#also for some reason there's a limit on @'ing people in a post????? or this site is broken again

[nsewell]

10 characters/10 fandoms/10 tags

tagged by: @kirnet 🤍🫶 tagging: @sarahlyons, @nat-seal-well, @aztarion, @stinkrascal, @crownleys, @brightpinkpeppercorn, @plasticdodecagon, @serenpedac, @dumortains, @briarhips

yennefer (the witcher)

natalie sewell (the wayhaven chronicles)

caitlyn kirraman (arcane)

kaladin (the stormlight archive)

leia organa (star wars)

lara croft (tomb raider)

alicent hightower (house of the dragon)

miranda lawson (mass effect)

morrigan (dragon age)

claudia (amc's interview with the vampire)

[ohnoitstbskyen]

100 songs to get to know me

I posted this image over on the bluesky, and it got like 100 likes, so now here we are. I was going to write them all up here, but Tumblr imposes a 10 video limit on embeds per post which I find infuriating.

So! You can read the first ten entries here, but you can read the entire list here: https://tbskyen.bearblog.dev/100-songs-to-get-to-know-me/

1. ABBA - Lay All Your Love On Me

I genuinely don't quite know if my enjoyment of ABBA is something I came by honestly, or something which is simply genetically engineered into my Scandinavian soul. I remember hearing my mom blasting their songs on the home stereo in my childhood, and the association has put permanent nostalgia blinders on me for all of ABBA's greatest hits. Still, I think the beat is undeniable and the mournful tone of the chorus adds some real melancholy to the dramatic plea at the core of the song.

2. Afenginn - Oestrogenmanipuleret Basilisk

Afenginn describe themselves as "bastard etno-punk" which is probably as good a description as you're going to get. There's a lot of klezmer and eastern European folk influences here, but what is more important about Afenginn's best songs is that they go hard as f*ck and it's an absolute blast to dance to them at a show. They played this the first time I saw them live, and the rhythm comes back every time I hear it again. Good times!

3. Afenginn - Ralli in D Minor

With 100 slots to fill, I am giving myself permission to allocate two slots to Afenginn, and for the same reason. Ralli in D Minor is less of a dance tune to me, and more of a headbanger, but with a sufficiently loud subwoofer and a game crowd, you could f*ing mosh to this.

4. Anamanaguchi - Prom Night

I discovered Anamanaguchi as the composers of the title track to the Nerdist podcast back in the day, and being unfamiliar with the concept of chiptunes, I was drawn in initially by the sheer novelty of hearing the squeaks and bloops of my gaming childhood employed towards rock tunes and combined with "real" instruments.

Beyond the gimmick, though, Anamanaguchi won me over fully with the Scott Pilgrim game soundtrack, and then 2013's Endless Fantasy, where the gimmick of chiptune nostalgia noise (at least for me) finally coalesced into something that felt entirely like its own thing. Plus I'm a sucker for exactly this kind of bright dance pop, and Bianca Raquel's vocals here are a perfect match for the tone of the music.

5. Jennifer Hudson - Memory

2019s Cats is a fascinating fucking disaster. Tom Hooper is the worst director of musicals in my living memory, the abuse of the VFX staff extended beyond brutal crunch and absurd challenge imposed by a director who had no idea what the hell he was asking them to do all the way into an astonishingly arrogant and condescending joke from Rebel Wilson and James Corden at the expense of workers who were the last people at fault for the disaster that the movie became (look in the fucking mirror, Wilson and Corden, your performances were rancid).

Still, the silver lining of Cats is we got to hear Jennifer Hudson shake the world on its foundations with her rendition of Memory. I don't give a shit what anyone says, this performance is transcendent and no amount of institutional failure can dim its quality.

6. Annette Bjergfeldt - Min Bærende Bjælke

Annette is one of my mother's oldest friends, and a prolific singer-songwriter now turned author. I've been going to her concerts since I was a little child, and while I am absolutely not the target audience for any of it, it has stuck with me as part of my musical vocabulary deep into adulthood.

She has experimented with brass band accompaniment a few times, but for my money, nothing quite comes close to the floating, optimistic vibe of Min Bærende Bjælke. It sounds like a very particular kind of lasting romance, which of course is also what the lyrics are about.

7. Hozier - Blood Upon the Snow

We'll get more than one Hozier song on this list, but Blood Upon the Snow stands out to me as a song which easily transcends the videogame soundtrack promotional tie-in nature of its conception. Bear McCreary's hurdy gurdy and lyrics about surviving through adversity by holding on to existence with your teeth and nails... yeah, it hits with me. There's something real in that.

"The trees deny themselves nothing that makes them grow, no rainfall, no sunshine, no blood upon the snow." Something about that feels real.

8. The Beatles - Something

idk if I really need to write anything about George Harrison's most famous love song that hasn't been written more extensively by a million dad-rock enthusiasts before me.

I will say, this is one of the few songs I listen to regularly that justify the expensive audiophile headphones I invest in. There's a LOT to hear on a good, lossless, original mix of this song, if you're the kind of pervert who gets off to listening to a song a hundred times to focus on different parts of the soundscape. (it's me, I am the pervert)

9. Blink-182 - Adam's Song

I discovered a lot of my music taste as a young man from extremely low-resolution AMVs that my friend used to download off sketchy file-sharing sites. Blink-182 entered my musical lexicon through the one above, specifically, piggybacking off of my teenage love of Dragon Ball.

I never really grokked what the lyrics were actually about, until relistening to the song years later, but something about the minor-key wail of the thing really sat with my angsty teenage soul and has stuck with me ever since. I cannot listen to this song without that music video playing in my head, the song will forever belong to Vegeta.

There's remastered versions of this AMV out there, apparently, but if it's not 144p with tinny audio, it's just not right. That's not what the song is supposed to sound like, not to me.

10. Blink-182 - Miss You

Blink-182 is one of those bands I discovered via anime AMVs and listened to obsessively for a period as a teenager (The Offspring will show up later on this list), and then fell entirely out of touch with for years until discovering much later in life that they did, in fact, keep releasing music. I Miss You from their self-titled 2003 album felt, when I discovered it sometime in the early 2010s, like a much more mature and interesting sound from a band which had gotten stuck associated with my adolescent superpower kung-fu fantasies which I was, at the time, feeling a bit embarrassed about.

The song had a resurgence on TikTok a little while ago as a meme template, which made me listen to the albums again, and rediscover yet again that Blink-182 is, in fact, still putting out albums.

---

The rest of the list is here: https://tbskyen.bearblog.dev/100-songs-to-get-to-know-me/

[team-unveil]

Hello everyone 😊

Welcome to Team Unveil! We're a very dedicated group of hackers and investigators, and I'm you're lovely admin, Blaire ✨️

We don't discriminate! Anyone and everyone can be a target of ours. We strive for neutrality!

If you don't have anything to hide, then we shouldn't be a problem 💖 Wouldn't the world be so much nicer if everyone was open and honest?

If you want any details on someone or have some interesting information, don't be afraid to reach out! Thank you!!!

OOC (PLEASE READ)

Hello!

While I'm an only mod, this blog operates as if they're are many people involved!

If you want to have an OC that's apart of the team, feel free to reach out! You can also DM me at any time for plotting reasons, you want a post taken down, or if you want to make sure I've received your post.

