#also i may start talking more just in text posts because i've gotten myself really wound up

[tia-amorosa]

Hi…

I thought for a long time about whether I should write a personal post again or not. But they usually get lost, literally. That's probably because hardly anyone here knows me well. But I'm writing this post to let off some steam and talk about the situation that's really bothering me at the moment. (sorry in advance for the long text)

I'm in pain. Every day, 24/7. Why? About 4 years ago I had dental treatment with a somewhat unfriendly, older dentist. The treatment was carried out under anesthesia. One of my wisdom teeth and another were pulled. And it may not have been done correctly, which is why I've been suffering from nerve pain on the left side of my face ever since. The pain is so extreme on some days that you just want to throw yourself in front of a car... or jump off a bridge. I've already visited neurologists in recent years, but unfortunately they couldn't help me. After the treatment at this dentist, I had another problem with a canine tooth (top left), which was then pulled. This is also a so-called eye tooth because it is exactly in line with the eye. This time it was a different doctor who had found that there was a small cyst on this tooth. So it wasn't wrong to pull it out. But since then the pain has only gotten worse. I have pain when I look (when I make a lot of eye movements), and the pain goes all the way up to my head.

The sad thing about the whole thing is that the pain is made worse by the fact that I work a lot with my mouth. Because I am severely disabled, I cannot move my hands and work with a special computer mouse that I operate with my mouth. My mouth is therefore an important tool that I use to write, write my stories and operate the computer in general. And it makes me... sad and angry that I am currently going through a phase where I am not making as much progress with my work as I would like because this pain is tormenting me every day. I've tried all kinds of painkillers, but none of them have helped at all. And I don't want to drug myself with any heavy stuff.

I'm currently trying to find a dentist who will continue the treatment. A lot of things need to be done, restoration, etc. I've already found a practice and asked them about it. A video consultation was supposed to take place last week. I waited half an hour in front of the screen and the loading bar until someone answered. After that I disconnected the connection. I then wrote an email to this practice. There was no response... I called them today and they said they hadn't noticed my email. OK, that can happen... Then they gave me a new appointment for a telephone consultation, also today. That was supposed to take place at around 2:20 p.m. Do you think someone called me? NO!

They seem to have forgotten about me. I was so angry... I'll call them again tomorrow and ask what's wrong with them. Above all, it is a practice that is well suited to people with severe disabilities. And I actually rely on sensible advice and treatment. They haven't even seen me yet. And I'm having real problems with my teeth at the moment. One of them is open and I have to be careful not to chew on the wrong side because otherwise more of it will break off. This will only put more strain on my nerves, I'm really fed up!

I wish we could turn back time, then I wouldn't have gone to that horrible doctor who started this pain. I wish I had found a better doctor, but it's difficult to find the right doctors in my situation. I'm also suffering from a urinary tract infection at the moment. It really hurts. I suffer from it often, but the pain in my face is just much worse. I can only do something on the computer on days when the pain is bearable for me. Before the whole thing with the first dental operation, I was incredibly productive and got a lot done. Now I can't even manage half of it. As I said, it makes me sad and angry. That's why my story is progressing very slowly at the moment. Sorry about that.

I hope I haven't annoyed anyone with the long text, but I just had to get it off my chest so that people might understand me a little. I would also like to write more, but my concentration is exhausted for now. I'm passing the time with Netflix, so I don't have to do much or think about it.

Now I wish you a nice evening/day. Greetings and hugs from me to you.🥰

[gamerbot-22]

And That's Curtains! (For Now)

And that's everyone I had set aside for this run of ficlets! 58 whole ficlets, written in a semi-straight shot (save those handful of breaks I took lol) I'll leave my big squishy emotional thoughts at the bottom of this post, just so I'm not clogging up people's dashes lol.

The link to last week's postmortem is here, and the tierlist is here. <3

Once more, there's been some minor rearranging - I think I'll do my Great Resorting sometime in May, during summer break when I have the time to sit down and actually read and evaluate everything at once. That's an estimate and I might do it sooner, but we'll see! Time is funny like that!!!

A Taste of Your Own Medicine, S Tier - Someone said that my biases were showing in this ficlet and you know what? Yeah they were and also I don't mind at all lol. I've said multiple times that I find the Belobog cast to be really interesting, and like... I find it odd that there's such little content in HSR for them compared to other casts (*cough* the Xianzhou *cough*) even so long after its release considering that something named "Belobog" shows up in a bunch of other Hoyoverse games (apparently it's in ZZZ? But I've never played so take me saying it with a grain of salt.) Anyways, my complaining about all that aside I just... Really like writing cozy scenes, and considering that Natasha had appears in two fics previously, serving as a guiding force/strict but loving parental figure, I thought it only fair that she get a night off in her own ficlet. I think this was also the biggest cast I wrote for any of these? At least it was the most characters interacting in any one scene. Nevermind I just remembered Himeko's breakfast ficlet lol that feels like it was forever ago-- All that to say, I really enjoy putting characters at ease, especially if they fall into Natasha's archetype of "absolutely exhausted but a bit too busy to really do anything about that."

A Girl and Her Rabbit, B Tier - This is like... A tentative B Tier, because this ficlet is definitely doing what I set out to do when I wrote it, which is "more relaxing shit," but this ficlet was really hard to write from a research standpoint because like... Lingsha is actually pretty underutilized as a character. I could complain more but this isn't the place for that lol. Anyways, I do like this ficlet, I just think in the grand scheme of all the other ones I've written, it's a little too simple and there's something just vaguely missing from it.

Healthy Anxiety, A Tier - God this one was silly. I very much drew from the like. Scarily vague texts/calls you get from your parents/boss/etc for this, as well as how anxiety presents in my own mind when I was writing this one. I think I could have pressed the waiting room scene a little more? Gotten more into the way anxiety can scramble your brain and make you think of the worst so that the payoff at the end hit harder both in terms of tension and comedy.

