#also i made a spreadsheet for all the sets im working on

[madebycoffee]

fun fact about my deco sims. I often reuse sims I've made (mainly so I don't have to spend 5ever in CAS) But I reuse them across sets that I think make sense lmao.

so: one of the strippers from that set last year, is also the bassist in the rock band set. (her name is elektra)

Che, was a stripper I made for my legacy a while ago. Made sense to include him in the stripper set. But he's also appeared as a wasteland and snow day deco.

and there are many many more examples including ones that are being added in to my current sets i'm working on 🤸‍♀️it's a fun little easter egg to mE.

[craftspace]

Y'all, im so proud of this one. Idc the pics aren't great, the finished item wasn't so perfect either. But I had so much fun making this one. Story of the piece first, then pattern info below

This project has tons of meaning to me n I figured I'd share the story here.

I made this project for a friend who also crafts. We chat regularly about our crafts and she often makes art for me and everyone in my apartment. We have some creative overlap, but not a ton. Historically, I've not been so great at crafting for others and hadn't made anything for her yet.

In any case, we chat with each other about crafts we see that we are excited about or think the other may be excited about. One day when she was over, we were chatting crafts again and she mentioned she was seeing lots of temperature blankets in her feed n wondered if I'd ever thought about making one.

Truth be told, I'd never made one for myself and couldn't see myself wanting to make one. I let her know this as well. Not for any particular reason, just never felt the need to. It was a pretty casual conversation and we moved onto other topics.

Fast forward a bit and we are chatting again and she lets me know her partner had proposed. She said yes and they had set a date for two years in the future for a special date for them.

It clicked maybe a month later that this time frame, their engagement period, would be perfect for a temperature blanket. I had doubts at first if I wanted to make it, but started getting thoughts on how to work it all out. The only thing I had for certain was fall pallet for the colors as it's their favorite season. I talked it over with some other friends who also know her, and after many many many reassurances, I decided to go for it.

Honest, this is the most I'd ever planned for any project. I researched types of temperature blankets, typical temperature ranges for our area, how to divide the time frame and temperature range, I swear, it's a whole spreadsheet with many tabs of research and planning. In the end, I decided on 9 colors with about 7°F increments where each chevron represents the average temperature for one week of their engagement. I also made a knitted scale (not pictured) of the colors in order from coldest to warmest and wrote on the card for the gift how the scale lines up to actual temperatures just so she and her family could look back and get more info from it if they ever wanted.

It was helpful to tell myself during the process that she would never see it coming as I'd previously mentioned I wasn't interested in making one. And if she didn't know I was working on it, I could ditch it at any point if it wasn't turning out.

I managed to keep the whole project a secret as I worked on it. Making sure I got advance warning when she would come over so I could make sure it was hidden away, sometimes even just making decoy projects to keep her off the trail. She would definitely suspect something if I all the sudden stopped talking about crafts. It was honestly incredible as it expanded my ability to work on multiple projects at once, which I was definitely not so comfy with when I first started crafting.

As common for gift projects, there was a clock and oh gosh was it a race! I barely had it blocked before I wanted to give it to her (yeah, I know the deadline was only enforced by me), but I wanted to give it to her as an additional wedding gift. I ended up being able to gift it to her at the rehearsal dinner, so really just in time!

I'm so happy with how it turned out, and had so much fun playing with the process and planning for this project. I definitely learned a lot and would have done a few things different if I could go back, but overall I'm super proud of it 😊

Pattern is Frankie Brown's Ten Stitch Zigzag

[eyedoeluhn]

I haven’t mentioned the other Celestial (x)s before, so let’s actually run through the three main ones as well as what the Celestial Forge even is. I’m not counting ones like the Celestial Bakery because that’s tiny it’s like eight perks. The CM is my favorite, the CF is…actually not that bad. The CG….

The Celestial Forge is a collection of Jumpchain perks loosely (emphasis on) based around crafting.

A jumpchain, for the uninitiated, is a story prompt game thing where you write a character (most commonly self inserts or ocs) as the ‘jumper’ someone who travels fictional universes at the behest of a random omnipotent being’s entertainment or whatnot. unsurprisingly, I’m not the fondest of them. The power system is in collections of Jumpchain documents which lay the rules ( perks, drawbacks, items, settings, etc) of each universe. These are made independently and are not explicitly balanced. This balance gets more and more wildly out of wack the more jumps you do and the explicit end point of a jumpchain is to become comparably powerful as a ROB by finding a ‘spark’ perk (used to be a specific one but now there are multiple). Sure, jumpchains can end at any point but most people enjoy numbers go-up too much. My favorite wildly unbalanced jumpchains are things like random sitcom shows because oh my god you will find the wildest powers in there. My personal favorite is a free perk that allows you to take command of a vessel and instantly everyone inside or on that vessel will do everything you command no matter what, which is honestly pretty tame but extremely funny.

The CF is a bunch of these Uber powerful perks mashed together into one document. It’s unbalanced, it’s not great for a narrative, its most popular work is BCF, it doesn’t have the greatest PR in my eyes. However I don’t think it’s completely unsalvageable. Some tweaking of points, ignoring powers that ruin your story,and an author who is discerning enough to focus on plot rather than word count could make a fine fic even if it has yet to be done. Also I would prune a lot of powers to make it an actual focus on tinkering.

also, side note, why the fuck are there so many versions on google docs? I understand Jumpchain documents are usually docs but they’re like five pages and some pictures not like eight hundred pages of text. Christ.

The Celestial Grimore is a collection of ‘magic perks’ which are so extremely unbalanced Im not sure how this would even be written. There’s a section devoted to rolling entire near universal compendiums of all knowledge of fictional universes. Basically any magic system, ki, chakra, mana, is in there and it’s terrible. Magic is already a really esoteric and broad power system to bring in OOC especially and putting basically no limits on it and ascribing a million ways to use it doesn’t help. The magic parks of the Forge are its weakest because the technobabble is at least hypothetically interesting and I have no real interest in the Grimoire. Also Got The Grimoire Now What…it did not leave a good impression on me. While at least it’s in a spreadsheet it’s not that readable and looking at it for a minute was enough for me to say it would need extreme pruning or a strong specific central narrative. This is probably the least salvageable of all of the celestials.

The Celestial Menagerie is the odd one out of the bunch. It drops the perk system entirely to be a summons based power where you primarily roll for creatures from real life or fiction. Well I wouldn’t call it perfectly balanced it is the hardest C(X) to become setting breaking imo. It’s the neatest as well, being a pretty google sheets with a built in dice roller and color coding. Well I would make some edits, generally to the powers section to preserve the squishy summoner, you start with limits on how far your summons can get away and how many you summon at once and so on. It’s also my favorite because it allows for some very funny builds, two of my own personal favorites are a guy who has no summons for several thousand words but knows a lot about farming, and on a more punishing rule set a guy who can summon one (1) flea.