The purpose of this blog is so people can share private messages, photos, recorded conversations, ect. without having to post it themselves OOC, pretend that it was accidental or any other reason as to why this leak in privacy is happening!

Maybe your crappy rotom phone ratted you out, maybe you were hacked, or perhaps someone shared private information you trusted them with, whatever the reason, this blog got a hold of it and is sharing to the world.

Submission Rules/Info:

If I feel like the rules aren't obeyed, I have the right to toss it out.

PLEASE USE THE SUBMISSION BUTTON NOT THE ASK. Asks are for questions, "leaks" need to be sent to me using the submission button.

I do not have the ability to change submissions to be anonymous! This is annoying, I know, but it's not something I have control over. This blog will operate where we are "blind" to the "submitted by" portion.

You can, however, submit things anonymously if you go into an incognito tab! I don't believe you can add images that way, but you are welcome to DM the images to me! I have the ability to edit submissions, so I can add them in! It will ask for your email, and I cannot see this 🙏

Please keep submissions PG-13! This means sexual content cannot be explicit, just suggestive and vague, and violence is fine, but gore will need to be censored. However, regardless of how vague it is, I will reject anything involving incest, pokephilia, pedophilia, and sexual abuse.

*new rule, but I'm not very comfortable posting things involving abelism or ridiculing people for mental health issues.

When submitting a leak, please add instructions! Tell when to post it! What day, what time (give me your timezone or translate to EST). I can delete said instructions, just clearly mark them with an OOC or // .

That being said: do NOT send me something that needs to go up immediately or within a few hours. I work and sleep! Give me time to see and get it ready please 🙏

Do not God Mod. God modding is when you control someone's character without their consent. If a leak has been shared about your character and you did NOT approve it, I will take it down!

You are free to submit leaks about canon characters! Someone having a canon character as a muse does NOT make them off limits. However ! If you are @ ing their blog specifically and they did not consent to it, it will be taken down upon request.

Post your submission as if you are the hacker or someone sneakily giving me intel! You can be as extravagant or minimalist as you want.

It seems that @/blog was lying about their relationship status with @/blog2

[Insert here a romantically involved chat log]

If not a hacker or someone ratting out information, you can post as if you're paparazzi or a stalker. Stalker posts will be properly tagged as such!

You can create fake chats, draw and edit things as you wish! Or you can just use image descriptors and plain text. The formatting is totally up to you. Anything official from Pokémon is free game, but you cannot use someone else's fanart or edits without permission.

And lastly, this should go without saying, but this blog is NOT intended for real drama and call outs. You should not be using this blog to try and get back at someone and hurt them. Everything here should be fictional.

Please @ the involved blogs, this will help knowing who is being talked about.

Use the tags!!! When you make a submission, you have the ability to add your tags. Please do so to add appropriate warnings.

I'm an adult! I run @pokeblr-confessions and @belamew. Those two characters have ZERO relation to Blaire.

[hot-take-tournament]

HOT TAKE TOURNAMENT

POST PRE PRELIMINARY #112

Submission 39

Kusuke Saiki is a good and justifiable character

[JUSTIFICATION UNDER THE CUT]

Pre-preliminaries will be used to determine what qualifies as a hot take. Propaganda is encouraged!

Also, remember to reblog your favourite polls for exposure!

Kusuke is a messed up dude, however, he isnt as bad as people sometimes make him out to be.

He did technically turn a village of old people into robots however, that is understandable. People think he did it only because of kusuo, which is wrong. Before he turned the village into robots, he called his grandpa and said he needed some money. His grandpa thought it was kusuo even though kusuke didnt hide his voice or anything, so he ran off to deliver the money. Once he realized that it wasnt kusuo and was instead kusuke, he scolded him for lying even though kusuke never said he was kusuo and he really did need train fare. once kusuke told them that he had graduated from Cambridge with a PHD, his parents and grandparents didnt seem excited or nothing even though he was only 19 since he was so smart he skipped so many grades. so it makes sense that he'd turn them into robots. he ended up leaving and undo-ing the robot thing too.

at some point he tried to launch his dad at a meteor but his dad sucks and both his parents prefer his brother I think, but ultimately both his brother and himself have it rough. also his parents let him go and study in England all by himself at 14, they didnt worry about him whatsoever.

also hes not obsessed with kusuo, hes obsessed with kusuo's powers. he acts pretty normal when he isnt talking about his powers, he doesnt obsess over kusuo, its just his powers that he obsesses over. anything that makes him seem gross in a similar way that makoto teruhashi is gross, can be refuted. why is he obsessed with kusuo's powers? because he was the smartest person ever and could beat everyone except kusuo. the reason why he couldnt beat him was because of his powers, since he kept trying to win but failed 4260 times (the amount he said + the amount he failed in the times after he said that), he ended up obsessed with winning against him and his powers. why did he put the limiter there? so kusuo would be more likely to have issues taking it given its placement, this gave kusuke an advantage and allowed him to almost get the other limiter. some people say he did gross things to the robot version, theres no evidence to prove he did anything other than make it lick his shoes and even that mightve just been for the recording he sent to the real version.

Point is, Kusuke Saiki is a messed up dude and does do bad things however he isnt as bad as a lot of people think plus there's reasoning behind his actions.

[turtlemagnum]

my mom grew up in an age where everyone called everyone shit like "dude", "bro", "guy" etc, and as a consequence i grew up with that as normal. when you're 6 years old and your parents refer to both you and one another as dude, that really normalizes it for you. that being said, i also understand that language is a two way street and that not everyone will have the same understanding of certain words that i have, so i completely get why some people are uncomfortable with them. so while i've never actually had the mistortune of bro-ing someone who was against it, i fully intend that if the occassion ever happens to arise, i'd apologize and do my best to not make the same mistake again. but at the same time, i also find it to be a bit much in the way people try to justify hating being called them? i just saw a post talking about how it reinforced misogyny, and i really don't think it's that deep. you don't have to find a feminist reason for justifying your discomfort, your discomfort is enough to justify itself and if someone doesnt understand that, they probably wouldn't give a shit even if you cobbled together a deeper reason for it, ya feel me?

i will admit i use "guy" well beyond the limits of gender neutrality. i use it in the same way i colloquially use "gamer", in a deeply non-literal sense. i call my pocket knife a guy. i call cats gamers. i use them as just like, a general all-purpose noun and at this point i cant even trace the linguistic history of it. this one time i saw a groundhog in the back yard and told my grandparents that "a little brown guy" was out back and they thought i was talking about a kid for some fucking reason. my specific fucking vernacular is strange and obtuse to people unfamiliar with it intimately. this is mostly unrelated but i have ADHD and this is MY BLOG & i'll post WHATEVER I WANT!!!

[psymmetry]

writer 20 questions!

so aoba tagged panda and yellow (@guesst), who tagged me, but i saw panda's post first for some reason. hi everyone. thanks for remembering i exist, i had to dust off my writer card. i will be responding to everyone's points…

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

36

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

125,372

3. What fandoms d(id) you write for?

mairimashita

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

dying doesn’t suit you either (433), trying not to move (same fic) (360), pandemonium (280), it’s not the end of the world (239), soft cream otoshichatta(191). what, no kidnapping fic on here?  no vampirio? vampirio is still my second most iconic work; people mention it to this day 

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

i think i do. enough that the number of comments is different from the number of comment threads.