Making Up, S Tier - Me, starting this project: I probably won't write anything explicitly romantic as I do this, just to avoid any potential drama. Me, a month in, writing at 2 in the morning: LESBIANS FOR EVERYONE! -- I. Really love writing soft romance shit. It's gotta be one of my favorite like subjects/settings, especially when it involves characters like Seele and Bronya, who oh so beautifully compliment and contrast against one another. I wanted to keep Seele stubborn, because she absolutely is, but I also thought it was really important to show that at the end of the day, Seele knows that Bronya is way more important to her than whatever it was they were fighting over. I also deliberately did not say what the subject of their fight was because, to repeat myself, that part doesn't matter. What matters is that the two of them were willing to talk it out and both apologize for their hand in the squabble. I think interactions like that are very mature, and a sign of a healthy relationship, which is what these gals have!

Hey, Diddle, Diddle, A Tier - This one was also really fun. Originally the plan was to just have Misha contend with having to get up out of his blankets to do a chore--something I think we all have struggled with--but as it was, that just felt really plain. So, of course, I threw a little bit of Penacony magic and whipped up something that I thought was silly and interesting in the way those trippy old cartoons tended to be. As a consequence, Misha himself takes kind of a backseat, but I still think it's really funny to imagine him laying in the background just watching his dream bicker with rapt attention. For a character as difficult to get a hold of, story-wise, as Misha, I'm pretty pleased with how this one shook out.

Treat Yourself, S Tier - Another silly lesbian-- Originally the plan was just to have it be the last scene, with the idea of Bronya treating herself being an established activity that Seele was only now learning about, but I thought it made more sense to have this be a New Thing for the both of them (both for narrative silly reasons and Bronya characterization reasons.) Also the flirty banter at the end was actually not something I had in mind when I started but boy am I glad that my sleepy brain was like "could be gayer" because I. Love them lol.

Blinding Lights, S Tier - YEAAAA GOD I had such a blast with this one. It was kind of rough to get it started--originally the plan was just for Boothill to be By Himself--but this boy works best when he's got someone to bounce off of, so I gave him a little Aventurine as a treat because I! Love banter! In case that was not obvious! I didn't get into it too much, but I felt kinda clever for the plot beat of Boothill getting overwhelmed by the lights because of his eyes. I don't know if he canonically has any enhancements for his eyes, but considering his Skill animation, I'm willing to bet that there's something, and like... tech is actually a lot easier to overload than you think it is, so a lot of flashing, swirling colours could pretty easily fuck with a targeting system. Also I'm just. Really obsessed with eyes as a concept in narratives anyways so having Boothill's eyes get all wigged out only for them to still when he looks at Aventurine's eyes, which are in-canon both insanely unique and drop-dead-- wait absolutely gorgeous? Ough. Good shit. Way to go, me, lol--

What Comes Next? - I've shared my plans for how I'll continue this series before, but I figured I'd go over them again in a more itemized format lol:

1) Right now I am going to prioritize like. Actually playing the game. I'm not going to stop writing--God I would never now that I've got my groove back--but...

2) No new HSR Daily Ficlets will be published until I have more than just 4 characters in the queue. Idk if I'll wait for a 7+ characters to rock up or if I'll call it at a specific update number, but as of now the series is officially on break until there's more I can work with.

3) I will do a grand re-ranking of all my ficlets at some point (possibly in May, as mentioned above) where I actually have a more strict criteria in mind to avoid the wibbly-wobbly placements I was getting to about halfway through the series (trying to keep track of your feelings on 58 ficlets is rough.)

4) This is has nothing to do with the series progressing but I think something I'm going to try to do over the summer break will be actually printing out this hunk of ficlets and binding them into an Actual Book I can put on my shelf. I might make more, depending on how I feel about the process, just to give to friends who are interested, but if folks wants a copy for themselves I will figure out the logistics of that closer to the day (and again, that's if the process doesn't make me want to tear my hair out and scream.)

5) I might do a Big Autism at some point and post statistics for the series, just because I like making charts, lol. It'd mostly be "Average ranking per week" and "most popular fic on tumblr/Ao3" and stuff like that. Idk if I'll post them but some of my irls will definitely be seeing my unhinged spreadsheets.

5) And finally, I'm going to keep writing stuff for HSR. It'll probably be really sporadic, but I've been kicking some ideas around. The one I feel most confident in mentioning is a potential series that covers Boothill finding and befriending a mechanic (half a reader insert character) after his arm gets busted in a fight.

Closing (for now) Thoughts - I. Am really proud of myself for this series. I used to write a lot of stories when I was younger but as I got busier and I think just... generally more anxious as a person, I stopped. Especially when it came to the idea of actually putting my work out there to be read by people who weren't like close friends/immediate family. The series has by no means been popular, but just knowing that I have friends, (both old and new <3), that were actively following along just felt really nice, as well as all the kind comments from strangers as the series progressed. While I'm glad to be done with this for now, I am very much looking forward to writing more, because this tiny community has been really lovely, and I think it's helped me get my spark back.

So thanks everyone! I'll see you guys in the stars ⋆｡°✩

[roguetelepaths]

byron + 1, 2, 5, 24,

Oh fuck yeah I was hoping someone would do this. This is going to be a massive wall of text and I'm sorry but also I'm really not. You have unleashed the infodump dragon and it's not leaving until it's run off some of its zoomies.

Why do you like or dislike this character?

You know a fun fact about me is that I was on Team Byron Disliker when I first started Season 5 just due to what I'd heard through pop culture osmosis. I even made a post to that effect after watching a couple of his episodes (deleted now because I was sick of seeing it in my notes) that got some circulation in the fandom. But the further I got into that arc and the more I thought about him, the less I saw what I expected to see when I started. Instead I saw someone who, though flawed, spent most of the time he was on screen trying to be gentle and compassionate and trying to protect his people in a situation that was hell bent on making it as hard as possible for him to do those things.

I do think he has a manipulative streak, and I do think he's the type to occasionally do very hurtful things because he believes he's doing so for the right reasons (see for example that fucking "doesn't it feel nice to be asked" scene between him and Lyta in The Paragon of Animals, even as a Lyta/Byron shipper that makes me SO ANGRY because that point could be made in LITERALLY any other way that didn't involve demeaning her and shouting at her, I get that you're pissed off at the people who did that to her but taking it out on her isn't gonna help anyone so stop) but those flaws when combined with his genuine good intentions and abundance of care are fascinating.

