#and these aren't even all of them lolsob

[salomeslashes]

I am so friggin indecisive and cannot get my head on correctly so please help a guy out.

Boss: Whumper POV, military whump. Blood and gore and basically everything bad that is possible will happen here. No happy endings. (Boss Part 0 - CWs at the top, and I really mean them.)

Bad Luck Town: Basically the groundhog day of whump. One ongoing whumpee, multiple whumpers over time. Though there will be death, by the nature of the story, there is a good shot at a happy ending.

Carrot and Stick: A soldier is invited to help them test new interrogation tech in exchange for an honorable discharge at the end of the experiment. Technically it's the safest assignment out there. (This one will be awful, but he will ultimately walk away.)

Revival: Whumper has a pet that eats death. As in, when the pet feeds, the corpse they feed on comes back to life. Painful healing, pet whump, torture, murder...yeah this one will also be rough.

Fit for a Queen: I think the log line in my spreadsheet best sums this up: "A man preens to be a meal fit for a vampire queen, but realizes too late that he has made a terrible mistake."

Viewer's Choice: This one will be a CYOA red room situation.

Y'all have a week. Good luck.

[bomberqueen17]

a week

hoo boy it has been A Week.

i keep thinking that i haven't worked all that hard this week really, but then i think about what's been going on, and like, yeah ok, i have done a lot. i've been really really tired every night. i've had almost no free time. i thought about going to see the barbie movie since everyone is, but i really truly simply just did not have time. behind the cut is just me sort of loosely recounting this week, minus the hospital adventures. (My finger is healed, if weirdly itchy in one spot, and I've got four more days of antibiotics about it?)

i spent time every day over at dude's aunt's house with his mom. i hadn't thought she'd need me thursday but then she texted to ask when i was coming, lolsob, so i got my laundry hung out and went over. i just hadn't asked, and i had assumed she'd mention it, and had built it up that i was going to get stuff done for myself that day. but then i didn't. i only went over there for a couple of hours, but it wore me out.

today we were only there for maybe an hour, not quite, and dude came too and we got a bunch of stuff removed. i keep not quite believing there's more. but there's more. there's always more.

i spent thursday afternoon and all but about an hour and a half of friday cleaning my own basement. and my own basement is not nearly so good. it's awful actually. there's so much shit that i put away not very carefully and it's wrecked now and honestly why was i keeping it anyway, and i need to just-- get rid of it, and i don't.... know... how... it's exhausting.

and i know, I know! what would make it so much easier, is that so much of the shit I have hoarded, not to put too fine a point on it, is stuff I want to use to make things, and if I just had like. IDK like maybe a week, let's say. During which I could just. Lay out and work on a bunch of projects with no other obligations. I know what would happen is I would realize that a lot of these carefully-hoarded things I've set aside to craft with are garbage really and my time would be better spent working with better materials. And then I'd throw them out! I know this sounds like wishful thinking but it has actually happened several times, I think I'm finally good enough at the things I want to do as hobbies that I feel able to let go of things that haven't worked, let go of things that aren't ideal, etc. We found out where all the textile recycling places are while clearing out Auntie's dragon-hoard of fabrics, and now I know, and I could let stuff go to that, I know I could. They take old shoes! I could do it.

I just don't have the time, which is frustrating. And so a lot of the cleaning I did is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. but those deck chairs are rearranged now, and the crucial thing is that when the movers come to take away our broken dryer and poorly-functioning washing machine, and give us Auntie's working ones instead (her washer is even OLDER than my nearly-unusable one from the 70s, it's kind of amazing, but ilke, you know what, why not, it would be amazing not to have to stand there holding the knob down the whole time it fills) they will be able to get in and out easily and we won't be paying them $225/hr to shimmy around my piles of junk. The front of the basement is now just like. Well I even mopped the floor, ok, so, if that means anything.

It doesn't, except to me. But there it is.

I am so tired. We got the guest bed taken apart; we're getting a fold-out couch in there instead, from Auntie's house, so that the room is more usable as an office. We'd been discussing that change for a long time. I was dreading to find out what's under that bed but it turns out almost nothing, refreshingly. Two strange boxes that contain things my sister left there when she lived in that house in 2007, but apart from that, just a whole lot of dust. Now that that's cleaned up, probably Dude's allergies will be better actually.