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

probably the one where kiri makes azu kill people and then it ends with him dissociating sitting on the bathroom floor knowing that his life is ruined. what a great fic. does anyone else want to read this fic? the statute of limitations has passed i don’t even mind

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

uuuu….. FIGURE IT OUT I DON’T KNOW

8. Do you get hate on fics?

never in my life lol i am a perfect angel

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

surprised to see other people saying they don’t. hey, if you get to write without being a disgusting pervert freak, why not me? if you can be motivated beyond a base impulse. if you can want something closer to pure, just for the satisfaction of pieces clicking into place, words coming easy for once– i want satisfaction in a bad way.

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

IN… theory. A. i love crackficcing and B. i feel like it’s hard to find an interesting crossover, which is a challenge, but hm, not really a thing i do. 

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

no, but someone once used my manga coloring for a fancam. i can’t be mad, i stole that shit in the first place lolol

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

nooooo (psy is not that famous) (never got a podfic either)

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

yes! i have been listed as a co-author for beta-ing and i have also written fics that were completely co-concepted and beta’d by the other person. never written by like, trading off chapters or had both people write extensive passages though. 

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

I’M POLYAMAROUS I DON’T HAVE AN OTP 

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

vampirio #2… i drafted it out and everything… from WIP to RIP… 

i don’t need to finish things for them to count towards my artistic development or whatever. you know, perhaps fans of my work would disagree. perhaps such people would prefer that i post things for them to read

16. What are your writing strengths?

this is too embarrassing. words pretty :> flow flow :> 

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i can’t structure and follow through on anything longer than 10k. i don’t block out time to write.

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

tu quieres escuchar mi espanol terrible? en un fic? por que’ yo quisiera hacer este NFDNs?? escribir fic por the smash hit sensation EL CUARTO MISTERIOSO. yo debo mirar mas shows en espanol…. este keyboard no tene un numpad. fun fact. no alt codes para mi

19. First fandom you wrote for?

uuuuuuuuuu nope that’s LIMITED INFORMATION

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

playing the victim. the aforementioned serial killer fic. 

i am tagging @cometkov and @dragonofthedepths! and everyone. everyone at all. if you see this you have to answer all 20 questions. 500 words each. assignment is due 11/30 11:59. by the way, here is a blank to make it a little easier.

[frostehburr]

Finishing the Year by 100%ing Pikmin 4

Yeah, this is the last tumblr post for me in 2023.

I really didn't expect to get Pikmin 4 so soon and be able to finish it before new year. Not to say it didn't have a bit of difficulty, the dandori challenges were a pain in the ass. I'm just surprised by the amount of time I had for this game.

Recently I had to go on a business trip to California and to pass time in the hotel room, I brought a Switch with Pikmin 4. Apparently the time I spent in the hotel room over the week long trip was enough for me to 100% the game! Would love to go on trips more often but it's far too expensive.

Like previous Pikmin games, the main story involves you using pikmin to collect giant every day objects and genocide the local wildlife so the pikmin can take over and dominate the area.

Family friendly Nintendo.

Anyhow, this fourth installment... fifth?... adds the goal of rescuing tourists who came to this planet filled with lethal levels of oxygen (what do these guys breath?) for various reasons such as real estate and looking at flowers. I personally think there are better options than a planet where you're chances of death via suffocation is high but I also know a few people who actively grab venomous snakes with their bare hands so I guess preservation instincts are different between people.

Also half of these castaways turned into leaf people. The pikmin are starting to take over the tiny tiny humans!

These leaf people demand you do something called a "dandori" challenge which is just doing a specific objective in the shortest amount of time available. If you want to 100% the game, you will have to get the platinum medal for ALL dandori challenges and battles!

This is the main reason I expected to not finish the game until next year. The dandori stuff stresses me out so much! Putting a time limit on it was bad enough but grading me on how much time I use just hurts. I hate it!

One more thing, I looked it up out of curiosity and dandori is an actual Japanese word! Yeah apparently it's a word that describes the strategic organization of tasks and working efficiently to a plan...

Basically the entire concept of Pikmin as a whole. Yet I struggled with it...

So they also have a few side missions, a treasure catalogue, and a bestiary. The bestiary was filled out thanks to me running all over chucking Pikmin at anything that moved. Including a massive giant dog that shows up some time late in the game.

Side missions were mostly "find all X crew" which is easily done when completing the caves. Oh there are two that are grow 300 pikmin and make 300 pikmin bloom but those are radiant quests so I'm certain they don't count. I also had to buy all gear and Oatchi skills but I recommend getting them when you can because it makes the game go by faster.

For the treasure catalogue I needed 100 purple pikmin which you can easily do without a purple onion. Yes the purple bois got their own onion this time! However, in order to get the purple and white onion you have to go through the dandori sage trials, which were a nightmare of 10 levels on their own.

I do not think I needed to platinum the sage trials... I never did but I choose to claim that it is unnecessary. For the sake of sanity. Those trials were brutal!

After getting the purple onion I had to find a way to grow 100 purple pikmin which is rather hard to do when you wiped out everything on the maps. Leaving me with the flower pellets as my only option. Took about three days but I got to 100 purple bois and collected the gold bar, finishing the treasure catalogue!

With all that done I just have to say: Pikmin 4 is a very enjoyable game you can have loads of fun with. It's a calming type of game where you can fling plant bois to collect shiny items. However, you should never attempt to 100% complete this game. Attempting to 100% Pikmin 4 will leave you more stressed than the year 2020.

Think I fully understand why Nintendo never bothered with achievements.

[fiercynn]

okay but like. this is one of those things where there's no need for the all-or-nothing stance op has jumped to, because i think most people that list the things they do not want to interact with are also curating their own spaces in the ways that you mention, depending on the platform they're on. why do those things have to be mutually exclusive?

op, you talk about being reasonable, but you seem to immediately assume that if someone has DNIs listed (because i think that's what you're talking about, though the examples you throw out read as pretty hyperbolic to me because they are so vague), they are somehow being entitled and expecting literally everyone who engages with them in any form to seek out and follow their DNIs. i think most people who list DNIs are themselves reasonable about what "do not interact" means; if they have a post that makes it out of their usual circles and strangers are interacting with it in a way that is either a light touch or generally respectful, then usually that's fine. but i don't think it's unreasonable to set boundaries about how you want people to engage with you on a more substantive level - for example, following you, or DM-ing you, or deciding to actively dogpile you for an opinion you shared online, or whatever else that might look like. it seems entirely reasonable to me to expect that people might read your bio before doing those things, in the same way that you might expect them to read your bio to see if you have pronouns listed before referring to you in the third person publicly. obviously not everyone's going to do it, but it connotes some basic respect imo.

it has become harder and harder over the years for us to curate our own spaces online, which makes sense because it's not in any way profitable for social media platforms to have users limiting their content. of course people are going to have to come up with their own ways outside of the paltry tools that social media affords us.

the thing about listing your triggers being potentially dangerous is valid (although i don't think everyone's DNI lists are necessarily triggers), but the derision with which op writes about everything else in this post makes me feel like that warning is not going to seek its' intended audience. younger people in fandom already get condescended to so fucking much that if you are truly trying to help by giving guidance about internet safety and privacy, you are not going to succeed by jumping to conclusions about the intentions of younger fans in listing out their DNIs.

it's also absolutely not only younger fans who are doing this. the number of fans in their 30s or older with "18+" or "antis dni" in their bios keeps growing. i generally think pro/anti discourse is bs, but if that's the boundary you want to set for people following you or whatever, more power to you.

it's just so fucking frustrating how people want to treat fandom as a community when it's easy for them to do so, but that any attempt to understand the perspectives of younger fans goes out the window when you decide that they are being entitled and doing fandom wrong. i'm in my mid-thirties, and the internet landscape that younger fans grew up in is vastly different than the one i did; even though i have continued to use the internet at the same time as them, i've done so as an adult, with different levels of personal protection and support. maybe, just maybe, younger people might sometimes know some things about how to protect themselves online better than i do.