A big part of why I think people dislike him as a character is because those flaws are presented as an immutable Fact Of Who He Is, which, yeah, I can see why someone would find that insufferable, but I like writing character growth and he deserves some.

Tl;dr, I like him because he's complicated. I dislike the way canon never seemed to want to grapple with those complications.

Favorite canon thing about this character?

That scene with the one guy in Downbelow. You know the one. Letting someone punch you repeatedly because you want to teach them a lesson about how finding a target to beat up on isn't actually going to solve their problems is... genuinely fucking baller and I wish we'd gotten to see more of that side of him.

Also that thing with Lyta in Strange Relations that's basically a mutual "I'm not overextending myself YOU'RE overextending yourself! Please slow down and rest 🥺" is probably what made me ship them as hard as I do. Dipping out of canon and into my fic for a second, but that interaction is so different from their first interaction that I kind of have to wonder if someone talked to him about the way he treated her. (I may have written a missing scene about that but it needs some fine tuning before I feel good about posting it.)

What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

oh my god!!! so many. SO MANY. But uhhhh I can narrow it down to like four?

Runaway by The National as a general theme song

I, Carrion (Icarian) by Hozier as a soft and sad song for him and Lyta

The Deserter's Song by Radical Face as a backstory reveal song

New World Coming (any version but I like the one by Nina Simone best because. Come on. It's Nina fucking Simone how can you top that) because I'm almost certain it was one of the songs JMS pulled from when he was writing That Song For That Scene.

What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

I've been saying this from the very beginning— The Signless from Homestuck. (Yes, I'm a Homestuck enjoyer. Sorry.) I just love my pacifist resistance leaders with feral partners and tragic endings okay.

[hybbart]

May I request you draw some empires s1 flower husbands I Miss them so much( ps your jimmy design is adorable)

First of all thank you very much! Now, I have actually drawn a little sketch for you. But I'm gonna put it in another post cause I just wanted to use this ask to say a couple things so it doesn’t get bogged down by this, cause this happens to touch close to some topics I wanted to mention for a while now but my brain has a hard time letting me just make permanent text posts on this blog specifically since it's supposed to be for my art.

Long post so I'm putting it below the read more. Sorry if this seems like an inappropriate reply, I really just don’t know how or where else to say these things.

TL;DR: I've given myself strict rules on what I'll personally depict in my mcyt art, I'm not actually fond of flower husbands or Jimmy and Scott's dynamic in general (adore both of them individually though), and I still don't really know much about e1 outside of Lizzie so have 3rd life instead.

First thing is something I probably shoulda said a long time ago cause I've gotten a few asks about drawing explicitly romantic or sexual stuff, but I don't intend to draw either of those things. I have a big difference between what I'm comfortable consuming and what I'm comfortable making myself. I gave myself a lot of personal boundaries when decided to draw mcyt stuff based on my own comfort.

Rule 1 is no sexualization or gore, basically keep things in the realm of the same rating as the hermits.

Rule 2 is that my designs would only be based on skins, lore, and fanon, and never anything around their irl selves.

Rule 3 is not to draw anything that was more than interpretive in relation to romantic vs platonic.

Rule 0.5, the only exceptions to be made would be for references to gags they themselves have made in videos.

I know some of my stuff pushes against the line on these rules, especially for jokes or replying to asks that use shipping terms, but they're ones I don't intend to ever fully cross with my own art. There's a lot of other amazing artists on here who are more comfortable with drawing that stuff.

So if you ever send in a request for art just know that ones that push against or cross these rules to me, I'm going to skip over them. Not anything against the request it's just my own rules. Sometimes I also just don't get to them, but I'd appreciate those rules being kept in mind when requesting.

Second topic starts with a bit of a story. So, I got introduced to the life series through a Grian animation that popped up when I was in my more standard annual hermitcraft phase. The first thing I watched of the life series was thus Grian's videos of 3rd life and double life very out of order and jumping all over the place.

Cause of that the very first thing I ever saw in relation to flower husbands was after Jimmy was already dead, and it was Scott talking about how his husband is dead after the desert war, telling Grian "see this is why I don't trust Jimmy with anything, because he's incompetent. I did warn you all." and it never really recovered from that first impression for me. It actually took me a long time to figure out it was more than a one off joke to call him his husband, cause it felt like every time I saw a scene with Scott he was just insulting Jimmy or begrudgingly putting up with him in a not very funny way. I really do not vibe with them as the flower husbands cause of that.

(That said I do adore both of them separately, and they are very entertaining as exes. Scott's just a lot more enjoyable as part of GGG and the divorcees, and I am very susceptible to the 'Jimmy bullying joke didn't quite land and I'm now just uncomfortable' low tolerance problem.)

Third is, I have actually watched an empires 1 pov now! Yay! But it was Lizzie's and there honestly isn't all that much related to them in her pov. There was actually not nearly as much related to others as I expected in general. Still loved it but didn't provide much is far as context for the season as a whole. Plus I'm unhappy with Scott's design for it and wanna redesign it. So basically I drew them from 3rd life instead.

[blazehedgehog]

I know this isn't a question, and idk if you get this a lot, buuuut... you're honestly one of my idols. <3 I don't mean that in a creepy way, I just think you're really awesome. Keep doing what you do.

I'm always appreciative of posts like this. I don't get tons, but I do get some.

It's weird, actually. For years I've had a number of friends and family try to uplift me about how they think I'm smart and talented and this and that, and while the gesture is always welcome, it... Never felt like it manifested in much?

Like, on Youtube, right. There are people that blow past 100,000 subs in under a year. There are people that do that with a million subs! And I'm over here, channel registered since 2006 or even 2005, and just passed 25k subscribers last year. 18 months later I am inching ever closer to 30k.

Or writing, right. Something I hung my hat on for a long time was writing this article for TSSZ where I was told "hey write something simple for this thing that just happened" but that would have meant an article with a couple sentences summarizing a press release. And this was kind of an ongoing story type deal, but it was the first time we had posted about it.

So I decided to describe everything that had happened so far. I did research, cited sources, and by the end of it I had two or three paragraphs of text that summarized everything that was going on. And I had a friend tell me, "Good work. You did more research than Kotaku."

