#because I'm working on writing/revising it again

[squeakyleftsneaker]

Colonialism Apologetics? In MY Space Mecha Kids TV Show? MORE LIKELY THAN U THINK

I will soon #discuss this but for now I'm just pissed off by it like really TV show? REALLY?

Wait also this is totally unrelated but I am still thinking about the Voltron Show episode where like I really do think they could've stumbled upon something interesting about 1: the fact that the Paladins suddenly become these like. Objects. Symbolically speaking. And then to the resistance movement there is a tension because they're not actually like. Doing shit. But then the paladins themselves feel objectified

Idk like there's so many things that you could do there that would be pretty doable to handle for the audience and keeping the tone of the show! Have Shiro feel uncomfortable with the Shiro The Hero [TM] persona because it reminds him too much of the Champion!

Have the rebels like in the Blade of Marmalade or Olkarion or other rebel outposts (which we barely even see because the show dgaf about the people fighting for freedom jfc) feeling some kinda way about it! A FUCKING MARVEL MOVIE DID THIS!!!! THAT'S HOW SIMPLE THIS IS TO DO!!! (I watched the first Captain America movie for the first time last night. It is extremely simple and very pro military. BUT IT UNDERSTANDS HOW TO DO WHAT IT NEEDS TO DO)

Like idk have Loverboy Lance be tied to Lance's own insecurities about what he brings to the team AND the war– have him feel some kind of way about being portrayed like that as MORE than just jokes!

Don't even get me started on Hunk this fucking show is so awful to Hunk

HAVE ALLURA REALLY GET TO GRIPS WITH THE FACT THAT SHE'S GOT TO PLAY A GUY WHO SHE IS BOTH VERY SIMILAR TO AND ALSO HE IS PART-GALRA, THE SAME GALRA WHO KILLED HER PEOPLE! IT'S A REASONABLE HESITANCY TO HAVE! IDK! IT JUST PISSES ME OFF MAN THERE'S SO MANY THINGS THIS SHOW COULD DO BUT DOESN'T

[lou-wilham]

I can't believe I have to say this again

Look. I've posted about how piracy fucks the little guys at least twice already, but guys, seriously, I'm being so fucking real with you, PIRACY FUCKS THE LITTLE GUY.

And this is just another shining example of how.

8 of my titles are on this list. 8 of my titles that I spent months writing, editing, revising, crying over, screaming over, plotting, putting my heart into have been pirated, and then used to train some soulless AI that will then go on to make money for a big corporation, without my consent.

And I'm on the lower end. Other authors literally have over 100 works on this list. New authors just getting into this have their debut books on this list.

I repeat, this was done without our consent. This was done because someone pirated our book, and made it available to the general public for free.

So when I beg you to please not pirate books. When I tell you that it's literally ripping the potential to make our art our livelihood from our hands. When I say that every author would 100% rather you come to us and ask us about where to find our books outside of pirate sites, or even to see if we have any ARCs available if you can't afford it. . .

I do so because in the end the only one you're hurting is artists who are just like you. Just trying to put food on the table. Working long hours. Giving up weekends. Putting everything they've got into their work. And all we're asking for is that you not pirate our books, so that we can pay our bills.

We do this thing because we love it, but there's no reason that doing something we love that provides entertainment for others shouldn't make us enough to live off of. If you don't believe that, I'm afraid you've fallen for the brainwashing bullshit that some jobs "just aren't worth anything". And that, my dears, is a larger problem than I have the ability to express.

Everyone should make a fair wage from drive thru workers to writers.

Everyone should be able to pay their bills.

Don't pirate shit.

Thank you, goodnight.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

How can you consider yourself any sort of leftist when you defend AI art bullshit? You literally simp for AI techbros and have the gall to pretend you're against big corporations?? Get fucked

I don't "defend" AI art. I think a particular old post of mine that a lot of people tend to read in bad faith must be making the rounds again lmao.

Took me a good while to reply to this because you know what? I decided to make something positive out of this and use this as an opportunity to outline what I ACTUALLY believe about AI art. If anyone seeing this decides to read it in good or bad faith... Welp, your choice I guess.

I have several criticisms of the way the proliferation of AI art generators and LLMs is making a lot of things worse. Some of these are things I have voiced in the past, some of these are things I haven't until now:

Most image and text AI generators are fine-tuned to produce nothing but the most agreeable, generically pretty content slop, pretty much immediately squandering their potential to be used as genuinely interesting artistic tools with anything to offer in terms of a unique aesthetic experience (AI video still manages to look bizarre and interesting but it's getting there too)

In the entertainment industry and a lot of other fields, AI image generation is getting incorporated into production pipelines in ways that lead to the immiseration of working artists, being used to justify either lower wages or straight-up layoffs, and this is something that needs to be fought against. That's why I unconditionally supported the SAG-AFTRA strikes last year and will unconditionally support any collective action to address AI art as a concrete labor issue

In most fields where it's being integrated, AI art is vastly inferior to human artists in any use case where you need anything other than to make a superficially pretty picture really fast. If you need to do anything like ask for revisions or minor corrections, give very specific descriptions of how objects and people are interacting with each other, or just like. generate several pictures of the same thing and have them stay consistent with each other, you NEED human artists and it's preposterous to think they can be replaced by AI.

There is a lot of art on the internet that consists of the most generically pretty, cookie-cutter anime waifu-adjacent slop that has zero artistic or emotional value to either the people seeing it or the person churning it out, and while this certainly was A Thing before the advent of AI art generators, generative AI has made it extremely easy to become the kind of person who churns it out and floods online art spaces with it.

Similarly, LLMs make it extremely easy to generate massive volumes of texts, pages, articles, listicles and what have you that are generic vapid SEO-friendly pap at best and bizzarre nonsense misinformation at worst, drowning useful information in a sea of vapid noise and rendering internet searches increasingly useless.

The way LLMs are being incorporated into customer service and similar services not only, again, encourages further immiseration of customer service workers, but it's also completely useless for most customers.

A very annoyingly vocal part the population of AI art enthusiasts, fanatics and promoters do tend to talk about it in a way that directly or indirectly demeans the merit and skill of human artists and implies that they think of anyone who sees anything worthwile in the process of creation itself rather than the end product as stupid or deluded.

So you can probably tell by now that I don't hold AI art or writing in very high regard. However (and here's the part that'll get me called an AI techbro, or get people telling me that I'm just jealous of REAL artists because I lack the drive to create art of my own, or whatever else) I do have some criticisms of the way people have been responding to it, and have voiced such criticisms in the past.

I think a lot of the opposition to AI art has critstallized around unexamined gut reactions, whipping up a moral panic, and pressure to outwardly display an acceptable level of disdain for it. And in particular I think this climate has made a lot of people very prone to either uncritically entertain and adopt regressive ideas about Intellectual Propety, OR reveal previously held regressive ideas about Intellectual Property that are now suddenly more socially acceptable to express:

(I wanna preface this section by stating that I'm a staunch intellectual property abolitionist for the same reason I'm a private property abolitionist. If you think the existence of intellectual property is a good thing, a lot of my ideas about a lot of stuff are gonna be unpalatable to you. Not much I can do about it.)

A lot of people are suddenly throwing their support behind any proposal that promises stricter copyright regulations to combat AI art, when a lot of these also have the potential to severely udnermine fair use laws and fuck over a lot of independent artist for the benefit of big companies.

It was very worrying to see a lot of fanfic authors in particular clap for the George R R Martin OpenAI lawsuit because well... a lot of them don't realize that fanfic is a hobby that's in a position that's VERY legally precarious at best, that legally speaking using someone else's characters in your fanfic is as much of a violation of copyright law as straight up stealing entire passages, and that any regulation that can be used against the latter can be extended against the former.

Similarly, a lot of artists were cheering for the lawsuit against AI art models trained to mimic the style of specific artists. Which I agree is an extremely scummy thing to do (just like a human artist making a living from ripping off someone else's work is also extremely scummy), but I don't think every scummy act necessarily needs to be punishable by law, and some of them would in fact leave people worse off if they were. All this to say: If you are an artist, and ESPECIALLY a fan artist, trust me. You DON'T wanna live in a world where there's precedent for people's artstyles to be considered intellectual property in any legally enforceable way. I know you wanna hurt AI art people but this is one avenue that's not worth it.

Especially worrying to me as an indie musician has been to see people mention the strict copyright laws of the music industry as a positive thing that they wanna emulate. "this would never happen in the music industry because they value their artists copyright" idk maybe this is a the grass is greener type of situation but I'm telling you, you DON'T wanna live in a world where copyright law in the visual arts world works the way it does in the music industry. It's not worth it.

I've seen at least one person compare AI art model training to music sampling and say "there's a reason why they cracked down on sampling" as if the death of sampling due to stricter copyright laws was a good thing and not literally one of the worst things to happen in the history of music which nearly destroyed several primarily black music genres. Of course this is anecdotal because it's just One Guy I Saw Once, but you can see what I mean about how uncritical support for copyright law as a tool against AI can lead people to adopt increasingly regressive ideas about copyright.

Similarly, I've seen at least one person go "you know what? Collages should be considered art theft too, fuck you" over an argument where someone else compared AI art to collages. Again, same point as above.

Similarly, I take issue with the way a lot of people seem EXTREMELY personally invested in proving AI art is Not Real Art. I not only find this discussion unproductive, but also similarly dangerously prone to validating very reactionary ideas about The Nature Of Art that shouldn't really be entertained. Also it's a discussion rife with intellectual dishonesty and unevenly applied definition and standards.

When a lot of people present the argument of AI art not being art because the definition of art is this and that, they try to pretend that this is the definition of art the've always operated under and believed in, even when a lot of the time it's blatantly obvious that they're constructing their definition on the spot and deliberately trying to do so in such a way that it doesn't include AI art.

They never succeed at it, btw. I've seen several dozen different "AI art isn't art because art is [definition]". I've seen exactly zero of those where trying to seriously apply that definition in any context outside of trying to prove AI art isn't art doesn't end up in it accidentally excluding one or more non-AI artforms, usually reflecting the author's blindspots with regard to the different forms of artistic expression.

(However, this is moot because, again, these are rarely definitions that these people actually believe in or adhere to outside of trying to win "Is AI art real art?" discussions.)

Especially worrying when the definition they construct is built around stuff like Effort or Skill or Dedication or The Divine Human Spirit. You would not be happy about the kinds of art that have traditionally been excluded from Real Art using similar definitions.

