#and i just appreciate y'all a lot

[thelonelyshore-if]

Hey ! sorry if you've already answered that but do you know how many chapters you think the lonely shore will be ? Hows the writing going btw ? Love your work and how active you are with the community, makes it very fun !

Howdy!!

My outline puts us at around 13 chapters, though with the amount I shift things around we'll see if it remains that way! Could end up being slightly more, could end up being slightly less.

Writing has...had its ups and downs, in all honestly. I've mentioned it before but I've been dealing with some pretty severe writer's block; mostly out of dissatisfaction with the chapter, I think?

Not that I haven't been writing. I think I have close to 30k written for this chapter in total...but we'll see how much of that I can salvage. It's much less than I would have wanted to have at this point.

Sorry to be a bit of a downer 😭 The good news is, with my recent plot switch I've found a lot of motivation. On top of that, I've made it a personal goal to start writing every day again, with or without said motivation.

So far I'm 3 days in and have written over 1k each time! Idk if that sounds like a lot, but compared to this slump I've been in it has felt fantastic.

All that to say, thank you for your kind words! I really appreciate them.

Y'all make the community fun to engage with! I can't exactly work on the story when I'm at work, but I can answer an ask or two, and it always helps keep my brain rolling about tls!!

I'm very grateful for everyone who's been following the story--you're all amazing, and y'alls enthusiasm helps remind me that I love this story, too, even when it feels impossible <3

[unforth]

Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.

That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.

That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.

That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.

That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.

That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.

That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.

None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.

I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.

If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.

Celebrate fan work!

To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.

[magefeathers]

everyone else: haha The Summoning sexy

me: The Summoning's "raise me up again" is in direct contrast to Drag Me Under's "drag me under again" and shows an immense amount of growth between the two points in the narrative, for him to go from singing "drag me [...] deep into your love" to "take me past the edge / I want to see the other side" shows that he no longer wishes to drown and wallow in the toxicity of this situation and now wants to move past it and see what lies beyond and in this essay I will-

[ryzenshines]

Gothamites! Tell me who's your favorite Bat of Gotham of all time and why are they your favorite!

[moiraimyths]

Before we call anon rude because let’s see it from their perspective, imagine getting an entire feast to eat. That can be pretty hard to start with so much that’s going on, but if they start with one thing they know they’ll like (aka one character they like) that can be the start for them leaping to other characters to finish the story and the bigger story. I struggle the same way to start book series if I don’t have at least one character that drives me to read it, it’s all about what can be the hook to push them through. Sounds like the anon is neurodivergent (just a guess) so they might genuinely not see it as rude and see it as a solution to even play the game to start with.

Btw absolutely adore the game, the complex and rich characters making them all so unique is amazing. The art is so pleasing to the eyes I love it!! I’m waiting for it all to get out at once so I don’t get too impatient. Shae however interests me the most, which routes will have the most lore for them? Will there be routes that give more lore in general based on decisions you make or do they all share the same amount? (I mean general lore not just Shae lore)

Apologies; we are not trying to accuse any asker of being rude! We are simply explaining our perspective as the developers / are trying to broadly encourage folks to dip their toes into other areas of the story outside of the main route(s) they're interested in, especially considering some routes will be made available sooner than others, and these other routes will likely contain additional scenes/lore of everyone's fave(s) regardless! We want to give each main cast member an equal amount of love (and lore) regardless of their overall popularity, so our goal is not to tut-tut anyone for having strong preferences for one character over the others, but rather to explain that you may be surprised by how much *more* you learn about your preferred characters in the other routes. That's all!

For Shae... Well, they were a foot soldier for one of the worst periods of the War. Lore wise, any other story that touches on the War will likely have content relevant to them and their experiences. ^^

[nichiperi]

happy birthday to meeee~ ヘ⁠(⁠￣⁠ω⁠￣⁠ヘ⁠)

[shalom-iamcominghome]

The positive about my expectations being in hell now for people to care much about antisemetism is I get excited when people care. My dad is so much better about being normal about jews than I thought, and like... I feel safe to rant at him about the negative experiences I've already had.

The negative about my expectations being in hell is that there's a reason for that, but I'm not going to focus on that. It just means a lot to me that my dad accepts my judaism and he's an ally, especially because I was planning on hiding this for a long while longer.

[nekrosmos]

Y'all I didn't expect working on commissions to be this exhausting what the hell

[thelassoway]

Ted Lasso S01E01 Pilot || Ted Lasso S03E03 4-5-1 & S03E07 The Strings That Bind Us

[spacestation-l7]

More John and Lisa friendship dynamic doodle I did while doing one of my midterms!

