work of animation. It was, especially for the time, astonishingly elaborate and straining the technical capabilities of the industry (although the claim on Wikipedia that it had 13,590 staff seems rather dubious lmao). The drawing count is stratospheric thanks most scenes being animated on ones and twos - the opposite of the limited animation techniques that anime would later perfect. Despite that, it is also the work of an inexperienced team, and compared to later works its animation can feel awkwardly timed, the flood of inbetweens turning everything to mush.

Nevertheless, there are two stars of the show in terms of animation. One is Yasuji Mori, who would later be one of Toei’s star animators, creating scenes such as the dance at the beginning of this post - as well as teaching Miyazaki after he joined Toei. The other is Akira Daikuhara, who was way ahead of the game on effects animation, creating the film’s transformation sequences. Daikuhara would go on to be one of Toei’s main animators of human characters, while Mori tended to take the animal/mascots; he has been a relatively forgotten figure, although that’s starting to change with articles like these ones by Matteo Watzky, whose research just digs deeper and deeper.

Toei’s early films tend to follow the precedent set in Hakujaden, adapting folktales from (mostly) China and Japan. In 1959 they covered a Japanese story in Shōnen Sarutobi Sasuke; 1960, they took on Saiyūki (Journey to the West); then Anju to Zushiōmaru (The Orphan Brother, 1961) and Arabian Nights: The Adventures of Sinbad (1962).

In this period of Toei, there was a lot of ambition, and also a feeling of inadequacy compared to the elaborate animated films being made in other countries. Hayao Miyazaki, who joined Toei in the 1963, wrote in 1982:

I used to create feature-length works for Toei Animation, but compared to the works just mentioned, they were obviously far inferior, at least technically. Sort of like showing rabbits slipping and falling, that sort of thing. We wondered if we would ever catch up to the level of what was being done in America, France or Russia, or if it were even possible to do so. Frankly, we really didn’t know.

To begin with, we didn’t even know what we had to do to reach the same level of excellent as the best works out there. We knew we had constraints, such as short production schedules, small budgets and so forth, but above and beyond that, we began to develop an inferiority complex: we wondered if we even had the basic talent needed to proceed. In retrospect, the only thing that probably kept us going, and drove us to pursue such a long-term goal, was our determination.

Miyazaki’s words should be taken with a grain of salt, since they definitely suit his personal myth-making. Still, conditions at Toei in the 60s were rough, leading to the first major unionisation struggle of anime history, which I wrote about in AN70. The studio started bringing on part-timers paid hourly rather than a salary, and created severe pay discrepancies, which were met with strikes and departures from the studio. Saiyūki took such a tole on its director Taiji Yabushita that he was hospitalised; Yasuji Mori would later create the term ‘anime syndrome’ for this sort of overwork because it was not the last time by any means.

However, I’m going to zoom over all of these to get to the わんぱく王子の大蛇退治 Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji (The Naughty Prince’s Orōchi Slaying, more commonly translated The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon) in 1963 - not because it’s necessarily more important, although it’s remembered as one Toei’s best films, but because I happen to have a fantastic analysis of one of its key scenes on hand thanks to AniObsesive and Toadette.

Wanpaku Ōji breaks from precedent in many ways, particularly its visual design, which takes on highly simplified shapes reminiscent of the then ultra-modern UPA style by way of haniwa figures. The story at least follows the pattern, adapting a Shinto myth in which the storm god Susanoo battles (guess what) an eight-headed dragon Yamat no Orochi. Susanoo is motivated by the death of his mother Izanami, and goes on a journey to try to find her, which leads him to the village of Princess Kushinada - a village with a dragon problem, which they’ve kept at bay only by sacrificing Kushinada’s seven sisters. Susanoo, horny for a princess who looks like his mum, decides it’s time to intervene.

The dance scene above comes in the middle of the movie, in which the goddess Ame-no-Uzume performs an increasingly mystical dance. It was an ambitious experiment of Makoto Nagasawa, who had joined as an inbetweener on Saiyūki, with large spacing and broad motion to create a snappy feeling. Animation Obsessive writes:

Typical motion at Toei, Nagasawa said, would be “neatly in-betweened from the first [key] pose to the last [key] pose.” In other words, in-betweens smoothed out the movement and made it longer, more complete and more realistic. By contrast, Nagasawa’s drawings of Uzume are often at wide intervals, with minimal in-betweens. Sometimes, she basically teleports from one frame to the next.

Even when the intervals aren’t that wide, the way Uzume moves remains big, broad, clear and non-real. Nagasawa pushes her gestures, increases her speed, shows us only what he wants to show us. The action is crisp, always holding its abstract shape. No naturalistic touches distract from the core form of what Uzume does.