Seriously when everyone was celebrating that the Catholic Church came out to say AI art isn't real art and sharing it as if it was validating and not Extremely Worrying that the arguments they'd been using against AI art sounded nearly identical to things TradCaths believe I was like. Well alright :T You can make all the "I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a catholic" legolas and gimli memes you want, but it won't change the fact that the argument being made by the catholic church was a profoundly conservative one and nearly identical to arguments used to dismiss the artistic merit of certain forms of "degenerate" art and everyone was just uncritically sharing it, completely unconcerned with what kind of worldview they were lending validity to by sharing it.

Remember when the discourse about the Gay Sex cats pic was going on? One of the things I remember the most from that time was when someone went "Tell me a definition of art that excludes this picture without also excluding Fountain by Duchamp" and how just. Literally no one was able to do it. A LOT of people tried to argue some variation of "Well, Fountain is art and this image isn't because what turns fountain into art is Intent. Duchamp's choice to show a urinal at an art gallery as if it was art confers it an element of artistic intent that this image lacks" when like. Didn't by that same logic OP's choice to post the image on tumblr as if it was art also confer it artistic intent in the same way? Didn't that argument actually kinda end up accidentally validating the artistic status of every piece of AI art ever posted on social media? That moment it clicked for me that a lot of these definitions require applying certain concepts extremely selectively in order to make sense for the people using them.

A lot of people also try to argue it isn't Real Art based on the fact that most AI art is vapid but like. If being vapid definitionally excludes something from being art you're going to have to exclude a whooole lot of stuff along with it. AI art is vapid. A lot of art is too, I don't think this argument works either.

Like, look, I'm not really invested in trying to argue in favor of The Artistic Merits of AI art but I also find it extremely hard to ignore how trying to categorically define AI art as Not Real Art not only is unproductive but also requires either a) applying certain parts of your definition of art extremely selectively, b) constructing a definition of art so convoluted and full of weird caveats as to be functionally useless, or c) validating extremely reactionary conservative ideas about what Real Art is.

Some stray thoughts that don't fit any of the above sections.

I've occassionally seen people respond to AI art being used for shitposts like "A lot of people have affordable commissions, you could have paid someone like $30 to draw this for you instead of using the plagiarism algorithm and exploiting the work of real artists" and sorry but if you consider paying an artist a rate that amounts to like $5 for several hours of work a LESS exploitative alternative I think you've got something fucked up going on with your priorities.

Also it's kinda funny when people comment on the aforementioned shitposts with some variation of "see, the usage of AI art robs it of all humor because the thing that makes shitposts funny is when you consider the fact that someone would spend so much time and effort in something so stupid" because like. Yeah that is part of the humor SOMETIMES but also people share and laugh at low effort shitposts all the time. Again you're constructing a definition that you don't actually believe in anywhere outside of this type of conversations. Just say you don't like that it's AI art because you think it's morally wrong and stop being disingenuous.

So yeah, this is pretty much everything I believe about the topic.

I don't "defend" AI art, but my opposition to it is firmly rooted in my principles, and that means I refuse to uncritically accept any anti-AI art argument that goes against those same principles.

If you think not accepting and parroting every Anti-AI art argument I encounter because some of them are ideologically rooted in things I disagree with makes me indistinguishable from "AI techbros" you're working under a fucked up dichotomy.

[ahungeringknife]

Just in case anyone was confused or concerned.

Drafting is a skill. And it's a skill you can learn. If you ever look at your first draft and go 'actually this is good' do not immediately go 'no it's can't be good it's a first draft'. If you've been writing for a while (like years) writing a draft that is perfectly serviceable and only needs some editing without a ton of cutting is like... fine.

I spend a lot of my time 'writing' and 'rewriting' drafts 6-10 times in my head and when they finally come out as my 'first draft' (or a second in some cases) it's already been through 2-8 revisions. The work has been done and the words I'm writing are the culmination of those revisions. I just didn't write it down.

Not all revisions have to take place in meat space or as text on a screen. Revisions happen as you play out scenarios over and over again in day dreams or bed time stories. Your first draft is not something that Must be conquered and tamed into something presentable. Sometimes you nail it because you've spent all the revision time already.

This is not something that comes to everyone. But it is something you can get good at. You do not have to agonize over a 5th rewrite if the first time you've put words to paper is already the 6th revision that's gotten better every time. There's a lotta 'you gotta suffer to make a book good' in writeblr I just don't agree with. You can just nail it the "First Time". Not every time. But you can.

[tea-cat-arts]

Ranking mxtx couples by whether or not I think they'd be good parents

(I'm 90% sure I'm forgetting someone)

Yep, next question (S)-

Wangxian: tried and tested good dads. I wish them luck with the whole “trying to get wwx pregnant” thing 

They have some shit to work through, but after that I think they'd be fine (A)-

Ling Wen/ Bai Jin: if we're just going off the original publication, I would put them in a much lower tier, but since the revised edition added that thing about them raising orphans together and said orphans turning out alright before unfortunate circumstances, I'm putting them up here. I think they'll be alright once they work through the miscommunication

Xiao Xingchen/ Song Lan: They obviously have a lot of trauma they're working through, but I'd like to think they and A-Qing will be a loving family in the long run 

One of them would be a good parent, the other wouldn't be a bad parent (B)-

Jiang Yanli/ Jin Zixuan: there's no canon reason for me putting them this low. Jin Zixuan just gives off a mediocre parent vibe to me (and we all know Jiang Yanli is the best)

Yushipei: Yushi Huang has good mom energy, and Pei Ming has been shown to be a not terrible mentor. I'd want the misogyny fully beaten out of him with a mace before I'd think he should have kids of his own though 

Lang Qianqiu/ Little Guy: at the very least, they're making sure Guzi is fed, clothed, washed, vaccinated, and has access to education. Neither of them know what they're doing, but I think Little Guy is good at faking it. I wish them luck in their upcoming custody battle  

You know what, surprise me/ I'll hear you out (C)-

Bingqiu: My first instinct is “no, do not bring kids into this,” but then I remembered tharnShen Qingqiu has a surprisingly decent track record? Like, Ning Yingying and Ming Fan both turned out a lot more health than they did in the original novel, and though I wouldn't call him in a good place, Binghe is doing a lot better than Bingge. The wild card for me here is Luo Binghe because I have no idea how he'd be with kids

Quanyin: Yin Yu had a decent track record until he was pushed into snapping. I think rn, he needs a couple centuries of being a babygirl before he's ready to parent again. No idea how Quan Yizhen would do though 

Born to “dual income, no kids, rich uncles/aunts” (D)-

Fengqing: Feng Xin is canonically a bad dad. I know he's working on it, but it is what it is. Mu Qing has been shown to be decent with kids, but I think he’d have a melt down if he had to deal with the mess constantly. 

Hualian: I mean, Xie Lian has raised three kids at this point and one of them became a god, another became state preceptor and then sorta complicit in a genocide, and one became god AND committed genocide + he babysat a ghost king for months and didn't even realize that's what he was because it was a miracle if he remembered to feed him… so, a mixed bag. Hua Cheng may be schrodinger’s child hater, but I'm intrigued by the idea of him raising kids just because I want to know how his own childhood would influence his parenting abilities. They should probably just stick to babysitting for now though 

Mingling: Liu Mingyan is too busy writing gay porn to be dealing with kids, and I just can't imagine Sha Hualing as a mom

Please don't bring a kid into this mess (F)-

Beefleaf: Do I need to explain this one?

Mobeishang: Shang Qinghua should not be put in any position where he has to teach someone about consent (Binghe’s early attempts at flirting being a prime example of why that's a bad idea). I also think Mobei Jun is still working on the whole “why hitting people is not cool” thing. 

QiJiu: I think the original timeline is a prime example of how they're just not in a place to be raising kids 

Jun Wu/ Mei Nianqing: Xie Lian would like a refund on his adopted father figures. They had one kid and he only made it to age 20 because he was cursed to not die

[euphoriaishername]

The Kind That Stays

The soft hum of the city buzzed faintly through the closed windows of Aera's apartment, the golden lights of the skyline casting a muted glow across her tidy living room. Her laptop sat open on the dining table, files scattered across the surface — not in chaos, but in the aftermath of effort. Weeks of planning, writing, revising. The weight of the day still hung heavy in the air.

Aera sat curled up on the couch, her posture tight and distant. She hadn’t moved much since coming home. No music, no Netflix. Her phone was turned face-down on the table — too many unread messages from people who didn’t matter right now. The one person she’d waited for never showed.

The door unlocked quietly.

Joshua stepped inside.

He looked around, his keys still in hand, his voice tentative. “Aera?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t even look up.

He closed the door behind him and placed his things down carefully, like being loud would make it worse. He took in the untouched dinner she’d made for herself, the dim lighting, the unsettling silence. Something in his chest tightened.

“I—uh,” he scratched the back of his neck, awkward, trying. “I know. I should’ve been there.”

Still, no answer.

He slowly walked closer, not too close. “I got caught up in the schedule. There was a meeting that ran late and I—I completely forgot.” He watched her, hoping she’d say something, anything.

“I didn’t mean to. I know how important this was to you. I really do.”

His voice faltered a little. “But, it’s not like I didn’t care.”

That’s when Aera finally looked up. Not with the warm softness he was used to. Her eyes were calm, but cold. Still unreadable.

Joshua swallowed hard.

“Aera… can we talk now?”

“What’s there to talk now, Joshua?” Her tone was cold, one brow raised, voice cutting through the room like ice.

Joshua blinked. Her tone sliced through the quiet like a blade. He hadn’t expected her to be so composed — not this composed. That made it worse.

He stepped forward cautiously, hands half-raised like he was trying to calm something wild.

“Aera… I know I messed up. But don’t do this. Don’t shut me out.”

He tried to hold her gaze, but the sheer weight of her disappointment made it hard to stand still.

“I said I forgot—yeah. But I didn’t mean to. You know that, right? You know I wouldn’t ever skip out on you on purpose.”

He gave a small, frustrated sigh. “I just… it wasn’t like I was out partying. I was working too.”

Behind his words, though, there was defensiveness. Subtle, but present. He wasn’t fully owning it. Still trying to justify.

“You could’ve reminded me again, Aera. One message, one call. I would’ve come running.”

He looked at her — still cold, still unreadable — and his voice softened slightly.

“You know I love you. Isn’t that enough to at least talk to me?”

He waited. A bit too expectantly.

The tension in the air only thickened.

Aera’s voice came, steady but cutting.

“Just because I love you, does it mean everything is fine and all mistakes can be ignored? I reminded you in the morning too and you said yes, you’ll come. Now you want me to call you like some desperate person? You say you're busy but do you realise I was also, because of my presentation? I didn't have the time to pick my phone even once.”