I knocked off work at 4:30 pm and took a shower and then we went out to dinner, and I made dude come for a walk with me around a local park, to do a Pokemon Go thing. He was amused. I asked him if he was having fun and he said "I have put myself into a place where I am enjoying this" which is familiar, honestly; I do that all the time. I realize a thing is just what's happening so I decide that I'm going to enjoy that however I can manage to, and usually it works.

I did get a tiny bit of writing done this morning, too, so there's that. But mostly this week was spent going through things and clearing out Dude's aunt's house. And that's what it is.

I'm headed back to the farm tomorrow. I need to work out how to cram things into my car effectively. I believe in myself. It'll be fine.

I'm so tired, and it's a chicken week coming up so I need to get my shit together. It'll be fine. I'm fine. God I could really use a whole day just-- mostly in bed. Wouldn't that be something! No I'd get too anxious. But a day reading. OMG Martha Wells put a new book out like a month ago and I haven't even bought it. Haven't even read an excerpt or summary. Haven't even looked at it. What would it be like to have time for that!

Someday.

[runicmagitek]

stole this from @wingsyouburn because why not! Not going to tag anyone, but if you'd like to fill this out yourself, consider yourself tagged!!

How many works do you have on AO3? 384 :')

What's your total AO3 word count? 1,836,435

What fandoms do you write for? Yes.

Ok but real answer? Current active ones are FF, Fire Emblem, and 13 Sentinels. I'll bounce around tho, depending on what inspires me. Like I always dip in and out of any video game fandom.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 1) Sweet Dreams (Witch from Mercury, sulemio) 2) Finally, Beautiful Stranger (FFVII, aerti) 3) Wings of Valor and Compassion (Overwatch, pharmercy) 4) Give Them Something to Talk About (TLOU2, Dina/Ellie) 5) No Safety in Desire (BotW, Urbosa/Zelda)

It does please me that my top fics are all femslash HSKDJAJD

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I definitely try my best to!! Unless it's very rude or makes me uncomfortable in some way, then I either don't comment on those specific bits or just ignore it altogether. I've had a handful of people make very backhanded remarks and I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's really awkward when an absolute stranger treats me with too much familiarity just bc we share the same ship.

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Probably Limbo? It does not have a happy ending and ends on a very horrifying note. What Becomes of Practice also comes to mind, seeing that the main character goes through hell and ends up dying, though IS reunited with her father in the afterlife 😭

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? God I really don't know. I'm more of an angst writer, so a lot of those happy endings are prefaced with a lot of pain lolsob so I feel pretty much any of my angst with a happy ending fics can qualify for this!! Tho I have received a ton of comments about how fluffy and cozy Finally, Beautiful Stranger's ending was, so I'll pick that one!!

Do you get hate on fics? Not regularly, but it has happened. I've gotten "ew this is gross" remarks on just writing about gay people. I've gotten weird comments about a brief nightmare scene in a fix-it fic, despite tagging for it, bc "she's suffered enough, why would you do this". And more recently, I've gotten some "this doesn't make sense, why would this character ever be depressed/angry" bc I guess female characters who are conveyed as bubbly in the source material aren't allowed to experience any range emotion outside of that and shame on me for wanting to explore darker themes, like recovering from trauma and depression. Bonus points when the male pov character does way more fucked up stuff and no readers call him out on it (sorry, I'm still very bitter about this)

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Hell yeah! All my smut, even my attempts at pwp, always incorporate feelings and more often than not gain a plot along the way. I can't help it. I love the build-up and tension leading to the main event. I need to give my readers blue balls, I guess fjlahdskdh

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? Not really. I'm more of an AU person than anything. Even going through my fics, the only proper crossover I've written was If You Had Life Eternal, but even that is like, reimagining Warcraft characters in the Diablo universe and that's kinda it.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? SADLY YES >:/ thankfully, it was removed from FFN, but I really hated that someone copy-pasted my fic and just changed the character names to fit their ship.

Have you ever had a fic translated? I have!! Several times!

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Nope. The closest I've come is like, sharing ideas on a single continuity with someone else and then writing it out on my own. I do like collaborative stuff with people I trust, but I don't want to co-write anything lolsob

What's your all-time favorite ship? EVER????? It varies from fandom to fandom, even year to year. Celes/Setzer will always have a special place in my heart, even if I don't write for them as often anymore. But right now, keinatsu is dominating my life and I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? God, so many. I have my one Setzer fic that I posted the first chapter, managed to write the second one two years later, and then…. did fuck all with it. Also remembering the Darill/Maria/Setzer longfic I wrote and even did an initial editing pass, but that's now rotting on my laptop. It got a bit too personal at one point and I don't know if I'll ever share it :/ oh and that one Overwatch longfic I got 80k~ into and then abandoned bc the fandom was shitty and I didn't want to invest any more time in it

What are your writing strengths? Dialogue, describing scenery, evoking all kinds of emotions.