Alongside Nagasawa, Yasuji Mori was now coming into a role close to that of the now-standard 作画監督 sakuga kantoku aka sakkan or animation director, an experienced artist whose job is to correct the drawings from many different key animators to keep them on-model. Modern anime productions tend to have a strictly hierarchical approach where the characters are designed by one or a few character designers, usually also the lead sakkan. At Toei, things had been a bit more fluid - the individual animators would often design the characters they were going to animate, with a division of labour closer to the old Disney style. On this film, it became more of a hybrid: Mori drew the final model sheets, but the animators would submit suggested designs to him.

For the most elaborate scenes, such as the dance, they went to great lengths to record a suitable score and record live-action footage with professional ballet dancers. I encourage you to read the AniObsessive article for the details.

At the time of Wanpaku Ōji, Toei was starting to face competition. The already-renowned mangaka Osamu Tezuka had founded MushiPro, which was rapidly taking over TV, and the sphere of TMS satellite studios were starting to get going and siphon away many of their best people such as Yasuo Ōtsuka. Still, the animators at Toei were determined to try and stand alongside international animators:

The team was well aware of the trends in world animation at that time. According to Nagasawa, they were watching work from Canada (Norman McLaren), Czechoslovakia (Jiří Trnka), Russia (The Snow Queen), France (The King and the Mockingbird) and so on. It was all bold, new animation. In The Little Prince, Toei took up the challenge this work presented, without simply copying it. The team contributed to modern animation while staying rooted in the ancient, and in Japan itself.

Subsequently, Japanese animation is sometimes divided into a ‘Toei tradition’ vs. a ‘MushiPro tradition’, of full vs limited animation respectively, followed by the various successors such as Ghibli on the one hand and Madhouse on the other. As ever this is not really very accurate, and both ‘lineages’ crossed over extensively (just look at Kanada).

Toei’s own output adapted to the times. Takahata’s Horus: Prince of the Sun (AN 70) might be the last of the ambitious movies in their old style; after this, the fairytale films were gradually replaced by gekiga animation such as Tiger Mask, super robots like Mazinger Z, and then at the end of the 70s increasingly science fiction adaptations of Leiji Matsumoto’s works (AN 146). In the 80s, shōnen exploded onto the scene and Toei made a lot of Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya, later joined by other franchises like PreCure, Digimon and One Piece. So Toei remains one of the largest and most robust animation studios in Japan. They’ve got a lot of salaried staff, a union(!), and regular work in the form of wildly popular franchises. But occasionally they’ll make something cool and weird within that remit, like Hosoda’s One Piece film (AN61), Kyōsōgiga (AN98) - or Interstella 5555 which we watched last week.

So! Tonight though we’re going to go back and look at those ambitious early days, where it started, with snakes and dragons and a bishōjo who’s 美 enough to inspire the entire career of Hayao Miyazaki. Animation Night 149 will begin at 20:00 UK time (UTC), (13:00 California time), at twitch.tv/canmom - hope to see you there!

And next week I have a serious treat for you, because the Inu-Oh BD finally dropped. Can’t think of something more perfect for #150 than returning to Masaaki Yuasa.

And now to spend the rest of the day until 8pm on intensive gamdev 😵‍💫

[nintendont2502]

What's up with heirstuck and reboot

Heirstuck is just my version of the generic homestuck fantasy AU (the planning document is actually named 'Yet Another Generic Fantasy AU' so I kinda call it heirstuck + YAGFAU interchangeably lmao), but idk I think its fun. I put a shit ton of effort into the world building/lore but also I have no fucking clue what to actually do with it? Idk might write smth after I finish Reboot

Reboot is just 'self indulgent shit: the fic' and I love it so fucking much. It's also the only fic idea I've actually written something for (8k so far baybee). It's all I think about at work because driving is Boring

Hold up im gonna add a cut here because im about to infodump hard

Reboot: takes place 10 years after the game ends, and right after Dirk kills himself like he does in the Candy timeline (except there's no Ult selves this time - dude was just Not Doing Great). Jake *also* isn't doing great, manages to convince himself that there *has* to be a Dirk, and somehow Hopes into existence a 13 year old Hal, who's very confused (because his last memory was dying as Arquiussprite when he tried to leave the game*) and definitely not Dirk. Jake freaks out, Hal *also* freaks out and passes out (partially due to just being overwhelmed by being literally Hoped into existence), and Jake takes them to Dirk's old apartment where he uh. May or may not keep him kidnapped there for just over a month (although he'd never admit that he's essentially kidnapped someone to himself). Also he keeps trying to figure out how to 'fix' everything, and somehow ends up deluding himself through the power of Hope into seeing Hal *as* Dirk. Hal (who at this point is incredibly scared just by. Everything (including Jake flipping his shit and punching him at one point) goes along with it.