Joshua’s jaw tightened at her words. Her voice wasn’t raised, but it stung more than if she had screamed. He took a step back, folding his arms like he needed some kind of barrier between her words and his guilt.

“I’m not saying you're desperate,” he said, the defensiveness bubbling just beneath the surface now. “I'm just saying—if it meant that much, why not make sure I was there? I forget things sometimes, Aera. I'm human too.”

His tone sharpened a little, frustration mixing with the guilt he hadn’t fully processed.

“You act like I don’t care. Like I just ditched you for no reason.”

He ran a hand through his hair, pacing a step before facing her again.

“You think you're the only one who’s overwhelmed? I’m trying too, Aera. You don’t get how much pressure I’m under. Sometimes things slip, and it sucks, but it happens. You don’t need to treat me like I’m the worst person alive.”

His voice cracked slightly near the end, his emotions catching up with him, but his pride still kept him from fully breaking.

The room went quiet again, thick with the ache of things said and unsaid.

Aera’s voice broke the silence, louder now, pain finally breaching her composure.

“Then why do I feel like you don't care at all?”

Joshua flinched — not from the volume, but from the words. They hit deeper than anything else had tonight.

“I do care,” he shot back, his voice rising now too, tension finally snapping through his usual calm. “You think I don’t beat myself up for forgetting? You think I came home thinking everything would be fine and we’d just hug it out?”

He laughed bitterly — low, pained.

“God, Aera. You think I didn’t want to be there? That I chose to miss the one thing you’ve been working day and night on?”

He pointed to the presentation files still open behind her.

“You don’t even know how proud I am of you. I’ve watched you pour everything into this, and I was supposed to be right there. I know that.”

“But I’m not some mind reader. And when you go cold like this—when you shut down instead of just talking to me—what am I even supposed to do?!”

His voice cracked again, this time more raw than angry. His chest rose and fell, eyes glassy but frustrated, not ready to admit the full weight of his mistake yet. Still caught in the pull between pride and regret.

“You’re acting like I never show up for you. Like one mistake erases everything else.”

His voice dropped, low and rough.

“Is that really what you think of me?”

Aera’s voice trembled with emotion now, angry tears brimming in her eyes.

“I think that you are someone who doesn't know how to keep his words.”

Joshua stared at her, and for the first time tonight, the fight in him dimmed — but only for a second.

He exhaled sharply, looking away like her words had winded him.

“Wow,” he muttered, shaking his head. “So that’s what you really think of me?”

He turned back to her, voice rising again, more wounded than before.

“After everything, after every time I’ve stood by you, stayed up with you, supported you when no one else did — you boil me down to that?”

He gestured wildly, his frustration bubbling over now.

“You know what, Aera? I forgot. That’s the truth. I made a mistake. But you—”

He pointed at her, hand faltering mid-air as the words caught in his throat.

“You’re not just angry at today. You’ve been holding this in for a while, haven’t you?”

He stepped back, as if the distance could help him breathe through the weight pressing on his chest. His expression darkened — not in anger, but in hurt.

“You say I don’t keep my word. Fine. Then what the hell have I been to you all this time?”

He wasn’t yelling anymore. He was just tired. Tired and breaking, standing in front of the one person he thought saw through all of him — and realizing she might be pulling away.

The air between them stretched thin, heavy with the tension of things teetering on the edge.

Joshua looked at her again.

“I came home because I thought this was fixable. But maybe you’ve already decided it’s not.”

The silence was deafening.

Aera’s voice cut through it, sharp and furious.

“How the hell were you gonna fix it, huh? By saying sorry like it's a magic word? What the hell were you gonna do?”

Joshua’s composure shattered.

“Of course I was gonna say sorry!” he shouted, voice hoarse now. “Because I am sorry! But what else do you want me to do, Aera? Bleed for it?!”

He stepped forward, fists clenched at his sides, trembling.

“I forgot. And you’re acting like that means I don’t love you. Like it means I’m nothing but a liar to you now.”

He scoffed, his eyes burning — not with anger anymore, but with betrayal.

“You think I don’t know how important this was to you? You think I didn’t think about you all day the moment I realized I missed it? I wanted to throw up when I looked at the time.”

His voice cracked, unable to mask the rawness anymore.

“But the moment I stepped through that door, you weren’t angry because I forgot. You were angry because you decided I failed you — like I was never anything but a disappointment.”

He ran both hands over his face, trying to press down the storm rising inside.

“You always say you can handle yourself on your own. That you’re independent. Strong. And I believed in that. I respected it. But right now, you’re not even letting me try.”

Then softer — still intense, but laced with desperation:

“What do you want me to do, Aera? Tell me. Scream at me. Throw something. Just stop looking at me like I’m already gone.”

He was trembling now — the fight in his words no longer about pride, but fear. Fear that this wasn’t just about today. Fear that something deeper was breaking.

Aera’s voice came quieter, but every syllable was laced with aching clarity.

“I don’t know how to look at you in any other way right now. You were the one who wanted to be there. You said you wanna see me do it. You came up with the idea. You promised me yourself. You planned it all out. I believed you. I looked forward to you coming. Yet you broke the promise.”

Her breath caught, thick with emotion.

“Tell me, how else do I look at you now?”

Joshua’s chest rose and fell, sharp and shallow. Her words hit places he didn’t want touched — the soft memory of that morning, her gentle reminder, her quiet trust.

And he had promised.

But now, cornered by her truth, something in him snapped — defensiveness rising like a shield over a bleeding wound.

“I know I promised, Aera!” he snapped, voice sharp, eyes glistening with fury and pain. “You think I don’t remember saying it?! You think I wanted to break it?!”

He turned away for a second, then back again, pacing like her words were fire licking at his heels.

“I messed up, yes — but you’re not giving me a chance to make it right. You’re just tearing me down over and over like I’m nothing but this one mistake.”

He faced her head-on, his voice rising with every beat of frustration.

“I’m not perfect! I forget! I screw things up! But I always show up eventually. I came back to you!”

Then, quieter — but burning:

“But maybe that’s not enough for you. Maybe nothing I do ever will be.”

The air crackled between them, brittle and close to breaking.

Joshua stood still, chest heaving, his entire body caught in the storm of everything he couldn’t say — his pride, his sorrow, his disbelief that this was what they’d become in a single night.

He stared at her like he was standing on the edge of something fragile.

Aera’s voice, low and laced with the hurt that had been quietly building, finally spilled out.

“Does showing up after it all goes wrong make it all right? I never asked you to come for anything, Joshua. And the one time I did? You forgot like it was a mere appointment.”

Joshua’s face twisted — like her words were carving into something already broken inside him.

“You think I saw it as just an appointment?” he said, almost spitting the words, his voice rough with disbelief. “Do you honestly believe that, Aera?”

His voice cracked mid-sentence, but he pushed through — louder now, more desperate than before.

“I’ve never treated anything about you like a checkbox on a calendar. Never. You think I forgot because I didn’t care? I forgot because I was pulled in twelve different directions trying to hold my own life together!”

He stepped closer, every inch of him taut with tension, his eyes stormy and pleading.

“But no, that doesn’t matter, right? Because your version of me is already decided. I’m the guy who forgot. The guy who broke a promise. That’s who I am to you now.”

He let out a bitter laugh, low and hollow, and shook his head.

“You say you didn’t ask me to come — but you did, Aera. You asked me. You reminded me. You believed in me. And I failed you. I know that. I live with that.”

His voice dropped, but the intensity only deepened.

“But what I don’t get — what hurts more than anything — is how fast you threw everything else aside like it was meaningless.”

He pointed between them, gesturing to the invisible thread they had built over time.

“We were not built on one perfect moment. We were built on everything we survived before this. And if this one mistake is all it takes to destroy it for you, then maybe you weren’t really in this the way I thought you were.”

His words landed like thunder — raw and ruthless in their pain. The silence that followed felt like it could shatter glass.

Her voice cut through it, quiet but shaking with everything she’d swallowed for too long.

“You think it's the first and only time? What about the times I understood when you cancelled meeting me, postponed dates which never happened again, left me for your friends’ meet-up? Did I not understand then?”

Her voice broke mid-sentence, louder now, no longer holding back.

Joshua's eyes widened — like she’d just torn open something he didn’t even know she’d been carrying all this time.

“Aera—”

“No, don’t,” she snapped before he could finish. Her voice cracked, but it carried more fire than it ever had.

Joshua’s hands flew up to his temples as he started pacing in tight, frantic circles, the air between them getting thinner.

“Don’t make it sound like I’ve been that guy all along,” he said, his voice unraveling. “That I’m just some jerk who’s been stringing you along.”

He was raising his voice now — not to overpower, but like a man slipping, grabbing at the walls as they caved in around him.

“I told you I’d make time. I tried. I didn’t cancel because I didn’t care — I canceled because I had no choice! This life, this job, it’s not like I can clock out at six like you and run to you every time—”

He stopped.

Just like that, the words halted, crashing into silence.

Joshua froze, eyes wide, realizing what he’d just said.

Silence.

Aera stared at him, her expression unreadable at first — then filled with pain. Fury. And something worse. Betrayal.

“Aera… I didn’t mean it like that.”

But the words were already hanging in the air — unmovable, irreversible.

He tried again, softer, almost childlike now.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he repeated. “You know I didn’t.”

He took a breath, slower this time, but his voice still shook.

“You think I don’t see how much you’ve been giving? That I don’t know how many times you smiled and said, ‘It’s okay,’ when it wasn’t?”

His voice cracked fully now. Tears touched his eyes.

“I see it, Aera. And I hate that I made you feel like none of it mattered. I hate that I’m the reason you're crying like this.”

He looked down, jaw clenched, breath shuddering as guilt washed over him.

“I hate that you’re starting to believe I never deserved you.”

The fight wasn’t just a fight anymore.

It was unraveling.

Aera’s voice, barely above a whisper but fierce with pain, cut through the quiet.

“Don’t, Joshua. Don’t talk to me as if I'm something fragile, as if I'll break.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks, her expression raw and wounded.

“You don't get to say such things after all what you said.”

Joshua's expression twisted — wounded, exhausted, cornered by everything he didn’t know how to fix. The tears in her eyes, the way her voice trembled even as she tried to hold herself together — it was too much. And then he broke.

“God, Aera,” he snapped, louder than he meant to, pain spilling out in jagged bursts. “Why is everything with you always this intense? This dramatic?!”

He regretted it the moment it came out.

But it was like a dam had cracked.

