#but these kind of reflections are kinda fun maybe i'll do a general one | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rustyboltzz · 1 month ago

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ok no deep burning questions but here's some silly ones

is iris a dog or a cat person? and on a similar but not exactly the same note if she was turned into a critter of some kind thru some anomaly would she be a dog or a cat (or something else :eyes:)

if she played minecraft what kinda style would she have (redstoner builder speedrunner fighter etc)

Oh my god... Iris asks.. how I've missed you!!

We're gonna do this a little differently this time. Within the ask, I'll include some little art to go along with my answers, I hope you enjoy! :]

(Perhaps you aren't into reading. If not; you're able to simply scroll through the art within this post by selecting one and swiping back and forth. That or you can scroll down like a normie.)

First question; 'Is Iris a dog or cat person?' Being honest? Neither! If she was to pick between the two, probably dogs, she has specific trauma tied to cats due to Omega-7, which I could explain in a separate ask if you'd like, but in terms of dogs? I think she feels in-between about them. I think she generally thinks they are 'cute' and is probably bonded to the idea of them being protectors (I like the idea that she bonded with some sniffer dogs while on Omega-7), but the fact that they are very high maintenance and demand a lot of her attention and physical affection is overwhelming for her. In short, they're nice to be around temporarily, but not her ideal long-term pet.

As for a pet, though, I think she'd enjoy some sort of lizard or reptile. I asked GlassAutomaton something similar to this in the past, and I agree with what he said there, so I'll just say it here as well; I can imagine her enjoying upkeeping their enclosures and the heat of their sun lamps. I also just think she has this particular affection for them because she grew up in a place where there was a significant amount of them just around regularly. They remind her of home.

I like to think she has this particular affection for snakes, salamanders and geckos in particular, and they inflict a rare case of cuteness-aggression from her when she sees them, but I feel she'd have a hard time ever asking for one as a pet, not because she thinks her overseers wouldn't allow it (I actually think they'd like her to have something other then Alpha-9 to devote herself too) but because she'd get embarrassed about being caught being so affectionate with another little being, even if they're an animal. The gods forbid Iris Thompson from baby-talking an animal in another's presence, in her eyes at least. Gotta keep up that 'Cool-Girl' persona, I guess. (The one that only exists in her head. Aha.)

Next question! 'If she was to be transformed into a little critter of some kind, which would it be?' Picking between the dog and cat, it's a bit hard to choose, I think she shares a lot of attributes with both of those animals specifically. With cats, she's similar in the aspects that she's naturally drawn to warm places, always a little bit touch and go with affection and her mood, and secretly a bit of a cuddle-bug, even if she'd never admit it. And with dogs, I'd say she's very praise-driven, even if subtley, a bit of a suck up when it comes to those she cares about, and quite demanding when she wants to be. I guess this answer ends with her being an Eye-Pet, if that reference isn't too niche. Which, from my understanding, and reflecting back on my five-year-old self's memories, is the mixture between the two animals. But who knows, maybe there's another glorious mixture of the two I'm failing to bring up.

As for any general animal I think she'd transform into, I guess I'd say it would be fun to see a Snake-Iris, which I know is something that's already been conceived somewhere. There's not a lot behind this past how I've connected her with reptiles, and the fact that I think she deserves to unhinge her jaw and swallow a mouse whole, just a little.

Final question! 'If she was to play Minecraft, what playstyle would she attach herself to?' Honestly, it's a little bit hard to choose on this one because I never really imagined her being a fan of sandbox types of games to begin with, but! I'd like to imagine she'd probably attach herself to the 'miner' type playstyle. She seems the type to get into the game for a couple of weeks and devote herself hard to one goal at a time, like upkeeping a fort and a farm and grinding for all the best materials (Atleast the ones she deems 'ethical', whatever that means. I think she'd learn about the villager trading system and be mortified.) only to get incredibly embarrassed that she wasted her time on such a 'nothing' task and never touch the game again.

Do I think she's good at grinding? Somewhat. On the most basic levels. I think she'd start to feel her brain twist inside her skull if she even tried to conceptualise a Redstone farm, let alone a mob farm, I mean, c'mon! She needs to give her opposition a fighting chance! Trapping them in a chamber and swiping at their legs is just too far for her! She may be a fighter, but she has morals..

Speaking of fighting, I think one of the things she genuinely does get good at in the game is the combat system, even if she's just practicing it on the hostile mobs. If there is one thing Iris Thompson cares about, it's her safety, and it's also most certainly being prepared.

Finally, I think far in the future, or perhaps not, her and Jacqueline (SCP-1985) would play together. Iris would probably play hardball at first when Jacqueline suggests they start a little world together but eventually cave at the prospect of building something with someone else. It's a flattering idea to her, even if she'd never admit that. I think Jacqueline has a much more laid-back playstyle. She enjoys the nature and life the game holds in its scenery. She enjoys being able to build something beautiful from scratch. I think she's an immaculate builder and devotes far too much time to perfecting her landscapes within their worlds. Makes her and Iris a neat little cottage away from it all, and while she finds it a bit ugly, doesn't abject when Iris builds fortress walls around them to keep them safe, maybe just spiffs up her watch towers a little bit.

#scp #rust talkz #rust art !!#scp 105 #scp 1985 #Iris Thompson #Jacqueline Johnson #devils advocate scp #holy crap this is a long one! can you tell ive been itching to talk about them again?#and hey! if youre reading this and find yourself having little questions you want to throw in my askbox. its always open!#genuinely the highlight of my day when i get to talk about these fellas. they mean so much to me!!#I'm willing to talk about other scp characters as well! i cant promise ill answer every ask. but if im comfortable and interested in +#the questions im always willing to give my two cents.. and maybe an art piece or (checks this post) four

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shalomniscient · 10 months ago

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OH! sevchino thought that i suddenly had. in one of the asks you mentioned that you’re from SEA (me too!) was wondering what arle’s reaction would be if she would to taste south east asian cuisine, would she like them or would she have certain preferences?

omg i love this question !! had to sit and think about this one for a while HAHA for my non SEAsian or even non-msian gamers and moots, i'll add footnotes to the bottom of this post for each dish/food :)) ok last note before we get into the ask, i'm msian myself, so my 'expertise' as it were is in msian dishes (or, the msian variety). SEA is not a monolith and i won't pretend to know every single SEA dish out there, so the dishes i describe in this post won't be reflective of the true breadth of SEA cuisine !! ok disclaimer over tq for listening to my ted talk 😌😌😌

for breakfast foods i am legally obligated to make her try nasi lemak at least once bcos c'mon now. if i don't plug nasi lemak to foreigners i feel like the govt will kick my door down and revoke my citizenship. i usually take mine with fried chicken BUT i feel like arle would like paru (lung) ?? don't ask me why i am operating simply on vibes LOL but aside from that i think she'd be an absolute fiend for kaya on toast which honestly ??? so sexy of her, kaya is so fucking good

main dishes are a little difficult, admittedly, because a lot of them do have a generous amount of spice if i'm comparing it to fontaninan/european standards. i feel like arle has okay-ish spice tolerance, so i think arle could sit down and enjoy a toned-down rendang or an asam pedas that's more asam (sour) than pedas (spicy). anything higher than that like a straight up sambal might destroy her tastebuds LOL unless it's the kind of sambal that's got a sweeter aftertaste, though EYE personally don't like that kind of sambal LMAO as for noodle dishes, can't go wrong with a good ol' laksa or bakso. these are generally not the most spicy (and you can choose the spice level for bakso) as far as i've encountered them, so it's another win for arle !! also char kuey teow !!!! i prefer the dry version over the wet version, but both are FIRE and so fucking good. it's also not the spiciest, like you can get kuey teow that is kinda mild, so arle would be able to handle it 👍👍👍

ok now that we've got main dishes aside it's time to get really into it and go right to the sweet stuff and BOY do we have sweet stuff... i dunno why but i feel like arle would most enjoy semperit ?? maybe because i think it's very similar in taste to what you can find in fontaine. there's also bahulu, which is functionally the same as a sponge cake, just a lot smaller, like cookie sized. moving on from the kuih though we got the heavy sugar hitters like ais batu campur and cendol. i don't think arle would actively seek either of these out, but she will indulge in them if EYE drag her ass out to the night market to get some 😌😌😌 also i would 100% get her to try bandung and honestly i feel like she might like it !! but in moderation, because god that thing is sweet asf 💀💀💀

ok i think i've written everything i got for now so i can cease my rambling sdhlsjdhlsjhd in conclusion i feel like arle would gravitate more to the sweet foods than the spicy foods, but she can sit down and appreciate the spicy stuff once in a while !! in any case, thank u for the ask anonnie !! i think i got a little carried away but this was fun :))

nasi lemak - rice cooked in coconut milk and usually served with deep fried peanuts and anchovies, sambal, fried or boiled egg, and sliced cucumbers. can also be eaten with fried chicken or rendang.

paru - fried beef lung. personally not a fan, but it's usually eaten as a side dish to accompany nasi lemak.

kaya - a spread kind of like jam made from coconut milk, eggs, sugar and pandan leaves.

rendang - slow cooked and braised meat in coconut milk, seasoned with a metric fuckton of herbs and spices. my personal favourite is beef rendang, though it comes in chicken and lamb variations also.

asam pedas - a stew dish that involves fish cooked in with tamarind (asam) juice and assorted spices. usually will also have okra/lady's finger and/or eggplants added in as vegetables.

sambal - spicy chili paste, though some variations make it a little sweeter. sambal has a bunch of different versions, but my personal favorite is sambal belacan, which is sambal made with fermented shrimp paste (it's so fuckign good................ belacan my beloved)

laksa - sour-spicy noodle dish served in broth that contains coconut milk and/or tamarind, with chicken or prawn as toppings.