The Celestial Menagerie also has the current best C(X) fic, Brocktons Zoo of Myth and Legend. My god do I love BZML. I read it in one sitting, live reacting with my Buddy and we genuinely could not guess where the plot would go next. It’s hilarious and the author makes several extremely respectable choices and values the plot over useless powerwank. It has its problems but in this genre…also most of those problems were extremely endearing anyways. I’ll probably make a post about it at some point but I would recommend reading it blind.

There’s also another c(x) that me and said friend have been playing with that’s deeply stupid on purpose but I’ll wait for some context posts before pitching it.

[osarina]

hi carnia >^< !! i hope this isnt bothering u but i just wanted to ask u sumthing rq if u dont mind jnefvjnjdfn

how did u plot out waterloo ? its such a well written series (its literally my third fave fic of all time lol) and i was wondering how u plotted it out bc i'm plotting my own series (that i'll actually finish this time) BUT IM HAVING DIFFICULTIES n wanted to ask u how u did it be WATERLOO IS SO AMAZING N SO IS ALL OF UR WORKS FKRSNDVNDKJN

(oh god im always so nervous to send u an ask ;^;)

REDDDDD DON'T BE NERVOUS I ADORE YOU <33 and it's not bothering me at all!

usually when i'm plotting out a series it starts with like 2-3 main scenes i want to see in it. so for example, it waterloo, i had the original beach scene, the dancing in the rain scene, and a scene that's about to come up in the 5th installment set at a graveyard. once i have those 2-3 scenes, i focus on trying to figure out how i want the series to end. because my main issue is that if i don't have a ending in sight, i'll just keep going and going and going and then we'll never see the end of the series so i need to know the ending point before starting to write.

then when i have the few scenes i started for + a vague idea for the ending, i start figuring out how much development is going to be needed to get from scene to scene and i start ballparking chapter numbers.

once i've got a tentative number of chapters, i bring it to the trustee spreadsheets (i love spreadsheets i use them for everything) and then i start putting down the scenes i have into each chapter. i try to aim to max at 6 scenes a chapter. ideally only 3-4 but sometimes i end up going over it can't be helped. while i'm still in the spreadsheet stage, i try to figure out what exactly i want to see in each of the chapters—i put my main goal for each chapter in one of the columns, so for example

badlands1 - main goal was their meeting badlands2 - main goal was developing their relationship: the initial development of feelings on reader's part and dazai's acknowledgment that he's in a bit over his head badlands3 - main goal was reader fully acknowledging her feelings & dazai coming to terms with the fact his care for her is obvious enough that it's being used against him badlands4 - main goal was having reader realize that dazai is hiding stuff from her and casting some suspicion over him while also having them take the next step in their relationship

obviously i made sure to note some of the important side goals too: ie. her meeting the agency, her taking note of dazai's avoidant tendencies, etc. but the most important things for me were keeping track of each of the main goals for each chapters and filling out scenes around them.

honestly i dont even know if this'll help too much, i hope it does, but tldr: keeping an end in sight, giving yourself a development goal for each chapter and then filling out scenes around them. + trust in spreadsheets! we love spreadsheets in this house

[mayakern]

thank you for the advice on pins ! i am in the process of researching how to set up my shop and i have a couple more questions if you don't mind- at what stage did you feel it was time to open your shop, follower-wise? did it take a long time to become profitable ? i saw you go through a manufacturer for your prints, is it because making them is too expensive? i see you don't make stickers, is there a reason? is a laser cutting machine worth it when debuting ? or superfluous? what did you use to design your website (it's very pretty btw)? do you have advice on getting people interested in checking it out?

how does one deal with sales being down, mentally, and how to be patient in the beginning?

does managing orders require a lot of organization? is a label maker worth the time it saves? in general, do you recomment buying your own machines (printer, or button maker) or stick with manufacturers? also, do you have advice on reconcialiting it with anticapitalism because im feeling conflicted about outsourcing labor and adding products to this world... is setting up shopify very hard ? are taxes a hassle ? sorry if it's a lot, i have trouble wrapping my head around every step i'll have to do and want to avoid beginner mistakes if i can. if you have any other advice and traps to avoid i'd be very grateful

dude this is SO many questions.

the short answer is: everything is hard and takes work.

there is no “right” time to start a shop or start selling stuff. you just kind of do it and hope. i opened mine in college (around 2012 or 2013) because i had already made some merch for a local convention and i wanted to sell the leftovers. my store didn’t become viable as a full time job until around 2017—it was a means to subsidize the income i had from working as a freelance artist.

also i never went into debt for the store so there was never a moment when my store “became profitable.” unless you’re willing to go into debt for this (not something i’d recommend), it’s a slow slog to get to a point where you can afford to sell items with a higher price point at a high enough volume that it is viable as a full career. inventory costs money and the more profitable items cost more money. it takes a lot of time and work and momentum to make this your whole job.

buying your own equipment is only worth it if you plan to use that equipment for multiple years to get a good return on investment.

however a label printer is almost always worth it, but i wouldn’t buy one until you’re getting at least 20 orders a month.

low price point items like buttons and stickers can be good to start out (i used to sell both) but at a certain point, unless you’re selling a massive amount of them there is a limit to how profitable a $3 item can be.

managing a store takes an amount of work/organization that is proportional to the number of products you have/sell. i will say i was an absolute disaster at this when i handled everything myself, which is why the store only became viable as a full time job once devin joined me.

i use squarespace for my portfolio site and shopify for the store. they’re relatively hassle free.

if you’re making most of your income from store or freelance work, find a local CPA to help you do taxes. also keep a running spreadsheet for all your expenses and income. separate your expenses into groups based on the different types of deductions (i.e. office equipment, travel, etc.) and update that spreadsheet, at minimum, once a month. then taxes are easy.

as far as anticapitalist mindset goes… do your due diligence when it comes to sussing out the manufacturers/companies you work with and try to create thoughtfully.

anyway next time you ask for advice please just pick like 3 questions at a time. this was… a lot.