“You cry when you're angry, you shut down when you're hurt, and when someone tries to explain — you twist it into some betrayal. I forgot — yes, I forgot. And now suddenly I’m the villain in every version of our story?!”

His chest rose and fell violently, trembling with frustration and heartbreak.

And then the words fell out — the ones that would change everything.

“You're really too much sometimes. Just too much, Aera.”

Silence.

Not the kind that offered room to breathe. The kind that scorched the ground.

He froze. Her eyes locked on his — wet, wide, shattered.

Her tears still fell. But something shifted in the room the moment he said it.

Joshua’s breath caught. His arms fell limp at his sides.

He had gone too far.

And he knew it.

“…Aera,” he whispered, guilt thick in his throat. “I didn’t mean—”

But it didn’t matter anymore.

He had said it.

She stared at him, not yelling, not sobbing — just breaking, piece by piece.

Her voice shook, but it came out steady, heartbreak laced in every word.

“Anyone can say this to me and I would accept it and laugh it off. But not you, Joshua. Anyone but — but not you.”

Her expression crumbled, and more tears slipped down.

And in that moment, Joshua saw it — saw everything he had just burned down with a handful of words he could never take back.

The moment the words left her lips — “But not you, Joshua” — something shattered in him.

Joshua’s entire body seemed to deflate, like the fury had burned out and left nothing but smoke and ash behind. His breath caught in his throat, and all the defensiveness, all the anger, dropped from his face in one crushing, silent moment.

His eyes widened, glistening now, and his voice came out raw. Shaky.

“Aera… baby, no. No, no, no — don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”

He stepped toward her, slowly, like each step was made of glass, almost afraid she’d back away — afraid she should.

“I didn’t mean it. I was angry and scared and stupid. I—I let it get to me and I said something that wasn’t just wrong — it was cruel.”

His hands hovered mid-air, unsure whether he was even allowed to reach for her.

“Sweetheart, I didn’t mean a single word of it. You’re not too much. You’re never too much. You’re everything. You’ve always been everything.”

He swallowed hard, blinking rapidly, tears brimming now in his own eyes.

“You have every right to be hurt. You trusted me with the one thing that mattered most to you and I let you down. I broke that promise. I made you feel like you didn’t matter. And then I—”

He choked slightly, pain catching in his chest as he fought to keep speaking.

“Then I threw the worst part of you being human right back at you like it was a flaw. When it’s what I love the most.”

His voice dropped, barely audible now, fragile and full of ache.

“I love how you feel everything deeply. How you fight with your whole heart. How you care, even when it scares you.”

He shook his head, eyes pleading.

“But I hurt you. I really hurt you. And I don’t even know if sorry is big enough now, baby. I don’t know how to fix it. But if there’s any part of you that still sees me — still loves me — just tell me what to do.”

He stood there, broken, vulnerable, no pride left in him.

Just a boy in love, realizing he was the one who dropped her — and unsure if he’d ever be allowed to pick her back up again.

Aera sobbed harder now, her hands flying up to her face, trying to hide the devastation breaking her from the inside out. Then her body gave up.

The moment her knees buckled, Joshua moved without thinking — pure instinct, pure love.

“Baby—!”

He caught her before she hit the ground, dropping down with her, his arms wrapping around her trembling frame like they were the only thing keeping her together. Her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shook with sobs she couldn’t hold back anymore.

“Sweetheart… no, no, no, I got you,” he whispered, desperate and breathless, his voice cracking as he pulled her closer, as if holding her tighter could make her believe he never meant a word of what he’d said.

“I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you. I’m here.”

His chin rested gently atop her head, and he rocked her gently, instinctively, not because she was weak — but because he had caused this storm inside her, and he didn’t know how else to keep her from being swept away.

“I’m so sorry,” he kept repeating against her hair, over and over, like a mantra. “God, I’m so, so sorry.”

The room was silent except for the sound of her broken sobs, and his soft, shaky voice whispering her name again and again.

Not Aera now. But baby. Sweetheart. Love.

Like he was trying to speak to her heart, to reach through the wreckage and remind her of who they were — of who he still was beneath the mistake.

And he didn’t let go. Not even for a second.

He just stayed there with her — on the floor, in the pain, in the silence — his heart wide open, his chest burning, his arms wrapped around the only person who had always made him feel like home.

He would stay like that for hours if she needed him to.

She didn’t have to say anything.

But then she did.

“Why?” Her voice was almost a breath. “Wh—why would you say so?”

Her words broke again into sobs, hiccuping now, too shattered to keep them in.

Joshua’s arms tightened around her like her breaking would break him too — like every shake of her shoulders cracked something deeper inside him.

He buried his face into her hair, holding her as close as he could, his voice thick and strained, barely above a whisper.

“I don’t know. I don’t know why I said it.”

He rocked her gently, his words trembling through her hair.

“I was scared… I felt like I was losing you and I—God, baby, I said the one thing I knew would hurt you the most.”

He pulled back just enough to cup her face with trembling hands, brushing her wet cheeks with his thumbs. His own eyes were red now, the guilt staining every word.

“You didn’t deserve that. Not after everything you’ve given me. Not after the way you love me.”

She hiccuped softly, her chest still heaving under the weight of it all, and Joshua leaned his forehead to hers, their breath mingling, raw and broken.

“I should’ve held you when you needed me. I should’ve been there like I promised. Not just for the presentation, but every time you forgave me without saying a word.”

His thumb traced gently beneath her eyes, collecting the tears as if trying to take some of the pain with them.

“I said it because I couldn’t handle the truth — that I’d broken something I swore I’d protect. And instead of owning that, I… I stabbed at you to cover my own shame.”

Another breath. Another soft whisper, shaking with remorse:

“Sweetheart, I'm sorry. God, I'm so so sorry, baby. I don’t expect you to forgive me. But please know — I never meant to make you feel like too much. If anything, you’re the only thing that’s ever made me feel like enough.”

He pulled her close again, held her like he’d never let go, and her hiccuping sobs were the only sound in the room.

He murmured, voice low, steady, full of love and aching, “You can hate me. Yell at me again. Cry all night. I’ll take it all. Just let me hold you.”

A pause.

“I’m right here, baby. I’m not going anywhere.”

Aera cried harder, gripping his shirt in her fists, burying herself in his chest as if she could disappear into him and escape the pain.

And still — he held her.

Because no matter what came next, this moment was his to carry.

Every tear. Every silence. Every breath between them.

He wasn’t going anywhere.

Joshua felt her fists twist into his shirt, clutching him like he was the only thing keeping her from falling apart completely.

And it shattered him.

His arms wrapped tighter around her, his hand sliding up to the back of her head, cradling it gently as her cries wracked through both of them. He didn’t speak for a moment—he just held her, let her sob into his chest, let her grief and heartbreak pour out in the safety of his arms.

His chin trembled against her hair as he whispered, voice thick with emotion, “I’m here, baby. I’m right here.”

She gripped harder.

“I know you’re hurting. I know I caused it. And if I could take back every second that led us here, I would,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “You didn’t deserve a single word I said.”

Minutes passed as she continued with her cries and sobs. Her cries were softer now, but sharper—like the pain had gone too deep to scream anymore. He rested his cheek against her head and closed his eyes.

“I love you, Aera. I love you so much. And if you can’t look at me the same right now, I get it. I’ll wait. I’ll earn my way back, however long it takes.”

His voice broke again, heavy with desperation. “Just… please don’t let this be the end of us.”

Silence settled between them—raw, heavy silence wrapped in warmth, in grief, in love trying so hard to fight its way back from the edge.

“I hate you.” Her voice was barely above a breath, broken, shaking.

Joshua’s eyes shut tight the moment he heard her whisper those words. His heart clenched so hard it hurt.

“I seriously hate you so—so much.” Her words hiccupped out between sobs.

And then—soft, trembling, vulnerable, “Bu—but I love you more than that.”

His breath hitched, completely knocked out of him.

“Aera…” he breathed, like her name was a lifeline.

He pulled her in, impossibly closer, one hand cradling her head as if it were the most precious thing in the world, the other wrapped protectively around her waist.

“I don’t deserve that,” he whispered against her temple, lips brushing her skin like an apology. “I don’t deserve your love. Not after what I said. Not after what I did.”

She didn’t reply—just cried, gripping him like she’d disappear if she let go.

And so he held her through all of it. Rocked her gently. Kissed her hair. Whispered everything he could possibly think of to make her believe he was still hers. Still in this. Still hers.

“I love you, baby,” he murmured through his own tears. “I love you so much it scares me sometimes. And I swear to you, I’m never—never—going to hurt you like this again.”

They stayed there on the floor—two people bruised and broken in that moment, but wrapped in the rawest, realest kind of love.

The kind that hurts. The kind that fights.

The kind that stays.

Eventually, Aera’s sobs softened. Her body was still trembling in his arms, but now it was quieter—no longer the storm it had been. She was still sniffing and hiccuping, the sounds small and tired as she pressed her face against his chest.

Joshua stayed completely still, as if the slightest movement would shake her again.

Her sobs had quieted to faint, shaky breaths, soft sniffles against his shirt, and little hiccups that made his arms instinctively tighten around her every few seconds. Like reassurance. Like he was saying I’m still here without needing to speak.

He looked down at her, her face hidden in him, his shirt soaked with tears—but he didn’t care. He would’ve let her cry a thousand more if it meant she didn’t have to carry the pain alone.

He shifted slightly, just enough to press a kiss to her forehead. A long, slow one. One that said everything his words had failed to.

“I love you,” he whispered again, voice soft, like it wasn’t meant to be louder than the quiet between them now. “More than anything. More than any mistake I’ll ever make.”

She didn’t answer—just breathed, heavy and uneven against him.

But that was enough.

She was still in his arms. Still there.

His thumb brushed slowly over her back.

“Let’s just stay like this, hmm?” he murmured gently, kissing the top of her head again. “No more talking. Just you and me for a while. Just breathing.”

And so they stayed there on the floor, surrounded by everything they’d just broken… and everything they were trying to rebuild.

Time slowed. The world outside faded.

And all that was left was him holding her. And her holding on.

Her breaths stayed uneven—frequent sniffles and soft hiccups—but gradually, slowly, the space between them stretched. The silence grew softer. Sleepier.

Joshua felt it in the way her body softened against his—the fatigue settling in, the grief giving way to exhaustion. Her hiccups came slower, quieter. Her fingers, still curled in his shirt, were looser now. But she hadn’t let go.

His palm moved gently over her back, up and down, rhythm steady, like a lullaby written just for her.