What are your writing weaknesses? jfc I'm incapable of shutting up and keeping things short

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I guess it depends? Like I used French in Darkness/Starlight for Jidoorian and the only times Setzer spoke in that was when he was open about his feelings, but didn't want Celes to know. But if the reader translated those parts, they could get more insight as to where his headspace was at. But normally, I would want things written out in a way that's understandable to the audience. If there's a phrase or whatever in a different language, I try to italicize it, but that's it.

First fandom you wrote for? Vividly remember writing about my self-insert OC in a post-canon FFVII/Sailor Moon crossover that lived in spiral-bound notebooks at the age of 11. But the first fandom I actually posted something for online was Metal Gear Solid back in like… 2001???? It was forever ago lolsob

Favorite fic you've ever written? This changes over time, but I'm still very proud of What Leads You Here. I put a lot of work into it and am so happy I could share it with the fandom and even happier that a ton of folks enjoyed it!!

[kritischetheologie]

Maybe not a hot take but something I find frustrating is how quick people are to block on f1blr. It’s impossible to be 100% honest about your interests AND make friends with all the people you think are funny and interesting. For example: you love Daniel and really want to connect with someone who also loves Daniel but they HATE lando and you love lando so you feel like you can’t talk about him without risking that person blocking you/unfollowing/talking shit. Obviously if this only happened every once in a while I’d be fine but it feels soooo pervasive in this fandom, it’s like I’m walking on eggshells. Okay sorry for dumping but you asked for it and I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I try to navigate making friends on here 😩

so, first of all, I want to say that I hear you, and I totally understand why you feel the way you do, and that you're not wrong about the pervasive vibe

and also, I really really hope that you're able to make friends soon, anon! (and also, one of the easiest ways to make friends is going off anon. or at least, it's a prerequisite. mortifying ordeal of being known etc etc.)

and now I'm gonna give a little bit of gentle disagreement and also unsolicited advice

first of all, the walking on eggshells feeling is honestly a feature of tumblr culture, in general, not just f1blr. this is, in general, not a particularly healthy place to hang out (lolsob). a mantra I like to repeat to myself is the opening line of a postal service song: this place is a prison and these people aren't your friends.

I have about 300 followers (fewer every moment), about 100 of whom are mutuals, and there are maybe five people on this website I actually consider real friends. tumblr is, in many ways, a lot like high school: you have to find the real people you can actually trust, and just tune out everything else. you will never be able to make friends with all the cool people. you need the people who will actually ride or die for you, and everyone else can be people you take prom photos with (reblog each other's fic).

so second of all: you are only going to be able to be friends with people if you can actually disagree on fandom stuff that doesn't matter to your real lives, because friendship is not about comparing lists of all your blorbos and matching all your blorbos and shipping them with all the same blorbos. friendship is about who will let you sleep on their couch if you show up in the middle of the night with a suitcase, and the way you get there is honestly by talking about who you really are, as people. sure, it's nice to have some overlapping blorbos, to be able to rec each other fics, and it's nice to be able to watch races without constantly feeling like if one of your blorbo wins the other's blorbo will lose, except for how that can actually be an extremely fun way to watch races, because some good-natured competition is fun, if you're both into it...

(and when I talk about blorbo opinions not mattering for your real life, I am sure, because this is tumblr, that people are going to show up in my mentions like well come on max is racist surely that's not a difference of opinion how can I be friends with people who support someone who's racist, that matters to my real life. and to those people I say, the decision to support the guy who says slurs over the guy who evades taxes over the guy driving for the team with two sponsors both of whom have war crimes sections of their wikipedia page over the guy who's pro life over... does not tell me anything about someone's character in real life. how do they treat strangers? how do they treat waitstaff? how do they treat their friends, or their family? and sure, what do they vote for... but this is not an election, and finding a blorbo interesting, or liking their driving style, or even being attracted to them, is not the same thing as thinking they're a good person, morally.)