char kuey teow - stir fried rice noodles, usually prepared with lard but pork-free variations also exist. fried with cockles and prawns, but sometimes also with chicken or beef.

bakso - beef broth noodle soup with meatballs but SEAsian style 😎😎😎

semperit - a kind of crumbly custard cookie

bahulu - small cookie-sized sponge cakes

ais batu campur - shaved ice with red beans, syrup, condensed milk, evaporated milk, cendol, corn and agar-agar cubes. you can also add other stuff but iirc this is the typical combo. colloquially known as ABC.

cendol - shaved ice with green pandan-flavored jelly, coconut milk and palm sugar.

bandung - rose syrup mixed with evaporated milk and/or condensed milk

#sev.responses #sevchino #culture.talk #unrelated but i feel like raiden ei would commit worse war crimes for a bowl of ABC

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fatass-adam · 2 months ago

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Personal thoughts so far because I can't focus on shit else lol

Adam is a Gryffindor because he's too brave for his own fuckin good with all the shit talking he does and how powerful he considers himself (even being able to back it up against Alastor in their epic fight). Otherwise I'd go with Hufflepuff because he seems pretty loyal, even to a fault; he will stick with his side even if in the wrong

Probably comes from a pure wizard family that's upper middle class?? Pure wizard family because it gives him hot shit bragging rights regardless of his company, plus it kinda reflects his angelic status. I don't think he's full upper class though just because I'm taking his "struggling and surviving after being thrown out of Eden" period of his original life into consideration, but will also say that he doesn't have to go without much either given the other side of the story where he got to experience TWO different kinds of paradise (Eden before and Heaven afterwards)

He's great on a broom to reflect his long-ass afterlife of having wings (if he doesn't already have them depending on which verse we go with anyway...in which case I'll probably still just have him be lazy and have his broom do his flying for him BECAUSE YOU KNOW HE WOULD lol)

Also? Total Quidditch jock (maybe even on the way to becoming professional??) He totes has jock-bully vibes first and foremost regardless of age/setting we go with, not to mention he would do it because he easily gets bored anyway and needs something to do. And don't get me started on that Quidditch fan favorite status he'd try to achieve!

And adding to that, he's gotta be a beater. On top of the general enjoyment of getting to club a mindlessly violent ball senseless itself, it even funner when you get to club that mindlessly violent ball hurling into some other poor sap's direction with the intention of knocking them off and/or just downright injuring them

Socially speaking I'm gonna say that he's not above mingling with lower class, "mudbloods", muggles, etc. but will try to act like he is. In all reality I think he'd socialize with anyone who'd give him the time of day, but he's also just an asshole and gonna really play up his high ranking social status

That being said, if we have Death Eaters?? He's totally a Death Eater/Death Eater in training (if the age in the setting we go with allows it...and I'm gonna say yeah because they're all probably gonna be 8th years at least anyway). It only makes sense with his canon Exorcist shit lol

I am gonna go out on a limb though and say he's mostly a Death Eater (or Death Eater type) due to necessity (I mean ya gotta go with a winning team, am I right??). While I DO think Adam is naturally mean and an overall bad person, I also think he's been pretty misguided by how others have treated him (or his upbringing in this case) and has never really got to experience things from someone else's perspective to be able to judge things correctly. Like I said, he's pretty social and probably gets along with most people who treat him cool enough, he's just mostly been taught bad things that fed into his already naturally shitty personality and that has amplified it

Is probably still some kind of "dark wizard" anyway regardless because he wants that power and isn't afraid to go after it, even if it ends in regrets...SPEAKING OF WHICH-

Might face regrets/have a redemption arch out of it all?? Not that one just QUITS being a Death Eater...which is gonna be a lot of fun to explore on its own XD

He's also pretty good at dueling. He held his own in that epic battle with Alastor and only really got tripped up once he got too cocky and started getting sloppy on him. Even then he landed the winning blow that made Alastor retreat. Meanwhile I'm gonna say his magic mostly favors light/lightning spells because SUCK MY HOLY LIGHT FUCKERS!!" lol

His patronus is totally a dog and not a cool vicious dog but something cute and/or stupid like a golden retriever (and yes it's embarrassing when people find out what kind of dog it is because he'll admit to having a dog...but never specifies). This is because overall he is a big, dumb, loyal puppy lmao (he just fucking BITES sometimes)

That's about all I got for now! I'm now gonna start fucking around on wand specifics and get back to this later XD

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nautilusopus · 10 months ago

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Do you have any advice for anyone trying to get into writing?

Not really a motivation thing or anything, just for improvement. Your writing has captivated me, and I felt like it's better to get advice from an author that is reachable than reading a ton of articles online regurgitating the same steps.

Aw, thank you, I'm honoured!

Apologies if this is kind of a mess, I mostly went through stuff I come back to a lot that helps me. Also tumblr seems to have removed the ability to do indented bullets. Fucking great.

In General:

When I'm first starting out writing a story I'm excited about, I usually don't do things in order -- I'll instead pick one scene I can see extremely clearly and am super excited about, one of the things that made me want to write the story to begin with, and then build the entire outline out from there to set it up (what needs to happen to set the scene up exactly how I want it to be? How do I justify that stuff? What would happen afterwards that would add to the scene even more in retrospect?) This not only helps keep the energy going for parts of the story that might not necessarily be fun to plan, but will inherently cause you to start building a story that is either circumstantially or thematically building to something. It can be something as small as a single conversation but it should be the bit that you personally want to see realised most strongly.

On that note, people like when they can see foreshadowing! That's what it's there for! This has been said by other people plenty, but I'll restate it here: the audience potentially being able to piece together your twist after a while is not a failure in writing, it means you put information into a story that allowed them to engage with it and conveyed something that made sense.

I personally sometimes (but not always mostly due to laziness and because I do try to approach shit chronologically so I don't have to double back and do massive rewrites, also due to laziness) like to write big keynote moments of character arcs in full in advance once I have the whole plot more or less laid out. That way, I know what's coming emotionally speaking and can have characters start clearly building up to things, do stuff like plant specific phrases that come back in big ways or are recontextualised later on, and it makes the story feel more cohesive as a whole and helps the scene hit a whole lot harder when you do get to it. Like I said though I'm lazy and I also don't like creating more work for myself if I don't have to, and if by chance the story doesn't shake out the way I thought it would by the time I get to that moment then god is it a pain to rewrite that sort of thing.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Mostly I find it helps keep me focused on where it's going. It's a late stage thing though, I don't start doing this until I'm sure I know how the story will be laid out more or less chapter by chapter, which brings me to:

GO BACK AND CHECK IF YOU HAVE A MIDDLE OF YOUR STORY. ARE YOU SURE? GO BACK AND CHECK AGAIN. This is like the number one pitfall I see basically everywhere across any genre, both with fanfiction and professionally (and in movies always winds up manifesting in reviews as "the movie gets kind of aimless after a while/the third act kinda starts out of nowhere after a really slow part). People have an idea for a strong beginning, the rising action and the big dramatic moment when the stakes are raised, maybe a quiet moment in the middle reflecting on all the tension of the plot and how it's reflecting on the characters, a thing that sets off the end, probably an idea how it ends and how things resolve, et cetera -- and they will forget that at no point did they actually create any connective tissue between their plot development points. Travel! Character beats! The actual events in between big beat A and big beat B, no matter how barebones! Go back and check if you've made any!

As someone that writes a lot of heavily character-driven stuff I'm very biased here, but: in my opinion, if you have good, solid characters, they can carry even the most barebones dogshit story because they are the lenses that the audience is experiencing the world from and through, and whose actions are potentially shaping the course of the story, and of course who the reader is getting attached to. Conversely, even the richest, most lavishly detailed world and story is going to land with a thud if your characters aren't any good and don't have any more to them than making various political developments happen, because at that point you don't have a story with different elements interacting with each other to create events and tension, you have a lore wiki, which is not the same thing as a story. Maybe you could use that for a tabletop RPG, but people aren't necessarily gonna want to read it.

RELATED: JRRT was a linguist and historian first and a writer second. Lore is great and all and can help your world feel like it's a living breathing place, but think about if it's a good detail to include onscreen or not, or if it's just there to "flesh out the world". Stop to consider if this actually has a demonstrable effect on the things happening in front of the reader or not, and if anyone would notice if it were removed outright. Can some things be assumed? What might need to be explained?

Keep an eye on narrative voice versus character voice! If I stripped the dialogue tags from your story, could you still tell who was talking? Does everyone just talk like the narration? Like each other? Like you? Everyone is gonna sound like you at least a tiny bit because you're the one writing it, but at least try to keep an eye on how much you're doing that. It can be pretty boring to just listen to one guy talk the entire time across multiple mouths haha don't look at how long this post is getting shhhhhh

Any story (but especially horror, and especially especially cosmic horror), lives and dies by its suspension of disbelief. The rules don't need to be realistic because it is all made up, and they can be any rules you want, and if you establish them clearly then the audience will buy in as best they can because they want to engage with your story on its own terms (or they SHOULD grumble grumble but that's another discussion and not really something the author can control), but then once you've made them you need to stick to them, or when you do break them it should wind up meaning something.

Suspension of disbelief in horror or fantasy can be trickier, especially when it's something weird and the rules aren't even mechanically sound in their own setting. In that case, the important thing to preserve is emotional stakes the audience can buy into, about how this situation might feel to be in, or if there are any things in real life it might feel similar to. This one's more intuitive than you'd think. Sure, you might not know that the veil of reality is flimsy and all it would take to destroy it all is to get noticed by something much vaster than you could ever imagine; but you probably DO know what it's like to be one missed rent payment from losing everything and realising your safety was really all that never sound. I don't even flinch if someone's head explodes into gore in a movie, but I'll always wince and look away if someone has their fingers crushed or their eye pierced, because even though the violence is lesser I can imagine that happening to me and I don't like it one bit!