“Shh… it’s okay, baby,” he whispered, voice barely there. “Close your eyes. I’ve got you.”

She didn’t speak—just let out the faintest sound, somewhere between a sigh and the last of her sobs.

Joshua leaned down, brushing his lips against her forehead.

“You’ve done enough for today. No more crying, okay?” he murmured, eyes closing as he breathed her in. “Just sleep, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”

He shifted carefully, pulling a blanket over both of them while keeping her in his lap, her head resting against his chest. He adjusted just enough so she was curled safely in his arms, wrapped in warmth.

She hiccupped softly, one last time.

Then slowly, finally her breath evened out.

And he just held her, wide awake, guilt still thick in his chest—but love louder than all of it. Whispering quietly into the dark, more to himself than her, “I’ll be better. For you. Always for you.”

And with her still breathing gently in his arms, he stayed there—

Still. Holding. Loving.

Some time later, she let out a shaky breath in her sleep—the kind that came after crying so hard your body couldn’t forget, even in dreams.

Joshua’s arms instinctively tightened around her the moment he heard it.

That broken sound cracked something deeper in him.

He stirred slightly, his lips brushing against her forehead again—not quite awake, but not fully asleep either. Half in the world, half in the weight of what he’d almost lost.

Even in rest, she was still hurting.

He pulled her closer, his hold gentle but protective, curling around her like a silent vow.

“I’m here,” he murmured sleepily, more instinct than thought.

And then he let himself drift—finally—his breathing syncing with hers. The warmth of her in his arms slowly pulling him under, where guilt softened into resolve, and pain into peace.

The room fell completely quiet.

Two hearts beating in the hush of night. One wrapped around the other.

And for now, that was enough.

[doumadono]

sorry if this sounds rude 😢 but you haven’t been posting a lot of stories lately and that’s like the only thing you have to do? just post something it’s not that big of a deal? dygwim? i think fanfic writers especially on the anime side like to exaggerate things too much and if you don’t post then just deactivate? there’s no point in staying if you’re not gonna do anything but reblog silly content all the time? i don't understand how so many ppl can follow you when you are not even trying to be grateful and you only write not what people request but what you find interesting (which is not, like vampier Shigaraki???? viking Dabi???? so silly stupid ideas imo 😒)? whoever finds your writing or you as a person nice is either blind or stupid. and even if you write something chaptered it takes you literally months to update which isn't fair to people?? but I guess you don't care at all. you must be a freaking entitled white woman to treat otherz the way you do.

(again sorry, didn't mean to sound rude) 😔

When I first read your message, I was completely speechless for a minute or two, anon.

Firstly, it seems there’s a misconception about what fanfiction writers, or any creative individuals for that matter, have to do. Let me clarify something important: creativity isn’t a tap that one can simply turn on and off at will. It’s a complex, often unpredictable process that cannot be rushed without compromising the integrity and quality of the work. Quality stories often require research, plotting, editing, and revising before they’re ready to share. My creative process isn’t a fast food joint, nonnie, and I'm not here to serve up reheated ideas just to fill the silence.

My blog belongs to no one but me. I post what I want, when I want. As for the content of my stories, I believe every writer has the right to explore subjects that excite them the most - even if that means delving into topics or settings others may find odd, like vampires or vikings. My goal is to write stories I’m passionate about and then offer them freely to anyone who might find them entertaining. Some people will, others won’t, and that’s absolutely okay.

Contrary to your belief, I don't exist solely to churn out stories at the speed you dictate. I write on my own time and for my own pleasure. The notion that I should be a content machine is, frankly, laughable. Writing takes time, creative energy, and often real-life circumstances can slow the process. I post when I’m ready, and if that doesn’t align with your desired schedule, you’re free to unfollow or seek out other writers who update more frequently. Suggesting I deactivate because I’m not constantly posting or because I reblog content I enjoy is dismissive at best. I'm not a streaming service like Netflix, darling🙄

Calling me an entitled white woman or implying I’m ungrateful crosses a line. You know nothing of my background or personal circumstances, and bringing race or entitlement into the conversation is neither accurate nor constructive. My ethnicity or personal identity, whatever it may be, does not diminish the value of my creative output, nor does it affect my commitment to my followers. I appreciate every person who visits my page - whether they come to enjoy what I reblog, to read stories I post or to offer critique.

It's also laughable that you think my followers are stupid. Just because their tastes don't align with yours doesn't make them any less intelligent. Diversity in fandoms exists because creativity resonates differently with everyone, something you seem incapable of recognizing.

In the end, I won’t apologize for taking the time I need to create or for following my own interests - that’s part of being a writer. I do, however, expect basic respect in return. If you can’t extend that courtesy, I hope you'll block me, step away from my blog, and never interact with any of my content again.

With all this in mind, it's precisely why I've stopped taking regular requests. Last year, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests and the rudeness in many messages, pushing me to my limits. That's why I've decided to concentrate on my own projects and only accept commissioned work.

I'm taking a few days off to gather my thoughts and concentrate on my writing projects.

[blueskittlesart]

Can I have your directors insight on your Mipha comic? :0 I'd love to know why you chose certain imagery like the hand holding and head kisses and wounds.........I'm going insane over it 😭 🫶 Ive been a fan of your art for a while now and mipha's my favourite so Im so obsessed with this comic haha

YESSSS 😁 so as previously mentioned ive been attempting to write a mipha comic for a little over a year now, and most of the time what stopped me was the fact that there's SO MUCH about her that I found interesting and wanted to cover. the process for this comic was a little bit different than my usual one in that I actually started with the last few lines "i thought maybe if i loved hard enough, i could stop time / I could freeze you in place as i knew you once / the little boy whose skinned knees were so easy to heal / what a childish thought" and built the script out from there, which thankfully gave me a clear direction to focus on, i.e. wounds/healing and aging. the script also went through a few revisions (the first version was much more heavily based around the word 'pain' which eventually became 'wound' in almost every instance because I thought the imagery of a wound was easier to tie to the other concepts i was working with than a less concrete concept like pain.)

One of the major differences in structure between this comic and my sort of. standard i guess? is the aspect ratio--when i started drafting in my usual portrait orientation, I realized that a lot of the panel compositions and imagery I had in my head were very vertical, which meant I wasn't getting the level of gutter space I felt I needed for my text to have the right impact, which is why the final comic ended up in a landscape orientation! truthfully i'd also been getting kind of bored with my standard ratio--i'm doing a (VERY LONG) graphic novel in that same ratio for my senior thesis right now, and at a certain point the standard panel layouts that look good and flow well with a page shape like that kind of start to bore you. When I changed the orientation of the page all of a sudden everything clicked and the project started being exciting again!

As for the imagery itself, I usually have SOME idea of the imagery i want to use as i'm writing, and with this one the things I knew for certain had to be present were the use of red for both mipha's body and link's blood. you mentioned the wounds--honestly, the heavy focus on wounds and blood was in large part due to color. Mipha's character design happens to be this really striking red, and she also happens to be a character whose story deals very heavily with wounds and blood by virtue of being a healer, so the idea of using the same singular spot color for both her body and the wounds she was healing, inextricably tying up her presence in link's life with the presence of pain, was SUUUUPER compelling to me. (I do also just. really like drawing wounds. which sounds insane but it's true)

the hand-holding and head kisses truthfully weren't something I thought really hard about beyond like, something that was standard to me as a display of affection between children. One of the most important layers to link and mipha's relationship imo is their relative ages and the way in which that changes overtime. When they meet for the first time, they are both fairly young children. Their relationship at that point is what most childhood relationships are: uncomplicated. easy. they fit together without a second thought. Mipha is slightly older than him, but they're in similar enough phases of their lives that it doesn't really matter; they are able to relate to each other intrinsically in that way. I kind of thought about the gestures of affection common in children who are just starting to understand the concept of romantic attraction--hand-holding, maybe the occasional kiss on the hand or forehead, but never anything more intimate. That way, when they grow up, there's an extra layer of longing on top of it all. Now they're both older, but link has matured much more significantly than mipha in their time apart. Mipha still remembers him as the little boy she knew, and that's reflected in the way she treats him. She'll hold his hands and kiss his forehead, but she's completely unable to go any further. their relationship is so fundamentally juvenile that the only way she can picture his body, let alone touch him, is when it's a job for her to do, when there's a wound there that needs healing. She's younger than him, now, so young that her schoolgirl crush seems monumentally silly and immature in comparison to his adult problems, and the only time she ever comes anywhere close to adult intimacy with him is when there are striking, unavoidable reminders of the weight he has to carry literally carved into his body.

[concerningwolves]

I just finished First You Write A Sentence by Joe Moran & I loved it (so much so that I procrastinated on the last chapter for like a month bc I didn't want it to be over). in no particular order, are some of my favourite things about it/reasons why I think it's great for writers to read:

It really feels like a nice guy is gently but enthusiastically nerding out about sentences and creative writing, in a non-preachy way

encourages writers to think about their voice! Moran isn't a prescriptivist. He talks about why certain styles of writing sentences feel more natural to read, psychologically and linguistically, but also explores lots of ways in which the writing "rules" have been (successfully) broken and explains why these worked

and, similarly, explores different pieces of advice from multiple angles – e.g., instead of "you should avoid the passive voice", Moran's approach is "here's what the passive voice does well, why it's sometimes necessary, and why it weakens our writing at other times"

Little anecdotes that kept it interesting. A lot of "how to be a writer" books wear me out because the focus is so heavily on writing that I get over-saturated with advice, but Moran goes on well-timed and relevant meanders that both reinforce and let you take a lil break from the advice

Takes you through from the small, mechanical level of What Is A Sentence (i.e., nouns & verbs), to word order, to sentence length, to the effects of different punctuation marks, to how to connect sentences seamlessly, to the larger scale of fitting everything into paragraphs and prose

It put into words so many things that I do semi-intuitively bc I've been writing for so long now, but never really thought about. And now that I'm actually thinking about them, I can feel the skills getting stronger!!

Like, you can shift where your reader's attention falls by placing a word or phrase at different points in a sentence. Which i realised I'd been doing anyway, but now I can consciously think about it when I write and revise, and it's really fun to play around with :D

Big focus on clarity and conciseness, but not at the cost of voice and personal style. Really helped me see how to find a balance between the two, especially in my academic writing.

The writing of the book itself feels so graceful and easy to read that it's like you're in safe, knowledgeable hands. this is someone who absolutely practises what he preaches (although, as I said, it doesn't feel like you're being preached at)

There's probably more, and if I get the time and mental space I certainly want to summarise my favourite points from this book, but for now my parting endorsement is that I already want to read it again, this time with a notebook and page markers on hand.