Idk man I might get torn to shreds for saying this, but I simply cannot understand the new trend, particularly among younger internet users, where people write a laundry list of their triggers in their bio and then expect everyone to read and cater to said list on a PUBLIC PLATFORM.

This is the same mentality that drives people to attack appropriately tagged fics on AO3 for having x y or z content because “How dare you post this when I have trauma about this???” Obviously if someone is going to write a super heavy and highly sensitive fic and NOT tag it properly, they ought to be called out on it. But this isn’t about that, it’s about the people who don’t curate their own content, it’s about the people who enter public spaces and demand that the general public cater to THEM specifically.

Additionally: Listing out your triggers for everyone to see is just ASKING for trolls to come into your inbox and flood you with triggering content. (Unfortunately, as much as we would like to believe otherwise, the internet is full of selfish jerks who don’t give a crap about anybody’s trauma.) Not only this, but the algorithm does not read your bio. The algorithm does not care about your triggers unless YOU make sure to block specific tags and content.

YOU are responsible for curating your own content, and nobody else.

Obviously this is not to say people shouldn’t try to tag their posts for common triggers, because that’s the common courtesy thing to do. But if Becky has a phobia of bees, it is on her to block that tag and curate her feed around it, and she does not get the exclusive right to suddenly demand that nobody talk about bees within a ten mile radius of her. If Alec has a phobia of dogs, then it is well within his right to avoid contact with them, but he doesn’t get to go to a public park and yell at anybody who brings their dog there. It is his responsibility to know his own limits and seek out parks that are dog-free. (If someone brings a dog to a dog-free area, that’s a whole different issue that I won’t be getting into rn but yes, the person who does that is in the wrong there.)

The internet is widely a public space. If you want to create a safe space completely and utterly free of your specific triggers, you have to put the work in to make that space for yourself. You don’t get to ask other internet strangers to do it for you.

I’m saying this out of genuine concern (and admittedly, frustration) because there are so many young teens in fandom nowadays who don’t understand this, and they end up putting themselves in extremely vulnerable and even downright dangerous situations because they don’t understand that putting your well-being in the hands of a stranger is a terrible idea.

Please be safe, and for the love of all that is holy, be reasonable. Curating your content yourself is just as much a protection for you as it is a vital key that allows public communities to function.

[anime-ops]

FAQ & updated request/tagging info

When requesting a theme, you must include the following information:

- the name of the anime. - either the name of the theme, or which number theme it is. - it is NOT required to include whether it's an opening or an ending, but appreciated.

You can request more than one opening/ending at a time, but you still have to follow the guidelines above in some sort of form, please. Request examples at end of the post.

- I do not answer asks on this blog unless it's to deny a request, let someone know I cannot post a request for whatever reason, or to answer questions. I will not respond to you otherwise.

- Currently, I have a queue going on this blog that lasts over a month with 1-2 posts a day. Your request should be posted at some point within that amount of time, if not then be patient.

- If you're wondering whether I've posted your request yet, you can check the #requests tag. If you do not see it there, either it is not posted yet or tumblr is being stupid. Either way, please do not spam my inbox wondering when it's going to be posted.

- You may request multiple themes at once, whether they're in one ask or in multiple.

- The mod of this blog works 30+ hours a week and sometimes has limited amount of free time throughout the week and often lets the requests pile up a little bit before queue-ing them. Be patient and don't constantly pester me to post the theme you want.

- People sometimes request themes from western animated cartoons, and I sometimes post them simply because this is my blog and I can. If you do not want to see these, filter the #cartoons tag.

IF YOU WANT TO REQUEST A CARTOON THEME, FOLLOW THESE GUIDELINES. I WILL NOT POST THEM OTHERWISE.

[image id: a tumblr ask that says "hiiii. i'd like to request either soramimi cake or raspberry heaven, both from azumanga diaoh. they're the opening and closing songs respectively". the username and profile picture of the asker was crossed out in red. /end id]

[image id: a tumblr ask that says "Death note Opening 2 "WHAT'S UP, PEOPLE!?" by Maximum the Hormone, made in 2005 (Or put in the anime in 2007) [This is also EXTREMELY loud >-<]". the username and profile picture of the asker was crossed out in red. /end id]

[image id: a tumblr ask from an anonymous user that says "gintama endings 1-4". /end id]

[honeylizabeth]

For some time now I've been thinking on what SNS is suitable for me at the end of the day. I've been thinking on it since the clusterfuck that has been twitter in the last year, and tbh, i've been thinking on limiting twitter to only post my drawings, and RT-ing stuff i like or i want to share, kinda like what i do with tumblr but lacking the "giving a fuck to grow there" factor. I'm there more against my will than any other reason...

Up to this day i've been using instagram a lot more but i want to expand to other SNS too, like how from not so long ago I've tried to make myself more confortable on Mastodon since it has a really good server dedicated to art and I can basically use it as a portfolio, but I still need a place to post silly stuff about art and about things I want to draw in the future. Also, i mainly post in spanish there because i only have spanish speaking followers, no matter what i do and i find it funny. Spanish speaking in the sense of native spanish speakers and, i asume, people who don't have spanish as a first language.

Since I'm also on Bluesky i thought on using it more too, but here's the thing; as a twitter replica of sorts, my mentallity on using it is stil to use it like i use twitter, but maybe with a little bit more of caring about it and giving at least a fuck. Unlike whatever the hell is going on there, on twitter I mean.

And then there's tumblr. I'll be honest; I don't know how to use this site appart of rebbloging stuff i like or i care about, and similar stuff on my sideblog. But I want to do stuff in here too, appart of uploading my art and reblogging other's art... so i decided to post drawings that are shitposts too. Also because i feel this place will appreciate more my shitposts. Don't ask why. I mean i'll still upload them on insta at least but i feel like this feels like a better suited place... And maybe I'll upload them to Mastodon too, who knows.

...TLDR? SNS is going to shit, i don't know what SNS is worth using anymore as an actual place to share stuff, and I'll probably, definetly, surely upload here some silly sketches more often than in instagram for example.

[hockstuff]

VERY IMPORTANT.

with the nhl playoffs commencing, it’s usually a pretty intense time on hockeyblr or any hockey space really. so please remember that although it’s really fun to get really invested and into the games and the rivalries and the nastiness of playoff hockey, remember that there’s still a level or respect needed to keep this a fun and safe space for everyone. please also remember that hockeyblr is slightly different to other platforms with the (unspoken) etiquette we all maintain to avoid and prevent any drama from occurring between different fanbases. these include but are not limited to:

- tagging all your posts appropriately. if you’ve been on here for the regular season, you will likely be aware of the appropriate tags for the different teams. usually it’s the team names or when it’s live blogging while the game is on its the “lb” tags. for example “avs lb” “bruins lb” “canes lb” etc etc. use the right tags so people can block whichever tags they need to and also so your posts reach the right and intended audience!