[wednesdaytoo]

@coffinbutch tagged me for this! 15 questions + 15 friends! (coffinbutch you are so brave for doing all 15 tags. im gonna take the coward's way and ask any mutual to consider themself tagged if they want to do it!)

long under here

1. Are you named after anyone?

yea! im named after my abuela who died waaay before i was born

2. When was the last time you cried?

3 days ago

3. Do you have kids?

nope! i work with kids (teenaged) and they're fine, i enjoy them, but that's plenty of Kid for me -- i don't need to have my own in my home everyday. id love to be a lesbian uncle tho! which i already kno is Not gonna happen from either of my brothers, so my only chance is my wife's younger sister haha (we were just talking abt this yesterday lol)

4. What sports do you play/have played?

hahha i don't think i've ever played a sport like Officially, like outside of PE classes. i like badminton tho, and B and i are trying to learn how to play pickleball (we suck)

5. Do you use sarcasm?

i suppose on occasion i sarcast

6. What is the first thing you notice about people?

hair & clothes? face? im a simple guy

7. What's your eye color?

the inner part of my irises are yellowish-brown and the outer edges are grey-blue. ppl dont usually notice it unless theyre quite up close tho. from a few feet away i think they look grey and that's what i'll usually mark for eye color, or blue if that's not an option

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

i could go for either, but i think i lean slightly more toward scary movies, especially bc i love vampire movies so much. like when we watch a dracula movie and u have one of those "the monster is defeated! hooray!" endings, does that count as a happy ending movie?? we root for drac tho so it's a let down!

9. Any talents?

idk im pretty good at whistling !

10. Where were you born?

california

11. What are your hobbies?

movies, video games, insect/arachnid related things (catching, collecting, pinning, reading abt, etc), sewing/embroidery when the mood strikes me, reading (trying to get back into it at least!), listening to music/discovering new bands, sorting/cataloguing things

12. Do you have any pets?

3 cats (hopey, bullets, and cocoa) + a baby tarantula (avocado) <3

13. How tall are you?

5'6.5" or 168 cm!

14. Favorite subject in school?

in high school my favs were probably trigonometry and ceramics

in college i'd say science (esp entomology, ecology, botany, and astronomy) and foreign languages (i took french, japanese, ASL, and spanish)

15. Dream job?

see one of the above hobbies and then pay me $100/hr to do it :-))

no but fr even tho my current job has its annoyances, it's usually so chill. some days i just text B from work like "here's a bracelet i made today" "made u a candle today" "it was slow and i mostly just read in the library" "i drew a cute poster." two weeks ago we came in for a couple hours to decorate little pouches with custom vinyl designs on our new cricut. the next day we went roller skating lmao. even the actual "work" is enjoyable (i help students w/ their schoolwork, mostly math, which is fun to me, or entering info into forms/spreadsheets, also kind of fun to me bc i can listen to music while i do it). buuut i dont make a lot of money. if they paid me $100/hr and gave me some benefits, i'd be set!

[pommunist]

(Twitchtracker anon back again)

Im not really super interested in finances or statistics as a job lol, im just a nerd who likes to dig through analytics sometimes. Pretty much my whole essay length ask was made by taking twitchtracker numbers and putting them into a spreadsheet (So i didnt have to do averages manually), with some manual counting by hand for things like the number of streams.

(Also something i realized i missed when i reread my ask, the count of minecraft streams actually starts on the first day of qsmp, not the first day of march 2023 like everything else. Not super important but i wanted to make that one thing clear.)

Yeah i definitely agree that quackity's money doesnt necessarily equal qstudios money. However i also don't think a lot of the people who try and use the idea that "Quackity couldnt afford to pay that many employees" think about things like that, they most likely see quackity as the face and sole person behind his company (it is named after him after all), because you don't ever see them saying "Quackity studios cant afford to pay that many employees".

I do think that it's possible that for quite a while quackity's streams and videos were seemingly the only income stream for the company, with qsmp merch sales only really starting to be available and pushed more recently, and as far as i remember i don't think any qsmp events had sponsors or advertisers involved (I could be wrong here though, im not sure as I don't keep up with all the streams). Again im not personally a quackity viewer myself, so im not sure if he had any personal (quackity branded) merch sales outside qsmp before the start (early 2023, i know he had some back during dsmp but that's a while ago now) or during the qsmp. But from what i understand, he seemingly was doing a lot of the funding of the qsmp on his own.

Of course i don't think all his money was being directly funnelled to qstudios/qsmp, he still needs to pay for housing and utilities and food like the rest of us, as well as his travel to conventions/to meet friends (not saying he shouldn't travel, networking is an important part of any job). But i personally do believe he was basically the sole entity funding qstudios otherwise, unless there's some other income source we aren't aware of.

In regards to twitch monetization, the majority of streamers have a 50/50 split with twitch. Some bigger streamers having a 70/30 split, following the changes in late 2022 this split only applied to the first $100k earned, with everything after that going to 50/50, with that cap then being removed january 24th 2024. There's some stuff with the partner plus program that I honestly don't really understand because again, im not a streamer myself. I have no idea what split quackity has, though he is a partner. (Streamer/twitch for all split numbers btw.)

For how the payouts work, Via Twitch Affiliate Program FAQ: "As explained in the Monetized Streamer Agreement, there are certain costs, taxes, and fees that must be accounted for before you receive subscription revenue. Before the 50/50 split between you and Twitch takes place, deductions are made from the full price of a subscription, including taxes, payment processing fees, bank fees, currency conversion fees, etc. After the split takes place, we still account for required tax withholding, which is reflected in the payout you ultimately see on your dashboard. Twitch does not set or control the rates or fees, and they vary from region to region and by each subscriber’s payment method." Presumably this also applies to the partner program and the other splits.

Subs themselves are $5.99 USD, with other (usually lower when converted to USD) prices depending on the region of the subscriber. There's also ad revenue but I have no idea if quackity runs that many ads (or even runs them at all) seeing as his streams are usually 1.5-3 hours long (with the ads incentive program theres a 55/45 split of ad rev for a minimum of 3 minutes of ads per hour of stream, 30/70 otherwise), and again, not a viewer myself (I barely even watch streams live for streamers i do watch). And there's also bits, but those are a whole mess themselves so im not going to get into it.

I don't really know much about business running at all so of course everything is speculation based on the little i do know, and most of my twitch revenue info is directly from their help site, with some of the stuff about changes being from news articles about them.

Yeah that's pretty much it from me for now, glad you enjoyed my nerdy trawl through twitchtracker :)!