Horror can potentially struggle with this pretty badly. Unless you're writing a slasher where the point is to watch some dumb teens bite it, your movie won't actually be scary unless the audience can in some way feel endangered, and they won't be able to do that if what is going on is too disconnected from anything a human could experience. Writers tend to get fixated on making a Really Gross Scary Thing(TM) or Biggest Evilest Threat Evar(TM) and assuming their job is done.

There's no one right or wrong way to do something, but be aware that sometimes things tend to come up in stories a lot for a reason. The tools you have are just tools. Complaining a story has tropes in it is like complaining a tree is made of wood.

That said, if you're thinking of your story entirely in terms of which tropes you want to use, it may be time to take a step back and think about what you actually want to accomplish rather than mushing the same paste into the same holes for the 800th time (more on that later).

Dialogue. If it's something you struggle with, remember that chances are you're a person that knows how to talk, and so you inherently know how to create dialogue. The biggest pitfall I see is people overthinking it trying to "Write Dialogue in this Story" rather than just typing an idea the way they know inherently that it would be typed. If you wanna try and capture a much different voice, spend time listening to people -- and I mean really listening. People double back, correct themselves, trail off, change their train of thoughts in the middle, do more or less of these things when they're in a certain emotional state depending on their personality.

Frankly I'd spend time listening to real people anyway. Spend too much time online and characters wind up sounding like Twitter threads, or worst case scenario you wind up with perfectly articulated ideas and Therapy Speak. A character might not have the vocabulary you, someone who has been online for eighty to ninety years (est) would to convey specific ideas, and not everyone is perfectly self-aware about what they're saying. Someone's probably more likely to say "fuck you I had a bad day" than they are to go "gosh i dislike how much your own success reminds me of how my own mother held me to impossibly high standards so i have very high rejection sensitivity which is why i'm lashing out". Or, again, if someone does talk like that make it mean something. It could be a good example of someone either being insincere and going through keywords to shut someone up, or someone that's very socially awkward giving a rehearsed speech, and those are all potentially interesting ways to then take a story.

(Sidenote because I see this come up sometimes: Hate to single out a single genre here, but anime and by extent video games but mostly anime is a bad place to learn to write dialogue from -- if you're listening to a dub, they had to translate stuff from Japanese and then make it fit lip flaps on a screen, and if you're watching subs, not only were the subs translated but anime trends heavily towards melodrama and Japanese people typically do not speak that way.)

You gotta know the rules before you can break 'em! Read books. Actual books I mean, not just fanfic. Broaden your horizons. When you start breaking rules it will be because it's what you want to do.

Personal nitpicks, some fandom specific and some not. I'm aware some of these are basic but also you never know who might need to hear this stuff so:

Hentai is not a good place to learn about writing actual sex. It's a great place to learn about sex that is following pure porn rules, in which case go nuts and godspeed soldier, but unless you want your scene to come off as either unintentionally rapey or full of nonsensical leaps of moon logic when you're trying to write an otherwise somewhat grounded setting, you should probably read actual books meant for actual adults about fucking, or pull from your own experiences if you're able.

* This isn't advice but I want it known at this point I've seen at least three fanfics clearly written by a middle schooler that's never fucked before and honest-to-god genuinely seems to think some degree of omegaverse is how actual sex works. So that'll be interesting to encounter going forward. If you aren't committing to porn rules (there's that "the rules can be anything you want so long as they're internally consistent" bit again!) do research is my point.

If you started your character creation with their outfit and can tell me their star sign, bust measurements, the four shirts plus jacket plus socks plus shoes they're wearing, the kind of weapon they can summon, eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, height and weight, their agility score versus their magic score, and their favourite ice cream flavour, and yet you have one paragraph about "personality", your focus might not be in the right place and you are making an MMO character. That's fine for something you're going to be staring at the back of for 200 hours but maybe not for someone you're going to need to live inside the head of. Start with personality, and you can tailor all that fun back cover dossier stuff around who that person is and how it would inform the way they dress.

Bad child dialogue is my biggest pet peeve personally and I will immediately put a book down when I encounter it lol. A bigger portion of people are around children than you think and will notice if you've never interacted with a kid before. Children are not cavemen and do not talk like them. The gaps in their vocabulary tend to come from them having a limited amount of it and adapting new phrases into the few existing frameworks they have. This carries over to their psychology, by the way.

Specific to cosmic horror: you can't just make a Gross Thing, your horrors need actual motivations. Nobody cares how big of a squid you can invent, and going "uhhh it's so scary I don't have to bother can't describe it" can only work so many times and is not an excuse to at least not try to describe something. How it makes the characters feel, what the experience is like, whatever. Now, you don't ever have to tell the readers directly what the motivations of your old gods are, but you the writer should come up with some to shape their behaviour so the readers can see the inscrutable ghosts of clear patterned actions that almost make sense yet remain just outside human comprehension oooooooooo. Also readers can generally tell when that's missing and all you have is Large Squid Scary doing random gross shit so it's not an excuse to skimp.

Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. We have pronouns. We have context clues. We have sentence structures that convey what is going on to the reader. We have nouns. If you are going to constantly refer to your character as The Brunette it better be hugely massively goddamn significant that her hair is brown or it's gonna become clear real fast that you just ran out of ways to phrase things and it's gonna take people right out of the story. If the only way you can think of to describe your character in an intense emotional scene is "uhhh this is the one with the brown hair remember I hope you didn't forget" then that's code fucking red. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets.

And the two biggest bit of advice I can come up with for people trying to improve their craft that I give out every time:

1 Have a point. Have a clearly identified reason in your mind about what you want to accomplish with this story. This will help you get your thoughts in order when you are stuck, it will help you outline the story if you're not sure where you want it to go next, it will help other people troubleshoot with you if you aren't sure how to start solving a problem, it will help you make decisions about what and what not to include to help it feel complete, and it will help motivate you when you start to lose track of why you even started this project. Saying "well it's a Vampire AU and I want to do Hurt/Comfort with an ambiguous ending and a BAMF!Scrongus with Soft!Cromgle" doesn't tell me a damn thing, either as a reader OR as someone potentially trying to help you whip the thing into shape. That's a bit like asking, "How do I write a Cute yet Cool character?" like bitch I don't know it's your story there are a million ways to write this stuff and yes that is a real question I got asked once.

Instead, have an actual, identifiable goal that is personal to you, what you want to write, and what you have to say. That can be anything from "I have a lot of strong opinions about why gender is, across the breadth of experiences possible with human consciousness, a zero sum game that must be internally and deliberately engaged with before one is then able to determine their own relationship to it" to "oh man i love the idea of Mark from Accounts Receivable one day going apeshit and beating Jake from Auditing half to death with an office chair and the fallout that would generate and maybe also someone FINALLY FINALLY asks him for the first time 'hey dude are you okay do you wanna talk'" to "god it'd be so hot if this guy were bent over a pool table drooling onto the velvet and i am going to do everything in my power to facilitate that somehow". Either way, clear mission statement and goal that isn't just telling me what tags you're slapping on the finished product! If you have that kind of clarity of vision it will come across in your piece and resonate with people because it's a complete thought that the work is able to deliberately showcase, instead of just churning out Content™ that fits certain templates that are popular, even if you like said templates. What do you have to say? Why did this idea stick in your brain so hard you had to write it down and tell the world about it? What parts of it especially did you want to convey so badly? Show us!

2 Writing is vulnerability by proxy. Until we get the technology for brain uploading, you are only going to ever be you in your own head with your own thoughts, experiences, biases, and worldviews. If you think you can write something without exposing a lot of really revealing shit about yourself to an audience that notices it, perish that thought now. Quentin Tarantino and HP Lovecraft weren't slick about it and you won't be either. This is neither a bad thing or a good thing, it just is, and whether it affects the work for better or for worse is honestly dependent upon how you engage with that fact. I will say trying to back away from it generally leads to problems (unexamined prejudices showing up in stories, worldviews that it turns out most people don't share going stated simply as fact rather than being supported by the writing around it). It can also lead to a stronger story, though, if you're willing to engage with it. Engaging honestly with what scares you and why, what you find comforting, uplifting, upsetting, et cetera. All of these require vulnerability, and allowing other people to see that, and it's going to happen with or without your consent because you're the one writing the thing, so you may as well make peace with it and lean in. "But what if it's cringe" too late baby most things are cringe and that shouldn't be your focus. You are fighting a losing battle. We are all cringe. But we are free.