- redacting words/asterisk-ing words in post. this one is a lot less known and sometimes it slips peoples minds, which is usually alright but keep in mind that playoffs get a lot more intense and emotions run high. so just makes sure you redact or asterisks names of the team your opposed to so it doesn’t show up in their space/tags. for example, if you are rooting for the flames and make a post saying “the stars suck” etc and tag it appropriately under “flames lb”, it could still show up in the “stars lb” tag. so to avoid this, it would be best to asterisks it like “the st*rs suck” or something like that to prevent tumblr from putting it in the stars tags. this is important for if you’re making a post that targets a specific team!

- don’t go sending anon (or non-anon) hate to opposing blogs. there’s no need. games get nasty, that’s a given. but you don’t need to send direct hate to blogs of the opposing team. some suggestions if you’re frustrated after a game for any reason, make a post about it on your own blog and tag it with your appropriate team tags. vent and rant as you need, but there’s no room or need to be sending hate to any blog just out of spite. discussions (even if they get heated) are understandable, but don’t got sending death threats and personally insulting and targeting comments to someone over a hockey game.

there are obviously a lot more common etiquette and just general things to be mindful of once playoffs start but i think these three are the big ones. obviously, you can take what i say as you wish and you may choose to ignore me which is whatever, but i do think following these will make everyone’s experience just a little more fun as opposed to the contrary. feel free to add any other helpful ways/etiquette to make these playoffs fun for everyone <3

[oscillatingdichotomy]

This is a very limited-perspective response in many regards, so let me address each point in turn.

Talking about food and shelter, government housing exists (typically) for those with an inability to perform labor, but with all the resources and technology that exists there’s no good reason the working class should be having a harder time making a living due to stagnant wages and rising cost of living. The only ones that benefit are those who established businesses long enough ago and large enough to employ many people that they slowly take more and more labor from without fair compensation. This labor also has no need to be forced. Saying that all food and housing must result from forced labor (slavery, and you put it) has not been the instance for a majority of the human race; pre-historic humans voluntarily formed communities and actually supported each other in order to survive. Enslavement happens, but is by no way the default to survive.

It’s not so easy to just live off the land. Every space of land is owned and has restrictions on living there based on who already does, whether it’s preserved or someone already lives there. Property taxes exist, and it’s virtually impossible (at least in the United States) to not have to pay the government some amount of money to stay in any one place, which means that you’d have to engage in some form of business to acquire the legal tender to do so.

That take on earning a living even includes “earn[ing] the fruits of others’ labor”, which shows how the system encourages those with resources and power (often gained through family ties and no actual personal merit or ability) to take advantage of the labor of others. There are many other alternatives to this, and the thought that using force is the only one worth noting shows a hostile nature that exists within the capitalist mindset; either you willingly let me take advantage of you or I will use force to do so.

Bosses don’t earn the fruits of that labor in every instance. Anyone that’s been employed in any variety of actual working-class jobs beneath management has experienced bosses that purely tell others what to do, sit on their ass all day, and/or do much less work than their subordinates. It’s very difficult to get unemployment as well, and often can be incredibly difficult to find a job that’s not significantly worse in terms of labor, wages, or management than the one being left. Not everybody has the privilege to simply walk out of their job and find a better one at any second. It already was also stated that food and shelter must be obtained by forced labor, so it would therefore be impossible to voluntarily leave work if it’s forced.

These so-called analytical takes of capitalism are one-dimensional and show that the writer only views things from their personal perspective. Having had many jobs in many fields in more than a few cities, I’ve gotten a bit of a scope on how capitalism looks from middle-class to below the poverty line in terms of employment, and the post above is absolutely neglecting that population - which is a much higher volume of the population than the rest.

When late-stage capitalism is analyzed in the United States it’s clear that extreme success is based on wage-theft due to increased productivity expectations and stagnant wages, militant employer practices to force workers to comply, and so many other things that don’t give the freedom that OP seems to think exists.

Feel free to add your experiences of capitalism

"Why isn't food and housing a guaranteed right?"

They require the labor of others, which can never be guaranteed without forced labor (i.e. slavery).

"What do you mean I have to tie myself to wage slavery to house myself, etc?"

You don't. You are more than welcome to grow/gather/hunt your own food and build a house using your own materials. In contrast, what you are actually complaining about is that you do not feel it is fair that you must provide sufficient value to others to fulfill your needs and the only way that you perceive being able to do that is through what you describe as "wage slavery".

"The phrase "earn a living" says everything you need to know about end stage capitalism"

Yes, that capitalism believes people should have to earn the fruits of others' labors to fulfill their living needs, opposed to alternatives of taking the fruits of others' labors through force.

INB4: "Then why does my boss take the fruits of my labor?"

They don't. They "earn" it through providing you compensation. If it does not meet your own determined threshold, then you wouldn't continue providing your labor willingly.

[lackadaisical-lesbian]

I am so tired of people missing the point so let's talk about a specific take I keep hearing in reference to Rei and Endeavor

So the specific take is that if Endeavor had just gone about his goal differently not only would he have succeeded, but he would have done so ethically

If he and Rei were just a team instead of just a Hero and A Mother; if he played up the family image and Rei doubled as a wife and a sort of pr manager, and how that family image would have boosted his ratings(one person even said "if Rei had a backbone" and to that person: go fuck yourself, that's not how domestic abuse works you uncompassionate fuck)

However while this may fix the domestic abuse part if the relationship, it still misses the point. Endeavor did not come into this marriage with the intent to beat his wife and child, he did not intend to neglect his children from the get-go. That is something he did as a means to an end. Saying he did so by accident would obviously be a lie, but he did not wake up one day and decide "Abuse Is Okay, Actually". The manga makes it clear this is more of a spiral; he came into this marriage with a goal: produce and raise a heir, he got worse and worse over time.

The reason I'm highlighting the spiral here is because the narrative point is that Endeavor's goals were wrong. His intent is flawed. His reason for starting a family is inherently unethical, and his single minded focus of a selfish goal is what produced the consequences. He did not have a family because he felt he was ready to have children with the woman he loves, just for the sake of that family and those children. Their happiness and wellbeing was secondary to his goal.

Having a equal relationship with his wife isn't fixing all the problems; so long as he has kids for the purpose of a legacy, to give them some sort of pre-determined goal he is wrong. As long as he has kids for the sake of his career he is Wrong.

(That's not to say that people who have kids for the joy if it, or out of love for family can't be abusers, just that Enji was wrong from the get go)

Furthermore, this also fucks with the major themes of bnha. The Todoroki family is pretty symbolic of and involved in all the major themes and messages of the show.

The major message is that society creates it's own problems; that the false dichotomy of heroes verse villains is inherently flawed and a self fulfilling system. Society gives people roles based on their quirks; those with flashy quirks are given privilege and encouraged to be heroes whether that want to or not, people with unappealing or "scary" quirks(or just mutant quirks) are harassed and called villians, limiting that persons options and making it difficult to be anything but what society tells them they are, weak quirked or quirkless people either have to work extra hard to be a hero, or are denied anything but ridicule and forced mediocrity. There's other things that intersect with this, like class, family heritage, or queerness(seen through Magne).