Follow up on this post :

[knightofgames]

hey, if its not too much trouble could you tell me about how you make moonbase covers? im really interested in doing that but tbh i have no idea where to even start. thank you!

ironically, i don't actually keep a copy of moonbase alpha on my PC anymore. i just use the program that uses the same exact TTS engine - DECTalk: https://archive.org/details/dectalk_202010

what i do is a mix of this old guide by the OG herself Oasty: https://youtu.be/Vf1-UFGFK7o and a set of my own fucked up set of guess & check parameters. this guide is GREAT at explaining the basics, and you can probably figure out your own method to use just based off of that.

as a bonus, i also released the raw .TXT files for every piece in the work a while back: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f7uIJ84oVxveOp5-tZbFBPsqKe5ILBcA/view?usp=drive_link so if you just need to see what the vocals look like before being rendered & processed, this can give you a good idea.

but, if your curious about my own insanely specific methods that will probably not work for you, here's that, as a treat:

i could not use the excel spreadsheet. i just couldnt get behind it, and just manually timed my way through every phoneme, recording a usable file every once in a while to check on my results.

when i was actively working on moonbase baby, i had a list of usable phonemes & audacity open on my 2nd monitor, and dectalk & fl studio on my 1st. id use the phonemes list to figure out how to transcribe the words of the song into something parse-able by DECTalk, guess the length of the notes based on the lengths of the prior syllables (or at the start, just purely guessing), and then figure out what note to use from an already-transcribed set of notes to reference (by me, of course).

i'd play it back & use wasapi to record it back into audacity (although i think somebody has made an actually compiled version of dectalk that can export), then import that wav file into FL studio to check the timing & pitch of the file. now, dectalk exports files slightly out-of-tune, so there's also a -15 cents pitch shift on all audio files, as well as a slight bit of auto-tune on the vocals...but now we're just getting into mixing, which is a whole different topic.

here's a fun screencap of the vocal processing on the main layer of VOX in moonbase baby:

at a certain point, you just sort of develop a brainrotted relationship with the numbers at work, and it becomes a whole lot easier to guess what numbers you need to use & how much you should be modifying them to get stuff closer to the timing you want. even so, you're likely to do a decent chunk of manual timing correction in whatever DAW you use. dectalk is REALLY bad at pausing vocals altogether.

[pculrstate]

Oh you've been on my fic rec list for a few months now. I have both fics from "a palm to my mouth, i said it, almost" on there and I read your work often enough that it's bound to happen again.

when we leave this room it's gone

Bare prose rife with pain. Feels like a bruise you can't stop poking at.

I also think this was a fantastic way to set the scene for this narrow room.

this narrow room where life began

This was an arrow to the heart, so intense and smothering that it made me nauseous at times.

Bonus from personal notes for this one: "really the wincest ever. anyway im gonna go sob into a pillow after the rodeo" (I finished reading this one at the Sheridan WYO Rodeo during the opening announcements).

I think I highlighted like. Half of this fic in my ereader.

Your prose is claustrophobic and I mean this in the kindest way possible. It's intense and intimate and it makes me feel nearly sick from all that's implied by what little ends up said. I have the fics I've marked for later in a huge spreadsheet and you're on my favorite authors filter.

I also want to mention come as a bird while I'm here because I'm pretty much just talking about fics I've read from you now. This one was so important for the intense differences in perspective. Dean's dreamy delirium contrasted with Sam being almost painfully down-to-Earth. Methinks it stresses the canonical differences between their outlooks on life: Dean copes by making sense of where he is and what he's told, Sam wants agency and is willing to take it. Dean internalizes, Sam externalizes. I'm not sure if I'm managing to pull everything together, but I have Thoughts.

(I have thoughts about all of these, I've just read come as a bird the most recently)

At any rate, you're a feature of my rec lists. Lemme stay on anon though because I'm shy.

anon i literally have tears on my face rn. this means so so so much to me oh my gosh. thank you for including me on your lists and for your kind words and insightful observations 😭😭😭

also “gonna go sob into a pillow after the rodeo” —i am fucking obsessed with the fact that you finished reading this narrow room at the rodeo. that is SO perfect.

THANK YOU again this made my entire day, you have no idea (and please don’t feel too shy to come off anon if you want, i literally you love 🥺❤️)

[ravennanightcrown]

Lost in Mythos: behind the fic

So! I've decided that this fic ➡️ (Lost in Mythos) is the first one I'll be rambling about. Especially because I haven't really used the author's notes section to ramble about what the fic is about.

Well. First of all. It was born from me having sooo many thoughts about the moon/creation/god lore of granblue, which was then midwifed by me watching so many sci-fi movies wehehehehe.

As to my understanding of granblue timeline, my friend and I drafted some vague chronology which we plugged with theories about almost all of the storylines. (But this isn't THAT important to the fic).

Okay, might be spoiler-y (or even contradictory with canon, who knows! It's deliciously hard to track everything, and we can always make theories) but info/decoded stuff about the fic below the cut!

Well, the 2 major timestamps I used for this fic is "70,000 years ago" and "7,000 years ago."

And if you haven't worked it out yet, the timestamps for the "logs" in the fic are in t-minus hours hehe.

Meaning T-613,620,000H and T-61,362,000H were the equivalents!

I actually had half a mind to set a time zero, but I just delegated that bit to the Log #s instead.

Going back, the timestamps I picked were referenced from the Robomi storyline and the 10th anni Bahamut lore.

As for the in-betweens, I personally didn't think That Much about what happened. (Although i kept a spreadsheet with formulas to have some "systematic" pairing of timestamps and log numbers, and also the chronology milestones). My intention with choosing the timestamps is roughly to make the milestone events be the 1) Destruction of the old world, and 2) Creation of the new world.

And the blackboxes, the zalgo-ed text at the moment of the "apocalypse"? Aliens.

I'm joking. Not. (I mixed the Lucio uncap lore with my personal pet theory of "The One Who Covets The Blue". Who may or may not be also the one who sits beyond the boundary. That's a theory or a fic for another time).

As for the characters in the fic....my friend and I have taken to calling them Lucio Prime and Shalem Prime teehee. (Completely did not expect to find this OC of sorts with Feru's expression, Lucio's whimsical personality my interpretation, and Faasan's science-y side to be hot. HELP. My friend was laughing at me with my foot halfway into lucifucker hell)

I made them married because [vague hand gestures] smth smth pairs, a set, a match. They are the source code from which the imitations The Speakers were patterned from, albeit imperfectly. I wanted to look at them like myth, a foregone conclusion, or a role set in stone. Unlike The Speakers which! exist in the present, and can change. The Helel primes are already engraved in the past, almost forgotten, and whatever their story was has already ended. Their connections with the Speakers are just superficial. Smth smth clones smth smth. I have so many other thoughts about the Speakers which miiiight make it to another post. Maybe.

Aaaaand. Yeah. I had to add one more named character in here, but I had only a few choices to pick from. Pretty difficult choice tho. It was Kamuzumi that won over Austras, Gaokerena, and [wheezing] Nereus.

anywho. With sci-fi stuff I'm just really somft for the romantic aspect of it (is that even the word im looking for? Maybe not). I am so obssessed with referring to the planet as something blue (or a star, or a jewel), and so I wrote that. And also as a reference to Vaseraga's line in 7th anni.

Lastly, I think.... so, the stuff I wrote about Bahamut's roles? That was part me going insane over Nereus, astronomy stuff that I'm delusionally connecting to granblue, and going feral over Zero Escape (yeah, the games).

Okay, this rlly is the last thing. Probably the most important one lmao. For this fic specifically, I was going with the hc that Bahamut is a terraforming instrument, loaded with the database of all of mankind's knowledge and history for the past.... [checks notes] 6,000 years and more.