Hope this helps. I just know I've left half a sentence fragment in here that I said I'd come back to and then forgot oh god

#asks #Anonymous #spitegarbage #i will also add the obligatory 'execution is everything' here on the end

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batsplat · 8 days ago

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aliens’ aesthetic ranking

let's take it as read I have no taste. I also barely know what the word aesthetics means. I'm including a broad range of attributes like recognisable symbols, liveries + helmets, distinctiveness... recurring motifs, brand consistency, general vibes. what sponsors they happened to have and how they looked. personal bugbears like on-track recognisability (?). amount of variability. fun

1. valentino

this list does mostly reflect the philosophy of 'more is better'. pure maximalism. I also don't really care as much about whether things look 'good' or 'bad' but whether they are funny to me personally. valentino kind of clinches the first spot by default because he is just unambiguously doing the most. I'll say it: I like the yellow. I like the muted nice yellow he used to feature more and I like the fluorescent eyesore. it's bright and vivid and iconic and just kind of fun. AND it generally made him very easy to spot on the track, which is SUCH a plus point to me given how many races I've watched with him in them. it's probably for the best that in his actual career, valentino was generally shackled to having another base colour for him to then put yellow highlights on (rather than going full yellow) - and obviously the best combination here was all the yamaha stuff. objectively pleasing

he's gone through a lot of different eras and has a lot of different Bits. haircuts, symbolism, styling, fonts. (note: hair is something I am only mentioning with valentino because quite frankly it's not worth bringing up for any of the others, except maybe jorge. the other ones just kinda have 'generic men's haircuts' for the most part.) the rossifumi thing was cute, the lesbian era was strong, I like when he got plot significant haircuts (2003 brno hair dyeing which the commentators speculated were mind games, 2004 complete change-up of his look with the substantive curls, 2008 'time to get serious' buzz cut). 'the doctor' styling also personally works for me and the colourful font is fun. a lot of his styling until about the mid noughties was very children's cartoon in a way that didn't ALWAYS appeal to me but like. I love the Muchness of it. I love when valentino had two horrendously clashing shades of yellow during his nastro azurro honda days. the dumb 'WLF' stuff, with the W to escape sanction. baby's first counterculture. I love the turtles!! like the misano 2015 fish, there's just that slight self-effacing irony of you know... with the turtle, he's associating himself with a slow animal and it's got a cute story attached and he's got that dumb tattoo, it's all just got a fun vibe to it. all these stickers he's got on his bike with all his different lil symbols. there's an adolescent charm to a lot of valentino's branding that just adds to his appeal, like I want to roll my eyes over it in a vaguely fond way

plus he had a bunch of banger liveries and special helmets, that weren't part of his consistent 'aesthetic' per se but did just add to his general vibe and charm. I think probably my favourite very valentino-esque special liveries are valencia 2003 (incidentally the best the yellow has ever worked with the repsol orange), assen 2007, and catalunya 2008. for the special helmets, my personal faves off the top of my head are... mugello 2011 eyeball, misano 2020 viagra, mugello 2008 scream, mugello 2010 joker, misano 2013 'wish you were here', misano 2015 shark, misano 2010 clock. it's a good set

and I like the sun and the moon stuff!! cute bit of basic symbolism, it's fun and it's spawned a lot of lovely designs over the years. I don't MASSIVELY mind the minimalism that's crept into the picture here with some of these: I can admit that some of the simpler designs are quite nice... shout out to 2007 where you can kinda get into fun symbolism territory depending on whose perspective is foregrounded in photos

ymbolism goes brr. valentino also had a similar design around 2018-19 which was quite nice and classy, the black yamaha of 2019 worked well with it. but generally speaking I do prefer when the sun and the moon were a bit less minimalist and had more stuff going on, especially when they had faces. mostly a thing in his 125cc-250cc days, early 500cc. also no faces but one of the nicest sun + moon designs is what he was sporting in phillip island 2007

anyway. look. we could stick with this one for a while because obviously valentino had so so so much going on aesthetic-wise. I haven't even mentioned him doing his semi-regular doctor drag, how various celebrations played into his wider aesthetic sense, the chicken thing... there's a lot to get into here, way more than with the others, so I'm cutting myself off here for a general assessment. the whole aesthetic's recognisable + distinctive, there's a bunch of different fun recurring motifs, but there's also enough diversity of looks to keep things fresh. obviously they don't all work for me... I don't actually mind the ones that are just aggressively poor taste, like for instance the current vr46 livery makes me laugh every time I see it, I dislike valentino's output more when it's just a bit drab. 2002 'just some guy' era was kinda painful, the yellow plus repsol just... did not really work and he looked like Just Some Guy. also, while casey's little 'yellow has CORRUPTED the BRAND' bit is obviously silly, I will agree with him that the ducati era just did not work for valentino on any level. I don't even like the shade of the ducati back then, like it's just not red enough. troubling haircut situation. but to me those are the two main rough patches. I am pro buzz cut and I am pro sleazy sideburns and I am pro clashing shades of yellow. it's all good

2. jorge

given my previous position on maximalism, it shouldn't be a surprise that second place goes to the rider who has been doing the second most aesthetically. obviously this also existed in this fun space where it was... kinda inspired by valentino, kinda not... is he copying valentino or doing his own thing... trying to establish his own identity... I also unironically adore that a fair share of the jorge stuff makes a part of my soul cringe. I am thinking first and foremost of 'lorenzo's land', which I adore mainly because of how determinedly he stuck with that schtick over the years. look at him claiming his territory. dumbass

I feel similarly about the jump he does on the podiums, though I will say I am continually impressed how much elevation he achieved without ever fucking up the landing. I have to say I reckon I would have fallen off the podium at least once, not least because I can imagine riding a motorcycle for fifty minutes doesn't do great things for your sense of balance when you're walking again

the other big thing he had going on was the x-fuera thing, as is visible on the lorenzo's land logo and many of his helmets. I really like this!! it's original, it's a way of paying homage to his first victory (where he overtook the other riders 'around the outside', aka por fuera). my only mild quibble is I think it would've been good for him to... uh, how do I put this delicately. he should've overtaken more riders around the outside. like it's tough to do in motogp (though ironically the best overtake he's ever been involved in is casey overtaking him around the outside at laguna 2011) but idk. just my personal note. 2003 was a long time ago

then there's the glorious time in which chupa chups was sponsoring him (came back in 2019 for one more go) as the big sponsor on his helmet AND he was always sucking on a lollipop on podiums. which just added so so so much to his annoying brat energy and is infinitely superior to everyone having to hold those bloody energy drink cans these days. this to me is where capitalism peaked

another motif that's quite nice is the shark one which... this might have just been because he switched to a helmet company literally called 'shark' in 2016. though there was something quite nice and fitting about it, given that... I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think the first time anyone associated jorge with sharks was when valentino did his misano 2015 helmet design portraying jorge as the big bad shark? so as a fan of that particular dynamic, obviously I think it's very cute jorge leaned into this. then again, the shark was never a massive part of his branding, otherwise acosta presumably wouldn't have been so ready to nick it

in general, obviously jorge was another rider who like valentino took his branding very seriously - partly of course precisely because he'd watched how much valentino got out of it. he liked his symbolism, he associated a lot of meaning with replacing his '48' with the '99' in 2009, he put plenty of thought into this stuff. the lorenzo's land thing was part of him getting more into the spirit of celebrations generally in 2007, proper set pieces in the valentino mould. now obviously we're not going to go through those here, just like with valentino, but I do want to give a shout out to jorge's thing for body doubles. idk how I'd describe the 'aesthetics' of this beyond 'we don't have time to unpick all that', but it is a bit of a motif 2 me

and then, of course, there's the whole angel/devil thing he had going on. like the sun/moon stuff for valentino, this is all very basic dualism, the competitor who's both a good and a bad guy, bastard on track etc etc but like... it works, it's quite flexible, it's a nice design with the 99, no complaints. I also like that he changed it up for 2017 and was willing to have a bit of an aesthetic switch up when the time was right *squints at certain names further down this list* when he went for a two devils approach and ditched the angel

and the last thing I want to give him a shout out for - being a yamaha rider who decided in 2008 that he was going to have a highlight colour and that highlight colour was going to be Red. this counts as aesthetics to me.... I like his 2009 era asymmetric red/white shin area padding, but what I like most about it is that it is visibly very different from yellow. it means that despite jorge and valentino regularly fighting on the track (I mean not really given what the alien era was like but pretend they did) and riding for the same team, they were easily distinguishable at all times. it makes a difference!! good job for both of them!! hall of shame here goes to sete/valentino, who in 2004-05 rode for completely different manufacturers and were somehow still a nightmare to distinguish (even funnier because vale's 2004 literal teammate had a red livery). there's been plenty of teammates who are way too tricky to tell apart and we're heading for that situation again this year. but valentino and jorge were truly the platonic ideal for being easily distinguishable teammates. bless them

3. marc

confession time: I don't really like the repsol honda colours. I mean, first off, I think it suffers from overexposure. the liveries from like... 2003 to 2023 fundamentally look too similar to each other. maybe this is unfair because I don't judge yamaha from going from 'blue' in 2003 to 'still blue' now, but those liveries have changed more over the years!! google 2004 yamaha, 2010 yamaha and 2020 yamaha, like they've stagnated a bit in recent years but generally there's way more willingness to try out some different stuff. even ducati, whose only concept is 'what if a bike were red', has managed to change things up more. with honda... it's just that particular combination of orange and white and slightly darker orange that I have seen too much of by now. you'll note that I included valentino's 2003 valencia livery above, which to me is a glimpse into a better, kinder timeline where honda allowed itself to explore alternative ideas for what one can do with the colour orange. now I imagine repsol didn't want too much change for brand integrity reasons, but quite frankly I do not care. change your fucking livery, you guys win WAY too much to be this creatively bankrupt. also, would it kill you to rustle up a special livery? they genuinely did a great job when they had a gun to their head last year silverstone (albeit by reworking a livery from back when they had interesting liveries) so apparently it's possible. come on

the reason I bring this up here is that marc's aesthetics have been so synonymous with honda for so long that like... when I close my eyes and picture 'marc marquez aesthetic', I do see a respol honda bike. which in a way isn't ideal because obviously there are quite a lot of other honda riders, including literally every other rider on this list. but like... he was synonymous with the brand for a long while there. so it is worth mentioning that I don't particularly like the brand. I have nothing against orange, I think orange is a perfectly nice colour. I am sick of seeing repsol orange. it also doesn't help that marc's OTHER brand he's synonymous with is RED BULL which is like... listen, I don't HATE the red bull branding per se, I regularly see photos of laguna seca where it's got the bulls painted in big on things in the background and I go 'huh that actually looks quite good'. but this is another one where in motorsports, I think we've all seen more than enough red bull branding. and (prior to this year) it's just so bloody prominent on all of marc's stuff

obviously the main thing marc has got going for him in terms of recognisable symbolism is the ant thing. he's also got a thunder-related nickname but like... he's never really leaned into it as far as I can remember, so it's a bit of a dud to me. the ant stuff is nice!! it's got the same basic appeal as the turtle thing in terms of 'imagine if a non-threatening thing were actually winning everything'. it plays into marc's whole thing of emphasising how short he is, which I always found kinda funny given he spent much of his premier class stint with the one teammate he was decisively taller than. and also like... there's really only one alien who has more than two cm on him, plus he's taller than dovi. but it's still His Thing and I support riders having Things. when you google 'marc marquez ant', you get this --