Or, like, YouTube comments. I've gotten enough YouTube comments from people who are legit impressed with my editing skills but are amazed I'm not a bigger name. I remember a comment on my Sonic 3 video where somebody literally said "every time I think I'm starting to get bored, you pull another twist. I can't stop watching."

So confidence in my abilities has been steadily improving.

But my actual growth has always been slow. I've remained this unknown. And that gets to you, y'know? To have friends and family and fans uplift you, but to be stuck in this no-man's-land of "almost somebody."

You even start to get paranoid: do I have a reputation I'm not aware of? What are people saying behind my back? Maybe everybody just hates me, and this is what I deserve. I've definitely had interactions feed those fears, where it seems like I'm getting punished for reasons beyond my understanding. You can make yourself insane worrying about something that is, ultimately, nothing.

That's the result of many things. I won't go over it yet again, but I spent a long time after dropping out of high school depressed to a hazardous degree. My mom put the fear of "people who commit suicide go to hell with no remorse" in to me, so I was never suicidal, but I had fully given up in a way that may as well been a type of suicide. I did not end my life, but I did stop living.

And it's been a long, slow, painful process to understand that and start digging myself back out. To come back from a loneliness so encompassing you've grown numb to it.

It's a difficult process that has lead to a lot of awkward interactions. Spend long enough being antisocial and you forget how to be social. But rather that stress about it, and how weird I must seem to everyone else, I'm learning to be patient with myself. There are certain things about me where I have a lot of catching up to do, but I can't rush things.

Something also changed in me this last year. As my mom was getting sick and I was taking care of her, we had a very long, emotional talk about the future. I explained a lot of things I had figured out about myself but never told her, because I had a feeling. I knew our dynamic was going to change and I'd have to step up more at the very least. That I had squandered what I was building on YouTube and wasn't treating it with respect. And I wanted to try doing it for real. And she said to me, "I always knew you were going to be famous some day."

So... I'm trying to live up to that while I still can. And in particular, these last six or eight months, it really feels like I'm at a turning point. Things are starting to change for me. The way people treat me is starting to change. A lot of the things I was getting paranoid about turned out to be nothing. I'm starting to feel like somebody. Like the kind of person everyone always said I was.

And it's always nice to be reminded of that.

[ghoste-catte]

I was curious what advice would you give to someone new to writing fics? I've been wanting to get back into it but haven't seriously written something since high school. I hope this isn't an annoying question or anything!

Not an annoying question at all! I'm just a little worried that I won't have terribly good or useful advice. To be honest, I also sort of stopped writing in earnest right as I finished high school, and didn't pick it back up until my late 20s. It's certainly an adjustment! But I think the few things that really helped me get back into writing fic as a hobby and something I spend quite a bit of time on would be:

Write for yourself first, then find your other motivations. My original inspiration in getting back into fic writing was that there just were not that many fics I liked for my favorite pairing, and I wanted more of them, and I especially wanted more with the tropes and characterizations I wanted to see. I think at the very core of anything you need that internal spark that drives you. At the same time, for me at least, if I just relied on my own drive, I would not get much done; I need some external guardrails. So having people send prompts, or writing for particular events, or writing stuff for friends really helps me to get my ass in gear and finish stuff. That may not be the perfect motivator for you, and that's fine! You just gotta figure out what is.

Be open to inspiration. Anything and everything can be spun out into a story with the right tweaking. Obviously stuff like music is a classic inspiration source, but I've also pulled ideas from poetry, from memes, from Reddit threads, from YouTube videos, from rambling conversations on Discord and from real life to make fics out of. So many times, someone will post a silly Twitter screencap, and I'll think, There's a fic in this. And a lot of the time, there is! Research is a wonderful thing, but so is serendipity. If you're out there actively looking for ideas, eventually one that you like will stumble past you.

Find your community. I can genuinely say I never would have finished more than one fic if I didn't have fandom friends to talk to about even stupid headcanons, to bounce ideas off of, and to encourage me (and to encourage them in turn!). Discord has been a godsend, and some of my closest online friends are people I met in the GaaLee discord server. As I've gotten more comfortable as a writer, I've also joined general writing servers and Reddit communities and have found them immensely helpful on both a motivational level (bingos, sprints, owe-me challenges) and on a craft level (plot workshopping and writing ethics and live grammar help). It's a lot easier to think about fic ideas and hash through problem moments when I have a constant stream of fandom-related chatter coming from the little people who live in my phone! Ao3 is an amazing website, and it's great as, well, an archive, but it isn't social media by design. If you want conversation and human connection and cheerleading, you've gotta forge out and find it.

Make it a habit ... If you want to produce anything longer than a couple hundred words, you really have to set aside time for it. And writing is just like knitting or dirt biking or painting little model figurines: the more you do it, the more easily it comes. When I was first getting back into the proper swing of things, I committed myself to 30 minutes of writing per week. Just 30 minutes. I didn't even hit that goal every week, but there were tons of weeks I got on a roll and went over that amount, and by the end of the year I'd written over 200,000 words. I used to spend an hour laboriously tip-tapping out 200 words, but now I can easily blow through 1k in a 50 minute sprint. It's all about training that muscle.

... But don't make it a chore. With fanfic, you aren't doing this as a job, and you aren't ultimately doing it for anyone other than you. That means you can take breaks when you need them, you can set deadlines and then fail to meet them, you can write stuff and then decide to never post it. When you start getting burnt out, when the practice loses the joy and energy, stop. There's no 'hustle' here. In our capitalist society we're so trained to push past our limits and keep going even when it hurts us, but the hobby you do for connection and relaxation and whatever else shouldn't be like that.

Ignore metrics. Sometimes stuff isn't gonna get hits, or kudos, or comments. There are some basic 'rules' as to the stuff that does and doesn't get traction, but every time you post something it's a roll of the dice. If you're focused on watching that kudos counter tick up, you will get bummed out fast. And any writer will tell you that the stuff you think is your best work will never be the stuff that gets the most accolades. So you have to find something else to give you a sense of success. For me, it's watching my wordcount go up in my stats and those occasional comments where someone has a lot to say and that one person who always leaves me a <3 emoji (and, shout out to @egregiousderp, having someone to have long one-on-one conversations with about the stuff that never made it to page).