which is all to say that someone who will block anyone who ships *spins wheel* dando is not here to make friends. they're here to whip people up into a frenzy of perceived moral superiority, because this is tumblr, and this is what people on tumblr have always done.

to be clear: I am not advocating for being a dick as a way of testing people even if that is literally what I am doing with this little exercise. treat other people with charity, use the appropriate tags to block content people don't want to see, and then... let the chips fall where they may. and if someone unfollows you or talks shit because you also like lando, remind yourself:

this place is a prison and these people aren't your friends

so talk about daniel with the people who like daniel, and see if they're down to also talk about lando... but more importantly? see if they're down to talk about how your days are going, about work, about love, about the shit you're going through, about what it means to be a person in this fucking world. because that shit, at the end of the day, is what actually matters. they can tune out your posts about lando.

good luck, anon. I'm rooting for you.

[subdee]

ADHD anon. Thank you for your answer. A lot of what you said was very relatable. I've also had periods of my life where the ADHD seems to improve without medication. Tasks that require me to be on my feet and with people seem to be what works. The ADHD gets worse when I'm using the computer regularly.

It's interesting that you recommend Thinking Fast and Slow. My dad gifted me this book with the earnest advice to read it and I never did. Maybe I should.

If you don't mind me asking one more thing: How does the ADHD affect your ability to care for a baby? I ask because my partner and I both have ADHD and kids might be a thing for us in the future.

My partner is capable of holding high ranking, highly demanding, specialized jobs. He operates on the same high and low energy states that you mentioned. He works so effectively when he's on adderall, but when he crashes it can turn into an emotional breakdown for him.

Neither of us are currently taking medication because the side effects are too disruptive to our lives. My partner recently quit his job due to mental health problems. I'm not too concerned about the financial end of this because his skills are in high demand, but I am worried about this intense emotional/energy cycle becoming a non-stop issue for his health. I also worry that he won't be able to help with childcare for this reason, even though he has an evident paternal instinct around kids and he was raised by a house husband.

I have a hope in the back of my mind that if we did have a baby, parental instinct would override the difficulties of ADHD. However, I suspect this is not something I can know for sure until it's too late to go back on the decision.

"Tasks that require me to be on my feet and with people" <- This is it exactly, yes, thank you. By this measure there are a lot of people with ADHD who manage by either creating or lucking into the right environment (shout-out to the self-help book Driven to Distraction that recommended, essentially, being a dude and marrying a woman who could attend to all the details for you lmao).

About the parent thing... We've only been parents for about four months now so I don't want to pass myself off as an expert. For me, I'm on the older side (late 30s) but I don't think I could have had children any younger than this. Children really require a lot of managerial and organizational skills, especially as they get older and you have to manage their schedules for them. I never had those skills when I was younger, but I was essentially forced to develop them at work because I'm in a position of responsibility where bad things will happen if I don't do my job properly.

And the other part of that is, not only did I have to learn the skills, but after a decade of teaching I **feel** skilled and valued at work, and also in my relationship with my spouse (we've been together seven years). All of that gave me the confidence to try having a kid....

I don't think everyone has to be as old as me, but I think it helps to FEEL settled, to feel that you'll figure it out even if it's tough. And then raising a kid is a big financial commitment and job protections for new parents in the US aren't great, lolsob, so even more than the ADHD I would say that being confident I wouldn't **lose my job** if I took six months off to care for a child was the biggest factor in feeling ready.

As far as whether you'll be able to manage caring for a baby while having ADHD... it really depends on your situation and what kind of support network you have... If there are grandparents or other extended family/friend in the picture to help out, or if you have the money for paid help, then you can relax a little bit.

I haven't found focusing on the baby to be any kind of problem, though, because, well, you have to do it. You know? There's no getting around the fact that baby needs you to feed and change and bathe and burp and hold and play with them and etc etc. They can't even fall asleep on their own without you (alas)!

So whether you feel able to do it or not you just have to do it, unless again you have that great support network. I don't know about you but I personally find that a lot of ADHD difficulties go away when it's something concrete I have to do, with clear consequences if I don't do it right now.

About your partner, I don't know your specific situation but I wouldn't have a kid with anyone I couldn't rely on to help out with the childcare. Of course we all have our breaking points and sometimes RJ needs downtime and sometimes I need downtime and neither of us is 100% all the time *especially on days like today when the baby has been waking up every hour all night long (and this has been going on for weeks (and I'm almost always the person getting up in the middle of the night))* But no way I personally could be the only person caring for Baby. I need my husband to occasionally be the person who gets up in the middle of the night so I can sleep, who occasionally plays with the baby so I can have the morning off, who occasionally feeds the baby because my back hurts, etc etc. I'm sure your guy is lovely but babies take a lot of time and energy.