Yeah, my theory was that the old world (Robomi's world) is our world. (I dont think this is a new theory tho) And then I took heavy inspo from the Evillious Chronicles when writing/theorizing about how the new world was created.

So, hm, that's it for now! Maybe I'll post another of these things again, or something about the many many WIPs i'm sitting on. [headholds]

[keefwho]

May 27 - 2024 Monday

10:10pm

7/10

I didn't journal yesterday because my tummy hurt and I had bad anxiety last night.

This morning I didn't clean since I have to handle my parents 5 dogs which takes the entirety of my usual cleaning time. So I did that, took my shower, and made a breakfast sandwich with rice for breakfast. Also had a cookie. I tried to take my time eating which I don't usually do because I often feel like I don't have the time.

For work I warmed up with pony sketches and was thinking about how I want to determine a real sketching method rather than swapping in between things like I've been doing. I've been learning the pros and cons of different sketching methods and I'm on track to create a workflow that incorporates all of them in different stages. I see the potential. Then I finished that Venus patreon reward which I had a lot of fun making because of the composition and colors. It was also sort of classic in terms of subject matter and I enjoyed trying to capture that harsh vibe again. It seemed to do very well on my socials. For the last half of the stream I was handling selecting people for next month's commissions and setting up my spreadsheets.

After work I took care of the dogs and called DS while she worked on her fursuit so we could watch Barbie: A Mermaid's Tale. It was the most 5/10 Barbie so far I think. There was nothing too great or too bad about it. Nothing really stood out at all. The best thing I can remember is how cute the little seahorse with low self confidence was. While watching I played Gunfire Reborn on Roblox to get some of the event tokens and I was slaying in that challenge. She had to leave abruptly due to mom briefing her on family drama that I forgot to ask about. In the meantime I ate lunch and joined BR and AE in their server vc while I did DS's request. She asked for Zelink which was a hard prompt because it's so vague but also a good challenge. I had to think of something that I could do within 30 minutes and focused on 1 character since the requests are single character. I think I came up with something good. Then for my hour of personal art, I just sketched really good looking restyles of Monster High dolls on Pinterest. I always say if you wanna get good at something, you have to do it. I am pulled to draw Monster High content in some way but I lack the skills to adequately portray human proportions. So I did an hour of what I'd call fun practice because personal learning has to be fun. DS was free again in the middle of that so I worked in call with her while we watched Youtube. When I was done sketching, I switched to working on the VRchat world for PZ. I was mentally tired at this point but I cranked out 45 minutes on it and got a few things done. Im proud of myself for that given how little energy I had to spare.

With work done I switched back to Roblox with this not too great driving game and started grinding for more tokens. I put on more of this youtube video about a theme park called Evermore and everything it did wrong. We watched that for awhile until I remembered I had to take the dogs out so I switched to my phone and showed off the doggies. It was nice standing around outside just talking about whatever. I remember being really unengaged for a lot of the day because I think I'm getting tired of doing the same thing over and over right now. So being there outside, while brief, was refreshing. I was also thinking about what I was going to do with the evening knowing I'd have to figure out something. DS left to go shower and get something to eat. I just tuned in to this stream of Rust on Twitch and actually got invested. There was a big team of people engaged in a fight for a drop with another big team. The way they played was aggravating because they had no real organization. This is something I notice with a lot of events like this. I don't know why there isn't a simple hierarchy structure where people just follow orders, I think it would be a lot more organized and effective. Also fun to do and fun to watch. DS wanted to Just Dance so we did that before bed. We did the current Black Swan "event" which was actually just 2 poorly mapped songs with a hint of lore. Then we did one more poorly mapped song. It was still fun though.

In bed we did our puzzles and lost at connections because there was too much topic overlap and we were a little too careless maybe. Or I was at least. Then we had a nice little talk while drifted off to sleep. I played a Roblox skibidi toilet tower defense game trying to earn more tokens but I learned I had been mislead by the game and wasn't actually making any progress on the quests. BUT I had a very fun 30 minutes listening to very fast trance music and vibing out to the game.

I meant to do my trust homework for therapy today but I didn't get adequate time. I've been thinking a lot about it though. More specifically how I can make progress on my day to day trust issues in general. It's tough because it's not acute. Its a very deeply engrained way of thinking I need to unwire. It's something that can probably only be done with a lot of time, awareness, and having actual trustworthy people in my life.

[gikairan]

The eventual response from MS that actually acknowledged what people were asking for was.....

"There is no option to disable this notice. You may send feedback to Microsoft."

And just.... i am SO tired of big tech "improving" their products without actually having ANY idea of how its users actually use it.

Like, the person who made this thread did so because they had a spreadsheet that is used all year round. And its blank cells are gradually filled out as the year progresses The optimisation thing was telling them to remove the blank cells.... which would massively increase time spent on the sheet by continually having to add the cells back in?

And maybe some people could use a prompter to tell them where things could be better optimised! .... But also many businesses have very specific workflows, that require very specific uses of spreadsheets you cant even imagine until you see them in use. And no doubt this is a copilot function, which is a lying machine to begin with and should never be trusted, but especially useless in hyper specific situations where there are no other precedents in the datasets to reference.

But it just feels like another straw on top of a camel with an already broken back, yaknow? I: Tech is just getting worse and worse and worse all the time. Things that previously worked have noticeably degraded. New technology doesnt work, but it just needs "more data and itll be better!! we promise!!" (It will never be better). The last few tech "crazes" are just not how the regular normal person wants to interact with tech! (NFTs!! The Metaverse!! Now LLMs!)

Im tired of it!! I'm tired of my stuff getting worse!! All in the pursuit of the impossible - infinite growth of shareholder value!!!! I'm tired of pop ups for features i dont use that i cant disable. I'm tired of digging into my device settings to get rid of features i dont want because its sneakily installed itself. I'm tired of installing extensions to disable features that suck. Im just so tired of it!!!!

Getting reaallly annoyed at excel telling me "optimise this workbook uwu!" every time i open the template sheet Like, everything exists on this sheet for a reason and "optimising" it will break the whole damn thing

Try and see if someone has managed to get excel to stop doing that.

Find a microsoft forum post. Hoorah!

Original post contains: "The Excel sheet is the way I want it to look and don't want to change it for better performance. I just want Excel to stop prompting me." Microsoft response? "You can try optimizing your workbook it could remove that notice permanently."

Good job guys, really understanding the issue of "i do not want to be prompted to see this every single day, because there is no optimisation you can do to this sheet and still keep its function intact" 🤦‍♀️

[andypantsx3]

shoto and 'when i find out who is responsible for this...' IM A SUCKER FOR OVERPROTECTIVE SHO LMAO

This one was one of my faves to write, I really hope you like it!