Don't strive for perfection. It's really easy to want your first ever fic to be a complete showstopper, the best fic fandom has ever seen, hitting all the tropes and the ideas and the characterization that you just know fandom is missing and would be everyone's top favorite if only it was written. This is a trap. No one fic can be all things. Most people who want to write an epic as their very first venture will not see the end of that epic, because they haven't put in the practice hours to make something on that scale work. That's not to say you can't start out with a big, sprawling multichap, just don't expect it to be the greatest thing since sliced bread if you're just starting out, and be okay with abandoning it for greener pastures if you get to that point. Think of the first time someone makes a vase out of clay or bakes a loaf of bread. That's never their best vase or their best bread. If they keep up with it, they'll make more and better vases and loaves. Likewise, your first fic is probably not gonna be your best fic. See it for what it is: your launchpad.

You can't edit an empty page, but you can over-edit a full one. This kind of spins off of #7, but if the words aren't there, you can't fix them. Daydreams and headcanons are fantastic (and god, how many times have I wished for a speech-to-text engine that projected my falling asleep thoughts onto a Google doc for later perusal), but they aren't fic. If you want to write fic, you've gotta get comfortable with the idea of sloppy outlines and rough first drafts. You can't build a house without a frame and you can't build a man without a skeleton (I mean, you can, I guess, but he'd be one floppy man). The nice thing about fic is that it doesn't matter if that frame is structurally unsound or the skeleton has 18 too many bones, you can clean that up in the editing process. But you can't start hanging curtains and arranging furniture in something that doesn't even have walls. That's the process. But! Also know when to set down the editor's pen and say, "Okay, this is good enough for government work", and call it done. ("Done" doesn't have to mean "posted", but it does mean, "I'm done picking at this for now, and I'm gonna go write some more stuff".) Over-editing can make stuff seem laborious and forced, and it prevents you from actually improving. To continue belaboring the house metaphor, you can spend your whole life rearranging furniture in just one room, but the end result of that is a pretty narrow existence and a room with a lot of footprints and tracks in the carpet.

Write shit down. When you have ideas, jot them down--in a notebook, in a Google Doc, in the Notes app of your phone, in pen on the back of your hand. You think you will remember that brilliant line of dialogue or sparkling snippet of narration or genius plot that came to you in a dream, but you Will Not. Write it down. Write it down. Write it down! There have been so many times when a fic was completely saved by past!me having written down my shower thoughts about what happens next in the fic, that present!me had completely forgotten about and was floundering over.

Have fun with it! Try different stuff. Try stupid stuff. Try experimental stuff. Do stuff you've never done before that you aren't sure will work. It's important to get comfortable with your niche (for example, I know I'm never going to be the sort of person who writes intricate plots of intrigue or super long 100k epics or detailed battles), but you can't find that niche unless you explore lots of different niches! Figure out what you love and what you absolutely hate, and then keep doing the stuff you love.

Okay, so that was actually TEN things, but ... I hope you still found this helpful. Feel free to send another ask if any of this was confusing or unclear. Good luck with your fic writing and, if you want, send me a link to what you've written once you've written it! I'd love to read it.

[chibisquirt]

You don't have to answer, but if you wouldn't mind. What are some things you've learned about ADHD from Tumblr that are applicable to you, or others you may now? I've been reading more on it and how it manifests in girls/women and was curious when I read your rb on that post about Grammarly

I don’t mind at all!  Fair warning:  this is gonna be LONG.

I’m going to start by repeating something I mentioned in that post:  I was diagnosed in third grade, which was over two decades ago.  I had my diagnosis halfway through elementary school, much less high school and two rounds of college.  So a lot of the old information about ADHD I learned as a young person, and those things are worth exploring, too.  

Example:  It’s not that I’m not listening, Mrs. Nock, it’s just that if I try to keep my hands still, then the only thing I will retain from the lesson will be keep your hands still and not the things you trying to teach, which are supposedly important! 

(Mrs. Nock was the one who said to me, “I believe you believe you’re paying attention.”  Yes, it’s been fifteen years.  Yes, I’m still mad.  If you can’t have basic respect for your students, don’t teach.)

I figured out half on my own, half because of the counselling that if I had a fidget tool that didn’t require words I would pay better attention than if I tried to sit still.  (I still remember being mocked by my dad for fidgeting well after making that discovery, though.  Apparently diagnoses should only inform compassion when they’re his.)  On the same lines, I also figured out that music in the background wouldn’t work for me if it had words, and television is too distracting for me to use at all.  (I have a friend, though, whose ADHD works the opposite way:  he has difficulty focusing if there isn’t a television in the background.  Yes, both are valid.)

So, the Classics:  

I always had trouble with organization and cleaning, had trouble with schedules and calendars and managing my time.  Those are the things they’ll warn you about, the things they’ll tell you in counselling are natural and normal things for people with ADHD to have trouble with.  Trouble paying attention, sure.  Trouble sitting still.  Procrastination.  Got it.

But if you turn those traits around and re-frame them, they become a new set of symptoms.  Adaptations for these new symptoms are more personal and universally applicable in my life, and therefore, to my mind, more useful.

Take Procrastination.  (No really: please take it.)  That just means “putting it off until tomorrow,” and there are lots of reasons to do it:  “don’t have the tool I need” is one of the biggies, “want to conserve steps” trips me up a lot, “I still have time to get to it” is HUGE for me...  But a lot of times, these are just superficial reasons.  The re-framed symptom is, Trouble making yourself do things you don’t want to do.  

ADHD is an executive function disorder.  That’s a phrase I first learned on Tumblr, by the way; it may have been mentioned by one of my earlier counsellors, but it definitely wasn’t taught.  

This is why soooo many of us have struggled with the perception (including self-perception) that we’re lazy!  But no one tells the kid in the wheelchair he’s just lazy for not playing basketball.  (Okay, they totally do.  People are terrible.  Ignore that, stick to the point.)  I reframe this the way I do because acknowledging this as a symptom, taking the blame out of it, makes it easier to find adaptation.