Societies often play a game of sacrifice; what are you willing to sacrifice? Who are you willing to sacrifice? What is the cost you are willing to pay(or let someone else pay) in order to sustain the current social order? In my hero the sacrifice comes in the form of the underprivileged, and of children's lives. This society is forced to contend with that fact, and the consequence of the war arc and the resolution of this arc will answer that question, but so far the answer seems to be that, no, this is not something they can sacrifice. Systems made in blood to maintain a hierarchy are unsustainable.

This hierarchy is exemplified by the hero ranking system. If you think about this system of more than a moment it becomes clear that it's pointless and harmful. The most effective form of hero-ing would involve cooperation, transparency, and community outreach, and the ranking undermines all of that. When teams start being formed post-culture festival it's inspite of the system.

You get higher ranking (more money/notoriety/fame) by a) arrest numbers and b) popular vote. This creates a system where heroes are competing and trying to arrest as many people as possible, which makes teamwork difficult and can produce carelessness and property damage. Also, they are incentivized to preform more-so than do their jobs. This means focusing on high-traffic areas, wealthy areas, appeal to people more likely to vote, and preform for the camera. The focus isn't inherently on saving lives, it's on preforming. Working with criminals, minimizing crime, and actually making things safer is actively discouraged in this system because of the way it's made. There can't be heroes without villians, so they have to keep the villains around because this is a profitable industry. And it doesn't even have to be real villains! Most people aren't committing mass murder! Why do you thing the first scene in the show shows a man who stole a purse being called a villain, with the heroes(specifically Mt. Lady) escalating the situation and preforming for the camera? Mha isn't subtle in it's themeing.

And the public doesn't realize these things because of propaganda and "they're a hero! Of course they're saving lives, that's their job!" The public is both being deceived and acting as an active and passive participant in upholding this system.

So, what does this have to do with the Todoroki family?

Well, for one Endeavor serves as an example that being a hero does not equal being a good person. He also shows the flaws of the system in how notoriety and competition has unhealthy and damaging results.

One important thing to acknowledge is that society is currently answering what is a cost they're willing to pay? Well, they've decided that the Todoroki family is an appropriate price. Sure, he's faced backlash because one of his sons is a Mass Murderer, and some people are, in fact, not chill with domestic violence. But. They need him for the war effort, so he doesn't face consequences. Not significant ones, anyways. Because he never cared what the public thinks, he's never tried to put on a PR friendly mask. Their word's don't hurt him. He has interpersonal consequences, but that's it. They've decided the perceived protection Endeavor the hero gives them is more important than justice for the harm Endeavor the father has done.

TLDR: The Todoroki family has thematic importance, and saying if Endeavor respected his wife everything would be fine is missing an important fundamental message that his intentions in starting a family were flawed. Disregarding the messages in the story and how they intersect with the Todoroki family is also harmful.

[bsdthings]

Open requests i see 👀???

Hmmm maybe Dazai (and kunikida if you take more than one person) with an unusually pretty ada!s/o???

And sometimes they would be on a date and see random people fangirl/boy-ing over her, kind of like the same way characters fawn over Komi-san from Komi can't communicate? (Because haha funni)

Im not sure if you write headcanons or scenarios, but any would work. Hopefully this is not too much to ask for and take your time! ヽ(*・ω・)ﾉ

Yes, open and willing to be written! :3 I do take more than one character, but I will do separate posts about them for the simple reason of organization :3 I admit I had to search Komi-san as I didn't know her so I hope it'll end up how you wish 😅

Osamu Dazai

Dazai x Reader!drop dead gorgeous

Hints of: jealousy, obsessive behavior (stalking), possessiveness, Dazai typical suicidal antics (nothing too serious, tho)

Dazai isn't the type to be jealous in the first place. He has some kind of possessiveness within him, but it doesn't oftenly show or, at least, not in obvious ways.

When he first met you, though, he felt weak to the knees: how does a lady dare be so pretty AND single?!

When he discovered you're his colleague in ADA too, it felt like he won the jackpot when you accepted to go out with him.

Now, you're together, and Dazai is anything but insecure. And yet—

Yet, he's totally pissed by the way people don't seem to get that you're taken. Hello, your dearest boyfriend is right here??

Shortly, you're at the cafeteria in the same building as ADA, drinking your coffee, eating a cake and basically just enjoying your time together when another man dares to look at you too long and actually come to you right in front of him. As if he didn't even exist.

"Such a beautiful lady blessing my eyes! Your hair is like the waves of the sea, made out of silk and cherished by the Gods, your eyes are the deepness of oceans and as addicting as life itself, breathing hope into people's souls—"

That man truly has the guts to take your hand into his.

Now, Dazai might be on the side that saves people, and he totally understands you are so beautiful that even Gods would be jealous of you and would worship you as you're a real life capodopere but—

"I understand that my girlfriend is blessing your life with her existence, but you should know your place" his voice is low, cold, and his eyes are dark as he sits up right behind the man, clearly displeased, his fingers curling around the collar of that man's shirt and pulling him away from you.

"Now, where were we, my belladonna?" he'd smile, but you can clearly say he's one step away from strangling someone if they come too close again.

Of course it happens. How could it not? Especially with how sexy you are with your detective outfit, with how your hair softly caresses your cheeks, with how your eyes sparkle and your breath taking smile—

This time is a woman. And while Dazai is soft with women and a true gentleman—

"Excuse my vulgarity, darling, but you're so pretty! If you would permit me to have one single date with you, would bless me wih the chance to admire your unachievable—" the woman would slowly speak, tenderness in her voice, hands slowly tracing your shoulders—

Dazai is fuming.

"I'm sorry to interrupt this beautiful confession" he would start, but he totally isn't apologetic at all. "But Y/N is taken"

Stalkers are quite pretty common too. People just…follow you and confess to you and try to get you to accept going on a date with them, no matter the gender.

Of course he's proud to have such a beautiful lady by his side, but even his patience has a limit.

He leaves marks all over your neck. Of course he does. He also starts putting his coat around your shoulders, obviously too big for you and obviously masculine, hoping people will just get the hint. He's also mostly found wrapped around you or touches you in some kind of way as a way of claiming.

You're his and just his. Others should feel damn lucky for even being able to breathe the same air as you. And for not being shot by him by this point.

But when you kiss him and hide in his arms, he can't help the way he softens and gets the energy to deal with it all again.

He does sometimes dramatically say "Maybe we should actually go on a double suicide together! It will make it all easier! Ah, to die together, in each other's arms, how romantic!"

~The end~

(I'm sorry if it's quite short 🥺 I will work on the Kunikida one too :3)

[duckprintspress]

How to Edit an Over-Length Story Down to a Specific Word Count

One of the most wonderful things about writing as a hobby is that you never have to worry about the length of your story. You can be as self-indulgent as you want, make your prose the royalist of purples, include every single side story and extra thought that strikes your fancy. It’s your story, with no limits, and you can proceed with it as you wish.