Damage | Todoroki/Reader

Prompt: “When I find out who is responsible for this...” Word Count: 1600 words Tags/Warnings: SFW, ye olde quirk accident trope Notes: Special thanks again to my lady love @bobawithpomegranate for beta-ing me!! Also, for anyone who hasn’t suffered a corporate job: KPIs = key performance indicators, which are a set of business metrics used to measure success in certain areas.

The first sign that something was wrong should have been in line for security. 

Ayako—your favorite member of the Todoroki Agency security team—was waving a detector wand over your clothes when she asked casually, “How’s it going?”

Any other morning, your response was something along the lines of, “Oh, it’s going. How are you?” This morning, however, you blurted, “Good! Except that I bumped someone on the train and spent ten minutes trying to get a coffee stain out of this shirt, and I feel a little sick when I think about leading the KPIs review because Shouto’s property damage numbers are up again which doesn’t look great, so I skipped breakfast but honestly I’m super hungry right now, that was a bad choice, and—”

You cut yourself off, utterly bewildered. Ayako looked similarly nonplussed, raising a slim brow. 

“Uh, nevermind. I’ll just be going,” you said, and hared off to the rest of the security checkpoints before she could give commentary.

So you might have known that something was wrong even before you let yourself into Shouto’s manager’s office, armed with your monthly spreadsheets and performance slide decks. But you hadn’t given it more thought since then, a move which proved to be a complete mistake.

Shouto was already there, lounging in the set of chairs in front of his manager’s desk, looking less like a hero waiting for a meeting and more like some airbrushed ad for his dark turtleneck or his close-fit grey slacks. Your heart shot into your throat at the sight of him, like it usually did, and you had to remind yourself to relax.

Though he was unbearably handsome to the point of distraction, Shouto was relatively easy to get along with, something that should have made you calmer in his presence. He was straightforward, possessed of very little ego, thoughtful, and a very linear and strategic thinker—you’d worked extremely well with him the past couple of years, and Shouto, though he had less to do with the daily operations of the agency, had helped push your promotion last year to Director of Public Relations. It should have added up to an easy and uncomplicated work partnership, but his personality only made your unfortunate crush on him even worse.

He was so horribly, horribly perfect. And you were an awful little metrics gremlin, called in to roast him over the open flame of public opinion once a month. Really not something Shouto might be interested in.

“Y/N,” he said, looking up from his phone and fixing you with an intent look. Your heart stuttered under those heterochromatic eyes.

“Hi, Shouto,” you said, setting down your bag and digging out your laptop for something to take your attention off of him. “How are you?”

“I’m well,” he answered in his deep tone. “How are you?”

And that was it. The damning question that sent it all to hell.

“My heart feels like it could explode any second, and I feel kind of faint, weirdly weak, and incredibly distracted,” you answered, naming the symptoms of his very presence.

There was a beat of silence. You froze, crouched over your bag, laptop halfway out of it. Then it hit you what had just been said, and you slapped a hand over your mouth in horror. 

Shouto was up out of his chair in the blink of an eye, kneeling in front of you with cool fingers on your face, angling it towards him.

“You’re not well?” he asked, those eyes locking on you with an alarming intensity.

His attention only made things worse. “I feel like I might pass out,” you said, cringing even as the words left your mouth.

Fuck, what the hell were you saying? You were making it sound like you were some Victorian maiden, ready to swoon in the mere company of a gentleman. And why were you saying this shit? You’d worked with him for years and you’d never let slip the effect he had on you—what was wrong with you this morning?

You thought back to the coffee incident on the train this morning, the way the girl whose drink you had spilled had startled, the way she had weirdly apologized to you even as you were in the midst of your own apology.

A sense of foreboding settled over you. 

Oh.

Oh fuck.

“I think I’ve been hit with a quirk,” you blabbed.

Shouto’s features shuttered, a hard look you’d never really seen before entering his eye. He went over to his manager’s desk, dialing a number on her office phone, and then he was talking in low tones, asking someone from medical to come up to her office immediately.

Then he was back at your side, easing you carefully to the floor like you actually were in danger of passing out, and not just a huge idiot with an incredibly fat crush that made you say the world’s most ridiculous things.

“When I find out who’s responsible for this,” he uttered, low and dangerous, “they might never be able to use a quirk again.”

For some reason, the threat warmed you, even as it sent a little shiver down your spine. Was it weird to find him hot when he was angry?

You clamped your mouth firmly shut, lest you tell him exactly what illness prevailed you, but your silence was all for naught.

Because when one of the medical staff made it up to the office, pressing a quirk testing strip to your skin, she pronounced, “A truth quirk.”

Shouto caught your hand before it could smack into your forehead, looking surprised that he had done so. And then even more surprised at the pronouncement.

“A truth quirk,” he echoed, looking down at you curiously. His fingers were gentle where they held your wrist.

You squirmed uncomfortably under his scrutiny.

“But then, you’re still not well,” he said. He looked up at the medical staffer. “She’s feeling faint, and having problems with her heart.”

“She’s fine,” the staffer confirmed, holding up a scanner with your vital readings. They were embarrassingly perfect—incredibly, perfectly, damnably normal.

You could have died. You literally could have died.

Shouto looked down at you with a little wrinkle on his perfect brow, obviously wondering how you could admit symptoms like that given a truth quirk, only for there to be no physical sign of them. You tried to hold down the truth, but another question from him doomed you.

“But how?” he asked, clearly concerned, cool fingers smoothing over your cheekbone.

“I have an insanely huge crush on you,” you blurted. Then you unleashed a string of colorful swears, flushing so hot you thought you might catch fire.

Those heterochromatic eyes went a little round at the edges.

The medical staffer looked like she was trying very hard not to laugh as she bade a quick farewell. She was out the door before you could catch her sleeve and hold her like a shield against Shouto’s incredibly penetrating stare.

“I’m. Um. You know, sorry and everything,” you added. “I won’t let it interfere with work. I mean, I haven’t, any of the past couple years—fuck, oh my god, I just said that—”

Shouto was watching your mouth like he couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of it.

“Say it again,” he said.

You paused, staring at him. “What?”

“Tell me how you’re feeling.”

“My heart feels like it could explode any second, and I feel kind of faint, weirdly weak, and incredibly distracted,” you answered obediently.

“Because of me,” he said, like it was a wonder.

You gave him an annoyed look. Obviously because of him, who the fuck else did he think wielded that combination of attractiveness and straightforward appeal like an S-class quirk of its own?

Shouto choked on a laugh, and you realized with some horror that you’d said all of that out loud. 

Damn the fucking truth quirk.

“I don’t know,” Shouto said, sounding amused. “I think I rather like it. When I find out who is responsible for this, I might have to thank them instead.”