Eventually Jane figures out what's going on, finds Hal and loses her shit because holy shit her husband created life, kidnapped said life and didn't tell her for a month straight. Hal ends up moving in with Dave and Karkat (who are very very gay and very very in denial about that) and gets a job with crockercorp because he doesn't fully trust dave and karkat yet, and wants to be able to support himself. Eventually he realises thst he *can* trust dave and karkat (and his job is incredibly fucking boring) and he tries to quit, but whoops! Turns out he was *technically* registered as Crockercorp property.

To try and cover up Jake's... everything, Jane secretly gave him a role at Crockercorp in the research and development sector, with Hal legally being his prototype for Crockercorp's supposed AI program. Jane was originally just going to leave it, but crockercorp is struggling financially, and AI research could be enough to keep them running. Which means.- Hal isn't allowed to leave. Obviously Hal, dave and Karkat are *furious* about that, but there isn't anything they can do - legally, Hal doesnt exist as a person, and when they try to take Crockercorp to court, they lose. Bad. Jane (who isn't the absolute worst yet but judt give her time) offers them a contract where Hal can do his work from home four days a week, and only comes in on Mondays. She does get worse though. Way fucking worse - she begins to realise that if they're going to pull off the AI thing (and they have to, because they've invested so much time already and there's so much on the line), they need Hal to obey them- and right now, he isn't doing that. Being at Dave and Karkats most of tje time gives him a stable home base, so he feels confident enough to tell crocker to fuck off and not play into her robot shit. Eventually, she starts getting even more desperate, and Bad Shit happens which I won't spoil here :)

Heirstuck doesn't have a plot yet, but it's pretty standard 'homestuck fantasy AU' shit. Derse and Propsit are two separate kingdoms, ruled by the alpha kids (who are 20) with the beta kids (who are like 16) being the heirs to the throne. Alternia is a separate kingdom on the outskirts that fucking hates the human kingdoms, and the human kingdoms are also at war with each other

The rules of succession are pretty interesting though I think - each kingdom has two thrones, the male and the female throne. Only members of the royal family who show signs of magic abilities are able to claim the throne, and there's always two royals of each gender - one on the throne, and a heir. In both kingdoms, the male members of the royal family take one last name (Strider in Derse, Egbert in Prospit), while the female members take a different last name (Lalonde in Derse, Harley in Prospit).

The last Queen of Prospit (Queen Harley) mysteriously disappeared one day, along with the former King Egbert, leaving Jane and Jake to take the throne. Only a few days earlier, Queen Lalonde and King Strider of Derse *also* died, forcing Dirk and Roxy to the thrones. All four were far younger than any recorded rulers in history, and the suspiciously close timing of the rulers deaths only lead to more suspicion between the two kingdoms, fueling the war even further. Just after the crowning of the two kingdoms new rulers, the ruler of Alternia - Her Imperial Condesce - returned after her decades long disappearance, telling Alternia to ready for war

Before Queen Harley died, she spent a lot of time with her Heirs Jane and Jake, although what she did was unknown. It must have had an impact, though, because when Jane ascended to the throne, she took the last name 'Crocker' instead of the traditional Harley, in honour of the former queens original last name. Similarly, only a few days after he was crowned, King Egbert completely disappeared (although rumours have spread that he now goes by Jake English or Doc Scratch, in honour of the God he's created a cult around on the outskirts of the warring kingdoms)

(Also yeah Queen Harley is absolutely just HIC in disguise - she brainwashed Jane into further intensifying the war between Derse and Prospit before she 'died', and she told Jake about a powerful God known as Lord English in the hopes of distracting him to get a weaker King on the throne (poor John). She didn't expect him to actually raise LE - it was the equivalent of just jingling keys in front of a baby's face, only for them to snatch them, sprint away and commit mass vehicular manslaughter in your Ford f150.)

I dont really have too much in the way of plot yet, but I do have some random ideas:

- after HICs return, karkat is suddenly in a lot more danger as a mutant (and someone who neber manifested powers, unlike every other troll) - so he gets the fuck out and flees to Derse, where he meets dave

- speaking of Dave - he never manifested powers either. He shouldn't be heir, and they all know that. He came along with rose to serve as her body guard (and also to get away from his older brother, who - resentful that *he* never got called up to take the throne - trains Dave *way* too hard). Rose fakes a vision that Dave is meant to be heir, and dirk and roxy pretend to believe it because holy shit they can't just send him back

- Jake uses dirk as a host to manifest Lord English. Cue incredibly insane Dirkjake here

- I have. Thoughts about classpects and how they manifest but I can't be fucked writing them out jere

- HICs main goal is to have the two human kingdoms turn on each other so they weaken each other, and then the trolls can sweep in and take them all out (right now they live underground after some ancient war drove them out or smth).