#but either way these are getting way better haha

[chdarling]

Its a curse. No matter what story I read I always have to compare it to yours. Your writing and characterization is just perfect especially your Lily and James. I loved how you made James re-think his actions and when he questioned himself about being a bad person. Lily is often either a goody-goody or the biggest bitch alive. It really got me thinking when you said that shes kind but not nice. I am so excited for Lilys reaction when she finds out that the dog she revealed her secrets to is actually Sirius omg 🫶🫶🫶

I know its not a common question but when and where do you write? Do you have like your writing place or do you just begin if you have an idea. And another: Have you written many later scenes without writing the earlier ones?

Thank you so much 🥺❤️

I write in a lot of places!

I have my insane power user desktop set up (I have 4 monitors inherited from different jobs that thought it was less expensive to just give them to me when I quit rather than have me ship them back lol), but tragically this space has been spiritually tainted by remote work so I mostly only use it for plotting purposes when I need multiple screens. (I look like a serious business hacker gal with all my screens until you zoom in and see they’re all about my blorbos).

I’m not at Terry Pratchett levels yet but this is the vibe:

I also have a little secretary desk in my living room and this is where I tend to write the most actual prose. Unplug the Internet, close everything except my scrivener doc, sit in the slightly uncomfortable dining chair my kitten has chewed to bits, and disappear from the world for hours. This is why I have back pain. :)

I also write on my phone a lot, usually when walking. I will 100% stop in the middle of the sidewalk (or politely step aside if it’s crowded, I’m not a monster) and hash out a full scene of dialogue if it arrives while I’m commuting, which it often does. Yes I have been late to work this way on more than one occasion haha.

As far as the when, that varies. During a good, fruitful writing season, it’s any moment I can get. During periods of burnout and block (which tragically I am weathering right now), I have to make a concerted effort. I have made it a habit to write every day first thing in the morning (well, after feeding the cats, I’m not a monster). These days it’s mostly just a free write/brain dump of everything in my head, but hey, it’s words. During better writing times, I have been known to crank out an entire chapter before work 😭

And to your final question, oh yes, I write totally out of order. I have more of TLE4 written than I do TLE3 haha. But I find this fun because then I get to sneak in all sorts of foreshadowing nonsense. 😈

Thanks for the kind words and fun questions!

[nagasleeps]

your teeth and your tongue, bright red from tiger's blood

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

was having trans marty thoughts again and i came to a realization about this scene

[featherymainffins]

I hate to say it but I might have to admit that Redditors can be pretty based sometimes

[copper-sands]

starting to think that maybe it's a good idea to stop forcing myself to create and take a break actually

[sysig]

Go play pretend on your own (Patreon)

[zebratimw]

Spirit animal SQH

[techmomma]

Oh! In addition to the charging station being down, my phone might be kaput!

Y'know what you need to find (and usually USE) other charging stations? A phone! With an online map! Because finding a new fucking charging station is a reverse russian roulette, where most of the chambers suck and only one out of so many won't kill you!

You know what you can't do when you're low on charge? Go driving around, wasting your charge trying to find a different station to charge at! Because if my car fully loses charge while I'm out on the road, then I gotta call a towtruck! Those ain't cheap!

The best analogy for gas cars is imagine you have a car that can hold about 10 miles of gas. It sucks, but so long as there's a gas station, it's fine. It's special gas that's about .10/gallon so who cares.

Your car needs a specific kind of nozzle to fill your tank. Not every gas station has your nozzle!

In theory, there's about 12 different gas stations every couple of miles. Great!

The reality is 11 of those 12 gas stations don't work. They're broken, they're shut down, they've been decomissioned, and sure, there is an app that can tell you, but has the station been updated in the app? No! So generally, you won't know which ones do and don't work, until you get there! (On your limited amount of gas, as a reminder.)

So, really, on your ten-mile tank, you have... like 2 gas stations that you can go to. Within 10 miles.

And for one of them, it means sitting in their parking lot for 2 hours.

Now the good news is you found a gas station within walking distance of your house. It's a 2-hour station, but since it's within walking distance, you can park your car, go home and hang out for 2 hours, and then go grab your car. Not ideal, but it works.