This stopped you short.

He what now?

“I’m sorry, what?”

Something a little like a smirk curled the corner of Shouto’s mouth. “It is generally gratifying to know one’s feelings are returned, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I wouldn’t know—” you started, feeling annoyed with him again. Then you choked when the implication of his words sank in.

Shouto’s fingers slid down to cup your chin, and suddenly it felt like every nerve ending in your body was concentrated there, the touch magnified a thousand-fold into an all-consuming sensation. 

“Would you like me to kiss you?” he asked lightly, looking smug.

“Oh my god yes—” The answer was out of your mouth before he’d even finished the question.

Shouto laughed, and then he was leaning in. You could feel the smile still on his mouth when it met yours. Shouto’s kiss was careful and attentive, but you could sense something deeper beneath, the same kind of restrained sort of passion that underlaid his quirk. Having that kind of controlled intensity turned on you was something you could have never prepared for.

The kiss became deeper and more heated, and Shouto was just easing you backwards again, still pressed firmly to you, when the door opened and his manager blew in.

“This is a fucking office,” she said, stepping over the two of you like you were a grimy puddle in the street. “Now hurry the fuck up, we have KPIs to review. Shouto—don’t think this will derail me from your property damage numbers increasing.”

Shouto huffed into your mouth, slumping against you.

You couldn’t do anything but laugh.

Current event masterlist in pinned!

[peachy-inserts]

𝕙𝕢 𝕓𝕠𝕪𝕤 𝕒𝕤 𝕕𝕒𝕕𝕤

part one ♡  part two (coming soon)

✉︎request: Hcs for Hinata and Kuroo as fathers, please?🥺

✰warnings: none

✎a/n: ahh ty for requesting!! im so sorry but i just.., we dont really write for hinata im so so sorry baby- hes on the masterlist, but we really. just really dont like him. anyways., i added some characters and part two coming soon! i had a little bit of trouble with kuroo, but i hope you enjoy it <3

➳ᴜꜱʜɪᴊɪᴍᴀ, ᴋᴜʀᴏᴏ, ʙᴏᴋᴜᴛᴏ, ɪᴡᴀɪᴢᴜᴍɪ

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

✰ ushijima

He swears that he just KNOWS the gender of your baby before you’ve even had your first ultrasound, and with your third child you’ve just come to accept that he actually, really does know. Or maybe it’s dumb luck, but that never seems to be the case with him and he’s far too sure of himself

Talks to the baby no different from you, asks them for advice knowing they won’t be able to answer, but their little coos and smiles directed towards him are all the help he needs anyways

Sews patches into their play clothes when they’ve become too worn to wear, and teaches them how too! Makes his daughter a hello kitty bag when she says she wants a purse and she uses the leftover fabric to patch his work jeans, which he tore on purpose just because she wanted to put her new skills to use. He wears them out in public and with pride

Okay I know he’s a pro athlete but he’s also a farm boy sorry. Anyways he throws blankets into the back of a pickup truck and takes the kids on a (slow, and careful) ride through the backroads. Could you imagine having a dog back there with them too?? He’d train it to tug on their pants when they lean too far out of the truck and keep them safe

Excellent at putting babies to sleep. He’s kind of confused by them at first, and isn’t really sure what to do with them, but eases up when he sees how easily they drift off to sleep when he tucks them into his chest and pats their back

Doesn’t bring up volleyball to them, but secretly  has his fingers crossed that they’ll ask him to play one day; which of course they do, duh, he’s a pro player. As soon as they show even a mild interest in it he’s signing them up for the little league teams and bragging to his teammates

Keeps a photo of the family in his wallet and when he’s away for matches that you can’t make it to often gets caught just staring at it; the team shoots confused looks his way because he’s been looking down at the same photo for 30 minutes straight and smiling softly 

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

✰ iwaizumi

Please Iwaizumi with boys is just a role model father. He absolutely adores his little man and drills manners into his head from day one. It’s very important to him that he knows how to treat people with respect and be respected!

The moment he finds out he’s going to be a father he starts planning to build a treehouse. You haven’t even begun to put together a nursery and he’s made several trips to the hardware store and stacked wood in your backyard, and spends the baby’s growing years perfecting it 

He buys/sends you flowers on every single Friday, and hasn’t missed one yet. Your little boy catches on and saves up his allowance to buy you some too, because he’s gone with his dad to pick them up plenty of times and knows the way there relative to his walk home from school

He nearly cries with pride, because come on; that’s too cute.

Iwaizumi with a daughter? Different breed. He may not be real but my feelings for him are and I would do ANYTHING for him

He dresses her up in the ugliest frilly little dresses and takes hundreds of photos, and goes to daddy daughter events/dances??!? Bye I’m smitten. 

Little league coach!!! Listen he knows and loves sports, just the whole category, so everything his kids wanna sign up for you bet your ass he’s signing himself up for too

And he’s a GREAT coach ugh he always knows how to handle the kids, and given his profession is a bargain deal, they’re super lucky to have him there tbh

The other parents try and flirt with him and he just freezes up and panics because he can’t respond to them like he usually would to people given his kids are involved, so he just starts rambling about how great you are

Takes them to practices he’s needed at sometimes and before bringing them in, practically gives the whole team a death threat. They have fun there, though, and he’s screeching instructions and insults out at them with his kid asleep in his arms

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

✰ bokuto 

He cries when he finds out he’s going to be a dad. Big, ugly tears, and crushes you with his hugs. Wastes no time whatsoever in bragging to everyone about how lucky he must be to be having your kids ugh hes a cutie

Also cries when they’re born, and it’s visible in every photo. It’s heartwarming, though, and you’re ecstatic to see just how excited he is. You certainly know you’ve made the right choice

When he’s away for games, he always calls to tell his kids a bedtime story and tell them he loves them. Even if it’s 12pm or 3am for him, he keeps his alarm set to go off for 9pm at home.