-- which I quite like but also... does he ever actually use this? has he ever worn anything with this logo? I would support it if he did, but also this seems more of a fan thing than it does a marc thing. which to me is a shame. but in the spirit of brand integrity, I do support the actual ant helmets he's sported over the years. generally quite classy with colours that compliment the horrendously familiar repsol colours well

idk I don't have much to say about these. they look nice. I don't need every rider to go all in on the cutesy cartoon style, though I wish marc did SOME other stuff with the whole ant thing. like it is quite a basic ant. at first glance that could easily be a spider

I do have a bone to pick with some of his other helmet designs. first off, as a rule I don't like his american helmets

again this might just be a lack of taste thing, but I find all of these quite... you know. they're fine. they're helmets. to me they look quite messy in quite uninteresting ways. generic. you're in america so you've got a bunch of stars on your helmet. yay

the catalunya helmet situation is way better:

though it does have to be said. the divorce drama did also generally cause a bit of a hit on marc's helmet quality post-2015. for one thing, I do not want to see multiple years listed next to a special helmet. come up with a new one!! power up is particularly egregious here because the design was just never that interesting, like it looks like just another sponsor logo

the gresini era I have no real thoughts about because in all honesty I've never massively vibed with this era of gresini liveries in terms of colour, but I like what they do (or did, apparently) with the red stripes forming continuity between rider and bike. and that worked with marc's preference for the colour red for his highlights. crucially I could usually tell quite easily where he was on the track, which I'm generally a fan of and will very much end this season

which. speaking of. I can and will judge marc for what he's gone for with this entire red-on-red situation with his number and helmet --

-- first of all. it's kind of boring. second of all it's a bit of a visibility nightmare. pecco at least has gone for a black number on his bike (deeply necessary given how '63' and '93' are already way too similar) but that's like... it's still going to be exhausting, especially if they've both gone for vaguely reddish helmets. I would've put it into their contracts they need to have completely different helmet colours, make one of them wear green for all I care. idk at this point, just choose a different colour that isn't red. choose the bloody repsol orange to reverse what you were doing back at honda, pay tribute to your roots or some shit. this is too much red. I appreciated the red testing leathers in a sort of 'well this is horrendously tacky' way - very much cheap porn vibes which suits marc well. but this is not that red. this is just... ducati red, it's also all quite dark and threatens to be drab. get a brighter highlight colour. looking forward to a lot of squinting at race starts this year

4. dani

we are getting into the 'what aesthetic' part of the ranking. I have already made my feelings on the whole repsol colour situation clear, and unfortunately for dani.... he was at that team for his entire stint as a full-time motogp rider. thirteen years of essentially identical liveries. the only fun livery during that time I can remember is aragon 2011

casey disliked this livery btw. we'll get to him in a moment

dani grabbing fourth place in this list is basically solely down to his 'little samurai' branding bailing him out. it's something he kept returning to in his career so it very much qualifies as a recurring motif, he does a celebration with a sword, he talks about how much he'd like to have swords in interviews... it's got a long history, he's already been doing some variation of it since his lower class title-winning days (very cute shirts with the lil guy with the sword).... he's got the recognisable branding that is featured on his pit board, on merch, on helmets. it's his thing!! I'm pro having a thing. also obviously the 'little' thing, in a way he's so synonymous with his height that it IS a big part of his like... brand. he's short, that's his thing. but he's also dangerous. hence the samurai

and ofc he's talked about the nickname in interviews, why he wants to adopt the 'spirit' of the samurai, general affinity for japanese culture which is just a bit of a thing in motogp - the weeb sport - so he's also talked about that stuff... I also liked this helmet, just quite nicely designed

another critique I have to get off my chest... given the remarkably small number of times marc and dani had any sort of on-track confrontation, at the end of the day it ended up being kinda irrelevant.... but real hall of shame territory for both of them to have white numbers and no heavy use of highlight colours. every single year. (this is also why I don't understand why marc is so committed to a red number NOW, like you didn't even have one during your honda years.) at least casey's number was in a different colour - though an actual highlight colour would have also made that teammate pairing easier to distinguish - but the marc and dani situation was just egregious. you look the same

um. not much more to say than that. nothing offensively bad going on with dani's branding and again, I am very pro him having a Thing. I am also pro the thing. but it's also just the one thing and apart from that, he really was mostly associated with those repsol honda colours. which, as we've established, simply always look the same. shame

5. casey

ah, casey. well. the best thing you can say in casey's defence is that he wasn't really trying. he kinda just rejected the idea of that sort of outreach work. above the idea of recognisable branding. it's like the thing where he was kinda baffled by the idea of europeans 'celebrating' their 'victories'... he just didn't really like engaging with the commercial elements of the sport, which extended to not doing much on the symbolism front

casey's one bit of consistent branding can be summed up as 'left his home country at age fourteen and yearns after a simpler, less stressful time that he expresses in this extremely generic, non-specific patriotism'. it's like a way of expressing he's perma-homesick - for a country he has in reality acquired a lot of distance to. the only australian stuff that actually gets included in the branding is 1) the australian flag, and 2) kangaroos

this is a four year old's understanding of australia. it's extremely vague and regionally non-specific - compare and contrast to marc and especially valentino's deep connection to and identification with their home town. there you have an actual sense of PLACE that forms the bedrock of any patriotic affiliation, rather than a generic link to a massive landmass. australia is a big country and yet casey's just kind of stuck associating with the whole thing. as far as I can tell from his autobiography, it's also fair to say kangaroos did not play a particularly prominent role in his childhood. it's as if he's saying his one character trait is 'australian' - particularly dumb given he wasn't the only australian rider on the grid (cf vermeulen who has basically zero australian branding but did model himself after his BRITISH racing hero) and australia had another very recent premier class champion (some bloke called doohan who apparently won five of the things)

to some extent it's normal that when you're living in a place where you know almost nobody of the same nationality, suddenly your nationality becomes a way more salient trait. but obviously casey's biography and psychology has made this rather extreme, where defining himself against the europeans he had so many issues with was a big priority. which is reflected in his branding. unfortunately it is also very boring. the colours 'red white and blue' have thanks to historical british overenthusiasm found their way onto rather a lot of flags - which means that if I saw his helmet without context, 'australian' probably isn't even where my mind would go first. I don't necessarily mind the design of his helmets and his number, but I also just don't have particularly strong feelings about them either way. the kangaroo in the logo is cute enough I suppose, but it's also the only thing he's doing with the kangaroo

in casey's ducati era, not only was he blessed with generally quite nice looking bikes in quite nice looking colours, but he also got pretty lucky with the aesthetics of his sponsors. obviously I'm a big fan of the alice eye popping up regularly on both team kits and around circuits, but I also like whatever sponsor the barcode-type stripes belong to. they pop up on casey's caps too. and in general... I mean, he just sort of hit the aesthetic jackpot with the valentino rivalry. I haven't ranked him up for this because it's so completely not his own doing... or, I mean, I suppose it kinda is given he was probably the only guy who would've been in a championship fight on the red bike. in any case, you do just have to say this was aesthetically kinda peak as far as rivalries go

in general, aesthetically casey was the beneficiary of circumstance. the valentino rivalry just Looked Good because having a red team and a blue team is kind of ideal, and valentino's busier aesthetic contrasted quite nicely with casey's simpler faring. valentino was also tossing out descriptors like 'god' and 'devil' and 'demon' in casey's direction with reasonable regularity - which, while never obviously getting integrated into any branding, to Me contributes to the Vibe. you've got valentino's sun/moon stuff happening in casey's vicinity, you've got the nicely placed alice eyes adding a certain je ne sais quoi to some photos

am I allowed to mention valentino's name on casey's 2007 championship shirt as one of casey's heroes? important aesthetics In My Opinion. I'd also be remiss not to mention casey's favourite livery, the 2009 phillip island one. I'm gonna be honest, when I first saw this one I was kinda like. it's fine. not sure what the fuss is about. partly because I feel noughties motogp had a few too many white special liveries, so it just kinda felt like One More of those. but I suppose it is the nicest of those liveries, I do like it, it's nice and classy and I'm glad casey loved it ig. off the bike and on the podium celebrations, the white leathers with red highlights really do look quite lovely

though, as previously mentioned, he disliked the fun cute aragon 2011 livery. because he needs to be forcibly reconnected with his sense of whimsy. which brings us to the repsol honda era... a vibes collapse in many ways, across the premier class really. 2011 is a bad casey year - I mean, it's a good casey year in that he won a lot and was generally happy, but it's a bad casey year in that it's in some ways his dullest season in the premier class. (excepting jerez, which was deeply necessary to inject some narrative juice into proceedings.) and this vibes-shortage is reflected in his aesthetics. again, I think at this point my feelings on the respol honda liveries are fairly clear, but it did just take something from the ducati casey charm... also he was flirting with too much facial hair in both those years, making him susceptible to Just Some Guy-territory. the kindest thing I can say is that his gloves in 2012 were quite nice

#i was gonna say marc should have sachsenring special helmets but given what his cota ones look like it's probably fine #//#brr brr #alien tag #batsplat responds #this is the kind of dumb long post that really forms the bedrock of this blog

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inventors-fair · 4 months ago

Text

Second Wind: Hope Contest Runners-Up

And our runners-up this week are @bergdg, @bread-into-toast, and @piccadilly-blue!