When transitioning from casual writing to a more professional writing milieu, this changes. If you want to publish, odds are, you’ll need to write to a word count. If a flash fiction serial says, “1,000 words or less,” your story can’t be 1,025 and still qualify. If a website says, “we accept novellas ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 words,” your story will need to fall into that window. Even when you consider novel-length works, stories are expected to be a certain word count to fit neatly into specific genres - romance is usually around 80,000 words, young adult usually 50,000 to 80,000, debut novels usually have to be 100,000 words or less regardless of genre, etc. If you self-publish or work with a small press, you may be able to get away with breaking these “rules,” but it’s still worthwhile to learn to read your own writing critically with length in mind and learn to recognize what you do and do not need to make your story work - and then, if length isn’t an issue in your publishing setting, you can always decide after figuring out what’s non-essential to just keep everything anyway.

If you’re writing for fun? You literally never have to worry about your word count (well, except for sometimes in specific challenges that have minimum and/or maximum word counts), and as such, this post is probably not for you.

But, if you’re used to writing in the “throw in everything and the kitchen sink” way that’s common in fandom fanfiction circles, and you’re trying to transition only to be suddenly confronted with the reality that you’ve written 6,000 words for a short story project with a maximum word count of 5,000...well, we at Duck Prints Press have been there, we are in fact there right now, as we finish our stories for our upcoming anthology Add Magic to Taste and many of us wrote first drafts that were well over the maximum word count.

So, based on our experiences, here are our suggestions on approaches to help your story shorter...without losing the story you wanted to tell!

Cut weasel words (we wrote a whole post to help you learn how to do that!) such as unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, the “was ~ing” sentence structure, redundant time words such as “a moment later,” and many others.

When reviewing dialog, keep an eye out for “uh,” “er,” “I mean,” “well,” and other casual extra words. A small amount of that kind of language usage can make dialog more realistic, but a little goes a long way, and often a fair number of words can be removed by cutting these words, without negatively impacting your story at all.

Active voice almost always uses fewer words than passive voice, so try to use active voice more (but don’t forget that passive voice is important for varying up your sentence structures and keeping your story interesting, so don’t only write in active voice!).

Look for places where you can replace phrases with single words that mean the same thing. You can often save a lot of words by switching out phrases like “come back” for “return” and seeking out other places where one word can do the work of many.

Cut sentences that add atmosphere but don't forward the plot or grow your characters. (Obviously, use your judgement. Don't cut ALL the flavor, but start by going - I’ve got two sentences that are mostly flavor text - which adds more? And then delete the other, or combine them into one shorter sentence.)

Remove superfluous dialog tags. If it’s clear who’s talking, especially if it’s a conversation between only two people, you can cut all the he saids, she saids.

Look for places where you've written repetitively - at the most basic level, “ ‘hahaha,’ he laughed,” is an example, but repetition is often more subtle, like instances where you give information in once sentence, and then rephrase part or all of that sentence in the next one - it’s better to poke at the two sentences until you think of an effective, and more concise, way to make them into only one sentence. This also goes for scenes - if you’ve got two scenes that tend towards accomplishing the same plot-related goal, consider combining them into one scene.

Have a reason for every sentence, and even every sentence clause (as in, every comma insertion, every part of the sentence, every em dashed inclusion, that kind of thing). Ask yourself - what function does this serve? Have I met that function somewhere else? If it serves no function, or if it’s duplicative, consider cutting it. Or, the answer may be “none,” and you may choose to save it anyway - because it adds flavor, or is very in character for your PoV person, or any of a number of reasons. But if you’re saving it, make sure you’ve done so intentionally. It's important to be aware of what you're trying to do with your words, or else how can you recognize what to cut, and what not to cut?

Likewise, have a reason for every scene. They should all move the story along - whatever the story is, it doesn’t have to be “the end of the world,” your story can be simple and straightforward and sequential...but if you’re working to a word count, your scenes should still forward the story toward that end point. If the scene doesn’t contribute...you may not need them, or you may be able to fold it in with another scene, as suggested in item 6.

Review the worldbuilding you’ve included, and consider what you’re trying to accomplish with your story. A bit of worldbuilding outside of the bare essentials makes a story feel fleshed out, but again, a little can go a long way. If you’ve got lots of “fun” worldbuilding bits that don’t actually forward your plot and aren’t relevant to your characters, cut them. You can always put them as extras in your blog later, but they’ll just make your story clunky if you have a lot of them.

Beware of info-dumps. Often finding a more natural way to integrate that information - showing instead of telling in bits throughout the story - can help reduce word count.

Alternatively - if you over-show, and never tell, this will vastly increase your word count, so consider if there are any places in your story where you can gloss over the details in favor of a shorter more “tell-y” description. You don’t need to go into a minute description of every smile and laugh - sometimes it’s fine to just say, “she was happy” or “she frowned” without going into a long description of their reaction that makes the reader infer that they were happy. (Anyone who unconditionally says “show, don’t tell,” is giving you bad writing advice. It’s much more important to learn to recognize when showing is more appropriate, and when telling is more appropriate, because no story will function as a cohesive whole if it’s all one or all the other.)

If you’ve got long paragraphs, they’re often prime places to look for entire sentences to cut. Read them critically and consider what’s actually helping your story instead of just adding word count chonk.

Try reading some or all of the dialog out loud; if it gets boring, repetitive, or unnecessary, end your scene wherever you start to lose interest, and cut the dialog that came after. If necessary, add a sentence or two of description at the end to make sure the transition is abrupt, but honestly, you often won’t even need to do so - scenes that end at the final punchy point in a discussion often work very well.

Create a specific goal for a scene or chapter. Maybe it’s revealing a specific piece of information, or having a character discover a specific thing, or having a specific unexpected event occur, but, whatever it is, make sure you can say, “this scene/chapter is supposed to accomplish this.” Once you know what you’re trying to do, check if the scene met that goal, make any necessary changes to ensure it does, and cut things that don’t help the scene meet that goal.

Building on the previous one, you can do the same thing, but for your entire story. Starting from the beginning, re-outline the story scene-by-scene and/or chapter-by-chapter, picking out what the main “beats” and most important themes are, and then re-read your draft and make sure you’re hitting those clearly. Consider cutting out the pieces of your story that don’t contribute to those, and definitely cut the pieces that distract from those key moments (unless, of course, the distraction is the point.)

Re-read a section you think could be cut and see if any sentences snag your attention. Poke at that bit until you figure out why - often, it’s because the sentence is unnecessary, poorly worded, unclear, or otherwise superfluous. You can often rewrite the sentence to be clearer, or cut the sentence completely without negatively impacting your work.

Be prepared to cut your darlings; even if you love a sentence or dialog exchange or paragraph, if you are working to a strict word count and it doesn't add anything, it may have to go, and that's okay...even though yes, it will hurt, always, no matter how experienced a writer you are. (Tip? Save your original draft, and/or make a new word doc where you safely tuck your darlings in for the future. Second tip? If you really, really love it...find a way to save it, but understand that to do so, you’ll have to cut something else. It’s often wise to pick one or two favorites and sacrifice the rest to save the best ones. We are not saying “always cut your darlings.” That is terrible writing advice. Don’t always cut your darlings. Writing, and reading your own writing, should bring you joy, even when you’re doing it professionally.)