When he can’t tell a story because he’ll be in the middle of a game, he begs, BEGS, for someone on the sidelines to answer the incoming facetime call and face the camera towards him. When it’s done and over, he’s handed his phone and it met with their sleeping faces, with an msby flag clutched loosely in their tiny fists

He always makes up for having to travel by taking them out individually so they all feel special, whether it’s for ice cream or to a movie. It’s their choice, and he gives them his undivided attention the entire time

They’re completely spoiled by him, honestly. Their allowance is cut off by you because he’s not even leaving enough for him to buy himself lunch-

Shows up to practice when then they’re born just to show them off, excitedly displaying his blessing to all of his teammates before promptly tucking them away into their carseat and leaving before they can make him stay-

✰ kuroo

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

Sends his kids to private school, but makes sure they engage in community activities; he still wants them to have the same neighborhood kid experience that he did rather than being stuck up like their classmates, and will push them towards sports

Carries them around on his shoulders nearly everywhere he goes, when they’re babies always has them strapped to his chest and insists he be the one to hold them when you’re out and can’t use a stroller

Buys EVERY single parenting book he can find. Even the ones in the dollar store bargain bins, and compiles every common suggestion into a spreadsheet. By the time the baby’s born he has 12 pages on every book he’s read, everything he’s learned from it, complete with statistics and a works cited page

Takes classes! Is very nervous and doesn’t really know much about babies so he really wants to just make sure he can’t do anything wrong, and like the nerd he is learns as much as possible

He may as well be a pediatrician at this point tbh

Keeps stuffed animals in the bottom drawer of his desk at work for when he brings them in, and will make a bed where his feet would usually go for them to nap on time so they won’t interfere with your sleeping at home

The dad that is angry that math isn’t done the same way as when he was in school and they both have a whole entire moment at the dining room table

[jaime-brienne-fic-exchange]

Stats! Stats! Stats!

There are three days left until sign ups open and we thought it might be fun to look back at last year’s exchange through the fun lens of MATH!!

That’s right! Maths. The wonderful @im-auntie-social​ did the Lord of Light’s work last year tracking the published works on a spreadsheet and has helped to highlight some of the fun figures from last year.

The Raw Stats

There were 102 sign ups last year, but we ended up with 112 fics in total!

The total word count of all completed fics was 1,310,259 words, which is more words than A Game Of Thrones, A Clash of Kings and a Storm of Swords combined, and if you include the few WIPs we still have, we also top A Feast For Crows! 

The mean number of words per work was 12479 and the median was 8281, with a standard deviation of 13029 wpf (words per fic), which I am told by our resident statistician is hilarious:

AuntieSocial — Today at 2:51 AM

okay so as of 8/25:

112 fics, 105 finished

total word count 1,310,259 (which does NOT include WIPs), for a mean of 12,479 words/finished fic

with a standard deviation of 13,029 words/fic, which is never not funny to me

a more useful number is the median words/fic: 8,281

(which means if you write the word counts in order, the 53rd value is 8,281, so half the fics are shorter than that, half are longer)

The rest of the mods: 

So then she made some neat graphs instead:

(not included in this final image: the exponential growth of grey hairs on each mod correlating precisely with the countdown to the close of the collection as multi-chaptered fics grew in size while still showing no signs of completion!)

If you’re like us and bar charts confuse you, here’s a pie chart to show the distribution of word counts. Despite the massive total word count--and several writers’ increasing panic as their fics refused to end--most fics in the exchange were actually 10,000 words or less, and only 17% of the fics were longer than 20,000 words.

(The last bar, which is unlabelled, is for 60k and above, and belongs to the one, the only @writergirl2011​. A round of applause to her!)

In addition to having a wide diversity of lengths for our fics, we also had a wonderful diversity of ratings!

Fics!

Fun With Tags!

The most common tags on fics were fairly predictable:

Alternate Universe - Modern Setting (50)

Fluff (10)

Angst (10)

Pining (10)

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence (10)

Hurt/Comfort (9)

But one of our writers, @sapphiresandsunlight​, had the tags on their fic go viral on twitter! (Give it a reread, it’s a banger.)

But we had other favourite tags too:

"just buy a hat and hold the fuck onto it"

"Red Ronnet fulfills his sole purpose in life yet again"

"rated for violence; laguange; some body horror (apologies it's not for sexy times),"

"There's goats, and--therefore--some minor violence,"

"jaime is definitely the miss piggy of this relationship,"

"you don't have to judge me i am judging myself,"

"I overshot the minimum wordcount just a bit" (on a 57k fic, AHEM) 

"its cool guys Margaery has a plan,"

"everyone knows the one dude with a weird pet,"

"probably some deconstruction of Romatic Ideas as a treat,"

"no no she is literally a star,"

"unitards as a fashion statement," 

“lmao at my dumb ass for thinking this was going to be under 10k and finished on time," 

"I swear ths was just supposed to be a one-shot"

"Yes that title is in reference to an Ed Sheeran song" "WHAT OF IT?"

"some wolves do some harming but they get away with it," 

"'hey how is this 13k when it's just cave snuggling?'"

"Revealing your deepest secret and then passing out cold as flirting," "smuttier than that," 

"the minimum for this exchange is 1k" "here's 20 times that," 

“Cosplay as foreplay,"

"hey guess what? i have no idea how newspapers work and yet i picked that prompt anyway,"

"unconscionable abuse of italics,"

"academia is a trap!"

"math as a framework for love and trauma,"

"criticism of martini glasses,"

"Fic Exchange Yaaayyyyyy,"

"if there's a canon problem yo i'll solve it,"

"bet you didn't have this on your Winds of Winter bingo card,"

"this baby can fit SO MANY TROPES"

Then we had fun with tag clouds:

It was a monumental exchange last year and we’re so excited to see what we all come up with this year!

Sign-ups open very soon! Shoot us whatever questions you like and keep an eye out!

[horreurscopes]

exciting update re: commissions

hii!!!!

after a very difficult hell year and a half, i have!! officially!! finished reaching out all outstanding commissioners (important asterisk)* !!!!!!!!!! (!!!!!!) to apologize, explain the situation, update you on your pieces, as well as to offer different ways to proceed, including changing commission orders, and refunds. the anxiety over these outstanding debts has been, in technical terms, the absolute worst, and i am so happy to finally have tackled it. makes a loud wheezing noise!

thank you so much all y’all for your unbearably kind, understanding, loving and patient and responses. some of them made me cry (but i’ll never say which ones). i am grateful for all of the hands that reached out willing to help. owning up to one’s previous misdeeds is actually very cool and i am very glad to be in a place where it was possible for me to get the support i needed to get m'business in shape.

i now have an active, visible commission queue! (its a neat little spreadsheet) all my commissioners have been sent a link.

it is set up in such a way that i am leaving space to work on upcoming commissions as well as outstanding pieces, as i still need to support myself, but the goal is to be caught up by the end of 2021.

i am still learning to give out time estimates (shakes fist at adhd). but i have been updating the spreadsheet several times a week so you (beloved commissioners) can track my progress.

my priority right now is transparency, and maintaining lines of communication open :')

*that said -- if i somehow missed you (i was, after all, dealing with dozens of emails, so i’m not discounting the possibility i made a mistake somewhere along the way) please reach out to me at horreurscopes@gmail.com. please don't IM or message me on tumblr! i am now in a place where i can respond in a timeline manner! i, like, desperately, and reassuringly and actively want to make amends for this difficult period of my life in which i neglected being responsive.

i also will open commissions again later today! >:) new commissioners will also have acess to the queue, and be able to track my progress.

thank youuuuu (pleading eyes emoji) ♥