@bergdg — Cursemute

I won't call this a strictly better Teferi's Protection, but it's not too far off, as evidenced by the second two modes. You already know that, though, and you don't need me to tell you. Modal hope is just what we need, though, and wow, that first mode is even still powerful in itself. Getting to just straight-up slam a creature out of existence is pretty valuable even at rare, and in a format where there's kinda implied to be curses, you got some crazy stuff going on. A one-turn you-can't-lose-pretty-much card is gonna be popular with the folks it's already popular with, and with that precedent, that's all that we need, right?

I had honestly forgotten if there was a Cursemute card already depicted, but I know that there were a few cards from Avacyn's Funky Fun Time set that depicted various moments. I'm in the camp that there could be a boardwipe involved. I'm also in the camp that as more of a retelling kind of card, this does the job as good as it needs to and then some. Fateful Hour, despite being...you know, Fateful Hour, has enough application that this card's won me over on the hope of that. Everyone wants to make FH work, but nobody wants to get below five life. Ain't that a kick in the head?

@bread-into-toast — Reflective Exit

I think that it's right about now in the commentary haze that I realize just how much white there was in this contest. Not that I didn't specifically ask for hopeful/optimistic cards, but wow, there was a lot. I'm glad that weird cards like this are here as well. Sometimes we get an idea that, having played with similar concepts... I'll just say that I know it seems like it works well and honestly this is probably one of the best applications of it. Knowing me, I would have one mana and my opponent would cast a precombat killspell that would leave me at lethal to swings even if I used the exit to save my own dude. BUT. That's the worst-case scenario, and we're here to talk about HOPE.

Yeah, no, this card's great to me. I love this kind of stuff, seriously, I love the gameplay of bouncing and replaying and being in your own little world for a time until you can go nuts and rush in having controlled the board. In terms of flavor, I think I honestly don't need the AD with what you've got here. I recognize the shard, I recognize the goblins as goblins, and I only needed a tiny bit of context overall because your mechanics and flavor did a perfect job of explaining what you're about. There's hope to be had in a brief exit, and even if things ends up not going one's way on the board, we have our brief respite, the knowledge that we kept at least one person safe from harm.

@piccadilly-blue — Archangel's Radiant Feather

Not gonna lie to you, cap'n—the flavor text is a little bit goofy to me. That's really the only thing that's goofin' it, though, because this card's so on-point with what it wants to do that I'd like to commend it. The strict mana cost implies that you want to be deep in the color, and also the ability to recast your angels needs a target—so guess what you're playing if you open this card? That's right, you're in the mono-white pile of core-set wannabes. Gaining life is excellent and that alone would make people consider it, I feel. The wording as it is instantly makes me remember Chandra, Torch of Defiance, and I'm super down for that strictness. Gotta have the restrictions.

Maybe it's that heavy-handedness that gives me the "yeah, I get it" when it comes to the actual hope part of this card. I honestly thought that it was talking about Radiant, the character, or whatever her name was—that Boros one, yeah? But no, it's about angels in general, and I do wish there had been either a bit more specificity or a bit more subtlety there. Maybe more subtlety than anything. The blessing and the ability to rekindle an angel is certainly a sign of hope, so that all checks out with the mechanics, and I would absolutely play with this card. Heh, the Clue typing... I like how, in order to "solve" your clue, there has to be an Angel to bring back. No blessings without someone to bestow them, I suppose.

While you're reading this, I'm at a wedding. A nerd wedding! Commentary will be up later tonight once I get my act together. @abelzumi

#mtg #magic the gathering #custom magic card #inventor's fair #commentary #runners up #hope contest

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kingshimura4872 · 1 year ago

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Elan

A/N: Howdy hoe, here we go.

Its a blast from the past: It's from 2022!

This'll be fun to see where it goes. I never finished it, but maybe I can touch it up.

____________

Pairings: None (I don't believe)

Warnings: Overall, kinda heavy, very traumatized reader, etc

Word Count: 2K

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"Second years, settle down. I'm sure you've heard since last week, but for morality's sake, let's gloss over it. Any moment now, we will be receiving a new student. She came from a school closer to Japan's outskirts. I'll let her introduce herself, but be kind. I've been told she doesn't like being crowded so please, respect that." Aizawa, a tall man with black shoulder length hair slowly explained. As his voice traveled across the room, his students all shut their voices off to take in the information.

"She will sit next to Bakugou in the empty seat. Jirou, I appreciate you being generous and taking the seat in the back so that she can be closer to the front." He continued.

"Of course. Gotta be welcoming, y'know?" Jirou, a short purple haired woman replied with a smile.

A knock was heard on the door, catching everyone's attention.

"Come in." Aizawa called.

The door slid open and two figures stood in the doorway - Pro Hero: All Might, and you. You held your hands together in front of you, head and gaze to the floor, feet neatly together and facing forward.

"Ah. All Might. Come in, come in."

All Might did so, stopping a few steps in when you didn't move an inch.

"O-Oh. You too, come on in." The blonde hero smiled, holding his hand out. You did as told, silently stepping in and standing by the door. You assumed the prior stance you had, keeping your gaze down.

"Alright class, this is our new transfer. Why don't you give her a warm welcome?" Aizawa asked, not noticing your fearful jump as everyone began saying their hello's rather loudly to you. All you did in response was a simple bow.

All Might slowly leaned down by you, speaking softly. "Do you want to introduce yourself? Or if you don't want to, I can help out."

You slowly took a small glance at him, realizing he was sincere and quietly pointed to him. He took the message and nodded, standing back straight and looking towards the class.

"Class, this is Young (L/N) (Y/N). She will be your new classmate from now on." He beamed. A large but kind-hearted hand placed itself on your shoulder as he explained how you would be with them until you graduated and got your hero license. All the while you kept your sights to the tile flooring and how your uniform shoes reflected the light from the ceiling.

"(Y/N), why don't you take your seat next to Bakugou. Bakugou, would you raise your hand for her?" Aizawa suddenly began, startling you as you had begun to space off. You straightened your back, taking a small glance to look for the person he talked about. You saw a spiky ash blonde haired boy lazily raise his hand for a moment then plop it back down on his desk, rolling his eyes in the process. You swallowed and looked back to All Might for guidance.

"Go on. It's alright." He encouraged. You nodded lightly and padded across the room, placing the bag you'd been wearing on your shoulder off and under the desk. You pulled all your hair over your shoulder and sat down in the seat, hands cupped in your lap and head down like before. The class took turns swapping gazes between your small, frail demeanor and the two adults who were now whispering to one another while turned away from the class. After a minute or two of quiet conversation, they exchanged nods and All Might turned to walk away. You watched from behind your hair as he waved to you and left the classroom, leaving you by yourself. You were now surrounded by a crowd of strangers, unaware of what they would be able to do.

"Now, as long as she's okay with it, and she can answer to her own will, you all may take turns asking a few questions if you so wish. But just know we'll begin class soon." Aizawa finally ordered, watching you from the podium. You looked to him and he nodded, realizing why he added that second part to the sentence. You slightly squirmed in your seat, turning around slowly to see a few students with raised hands. You slowly pointed to a happy looking girl with short brown hair and pinkish circles on her cheeks.

"Uhm, hi. My name is Uraraka!" She smiled. "So, what brings you to U.A?"

You looked down at your hands, mumbling just loud enough for them to hear. "I…I wanna help people. I don't want people to constantly live in fear…"

Satisfied with your answer, she nodded and sat back, allowing you to pick your next student. You did your best to calm your already shaky nerves and pointed to another student - A cheerful red head with spiky hair and shark-like teeth. He looks like he could shred you to bits if he felt like it.

"Why change schools so suddenly? Did you not like your old one? S-Sorry if that's a little personal." He questioned, laughing nervously at the last bit. Your skin went a little pale as memories of your school flushed through your mind. You began trembling a little and shook your head to pull yourself from the void you were about to fall into.

"U-Uhm… It… It got s-shut down…" You finally answered, not realizing you'd been sitting in silence for about a minute and a half.

"I got a question for ya." A louder voice hissed, causing you to turn around a little fast. It was the blonde - Bakugou.

"What's so special about you that they let you in so late?" He huffed, leaning back in his chair. You frowned at the question and shrunk back. "I…I-I don't know… All Might said it'd be a nice school 'n stuff… I trust him, so-"

"So you got in just 'cause All Might said you could?" He cut in. He let out a sharp hiss as the scarf hanging from Aizawa's neck whipped toward him and whacked him on the head.

"Don't be rude." The teacher scolded.

Your lip quivered as you hid your features behind your hair again. Aizawa sighed, annoyed at Bakugou. "I think that's all for questions today. Let's get on with today's lesson and we'll move on from there."

You turned forward in your seat, reaching into the pocket of your blazer and pulling out a small stress toy, fiddling with it frantically to calm down. The voice of the teacher was drowned out by a loud droning in your ear. You desperately began biting at the loose skin on your bottom lip and sratching quietly at the toy as the noise got louder. Your toes curled inside of your shoes and your knees pressed harshly against one another. You took shallow, shaky breaths, each feeling shorter as time went on.

_________________________

You walked behind Aizawa, almost like a lost puppy as he made his way down the hallway. He took a couple turns, glancing back every now and then to make sure you were still there.