[ohcorny]

so! it's been a year since i put never satisfied on hiatus, and 9 years since i started posting it, and rather than make you read everything if all you want to know is "when's it coming back?" the answer is still: don't know! but the answer has also shifted closer to "it isn't" the longer i've spent on break, and i think it's worth being up front about that.

i talked about it a little here a few weeks ago, but the long and short of it is that between taking on better paying work, writing better stories, and looking back at what i'd already done for never satisfied... i just don't think i want to continue it? the year off has been incredibly good for my mental health, and i can't see myself wanting to go back after the two-three years still ahead of me on my current project. that's not to say i never want to return to the characters or the concept, but if i did, i imagine it would be with something completely new, in a different form. after all, i started this comic when i was 21 years old, a lesbian, and a sophomore in college. i am now just shy of 30, a bi man, and overall a completely different person than i was, back when i was writing without a plan and putting all of my insecurities into the comic--insecurities i don't identify with anymore. lord i'm closer to rothart's age than i am to lucy's. hate that

anyway. you have all been extraordinarily kind for following never satisfied for as long as you have, for supporting it as much as you have, and being as patient as you have. whatever form never satisfied takes in the future (god willing, with a more cohesive story structure and A PLAN FOR THE ENDING, WHICH BY THE WAY I NEVER, EVER HAD) i hope to see you there!

in the meantime, as an update on where i'm at with the thing that made me stop working on NS: i finished it! all the pages for Hunger's Bite (if you remember it with a different title: no you don't) have been turned in and now it's just revisions and covers and then........ waiting a year until it can come out. because that's how it is in traditionally published graphic novels! nothing releases for a full year after you finished it! and you're even getting it earlier than was originally planned, because i'm a creature and finished it like three months ahead of schedule. i've also already started thumbnailing the sequel book which i can't talk about whatsoever and will now be working on that for the next two years and then HOPEFULLY the first book will have done well enough that i can sell a third! so you better buy it when it comes out next february!!!!!!

to ease you all into it, i wanted to do a little crossover to introduce the main characters. we have emery, whose design is fully and unintentionally just Seiji Again down to his color palette (but seiji would bully him if they met. like so hard. he's a wimp). then we have neeta, a girl who dreams of travel and cares deeply about worker's rights, and wick, a vampire agent investigating the mysterious and sinister new owner of the 1910s ocean liner emery and neeta call home. he's also gay. but sorry lucy, you aren't his type. you're not mean enough.

the best place to keep up with me these days is probably here, as this first book gets closer to release, i will probably be posting about it a lot. and i will certainly post about it here when there's an official release date and cover reveal! i hope you'll go read it. i really think if you liked never satisfied and its themes, you'll like hunger's bite!

thank you again for reading!!

[techav]

On Celebrating Errors

Isn't it beautiful? The lovely formatted tables of register and stack contents, the trace of function addresses and parameters, the error message ... it's the most beautiful kernel panic I have ever seen.

Why on earth would I be so excited to see a computer crash? What could possibly be beautiful about a kernel panic?

This kernel panic is well-earned. I fought hard to get it.

This kernel panic came from a current NetBSD kernel, freshly compiled and running on Wrap030, my 68030 homebrew computer. It is the result of hours upon hours of work reading through existing code, scattered documentation and notes, writing and rewriting, and endless compiling.

And it's just the start.

As I've said before, a goal of this project has always been to build something capable of running some kind of Unix-like operating system. Now that I finally have all the necessary pieces of hardware, plus a good bootloader in ROM, it's time to give it a shot. I'm not that great with this type of programming, but I have been getting better. I might just be able to brute force my way through hacking together something functional.

It is hard.

There is some documentation available. The man(9) pages are useful, and NetBSD has a great guide to setting up the build environment for cross-compiling the kernel. There are some published papers on what some people went through to port NetBSD to this system or that. But there's nothing that really explains what all these source code files are, and which parts really need to be modified to run on a different system.

I had a few false starts, but ultimately found an existing 68k architecture, cesfic, which was a bare minimum configuration that could serve well as a foundation for my purposes. I copied the cesfic source directory, changed all instances of the name to wrap030, made sure it still compiled, then set about removing everything that I didn't need. It still compiled, so now it's was time to add in what I did need.

... how ... do I ... ?

This is where things get overwhelming very quickly. There is documentation on the core functions required for a new driver, there's documentation on the autoconf system that attaches drivers to devices in the tree, and there's plenty of drivers already to reference. But where to start?

I started by trying to add the com driver for the 16550 UARTs I'm using. It doesn't compile because I'm missing dependencies. The missing functions are missing because of a breaking change to bus.h at some point; the com driver expects the new format but the cesfic port still uses the old. So I needed to pull in the missing functions from another m68k arch. Which then required more missing functions and headers to be pulled in. Eventually it compiled without error again, but that doesn't mean it will actually run. I still needed to add support for my new programmable timer, customize the startup process, update hardware addresses, make sure it was targeting 68030 instead of 68040 ...

So many parts and pieces that need to be updated. Each one requiring searching for the original function or variable declaration to confirm expected types or implementation, then searching for existing usages to figure out what it needs ... which then requires searching for more functions and variable types.

But I got something that at least appeared to have all the right parts and compiled without error. It was time to throw it on a disk, load it up, and see what happened.

Nothing happened, of course. It crashed immediately.

I have no debugging workflow I can rely on here, and at this stage there isn't even a kernel console yet. All I could do was add little print macros to the locore startup code and see where it failed. Guess, test, and revise.

I spent a week debugging the MMU initialization. If the MMU isn't properly configured, everything comes to an abrupt halt. Ultimately, I replaced the cesfic machine-specific initialization code and pmap bootstrapping code with functions from yet another m68k arch. And spent another day debugging before realizing I had missed a section that had comments suggesting it wasn't for the 68030 CPU, but turned out to be critical for operation of kernel memory allocation.

Until this point, I was able to rely on the low-level exception handling built into my bootloader if my code caused a CPU exception. But with the MMU working, that code was no longer mapped.

So then came another few hours learning how to create a minimal early console driver. An early console is used by the kernel prior to the real console getting initialized. In this case, I'm using the MC6850 on my mainboard for the early console, since that's what my bootloader uses. And finally the kernel was able to speak for itself.

It printed its own panic.

The first thing the kernel does is initialize the console. Which requires that com driver and all the machine-specific code I had to write. The kernel is failing at its step #1.

But at least it can tell me that now. And given all the work necessary to get to this point, that kernel panic data printing to the terminal is absolutely beautiful.

[kastellaran]

Q&A Translations

I translated all of the Mononoke Question Box Answers that have been posted by the official Mononoke Twitter as of March 26, 2025. I will work on posting the others as they come out so I don't put out such a long post again, but in the mean time here they are:

Q: Is there some kind of magic related meaning in Kusuriuri-san and Shingi-san's clothing? For example, Kusuriuri-san wears women's kimono, and Shingi-san has black cloth wrapped around his arms and legs. A: On the kimono, I believe it serves as the mark of a Medicine Seller, which is why there are a lot of shared elements. It's similar to a uniform.

Both Kusuriuri and Shingi's forms change as they mark the passing of history on their bodies, so as for the black cloth, there is probably some story there.

Q: Did Kusuriuri-san buy the love potions from England himself? I was wondering if they do business with foreign countries.

A: They do. It seems more research is needed on the question of if Medicine Sellers are unique to Japan.

Q: Does Kusuriuri-san need to eat? Did he eat the hoobamiso onigiri after Karakasa?

A: Medicine Sellers don't need to eat or sleep. They don't need to gain nutrition with their mouths. But they do understand taste, so sometimes they pretend to eat. This depends on the personality of each Medicine Seller, so even I don't actually know if the Medicine Seller of Kon ate it.

Q: Were there any points during the production of Hinezumi that made you be like "This came out super well! I love it!"? Also, are there any points where you're like "Open your eyes and watch closely!!!"? It was fast-paced this time so I'm not sure if I'll be able to follow everything, but if there are, I really want to try and keep an eye out for themmm!!!

A: Director: Suzuki Kiyotaka I won't be able to write everything because it's too detailed, sorry. In my opinion, our team was super competent and it feels like each person's skill came through in the film, so thank you to all the staff. To touch on the contents, I guess I really liked the balance between reality and memory. Because it's a movie, we had them come up with all sorts of ways to increase the climax in the latter half. I hope you enjoy it with your eyes, ears, and heart.

General Director: Nakamura Kenji The collaboration between the storyboard and the screenplay. We had Atarashi-san, the writer, look over the storyboard and edit the dialogue. After the framework of the Mononoke and the set were decided, the action was adjusted to work within the space, and there was also revision during ADR (from the time of Karakasa) with updates piling on top of each other. There are quire a few difficult spots, but it seems like it should be normal from here on out.

Q: In the movie, the Sword of Exorcism and the trunk seem to move with a mysterious power. Is that Kusuriuri-san's power? Or does it come from Shingi-san or the Sword of Exorcism?

A: It's the power of the Medicine Seller, but there are many scenes where the tools use their situational awareness and move on their own. I think they're all probably working together.

Q: With regards to Karakasa and Hinezumi, I want to hear about the scenes that gave you the most difficulty.

A: General Director: Nakamura Kenji For Karakasa, it would probably be the part from Kusuriuri's transformation to when he says "issen!" and Kitagawa's first appearance. For Hinezumi, I'll pass to the director, Suzuki!

Director: Suzuki Kiyotaka For Hinezumi, constructing the parallels in the drama between Fuki and Botan around solving the Reason was kind of difficult. And the part from the transformation to "issen!" was difficult because of the quantity, but we got through it thanks to our amazing staff.

Q: When the giant eye appears, Kusuriuri-san says "The Karakasa is manifesting in the utsushiyo*," but it actually seems like the dimension that Kusuriuri-san, Saburoumaru, and everyone else is in has changed. Is the world in which the Karakasa has manifested also the utsushiyo? *Buddhist term referring to the current life

A: Very good question, yes, the utsushiyo also includes the yellow sky where the mononoke reveals its true form, and the anomalous space (is what we call it) of the outer wall. The world is structured like a millfeuille, with layers on layers (so it could also be thought of as a separate dimension).

Q: Directors, who is the character you love the most in Mononoke? Mine is the scales.

A: General Director: Nakamura Kenji I love them all so much; I'm always crying while cutting their scenes and lines. I'd like to have the scales be more active too.