Now, this is a personal post.  YMMV.  But I have an easier time managing my conduct if, instead of calling myself lazy a procrastinator, I say, “I keep not doing that --> oh it’s because I Don’t Wanna --> how can I con myself into doing it?”  (Strategies include bargaining, making it easier, powering through but then allowing yourself to stop afterwards, just acknowledging that I Don’t Wanna and allowing that to be valid...)  Procrastination is an action, but “executive function disorder” is a disease and “I Don’t Wanna” is its trigger, just as much as an allergy and a clump of ragweed are.  “Procrastination” is a powerful sphynx against which I’m helpless, but “I Don’t Wanna Disease” lets me start cultivating my metaphorical catnip and researching the answers to common riddles.

And while we’re talking about procrastination--and trouble with deadlines, and schedules in general--let’s talk about Time Insensitivity.  Missed deadlines and perpetual lateness (perpetual) are external actions, just like procrastination, and they can have all sorts of explanations.  

(Shoutout to Mrs. Pollack, who looked around a classroom containing thirteen-year-old me, and, knowing full well that I was chronically tardy, declared that “anybody who’s always running late, deep down, they just doesn’t care about anybody else’s time.”  Great job with calling the thirteen-year-old a heartless bitch, Mrs. Pollack!  As you can tell, I definitely forgot it very quickly, and didn’t at all have a self-critical breakdown about it, periodically revisiting the question of my own inherent selfishness for years!!!)

But ignoring the external actions, let’s take a compassionate look inside the head again.  Executive function includes regulation of, and awareness of the passing of, time.  Again: you can’t play the basketball with no legs.  We literally do not realize what time is doing.  Sometimes we do--if we devote enough of our attention to it, which may be a large amount for some, a small amount for others, or a variable amount for the same person.  But our brains literally don’t process it the same way.  

But hold on a minute--let’s go back to that analogy.  Because actually, people with no legs can play basketball!  It’s just that you have to use the adaptation of wheelchairs to do it--and that’s an adaptation for the game and for the players.  

I use alarms.  I’ve recently seen a post about audio memos as alarms.  There are people who just slap clocks everywhere.  When I was forced to work in a kitchen with no clocks, I used the multi-setting timer and set it for like four hours so I would know if I was keeping on schedule.  I also chose a job environment where much of my shift is the same as itself, and rigid punctuality isn’t enforced--that’s adapting my environment, instead of myself.  There’s all kinds of adaptations.  But you have to know you have the condition before you can compensate for it.

Here’s a fun little story:  when I was... oh, eleven?  Twelve?  My Quaker Meeting’s youth group (#7 whitest phrase I’ve ever written) went to the museum together.  One of the stops was in the children’s section, there was a... a pegboard, I think?  With some kind of problem on it.  A puzzle.  Me and a couple others sat down at it, and it took me a while, but eventually I solved it, and I looked up.  

I blinked.  “Where is everybody?” I said.

“They left,” said my mom.  “Half an hour ago.”  

I was stunned.  “Half an hour ago?!  But I couldn’t’ve spent more than ten minutes on this!”

“I promise you, it was half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you call me??  Why didn’t you say my name?”

“We did.  Several times.”

To this day, I will swear myself blind that I never heard a thing.

Hyperfocusing.  They’ll tell you about the problems focusing; oh yes.  They’ll tell you allll about that one.  But they won’t tell you about the flip side of it.  They won’t tell you about the times when the rest of the world falls away, and the only two things in the world are you and whatever problem you’re trying to solve.  

D’y’know what, I bet that’s the reason I test well.  I just realized this now, phrasing it like that, but--I’ve always tested well, even when my actual practical applications of things are mediocre I do well with the classroom testing on it.  I scored a 39 on the MCAT, back when it was out of 45 and not whatever it is now.  (To those with the plain good sense not to want to be doctors:  that’s pretty good.)  And I just bet it’s because, once I get focused on solving the problems, the other problems--nerves, intrusive thoughts, anxiety--just don’t have room to get in.  Hyperfocusing can be a superpower, if you can harness it.  

But it can also blind you to everything else.  And it works in smaller ways, too:  once I think I understand something, it is very difficult for me to perceive information that contradicts that understanding.  I still get the map of the Elflands backwards every time I read The Goblin Emperor, just because I pictured it one way, and every indication in the text that it was the other way just fell on deaf ears.  

And this one leads right into the next, which is Rejection Sensitivity Disorder.  RSD is hyperfocus, but it’s hyperfocus on how everyone must hate you.  It’s delightful!  I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, as well, and I do have both of those things, but for my money, I think that this one symptom of ADHD--which no doctor has ever even mentioned to me--has hurt me more than both of those conditions combined.  

The last one I’m going to bring up is Auditory Processing Disorder.  Now, I’ve gone and gotten re-diagnosed twice in my life, and the last time was just a few years ago, so they actually used this one in the test.  The psychologist told me about it, she just didn’t use the phrase Auditory Processing Disorder, and she didn’t tell me that it was its own symptom--she just used it for the test.  

What she did was, she gave me two hearing tests, one to test whether or not I could hear, and then the other a list of words that all sounded alike, and I had to mark which one I was hearing.  The second part of that was very long, and very boring, and despite scoring perfectly on the first test, I got several wrong on the second.  I was actually surprised by that; I at no point suspected I had heard any of them wrong.  When she gave me the test, told me this was proof by contradiction, that we were ruling out hearing loss as an alternative explanation for my difficulties.  It was only after the test was done that she explained that the pattern I showed was actually part of the diagnosis of ADHD; that we get bored, and stop really paying attention, and that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

...Okay, but you couldn’t have mentioned the part where I also do that every day in real life, lady?!?!  It’s not just when we’re bored, it’s not just for long processes.  I do this all the time.  I actually tell people now that “I actually have a neurological condition that makes it hard for me to hear; I can tell that you’re speaking, but I can’t tell what you’re saying.”  

This is 100% true.  It is a neurological condition.  

We label this a condition, but as a society, we don’t treat it that way.  Society treats it as yet another excuse.  It’s not.  You’re not lazy, stupid or crazy.  Neither am I.  