That's my personal two cents, and you'd know better than I would how often you'll be able to count on your guy when you need him. Maybe a more traditional split with your guy making the money and you doing the childcare would work for you guys, it seems to work for some people. Maybe he'll step up when it's clutch time, some people perform better under pressure. Really it all depends. I couldn't be the woman in this relationship though, not under any circumstances:

https://botharetrue.substack.com/p/i-cannot-handle-my-sons-crying

Anyway. It depends on your baby too, and whether you grew up around children and know how to care for them (I didn't) or whether you'll be muddling through. Some babies are easier to care for than others. Ours is good-natured but he had stomach issues and now he has sleep issues. Also he's at the age when he craves stimulation and if we don't take him somewhere interesting at least once a day he gets cranky and indignant - he also needs tons of exercise every day like Michael Phelps or he can't settle enough to eat or sleep - ADHD probably to be honest.

One thing that no one tells you about babies but that helps in caring for them - they come with a learning curve. They are actually pretty easy to care for in the beginning and the difficulty increases gradually. So you do have some time to adjust.

[runicmagitek]

In your Keinatsu head canon what do Yuki think about Miura? But also what do Takatoshi think about Natsuno? Really love your Keinatsu fics ^^

Awww thanks for the ask, anon! You're too kind. So glad you enjoy the fics 🥰 always game to chat about keinatsu stuff! Will put this under a cut for spoilers.

I feel my headcanons kind of vary from continuity to continuity. Like with What Leads You Here, Yuki has VERY strong reservations against Keitaro due to… well, it's in the fic lol. But more or less, she didn't trust him and was under the impression that he had hurt Natsuno somehow and didn't want that to happen again. However, she warmed up to him upon realizing how much he does genuinely care about Natsuno along with how much he's helped Natsuno out. As for Takatoshi in that fic, he expresses concern about Natsuno's well-being and even goes out of his way to watch over her after a particular incident when Keitaro can no longer do that himself. There aren't as many scenes with Takatoshi and Keitaro talking about Natsuno, but Takatoshi just wants his best friend to be happy at the end of the day.

But outside of that fic, here are my general thoughts!

I still feel that Yuki would be very "I'm watching you, pal" around Keitaro, but not as aggressive as she is in What Leads You Here. She knows Natsuno has already lost someone she's cared about deeply (BJ T^T) and with how resigned to dying Keitaro was during the final battle, I imagine she worries that he might also disappear from Natsuno's life. I could also see her stumbling upon the 2188 logs and learning more about… well, All Of That and just going "fuck me, guess that makes sense." She's always going to worry about Natsuno, but she's glad that this version of Keitaro treats Natsuno with the respect and adoration that she deserves. I could see her and Keitaro getting into a few one-sided arguments (mostly with Keitaro being all ???? what's the problem???), but then she warms up to him and is taking bets with the rest of the colony about when those two will FINALLY make it official. Definitely on better terms with each other than their 2188 versions!

As for Takatoshi, he's probably very amused by this leggy lady that has his friend perpetually blushing. He's glad Natsuno is just as much of a nerd as Keitaro is. He's also glad there's someone aside from himself to push Keitaro out of his usual shell. He and Natsuno probably get along pretty well (I can see them being morning jogging buddies together!). She probably picks his brain on and off to ask about Keitaro so she can surprise him with a gift or a special time together. And with how blunt and no-nonsense Natsuno can be, Takatoshi is caught off guard now and then with her remarks. I'm sure Keitaro also vents to his friend sometimes about being so flustered around Natsuno, to which Takatoshi just teases him a bunch….. then comes crawling back to him the next day with the same vent, because Okino is also bullying him lolsob. The poor boys and their reincarnated lovers sharing some solidarity, at least! And I'm sure Takatoshi reminds Natsuno a lot of Nenji while they hang out (neither Takatoshi nor Nenji likes this jdsklafjkdljfkla).

So yeah, they're supportive and enjoy their bestie's love interest! A bit of a bumpy start with Yuki, but long-term she's glad Natsuno has a great guy in her life and Takatoshi feels the same way about her for Keitaro 🥰