Director: Suzuki Kiyotaka It's not love, but with regards to the movie, I started to sympathize with Botan and feel like she was kind of similar to me. Other than that, I like the funny and cool Sakashita, and the funny and cute Kume-chan.

Q: When did Saburoumaru and Hiramoto develop their current dynamic? They originally had different social standings, so maybe they weren't able to banter like they do now...

A: We actually just published a short story on WEB where you can read about this, so please check it out. Hiramoto is actually the type to live by his own values and thoughts, regardless of the people around him, so he would speak directly with Saburoumaru instead of holding onto any strange prejudices. Hopefully they'll continue to be buddies.

Q: In the anime, I had the impression that Kusuriuri-san and Shingi-san were like mirror reflections, inversions of each other, but in the movie it seems like they're complete opposites. Are Kusuriuri-san and Shingi-san designed with the pair in mind? There are a lot of parts that are fiery, like the hair and the sword, so I'd like to know if there was some design motif being referenced.

A: Basically, the Sword of Exorcism and Shingi are a set. You may wonder, "Then, shouldn't Kusuriuri's body and form match the sword?" but we haven't advanced that far in the research of the Sword of Exorcism. I'm deeply ashamed.

Q: There are a lot of movements that are flashy in a kabuki way, like sheathing Sakashita-san's katana with his foot or jumping off the roof spinning. I'm interested to know if you had any references.

A: It wouldn't be that cool if Kusuriuri-san moved normally, so everyday we would think about how to make him more ostentatious, how to add more theatrical flair. So a lot of it is from imagination. But kabuki, noh, tokusatsu, or any videos where men have beautiful movements might also serve as a reference.

Q: Kusuriuri-san's trunk seems awfully heavy; I wonder how heavy it is? The scales are on the bottom, the sword is on the top, so I'm curious what else is in there. On that note, in the movie Kusuriuri has some pretty flashy action scenes, but wouldn't it be bad if the medicine in there got damaged?

A: The inside of the trunk is like a different dimension, so it's take care of. There's no way all the scales could fit in there, so it connects to another dimension. It's like a magic item. So, you don't need to worry; but if we tried to lift it, it would probably be about 200 kg.

Q: Utayama-sama was shown to be self-conscious of her hands; was she conscious of her age? Did she perhaps think about how she had been in the Ooku the longest? Also, I want to know more about her. Anything's fine; her birthday, height, favorite food......please tell me anything you can!

A: I personally think that life is shown in the eyes or expressions and age is shown in the hands. Utayama-san feels that in the near future she will not have the power to carry out all of her duties within the Ooku. With regards to her birthday and favorite food, the results of the investigation have not come back yet, so all I can say is she doesn't like or dislike anything (investigation ongoing).

Q: In the movie, Kusuriuri-san wields the Sword of Exorcism with his left hand even though he seems to be right handed. Is it because Shingi-san is left handed, so he holds the sword in his left hand to match?

A: The hand that the medicine sellers use to wield the sword depends on the sword. Apparently the Sword of Kon wants to be held in the left hand.

Q: When it's time to decide the nighttime companion, the ochuurou are lined up in the Osuzurouka. Is the order they're lined up in predetermined? Also I'd like to know the order in which they became ochuurou.

A: It is predetermined. I don't actually know the order in which they became ochuurou either, but Kiyo was definitely the last. She's a new ochuurou-san compared to Fuki.

Q: Is the Medicine Seller of Kon's hair long!??! Is it short!??! Please tell me!!!!!!!

A: The Medicine Seller of Kon's hair seems to be short. There might be times when he wants to grow his hair out, so I think it changes from time to time.

Q: I've heard that ideas can come to people at different times, like in the bath or on a walk. At what kind of time do the directors think "That will be the mononoke this time!" or "The Medicine Seller should do this in this scene!"? If that's too difficult, please tell me what candy you've been into lately!

A: General Director: Nakamura Kenji I'm not always doing my work or taking baths; when I'm particularly in pain I try to take showers, and since I'm changing my clothes at the same time I like clothes that are easy to launder.

Director: Suzuki Kiyotaka When I'm waking up or in the bathroom... It seems like it's mostly in the morning, but ideas come to me when I'm away from the desk.

Q: During the flashback scenes, these pentagonal shapes are floating around. Is there a reason for those shapes? Or are they an artistic element?

A: We call them "flashback clouds." We really wanted to make sure people noticed when it was a flashback, so when they appear, it's a flashback scene. There is one mysterious depiction of the past which is not actually a flashback, so they don't appear there (sorry if this is confusing). We wanted the shapes in the clouds to be kind of cute and look like candy. Those shapes are stored alongside many people's feelings and memories of the past. There may be more elements like this in the future.

Q: What are the cute decorations that look like taiyaki in Karakasa... I want one. Even though they're soggy.

A: General Director: Nakamura Kenji I want merch of them too. I'd like to put them on a bag or something. Those "fish" are actually made of wood, so they dry easily. If Kame-chan had secretly done her job in the middle of the night, she probably wouldn't have been found out,,, That aside, I wondered what they were, so I interviewed Katouno-san from the art department. ...Katouno-san, what are those fish?

Art department: Katouno Youichi They're hanging dolls. I think they're probably the goldfish type. They've been around for a long time, and since they always convey an auspicious feeling, I thought that if something happened around them it would be even more emotional, so I referenced them. General Director: Nakamura Kenji I see,, I get it!

[peascrabbles]

So, as I've gotten deeper into writing as a hobby again, all the reasons that made me stop doing it years ago have shown themselves once again. Bafflingly enough, it's way more difficult for me right now than it was as a rusty beginner weeks ago. Something something the learning curve:

I am totally somewhere in the "This is hard!" or "I don't know s***" zones right now (and it's where I stopped last time.) On this second go-around, I won't let it defeat me, though! Been reading little advice tidbits here and there that have been really, really helpful.

A few gems from a great discussion about the purpose of a draft that spoke to me:

Q. What makes you keep writing your first draft even though it's a complete mess?

I. Being a complete mess is the one and only job of the first draft. Proof of life. Keep going. It's like moving, which is the world's single worst activity. You box up every fucking thing in your head, and set it all out in your new space, and it's the worst day of your life when you do. And the satisfaction of moving all those boxes and finishing the laborious work is fleeting because now your new space looks like absolute garbage, and it will keep looking like a cluttered unlivable mess for months and you know it and you wonder why you even bothered moving. But you slowly unpack and organize and hang things on the wall until one day you're living in the home you always imagined.

II. Think of the mess as a puzzle that you get to have fun solving.

III. It's only a mess compared to other things you've read. But other things you've read are finished.

Stop comparing your work in progress to finished works.

It takes months or even years to finish most stories (excepting short stories and maybe novelettes). You're not going to get there on your first draft, or your second, or even your third. So, according to the words of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, "Don't be afraid to write crap. Crap makes great fertilizer."

IV. Writing anything is an accomplishment. So many people think about, talk about, post about writing… and never do. (shush, I know I'm guilty of that at this moment!!)

Set a daily goal (words, pages, whatever). Hit it each day and take pride in JUST THAT accomplishment. It will get easier each day to reach that goal it as it becomes a habit rather than a chore.

Your story can't just exist in your head, it has to be given form. Writing it will gradually, eventually reveal what you can keep, what you must refine, and what you need to mercilessly cast away. If it's only in your head, it ALL exists, good, bad, and mediocre. Putting it in words starts the process of separating it from your mind and ego, and will start to give you some detachment and perspective for further drafts. It might start as a mewling little lump of words that drools and vomits and shits itself but by GOD you are going to raise… er, revise… that story into a fine figure of a tale.

As the sayings go, all writing is good writing. And all writing is rewriting.

[2n1ghts]

❝let me take care of you, baby.❞ ❥︎ collegebf!eren x reader

・┆✦ʚ♡ɞ✦ ┆・

synopsis: it was nearing finals, and you avoided your boyfriend— eren—like the plague. and boy, was he was worried for you. your normally cheerful demeanor dwindled to something snarky, something avoidant. all you did nowadays was study till your brain rotted, and it made you a bitter person. he was waiting for the day you'd collapse, and the moment you did, it was worse than he expected. good thing he was there to take care of you. to pamper you because you were his baby.

*contains suggestive content!!

key: e/c -> eye color

・┆✦ʚ♡ɞ✦ ┆・

hey y'all!! 💌

again, not sure how the whole tumblr thing works. i'm experimenting and trying out writing for fun, so please be kind. i was pretty out of it when i wrote this, so ignore any typos or inconsistencies. also, bear with our y/n. she's crafted this way for a reason.

it's my first time writing a short fic/drabble, and i did this as more of an experiment. i welcome feedback but please be kind with your words. i am just learning and finding out what works for me.

anyways, hope you enjoy lovelies!

best,

~ nene

The past few weeks had been a living hell.

Not because of the finals nearing round the corner, or because of the two hours of sleep you were getting per night; not because of the crude professors who made it their life mission to assign a million projects when the quarter was about to end; not because of your parents who did not give two shits about your mental health.

It was the distance you were maintaining with Eren that made it the hardest.

He was worried for you. You could tell by the way his eyebrows would furrow when you would decline yet another plea to relax, or the way his eyes conceringly flitted to your scrunched posture whenever you'd cuss at yourself, or the way he would gently, tenderly... remove your hands that tended to roughly rake through your hair when anxious.

Your breaking point was nearing, and he was holding himself back from embracing you right then and there. He was not one to interfere, but he wanted to take care of you, to ease the burden off your shoulders and reassure you that your studying would amount to great achievements. But he didn't know how to reach you. You were so caught up in your bubble of self-sabotage and pressure that you shut the rest of the world out, including him.

But he didn't want to be "the rest of the world." He would wallow in your bubble too, only if you'd let him in.

"Fucking deratives will be the end of me," he heard you seethe from your position on his gaming chair. The both of you were currently cooped up in his room, with him scrolling through TikTok and occasionally glancing at you while you revised and revised till your eyes were sore.

Eren's roommate flew out, which left the place to himself. He lured you here stating it would be better to study at his place with "no distractions" compared to your apartment with Hitch, who was quite the gossip and hinderance.

As you highlighted yet another section, you felt his eyes raking down your figure.

You were engulfed in his oversized grey hoodie, wearing nothing but a flimsy cotton bra and matching underwear underneath. Your hair was messily thrown up in a bun, a few strands tickling your forehead here and there, to which you frustratedly blew from your periphery. Lilac crescents embedded themselves into your under-eyes, followed with bags entailing sleep deprivation. One bare leg was propped up as you rested your chin on your knee and swung the other absentmindedly.