I have a condition.  Acknowledging that is the first step of treatment.  Not five thousand sticky notes, not binders or filing systems or even taking all the doors off the cupboards (although I definitely plan to do that one as soon as I possibly can).  Not counselling sessions with so many different people I can’t even name them all, for the love of god please understand that you can’t just fix it with pills.  

(Although mad props to the people who thought Concerta would magically solve me at the age of nine!  Spoiler alert:  it did not do that!  But it did mean that my parents felt comfortable blaming me for all my failures again, so it did at least some of what it was designed for, I guess. :) )   

I have spent the last few years re-understanding my ADHD it as is:  a neurological condition, a disability, and a simple fact of life.  A starting place, instead of yet more proof of my own inherent insufficiency.  And you know what?  When you take the blame and self-hatred out of the diagnosis--when you stop cursing it as the cause of all your problems and start trying to work with it, instead--it gets a lot easier to manage. 

[another-sonic-blog]

The Dark Prince: Epilogue: Not The Dark Prince

"Today is the first Independence anniversary for the Acorn Kingdom! Not too long ago, the Acorn Kingdom was under the commands of their tyrant King. Everyone expected the Rebellion leader Princess Sally Acorn to take over the throne. However, informants declare that a secret member of the Rebellion, whose face had not been revealed yet, has been picked by the people of the Acorn Kingdom to take over the throne. He goes by the name of-"

"Cream, stop watching that!", Amy turned off the TV of her leaving room.

"But they were going to reveal the name of the new King!" Cream said winning.

"You have been too obsessed with this new King, you don't even know his name nor his face...what's with this guy anyway?" Amy said as she looked at herself in the mirror, making sure that her hair looks decent for work.

"He is just so mysterious! The news is always talking about him and about the things he has done or the Acorn Kingdom...Weirdly enough, the Acorn Kingdom never let a single picture of him infiltrate...I wonder why?" Cream said thoughtfully.

"He is a secret Rebellion member, if his identity was revealed, then the Kingdom would probably go after his loved ones."

"Rouge?!"

Amy and Cream turned around to find Rouge drinking a cup of coffee. "What?"

"How long have you been there?"

"Half an hour", She said as she took a sip. "I used to be spy honey...I remember some old tricks."

"I forgot that just two years ago you used to work for G.U.N hehe... well at least you are doing good as a self-defense trainer." Cream said as she made room for her bat friend to sit with her on the sofa.

"And you are doing good as a Pre-K teacher yourself Cream.", Rouge took a seat next to her rabbit friend.

"I am really happy you are here Rouge but I am just leaving to work," Amy said as she opened the door, ready to leave.

"But we even haven't talked about the wedding yet!" Rouge said almost screaming as she saw Amy leave.

"We will talk about it as soon as I get back home!

And with that Amy left.

Rouge and Cream looked at each other, already knowing what they were going to do next.

They turned the TV and watched the breaking news.

The news reporter was shown quickly on the TV, still announcing the breaking news. "Who would have thought that the new King of the Acorn Kingdom will be no other than the re-owned worldwide superhero-"

Then, both Rouge and Cream yelled in unison...

"IT'S HIM!"

.

.

.

It has been another busy day at Momo's Cafe, AKA Amy's cafe. Although she was thankful that her cafe had become more popular these days, she was still thankful that everything was working well.

She looked up at her phone, looking at it proudly, she was able to buy herself a smartphone. She received a text message from Sonic clearly saying: "Can't wait to see you!"

Amy smiled with the text, it has been two weeks since she last Sonic and she was super excited to him. She texted back: "I am cleaning up at the cafe, you can come if you want."

"Alright :)" He texted back.

She put her phone away and put on some music to start cleaning up. Her last employee left and since Amy was the owner, she made a thing that it must be her the first one to arrive and the last one to leave.

To leave

It has already been two years and still no signs of him. She really wonders if she is worth waiting for him this long. She wanted him to be there for the wedding, but it seems like she wasn't going to see him anytime soon.

Amy used a towel to clean the underpart of the cashier's table. As if she was under it, she heard the cafe's door open. Steps getting closer to her as they finally made a stop in front of the cashier, waiting to get service. Amy was having a bit of difficulty getting herself up from the underpart of the table, as she hit her head.

"Can I have a cup of black coffee?"

Amy heard a someone from the other side of the cashier say, as she stopped from touching her head, she quickly stood up to face her client.

"Sorry sir, we are closed-"

This must be a dream.

Amy must have hit her head too hard because the one standing right in front of her, asking her for a cup of black coffee was no other than Shadow the Hedgehog.

.

.

.

This wasn't like in the books, where both protagonists end up kissing each other after a long time of not meeting.

Their feelings were never like that, and Shadow was aware of that. Before, Shadow would be worried about that fact. Now, it didn't matter, it was unique. It wasn't fictional....

their feelings were real.

And now they were here, alone, drinking coffee on the place where everything began. Quietly, their eyes crossed each other, not knowing where to star.

"So...how you have been?" Amy asked trying not to make eye contact. Shadow took a sip of his coffee before answering, keeping his cool.

"I've been alright"

That was it. Shadow couldn't get words out of his mouth. He really was trying to make any motion possible to show that he was happy to be here.

"What-um..what you?"

"What?"

"What about you?" Shadow finally was able to pronounce his words properly. He didn't know why he was getting so nervous for. It was just Amy, the girl who he had a crush on since forever, nothing to be worried about right?

"I've well since you left two years, I kept working on my cafe and now it's gotten more popular. Also that I've been busy planning a wedding." Amy said simply, still trying to fully realize that the Dark Prince was in front of her.

"Oh...A wedding?...things between you and Sonic must be pretty good then." Shadow sighed, what was he expecting? He clearly told Sonic to go after Amy, and for him to make her happy. It had been two years, so of course their relationship had developed. Of course Sonic would want to marry her, who wouldn't? At least Shadow would do it in a heartbeat.

So if he knew...why was there still a pain in his heart?

Oh, yes...because he had hoped that Amy would have waited for him. But he knew that it would be selfish of him to ask her to do so.

"Ummm, yes we are good but I am planning Rouge and Knuckles' wedding. They asked me to do it, so of course, I said yes. Don't get me wrong, I love planning but it can be stressing at times."