"Ah. Here we are. This is going to be your dorm. We made sure to change the door so that you can lock it from the inside and outside. Here." He explained, pulling a pair of three keys on a small ring out of his pocket and placing it in your hand. You nodded, holding them securely.

"And don't worry about anyone coming in unannounced. Everyone in my class, no matter how rowdy, knows to knock first." He continued.

"All Might works here and Hawks will occasionally visit you to check up on you, so if you need me to find either of them for you, don't hesitate to ask. This is a safe place for you." He leaned down to be face level with you, pulling something else from inside his large scarf. A life sized black cat plushie. He held it out for you, watching as your eyes lit up just a bit and you took it in your arms. "To help you get a little more comfortable. Its yours now, so do whatever you want with it.

"It…D-Doesn't have cameras in it, does it?" You asked quietly. He shook his head, which calmed you a bit. You hugged it close and bowed to him. "Thank you…"

"Of course. If you need something, I'll be in my office and you already know where that is. If you don't want to leave here, the students will be more than willing to help out. I'll leave you to get used to the room." He concluded, giving the top of your head a light pat and walking back the way you both had come before. You slowly reached out to the door and turned the brass knob, pushing the door open and stepping inside. You shut the door and took in your surroundings. There was a bed in the right corner already made neatly, a desk parallel to it against the left wall, a trash bin on the floor beside the desk, an open closet on the other side of the desk, a dresser by the other corner of the right wall, a large gray circular rug sat in the middle of the floor and a sliding glass door leading to a balcony directly in front of you. You set the cat on your new bed and tested each of the three keys on your door, locking it, jostling it a bit, then unlocking it to test the next one. You took two off of the key ring, placing the untouched one in your school bag, one in a drawer in your desk, and one in the corner of one of your dresser drawers. You placed the bag at the foot of the bed and glanced at the curtains. They were a soft purple-ish color, not completely opaque, but not seethrough in the slightest. It could allow enough of the sunlight in without exposing you to nosy onlookers. You opened one of the curtains and looked at the lock on the door handle. It pushed close and had a small nub on it that you twisted to lock and unlock. You tested it out a few times, locking it and pulling the door a few times to make sure it was secure. After confirming that it was safe enough, you unlocked it and opened the door, stepping onto the balcony and into the light of the now setting sun. It was around five-thirty by now and evening time. You noticed that there were a row of balconies beside you and across. You didn't exactly like how close the adjacent balconies were, but you knew the doors were safe. You eventually became entranced in the sun. The glossy red-orange color and lighter oranges surrounding it made the sky light up in pink-ish tones, some clouds even turning purple. You loved the sky. It felt like freedom to you - true freedom. You tucked a few strands of hair behind your ear subconsciously, glancing over when you sensed movement from across from you. You took a step back, realizing someone had spotted you and was making their way to their balcony to get to you. You swallowed, attempting to hold your ground.

"Oh! It is you! That's so cool, nice to see you again!" The somewhat familiar voice cheered. It was the redhead boy from earlier. You sheepishly waved.

"O-Oh, sorry, was I interrupting something?" He asked, taking a precautionary step back.

You slowly shook your head, pointing to the setting sun. "S-Sunset…" You uttered. He looked at where you pointed and smiled. "Oh. Yeah, we get the best sunsets here. It really puts life on hold, y'know?"

"Yeah… It tells you you're truly free…" You hummed, gently leaning against the railing as you once again got lost in the beauty of the sunset. He looked over at you for a moment and smiled more as the two of you just sat there in the warm embrace of the sun.

#anime #anime x reader #bnha x reader #bnha x y/n #bnha x you #mha x reader #mha x y/n #mha x you #my hero academia

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freshlybakedspiderbread · 1 year ago

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Chimata if you feel like it!

General opinion/How much I care about them: i dont remember if it was really soon after or if it took some time for it all to click, but i've really come to adore all of th18's cast, and that includes that Chimata who has one of the best designs ever and I am being completely sincere! 🌈 i love everything about her. Her concept as a god of markets and how that was clearly inspired by real life doujin conventions yet still making it make sense in the setting of touhou, and her personal journey of rising back up to power thanks to the really complicated connection she's struck up with Megumu is so compelling and instantly had me and so many other fans running hamster wheels in our brains for years to come...

Also the majority of her dialogue is just really really funny, between bragging about how amazing markets are (She's right) or getting so offended when the player characters insult her card... She's kind of a mess even moreso than the usual touhou character, and that she's also a final boss and super powerful god makes a fun contrast i like a lot.

A ship I love: the obvious one is chimata/megumu though its a bit weird to talk about in this context because personally what i love about the marketeer quartet polycule is how Megumu is at the center and how the other three reflect and bring out different aspects of her (Although at the same time i also think Tsukasa can easily be the 'center' pov if needed to, because they all think the scheming tube fox is cute!). Going into detail on all that would probably steer the topic away from Chimata too much so i'll just say for now that I think Chimata and Megumu, without either really meaning to, brought the 'best' out of each other. Its just that their 'best' in this case meant giving them the means and confidence to take everything for themselves 😄

(also kind of a tangent but ive also always kinda thought megumu/chimata is similar in superficial ways to how i see yachie/keiki from just the previous game maybe with the dynamics reversed a little. But then following on that thought, momoyo is kinda similar to saki, and then i have no choice but to say tsukasa like some inverse mayumi... Its just nonsense but its funny to me think about)

A non-romantic relationship that I love: as of right now, she's gotta be reeeeeally ticked at Marisa right? Chimata had gotten over that whole thing of attacking her market as a robber and turning her bedridden, but then the stuff with the black markets had Marisa being trusted to stop them and then putting it off to enjoy collecting cards instead 😂

But despite all of that, I think Chimata ultimately would still acknowledge that avariciously human spirit which is vital in those who seek to do exchange, and will probably take Marisa off her personal market banlist eventually....

The NOTP: I actually think Chimata would get along surprisingly well with Momoyo but ive no desire to make something romantic out of it. although... maybe if megumu was somehow their driving motivation???

My biggest headcanon about them: i actually dont have anything too substantial this moment if only because her actual canon has been already so substantial and fulfilling... Though i think after becoming bedridden after UM's ending, she was resting at Megumu's place and was helping herself to the fridge and stuff without any hesitation or remorse 😊

An idea for a fanfiction I would like to write/read about them: well i'll just say for now that i definitely want to do a specific story featuring the market quartet sometime.

anyhow, something about her makes me feel like shes a prime candidate for those AUs where she swaps roles with another character (like megumu or kanako) yet somehow retains mostly the exact same personality and mannerisms.

Something that makes me think of them: i will always think of chimata now whenever i purchase goods and services, and remember to thank her for keeping me alive 😊

#tenkyuu chimata #amemenojaku #also ive liked her boss theme from the beginning and apparently thats not a popular opinion i dont think? well i like it a lot 🎵

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parksprout · 2 months ago

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Sprout Journal 12/14/24

I'm going to stop apologizing to myself for these delayed journal entries. I think I've just got to acknowledge that like... life isn't moving as quickly as it was when I started these. The emotions I was experiencing everyday that I was expressing through those earlier entries were rapidly evolving, complex, intense emotions that needed immediate expression or else they might've crippled me. Life isn't moving nearly as fast nowadays as it was at the end of October through the first half of November - I'm basically in emotional stasis.

Maybe emotional stasis isn't the best phrase! I am certainly feeling a variety of emotions, attitudes, and opinions every day. I'm still wearing many faces and using every voice I have. But most of my internal conflicts have been resolved; I know what I want, I understand where life's at and I know who I am. That doesn't mean that my problems are gone, but rather it means that I'm relatively confident that I'm doing the best that I can to solve my problems and answer these questions I have. I guess that even though I want my life to change from it's current spot, I'm not necessarily unhappy either. To quote the person at the heart of the biggest question in my life I'm doing okay "because we're fine". I won't pretend like the most painful wound isn't my relationship woes. Yeah. It's still shitty. But frankly there's not much else I can do at this exact moment other than continue what I have been doing since I met Aaron in the first place. Treat them with the love and kindness that they deserve, enjoy my time in their company, and seek the right admixture of his happiness and mine. I want him to be my boyfriend, my girlfriend, my partner, whatever they feel any particular day but... at this moment I have to settle for them being my very close friend. It hurts sometimes explicitly because it is fine, because I am seemingly on the precipice of something grander than my lot with them but... to be as nonchalant as I can be it's straight up whatever, I can't change it unless they want to change it.

I have answered a lot of questions about myself recently through reflection at least. I tried to gaslight myself into thinking I could be interested in other people if I tried to be, but after a conversation with a mutual friend of me n' Aaron's I realized just how untrue that is. I'm frankly not interested in other people. I don't need a relationship to be happy, and the void left in my heart isn't one that could be filled by anyone else. It's kinda fortunate not really being interested in any other romance, though. It means that there's less places to direct my energy, I can feel okay when I reject people and not have to worry that I might be missing out; it's only missing out if I wanna participate in the first place. So that's nice y'know? It's not that I need a relationship in general, it's that if I'm going to have anyone? I want it to be Aaron. They're the person I see as my other half, the person who balances my bad and I have the most fun directing my good towards. The person that I see myself happiest with and want to imagine a future together, with. I've also been reflecting on the way that I think about them as well and... I'll admit that at one point in our relationship, probably like eight? Ten months ago? I was almost obsessive (I was super lonely, man) but I wouldn't call myself anything close to that now. I text them a lot, and I get very excited to talk to them, but in those moments in which we're not talking I'm not dysfunctional like I was at one point. I don't need them to be omnipresent in my life in order for me to be happy, I just have the most fun when they're around. I think that's a healthier mentality than I've ever had about them, or frankly about any other relationship. I wish I had achieved this status a little bit earlier, though. I would've been a better partner to them had I not been so needy, and frankly it's something that I need to work hard on to prevent both now as their friend (ToT hate saying that) and in the future if we ever start dating again. I also think that it's good that I'm finding and acknowledging these flaws in my thought processes and emotions, I want to continue working on: patience (like being okay with them taking their time to reply to me & specific messages, making complex and important decisions, or finding time to spend together), confidence in myself/building a lack of need for encouragement, individuality and surely more too. I think that if we start ever again, our relationship needs to look more like how it does now than it did then. We need to have time apart every day, we need to have our private spaces online, we need to be able to exist separate and be casual about our relationship. That's one thing that I always lacked when we were together was the ability to be casual, I got too serious too fast too young and too earnestly.