If you’re having trouble recognizing what in your own work CAN be cut, try implementing the above strategies in different places - cut things, and then re-read, and see how it works, and if it works at all. Sometimes, you’ll realize...you didn’t need any of what you cut. Other times, you’ll realize...it no longer feels like the story you were trying to tell. Fiddle with it until you figure out what you need for it to still feel like your story, and practice that kind of cutting until you get better at recognizing what can and can’t go without having to do as much tweaking.

Lastly...along the lines of the previous...understand that sometimes, cutting your story down to a certain word count will just be impossible. Some stories simply can’t be made very short, and others simply can’t be told at length. If you’re really struggling, it’s important to consider that your story just...isn’t going to work at that word count. And that’s okay. Go back to the drawing board, and try again - you’ll also get better at learning what stories you can tell, in your style, using your own writing voice, at different word counts. It’s not something you’ll just know how to do - that kind of estimating is a skill, just like all other writing abilities.

As with all our writing advice - there’s no one way to tackle cutting stories for length, and also, which of these strategies is most appropriate will depend on what kind of story you’re writing, how much over-length it is, what your target market is, your characters, and your personal writing style. Try different ones, and see which work for you - the most important aspect is to learn to read your own writing critically enough that you are able to recognize what you can cut, and then from that standpoint, use your expertise to decide what you should cut, which is definitely not always the same thing. Lots of details can be cut - but a story with all of the flavor and individuality removed should never be your goal.

Contributions to this post were made by @unforth, @jhoomwrites, @alecjmarsh, @shealynn88, @foxymoley, @willablythe, and @owlishintergalactic, and their input has been used with their knowledge and explicit permission. Thanks, everyone, for helping us consider different ways to shorten stories!

[sixteenthshen]

the captions are the best part of this special edition of  《快本营业中》  ❤️

some notes behind the cut (regarding the possibily confusing use of more than one nickname for GJ in this post and junzhe nicknames in general)

The nicknames for Gong Jun may be confusing here. 

He is both Junjun (俊俊) and Junzi (俊子). I used three different names for him here (GJ, Junjun, Junzi) for "accuracy" purposes. Junjun is what He laoshi and ZZH address him by; the caption used Junzi and subtitles always use the person’s full name. 

These are very common ways (Junjun and Junzi) to address someone with a one-worded first name. So if you're into RPS, ZZH calling Gong Jun “Junjun” doesn't really mean anything. 

GJ's Nicknames:

laogong (老龚): It's the prefix lao- and his last name, a play on husband (homophone). 

Junjun (俊俊): It's his first name x2. It's quite a cute nickname for people with a one-word first name. My nephew's name is Kai; we call him kaikai all the time.  This nickname shot up in popularity when Ma Jie (then ZZH) called him this during the pre-Happy Camp livestream. Before that, laogong and junzi were more popuiar.

Junzi (俊子): His first name + Zi (子). "Zi" is only used for males, as it means son. (It can actually be used for women, but not advisable unless you speak Mandarin and can gauge the context better) 

"junzi" (菌子): Homophone of Junzi, it means mushroom. Not much meaning behind it; it's just one of the more adorable options (and GJ is adorable!) that come up when you type "junzi" (pinyin input method). 

doggy "gougou" (狗狗, 狗勾): Cause GJ likes dogs and kinda has a dog personality in that he's happy, cheery and adorable. He's associated with the doge emoji and ZZH, the cat version. (ZZH doesn't have a cat personality either, he's the cat because GJ said he likes cats - gif #2 calls ZZS a cat) 

laopo (wife): Feminising, so this is the only one ion this list that I’ve never used. 

(Also, some fans may use other alternatives for laogong, such as the actual husband (老公) and "lao" with the gong from gong/shou (老攻), but the last one is rare. 

You won't normally use the above nicknames for someone with a two-worded first name, such as Zhehan. But there's no hard and fast rule. You can still do that, if you like. For example, we don’t normally use the prefix xiao- (小/little) for an adult, especially men, but ZZH's nickname is xiaozhe (小哲). And it’s not a "fan nickname" to sound cute. It's really what some people (e.g. Zhao Wei) call him.

ZZH's nicknames: 

laopo (wife): When it was first popularised, I think everyone wanted a wife like Zhou Zishu, but Zhou Zishu is WKX's (wife).

Not feminising*. One of the most famous fan memes is, "although one punch from ZZH can defeat 10 of me, he's still (my/our/everyone’s) wife of destiny".

Fans have been calling their favourites "laopo" for ages, but it doesn't get popular enough to make it out of their small circle due to the feminising aspect of the nickname. ZZH is the first because he isn't feminine. So, no one feels like they're feminising him. Laopo's quite a "powerful" nickname, actually; someone even spread rumours that this nickname was costing him opportunities, so WoH/his fans would stop. ZZH's team had communicated via his official fan club that it's an unfounded rumour, and if there're any changes, his team will update everyone.  

Princess (公主): Mostly not feminising. It’s mainly his character that started this nickname, but I have also seen it feminised (side note: I may hate Faceapp? I’ve seen way too many girl!GJ&ZZH). Main reasons for princess: 

Firstly, it's his way or the highway. His fans often say, "the princess can do whatever he wants to do", "don't try to teach the Princess what to do" (used by everyone!). He famously deleted his Weibo when some fans tried to teach him what to do, they argued, he got angry and deleted. Many celebs don’t really have the guts to say anything that may seem rude publicly to their fans (especially when they’re not very famous). So if you’re stanning a B/C/D-list Chinese celeb who openly tells their fans off for unreasonable behaviour, you should be very, very proud :) 

Also, he is insanely good at sajiao-ing. It just comes naturally to him (see the link for the explanation of sajiao, it can be a few different things. The exact meaning depends on context, but ZZH sajiaos in many ways).

xiaozhe (小哲): Explained above. But don't use it if you're younger than he is.

Han-ge (瀚哥): Han from his name and ge (older brother). Fairly self-explanatory, as with xiaozhe, age-specific rules apply when you're not close.

meimei (妹妹): Little sister. I think it's from ZZH's hairstyle while filming Word of Honor. Fans called it "妹妹头/meimei hair" and his current hairstyle, "寸头/inch-long hair".

“zhehan” (折汉): “Zhe” is bend, “Han” is man. It means he can bend any man. There's more than one interpretation to this, lol. I'm sure you can think of the non-PG explanation. The kid-friendly version is that he sajiaos a lot, and he can get his (very many) male friends to do whatever he wants.

"zhehan" (折菡): "Zhe" is bend, "Han" is a flower. I find this is feminising (based on the limited times I've seen it), so I'm not too fond of it either. But I suppose fans may mean that he can bend any woman (flower?) to his will.

As always with nicknames, the most important thing is whether or not the person you're addressing is alright with it. 

If you're interested in how pinyin is transcribed, you can check out this link, like why it's Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing instead of Zhou Zi Shu & Wen Ke Xing.

Notes:  

I tried subbing this first, but it was impossible to read both the subs and captions simultaneously. 😋 So gifs it is!

I use He laoshi (while using GJ and ZZH) because He laoshi deserves all the respect. 

*When I say not feminising, I mean for the majority. There will always be some fans who are into feminising male celebs, especially young idols and those who have acted in danmei. I spent longer on ZZH because multiple nicknames may come off as feminising, and I wanted to clarify that most of them aren’t.