"Wait, so Sonic and you?"

"What about us?" Amy said a bit weird out by Shadow's question.

"You know..you both are...a thing?"

"No, we never dated. I couldn't bring myself to think about anyone else after what Sonic told me." Amy took a sip once again from her cup, already knowing where this was going.

"What did Sonic told you?"

Shadow was panicking. Sonic couldn't have told Amy about the letter...right?

"Mmm...where should I start?... I am not perfect, and I may have hurt you-"

"STOP!"

Shadow could feel his cheeks getting hotter by the second. He had never felt this flustered before. He hated himself as he realized that he had lost his cool.

"I am sorry...I won't talk about it again." Amy said smiling a bit, proud that she made Shadow get pink like that.

A few minutes passed again in silence as Shadow had gotten his composure back. "So...you waited for me? Although I told Sonic to be with you?"

"Sonic always put others before himself. He knew that you loved me so he stepped aside. He asked me if I was ok with it...you know...If I was ok with waiting..."

Amy sighed as she remembers the scene clearly from two years ago. Sonic showing her the letter Shadow had left. Reading Shadow's true feelings was what made Amy come up with an answer.

"And I said yes."

For a moment, Shadow couldn't' hear anything but his heartbeat. For a small fraction of a second, Shadow couldn't see anything but Amy. That 'Yes' stumble his ears again and again, almost like a melody.

It may be a simple word, but for him...it meant everything.

All of this time, he was scared that all previous feelings Amy had for him were gone. But now, seeing her eyes glow like that as if she was about to cry. Her lips trembling, and her body ready to jump into his arms.

"Are you still looking for an extra worker?" Shadow smiled, hoping that his words will resonate with her.

"Yes..." Amy took one second to stop her voice from cracking. " I can't promise you a good paycheck but...I promise you that I'll never fire you... Will the Dark Prince comply to these terms?"

Shadow couldn't wait to get Amy into his arms. After two long years of being part of the Rebellion and learning more about himself, he was ready to start living. Although he still had questions about love and how it should be treated, he knew that the only way to learn was to experience it.

And he wanted to experience everything with Amy. Their time was ending, the two lovers had no one to stop them from loving each other. It was the beginning of the end, but what a beautiful ending it was.

Sonic had finally arrived at Amy's Cafe but he couldn't bring himself to interrupt the beautiful moment the two were having. At last, his promise to Shadow had been fulfilled and there was nothing else to do but watch. He smiled out of happiness as he watched the two share a small kiss. He learned to watch from afar and appreciate the little things life brings him. He was truly happy for them both.

Shadow smiled and held hands with Amy. He closed his eyes and opened them slowly as to savor the moment, not wanting to let go, he sighed and answered her question...

"I am not the Dark Prince anymore...but if you want, call me the Dark King."

.

.

.

.

.

The Dark Prince Epilogue: END

.

.

.

.

.

Previous Chapter: https://another-sonic-blog.tumblr.com/post/185970145230/its-been-a-while-since-sonic-had-seen-shadow-he

The Dark Prince: Chapter Nine: A Confession

A/N: This story came out from a small idea, now it has become a complete story.

Personally, I think this is the best ShadAmy fan-fiction I've written. I want to thank everyone who has followed this story to the very end. Especially those who comment and inspired me to keep writing.

There's really not much to say, I will probably take a break from writing stories with multiple chapters. I'll like to get my ideas going by writing one-shot stories, so of course, if anyone has prompt ideas feel free to message me.

Thank you once again to everyone who read "The Dark Prince" I have loved writing this story and its sad to let it go.

But all things that start well, end well.

.

.

.

[ablednt]

If I may elaborate a little on that part, I said "expressing things in a complicated way is sometimes easier" specifically because I'm hyper verbal myself and sometimes it is easier but I then added the part you mention with the OR behind it because there are a lot of people (and this isn't specifically an ND thing in fact nt people do it more often) who purposefully use hard to understand language to appear smarter.

By that I am referring to academics and intellectuals or what not who are purposefully using confusing language for clout. It was in part referring to a recent blog I saw who was starting discourse/debates with people specifically using a vocabulary set that was so needlessly complicated that I was not able to understand almost a single word of it even if I looked up the definitions of the words I didn't know because it was so overwhelming.

I've experienced this a lot as I unfortunately have been raised around academics and can testify on how much of the language that is used is tied directly into the hatred and exclusion of undereducated people.

That's primarily what my point was about, and that's why I put those comments in because a lot of people think to make valid points you have to sound like a scholar and then will come for anyone who doesn't have the desire or ability to understand and talk like that and then act like they aren't intelligent enough to have opinions. (And while it didn't happen on this blog yet I have gotten hate comments for the way I talk when I'm typing informally specifically mocking my level of education so that also influenced the way I wrote this)

Now, all that to say that I tried to make that distinction without extending the post out even longer because I have a lot of adhders following who can't really read long posts too much. However, you couldn't have known all that, and I totally understand why the wording would come off as sounding patronizing of hyperverbal people who do have larger than normal vocabularies (also I feel like I should note that when I said a 5th grade level I was going off of a website that calculates the reading level of text, so it's a very rough estimate, and in hindsight I should have said at the level people who haven't graduated high school can understand with maybe looking up a word or two or just guessing what it means in context, as it is more accurate to my point).

So, I would like to make it clear that I am hyperverbal myself and FULLY support anyone who struggles to simplify their speech into easier to understand word choice because it is a skill and thusly takes an amount of energy that not everyone can be expected to have all the time.

So you're valid! It's just that a lot of ppl are really shitty about how they treat undereducated people on this site and everywhere else basically but I wanted to post something other than a rant about it that could also be like short and to the point essentially.

Alright but if you aren’t writing at a 5th grade level or lower, your posts are not accessible to

People with certain learning/cognitive disabilities

People who could not get a proper education

People with frequent brain fog/fatigue due to mental illness or physical disability

Like I know using academic words and phrases and expressing things in a complicated way is sometimes easier or if not it still feels great

But to really show and share understanding is to be able to simplify ideas to make them more accessible. The point of communicating isn’t for it to look nice, the point in communication is to be understood.