If you didn't stop studying now, you'd collapse from exhaustion. Three hours had passed by nonstop. You hadn't even drank water.

"Y/n," he called out gently.

You ignored him, but he knew you heard him because of that cute forehead scrunch you just did.

"Y/n," he called, this time a bit louder. Once again, that damn scrunch, but no verbal acknowledgement.

"Y/n!" he tried for the third time. You furrowed your eyebrows, scowling. Your slender finger pressed into your plump lips, a gesture made to silence him.

Leaving his position on the bed, he strided over to you. He got onto his knees and gently took ahold of your meandering hands. The callus of his fingers felt textured against your knuckles.

"Why are you ignoring me, babe?"

"I'm not ignoring you," you replied, trying to refocus your attention on your migraine-inducing Calculus textbook. He tried not to flinch at you shutting him out for the nth time this week.

It hurt him whenever you tried drowning him out like he was a petty distraction.

Because he wasn't to be discarded. He was your boyfriend, and he promised to always be there for you, so why wouldn't you just confide in him?

"I called for you three times, Y/n," he stated calmly. Letting go of one of your hands, he gently drew circles on your knee with the pad of his thumb, hoping it'd soothe your nerves. Goosebumps littered your skin at the gesture.

"Can't you see I'm studying, Ren? I can't talk right now." Overstimulated and tired, you weren't in the mood to converse. In fact, you weren't in the mood to do anything. All you wanted to do was collapse onto your sheets and fall into a hundred-year slumber, but unfortunately, finals exist to give you enough of a reality check.

"You are working so hard, so take a break, please," he pleaded yet again.

He'd beg if it meant you'd prioritize your health. He cared more about you than his ego. That's why he always rebounded with a gentle demeanor, even if you were rude and snarky. He knew your brash attitude wasn't your fault. You just didn't function well under stress.

The unfiltered truth was, you weren't used to the princess treatment Eren offered. As a child, you had gotten used to your parents' nagging. Sleepless nights became routine if it meant you'd score straight A's. It had been like this all throughout high school.

Until you met Eren.

He prioritized you first, always, and taught you to do the same. It was sort of... a culture shock to you, a difficult adjustment. You needed time getting accustomed to this novel way of thinking, and luckily Eren was understanding.

Couldn't say your self-sabotage wasn't eating away at him, though.

"And you need to take a break from badgering me. I'm perfectly fine," you snarked. Your eyes broke contact with his, gaze landing once again on the textbook to your left.

Angling your chair, you turned your body away from him, trying to focus on the task at hand. You couldn't bear to look at him because you knew he was right. If you gave in, you would stop studying. If you stopped studying, you'd catastrophically fail, which could not happen.

With a frustrated sigh, Eren swiftly snagged your textbook and threw it behind him. It collided with the mattress with a large 'thud.' You gasped as he grabbed the edge of your chair, turning it towards him.

"You're not getting that textbook until you eat and drink something," he asserted, a layer of seriousness washing over his green eyes.

"What the hell, Eren? Give it back!" You shrieked.

"You heard the conditions."

"Eren, this is serious. I don't have time to play games right now. Please... give it back."

"Who said I'm playing games, Y/n? The only reason I'm doing this is because you're being negligent towards yourself."

"Okay, well that's my problem. Who are you to interfere?" You countered.

"Hey, I'm not trying to be your mom or anything. As your boyfriend, I care about you. It's just a glass of water and a snack, Y/n. Do it for yourself. You deserve a break."

You started panicking. An uneasy feeling sprawled up your stomach as your hands got clammy. "No! You don't understand."

"Then enlighten me, babe. I'm right here."

Rolling your eyes, you stood up from the chair, trying not to cringe at the weird noise emitted from the leather upon loss of contact with your skin. You reached forward to grab your textbook off the mattress, but Eren was faster. He took ahold of your wrist and lowered it.

You grunted in frustration. "I—I need to study, Ren. Badly. My career and future depend on it. These are hard subjects. I need hours and hours of studying to ace these exams. You don't get it."

He doesn't reply, continuing to look at you sternly and not budging. Your nerves were skyrocketing. What was his deal? This wasn't the time to be testing your patience. Plus, if he really cared, he'd understand your desperation.

"Okay, whatever sick fun you're trying to derive out of this isn't cool," you deadpanned.

You tried pulling your wrist out of his grip, but he required little to no effort to keep you at bay, simply planting his feet further into the ground when you tried shoving him. Your e/c-eyed stare pierced him like daggers, but his resolve was impenetrable.

God, what a stubborn fuck.

You continued wriggling and squirming to no avail. Your bottom lip began trembling. Liquid pooled at your lashline, threatening to moisten your cheeks with its salty trail.

You broke.

Sniffling, you shoved him repeatedly in the chest. "I hate you. I hate this. I fucking hate college and hate my parents and hate finals and hate this fucked up system that does nothing but capitalize on our stress and hate motherfucking Calculus and professor Ackerman and—"

Moist lips enclosed your own, trapping them tantalizingly. The kiss was brief and sweet. He used it as a way to tranquilize you, gently trapping both of your wrists with his one hand.

"Shh, just let me take care of you, baby," he rasped as he tenderly interlocked his arms under your legs, lifting and placing you on the bed. The mattress felt soft against your spine.

If pamper had a textbook definition, Eren's face would definitely appear in the margin.

[trace-of-a-song]

Writing vs Playing

I think this might be a good place to talk through this.

Last year, I started taking a workshop class for composing. It was intentionally brutal. The goal was to create a new piece every week and to listen critically to the other people in the class and give and receive feedback.

Given how much music I can put out when I'm working intensely that doesn't sound too hard, but I failed. I made it through about 16 weeks of a year-long class and then life got life-y in about six different ways and I fell too far behind to keep up so I dropped out.

But I got so much out of those first few months that a) I'm trying the class again this year (we're on week 11) and b) it completely changed the way I do the music thing.

It's the difference between writing and playing.

For most of the time I've been doing this, unless it was for some out-there experimental thing with no set rhythms or intentions, I've written everything out in notation first. That hasn't been a bad thing. I'm comfy there, and I think pretty securely in notation, so the process was something like this: Write out an idea in pencil. Flesh it out in notation software. Bring the notation over to Reaper. Add instruments to make the midi noisy Adjust and spice to taste. Mix. Revise. Mix. Music.

And it worked nicely, but the speed at which this class had and has me working means I couldn't take all that time. The process became this. Pull up Reaper and make there be a piano. Play things until an idea is solid. Play more things around it. Play. Play. Mix. Music.

I don't know that the music is better this way. I think it's a bit more free, and I definitely write Different music this way but "better" is a word I'm uncomfortable with.

I do know two things though.

It happens faster. I can write one of these class pieces in 2-4 hours, the morning of a Saturday, and be finished.

The fact that I'm Playing makes it fun. Like, not just Enjoyable, but Fun. The act of creating a thing with the brain plus making a thing with the hands all smooshed together is a spicy, excellent brand of fun!

I'm thinking of this partially because as I go back through the Carmilla music, this is the first show where I wrote this way. I don't know if anyone else can hear the difference, but I can feel it.

I got to Play.

[randomhealer]

types of kisses

something cute, improvised (very improvised), no revision, I'm doing this without glasses and I'm very sleepy, sorry for disappearing and I wanted to add other characters but I'm dying now, anyway I tried my best today to write this, my mind isn't working very well...sorruh

Pomefiore + Savanaclaw

✦ Pomefiore

Epel definitely gives you soft kisses in the presence of others, he really likes giving kisses just as he loves receiving them, he can give you soft and affectionate kisses when you are around someone especially other pomefiore students but when you two are alone he loves Long, heavy and messy kisses, it's a real achievement for Epel to see you breathing heavily and your lips swollen beneath him, he also loves biting your lower lip just to tease you. a session of small kisses at the end of class always ends up turning into a little messy and carefree make-out session with you and Epel which always results in both of them having a flushed face and irregular breathing, messy hair and slightly wrinkled clothes.

Vil always asks you to help him test new lipsticks, and how do you help him with that? well...you stay there and serve as a guinea pig while he kisses your face with every new lipstick he tries. Now...does he use you as an excuse to test which lipstick transfers or doesn't or does he use the lipstick excuse just so he can kiss your cute little face? who knows... but he loves kissing your cheek because he thinks it's soft and if you've been using any of his skin products you'll be even happier, You are his favorite guinea pig because he loves seeing your eager little face when he approaches to kiss your face again, and he loves your flushed face even more after he pulls away, at the end of it all when he is done and your face is dirty. with some kiss marks from different lipsticks he will give you a light kiss on the lips as a good job.

Rook loves kissing you randomly at any place, time, time- in short he loves stealing kisses from you at any time, it's a blessing and a misfortune for you, it's as if he watches you 24 hours a day (and he does that but that's a topic for another day) just to give you a kiss when you're unprepared, does he also give you a kiss at all times at any event, before classes? after classes? after the break? when he randomly sees you around? entering your dorm without you noticing? yes he will kiss you or steal a kiss from you, He also loves letting you curl up in his arms so he can finally claim your sweet lips properly.

★ Savanaclaw

When you give Leona little kisses he thinks it's cute and/or maybe even a little funny how you give him affection...it's like a little mouse taking care of a big lion...Leona prefers to kiss you hard and take the opportunity to bite you here and there, not just your lips but your neck too, you can literally become his little biting toy during this time, he's not content with just your lips he kisses your neck and chest too, making sure to leave bite marks where he kisses, Leona just like Epel likes to see you with your lips swollen and your face flushed and messy beneath him, he finds this the most fascinating thing he has see.

Jack and you are a cute dynamic, Jack loves your kisses because for him it's like a reward and a form of love, as he makes a promise to run several kilometers so that when he reaches the end he receives a kiss from you as a reward, he loves being together. cuddle with you and snuggle into you and tuck his face into your neck as he kisses your neck and you rub his ears, you can see his tail wagging behind him excitedly, He might end up being too happy and reflexively end up biting you (he'll apologize for that, okay) You are the reason he trains for two extra hours, in fact there is nothing better for a well-trained dog than a good treat.

Ruggie loves it when you give him tender kisses whether wet or not he likes it anyway, he just melts like butter when you kiss his ears or his face, pick him up, squeeze his cheeks and fill his face with your kisses okay ? Is this his biggest request, or when you let him rest on your chest while you caress him and kiss him? This is his paradise, he will steal kisses from you during the day because well...it's his right...he will remind you (and demand) affection and kisses at the end of the day.