Ending where they run away together :)

[cunninghamchrissie]

daily post abt how sad and isolated i feel since twitter was banned bc a lot of the fandom only interacts w me/my fandom posts on there even if they follow me here or on bluesky

[nikki-tine]

Hi guys! Have a little something from back during the holidays :3

Sparky trying to set up decorations, and the next thing you know...

Welp. Here comes Lyuben with a steel mistletoe (and a radio, and every Mariah Carey Christmas meme known to man)!

... Yeah, let's just say Lyuben adores christmas with every fibre of his being, and it may or may not have to do with being able to actually use his huge chunks of money on something other than cosmetic purpose njerngj

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

honestly it's been really healing being back to actively contributing things and writing out thoughts on tumblr the last week or so, because while twitter tends to be easier for me to write out Thoughts on without getting overwhelmed, the environment in the twitter fandom circles i'm interested in is not only infested with antis but cliqueish in a way that is caustic to the fucking soul if you try to express a thought that's more than three sentences long--a hundred times over if you're autistic in slightly the wrong way--and it's incredibly reassuring to come back to an environment where the very kindest and most inclusive people toward you are not clearly thinking the r-slur the entire time they interact with you lmao

[optiwashere]

How do you manage to write smut that's like, actually arousing? What's the secret?

Well, first of all thank you! I'm glad you enjoy it, I really am. Happy to hear from you here as well 💜

Also, I'll let you in on my secret — I can't stand almost anything I write after it's posted. I see nothing but the flaws, grammatical choices, and technical foibles. This extends triple, quadruple, to smut. So if you're feeling the same kinda way, that your writing feels somehow off, then just know you're not alone.

I could give some pointers, but I don't really know how much benefit anyone will get hearing these from me of all people. But in my opinion it's a lot of the non-smut aspects that highlight the smut and make it shine. So here ya go.

Keep it in-character. I'm not out here talking as an authority on anyone's characterization, nor am I saying I'm some master of it and there are plenty of people out there with differing opinions, so take this with a colossal mountain of salt. But you should focus on making the voices, internal thoughts, and prose in keeping with the POV character. This is something called "POV control" and it's a very useful skill. Be able to flow in and out of a character's POV as the need arises. How Shadowheart interacts with sex is very different from Karlach is different from Orin, for example.

Strong focus on dialogue. This is a sorta addendum to the first point. Characters shouldn't suddenly turn silent when they're having sex. That is, unless that's the point of the story! They should also be speaking in-character even (or especially) during sex. Also, "porn dialogue" is something that gets brought up a lot in writing, and I think we all know it when we read it. That being said, people in the real world do say things during sex that, out of context, are hilarious. So it's a balancing act.

Fitting descriptions. This is actually one of the more important ones! If a scene is very romantic and meant to be light and fluffy, maybe avoid words for genitals altogether and focus entirely on simple visual aesthetics (how moonlight plays on a body, to give an example). If it's meant to be rough and focused on bodies or the mechanics of the scene, ham it up on those words. This also isn't a binary. Things flow back and forth all the time.

Firm language. I don't mean, like, power dynamics "firm." I'm talking about a willingness to use the words that fit the descriptions and sticking to it. Some people despise certain words, but other people will find the alternatives hilarious and completely tone-breaking. Find the words you like and stick to them; consistency gives your voice strength.

Don't try to appease everybody. You just can't. You have to write what you personally enjoy reading/writing/doing/thinking about, and go with it. If you try to cater to everyone's whims with any of the above, you'll wind up with a beige platter of nothingness. That doesn't mean you can't explore other tones or flavors, but don't try to do too much in one story.

Focus on emotions. Emotions could mean anything from love to lust to anxiety to fear to uncertainty and so on and so forth. My strategy is to center a fic on a theme/emotion that resonates with the characters involved and then I explore the smut around that central point. Revisit the idea between the action. Show how the characters' feelings around the theme change or how they're reaffirmed.

[holocene-sims]

a sneak peek for an upcoming (timeline tbd) update 😊

[starflungwaddledee]

deleted my little melt-down from yesterday. left it up a little longer than planned because i wanted to make sure folks got replies!

thank you so much to everyone who was very nice and encouraging to me about it and also to the person who sent me a delightful ask/prompt/suggestion that i would love to draw something to; if i can just get the confidence up

thank u 💖🙏