Today though, that gas station is down. You have no idea when it'll be back up. Maybe it'll be back up today! Maybe a week from now! Maybe the gas company will decide it doesn't care and will just leave it broken forever! Who knows~ But it's down and you've got about 2 or 3 miles in your gas tank left. Do you want to risk wasting those 2 or 3 miles you have left in your tank trying to find a station that works?

And all of these gas stations are moving to solely paying by phone. One of them might take card! Hope it's one that works!

So you need your phone to pay for gas. Your phone that is currently, probably dead and probably needs to be replaced.

So uh. Hey. If you have some money to spare. I might need some to buy a new phone. So. If you want to throw anything my way, I have a paypal. If you would like to toss some monies my way for the inevitable phone replacement I am going to have to make. And loss of income for today because I can't go to work today.

[true-blue-sonic]

I was musing over what Sonic could do to get Silver's goat, and the conclusion I came to was terrible puns. To my knowledge, Silver's never made a pun before (and neither, as far as I can remember, any actual jokes, but perhaps I'm wrong there). Sonic meanwhile strikes me as the guy who will never shut up with making the worst puns known to mankind. And I can imagine Silver doesn't think they are very funny!

[meaty-bones]

I'm still working on Lamb anatomy lol

[beans-and-shet]

You’re my happy place

[five-of-cr]

here's the thing about matthias: he isn't the honorable, reformed hero some of the fandom seems to see him as.

yes, he was raised by a tight-knit family of comrade soldiers and decides to betray them in the end. of course that took incredible strength. i don't deny that. but we also need to recognize that the drüskelle are not just some rogue cult. they are a core part of the fjerdan government, who is trying to wipe out the grisha because they are seen as dangerous. that's literally just genocide. however indoctrinated someone is, this is something that is evil from every angle, even if the character can't or won't see it.

and look, i love a good redemption arc, but matthias is such a passive actor in his. he falls in love with nina against his will. she changes his attitudes toward grisha because she's beautiful and kind so all grisha can't be bad, right? this a classic example of the trope of separating the "good ones" from the rest, where you cherry-pick specific individuals to point to as exceptions to a group's nature, which is still implied to be evil. you have to do a lot more than fall in love to truly unearth and address the roots of bigotry.

tbh, this is my biggest critique of the books as a whole. i loathe the "love conquers all" trope that pairs together a character from the oppressed group and one from the oppressors, letting the one show the other through the power of love that being bigoted is not nice. it puts all the responsibility on the former to prove their humanity, and gives all the credit to the latter's ability to be persuaded to recognize it. and then it inevitably leads to forgiveness, because the character has "earned" it by changing their views, once again making the victim seem like the villain if they don't absolve the oppressor of their past "mistakes". also, it's incredibly unrealistic for someone to fall in love with a person who actively hates them and considers them sub-human. in real life, people have to work on their bigotry before that happens, not use the relationship as a plot device for character development.

i think the idea of writing a character like matthias is neat. i think portraying someone's struggle to throw off the suffocating, hateful dogma they've been fed all their life is a story we need more of. i think personal growth of this variety should be celebrated, because otherwise people would never change. but i don't think the people, fictional or real, get to do this without facing profound consequences. it is not enough to feel sorry. it is not enough to apologize. it is definitely not enough to fall in love. and i think writing that lets people off the hook like this grossly oversimplifies power and oppression, and ends up being a feel-good way to romanticize people who cause a lot of harm.

a last note: my opinion is 100% influenced by my being bipoc. matthias is a classic aryan supremacist, even if being aryan isn't the thing he's being supremacist about. my gut reaction to that type of character is always going to be mistrust, both because people in real life have given me reason to be mistrustful and because characters like these are often written in a way that makes you sympathize with oppressors. i don't think matthias earns that trust, and i don't see why i owe him my affection as a reader.

[sunbedo]

Having a reorganizing/arranging day for my collection, wanted to show some of my favorite art from cards that ive gotten recently :3

[mer-se]

please pick friends u can argue or have misunderstandings with and actually communicate with immediately after like, it’s so fucking important

[tkfluff-fanatic]

Sometimes I look at other Countryhumans fans and wonder if we're in the same fandom

[sysig]

They’re perfect for each other honestly (Patreon)