We really are cool lately, though. I'm doing a lot better when it comes to being annoying, I think. I text them about almost everything happening in my life but like... I don't think that Aaron minds? They know that they're my best friend regardless of what's going on, and I never add that additional pressure of needing them to respond like I used to. We're still talking about most things happening in our lives, but frankly I don't think that either of us have the most going on right now so things are a bit drier than I would like! It's moments when we're dry like that I think I miss them the most, though, because what I would always want when we weren't texting as much due to having little to say would be to call and have fun together playing a game, watching shows, or even just doing parallel hobbies while being able to hear each other. That was always the most fun, just vibing out together super casually without an end goal in mind. There's some stuff that we're actually better at now than we were before haha. Like saying hi to each other's friends, being honest about feelings, giving each other space (really just me giving Aaron space lmaooo), and this might sound weird but I think I've been more comfortable showing Aaron parts of my body (think SFW y'all) that I wasn't really confident in showing before. We have fun talking and I know that because Aaron has no obligation to me, he's only texting me because he actually wants to, not because he's afraid of hurting my feelings with his absence. Or at least I hope that's the case.

We're doing good in most ways. I'm treating them better and myself, too. My desire to date them hasn't diminished even a little, though, and if anything I've only been dreaming more. There's a couple of opportunities I've been made aware of near where they live that I want to capitalize on, but I still feel like a weirdo thinking about moving to their city without being their partner. I know that they trust me and that they know I'm not some crazy ex who would be moving out there to stalk them, but I still feel like a freak for dreaming about places nearby. I want to apply to the University system in their state to pursue my masters degree, and the campus nearest to them is one of the options for a field school I was interested in. I want so badly to leave the place I live now, but it feels wrong that so many of my dreams have become wrapped up in a place that they occupy. Like what am I supposed to do if I end up living there? It feels super frustrating considering isolating myself from a place where my personal goals might be more achievable but I think I might have to, like the discomfort of potentially running into them when we aren't a couple is something I genuinely have to factor. I guess this is what happens when you date someone sometimes. You build these dreams and when the relationship ends, all of the sudden you have to reevaluate everything down to the foundation. Unfortunately I have reevaluated and it looks like many of the best options for my career and safety as a queen individual still push me in their direction. I have a lot of time to decide on whether or not to transfer schools, where to live during my career and what we'll look like in the future, though. I just have to be patient, y'know? It's funny, I wonder if I would've ever researched that school so much, learned so much about their city, realized how badly I yearn to live somewhere like that if I hadn't met them? Would I be forever content living in bum ass Ohio if they weren't the person I love most? I've always dreamed of moving away but... are they the reason it's that place that draws me in the most? Maybe in time as I continue reassessing myself and my future I'll find somewhere that interests me more, but maybe I won't?

There's been a lot of other stress in my life besides just the typical love life situation, though.

First of all it's been exam season at school, which unfortunately I've been probably the least prepared for I've been out of any exam season I've lived through. This year was a tough one, y'all, but I've kinda kicked ass at it despite my fears otherwise. I've gotten back three out of four of my classes final grades, and thus far it's looking nice. In Anthropology I got an A for my final grade, in creative writing I got an A as well. In Spanish I performed very poorly on the exam but I'm still finishing the class with a B as my final grade! Archaeology is the last course that hasn't updated my final grade, I hope the professor does soon!!! Rah!!!! I'm kinda nervous about that class because I could technically fail. If I get a 3/30 or below on the final exam I fail the course which like.. feels unlikely but it even being possible makes me nervous. I'm such a goody-two-shoes academically, I can't accept failure and I've never really experienced pure educational inadequacies. My final project for creative writing got some accolades from the professor. He said that he could tell that I was experiencing a lot of pain in this past month and that it certainly came forward in my writing, but that he also wishes I had taken somewhat of a different route with my story. I wrote about my relationship failing as part of the set-up for the story, and made the characterized version of myself's unwillingness to ask my former partner for help a major plot point. The professor was more interested in the backstory, I was more interested in the present conflict as a writer. I originally really wanted to share the story with Aaron but as it evolved it became increasingly a treatise to my feelings about the breakup and... I'm afraid that I already share so much about how it's made me feel with them. I think I might continue working on the story as well, and eventually I would like to share it but maybe not for a while <3 one of the biggest aspects of our relationship that I'm still mourning actively is that they were my trusted reader, they were my creative muse, they were the person I wanted to build a mythos with and... since we've been separated, I haven't been able to work on our story once without shedding tears. They are just as responsible for creating Opossum Creek as I am at this point, and... unfortunately without them I can't do it in good faith, I can't write that story without it breaking my heart.

There's been some other stuff happening in life that has been a mixture of terrifying and fun! I'll start with the scary. My dad had a massive stroke that put him in the hospital and had him unconscious for nine hours. There was some serious debate as to whether or not he'd wake up as the doctors weren't entirely sure why he was still unconscious, but eventually he woke up without medical assistance and resumed both normal brain and physical function. The doctors don't even know how that's possible, but he seems perfectly fine despite how terrifying the actual event was. It kinda convinced me even more of my current health track; he's lived an unhealthy life and I don't want to end up being only 55 having major strokes like him. I was very confused by my feelings during that time. I hate my father, he was a horrible parent and he's a bad man. I also wasn't ready to be fully parentless, though, and the stress of my dad having a stroke in addition to everything else in life was... a lot, honestly.

The good thing that happened was that I hung out with an old friend of mine again!! It's the second time we've met up in recent weeks, and it's fucking crazy how easy it's been to just get back in the flow of things. I had missed her a lot, for a while she was even closer to me than my best friend Sammy at the same time, so it's been a bit of a dream come true to see her again. Her boyfriend is also an amazing dude, and after her numerous very abusive past partners I couldn't be more grateful to see her happy.

I think I wanna make a post sometime soon talking about more of my dreams, especially the ones that are kinda in question since me and Aaron are kinda in question, too. There's a lot of my life that's in limbo while I wait to see if we're going to work out. I really... I wanted to move in the next year or so tbh, but realistically I can't do that until I have a clear image of whether or not me and Aaron will work out because that might decide where I live. I wanted to start figuring out my next steps academically and where to build a career, but that depends on where I move, which depends on those questions too. I'm an impatient person, though I am working on that impatience, so it's really bothersome playing this whole wait and see game.

I guess I wanna end this by saying that... I love them a lot, y'all. Even if the pain has mostly dulled, the affection never has, and unfortunately I know myself well enough to say that... I don't think it will. I do believe in soul mates, I do believe that everybody has their one, and I do think that they're mine and that.. despite everything, I am theirs too. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong. But they're worth waiting to see, they're worth working on myself for, they're worth the time between now and what's next. I'm worth it too, I think.

That's all for tonight tumbie. I love you so much :) I think I'm saying that to anyone who reads these, this website, and to myself when I go back to re-read them too. Goodnight everybody <3

#sproutposting #sproutjournals #journaling #journal #12/14/24

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bmpmp3 · 11 months ago

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and you know recently i was thinking about the otome isekai vs otome game conundrum (a lot of the tropes and genre staples the isekai stories have in their fictional otome games are not very reflective of real life otome game trends historically) again and like ive mentioned before now that i dont mind that too much (although i do personally prefer my isekais generally to be into a book or a comic or something linear (or of course the classic isekai into the past or an alternate universe is also great) unless the story really goes out of its way to take advantage of video-gamey weirdness. if u die in the game u die in real life!!!!!!! shit like that LOL) but i was also thinking about like. i wonder how an isekai into an otome game would actually look like....

there is the problem that the localized scene is only a fraction of whats out there (although recent years have been very kind to us! but if u ever want good motivation to practice ur japanese, go on vndb and look at the sheer amount of jpn only psp otome games there are on this earth 😔 someday.....................) so if u were going based off the english speaking perception, otome games are like painfully varied genre and setting wise and full of high stakes action LOL we have been getting quite a few lower stakes ones about actors though recently....

alas as implied before i dont speak japanese (YET.......) so my knowledge is only secondhand and you should take everything i say with a grain of salt BUT it does seem in the jpn only psp era we had a LOT of highschool otome games, and it seems like samurai never go out of style. vaguely medieval and vaguely victorian fantasy is also a classic, although unlike most of the isekai stories it seems nowadays most villains will be men (another guy to romance) and villainesses are still pretty rare after like 2005.... but its still difficult to find a common denominator here to play off of cliches

BUT i do think there could be something funny about an isekai main character trying to remember the exact dialogue options needed to not get a random bad end HJWHRJDSHJFs oh fuck if i go left i'll run off a cliff and die!!! or was it right.....

but thats more on the character route-structure visual novel side of things, on the more stat-raiser-y true dating simulator side of things (we dont have a whole lot outside of a few indie games and a couple fantranslations) those seem to be largely fantasy (Angelique and the like) or high school stuff (there were ten bajillion on the psp and some ds ones too!)

many isekais do take the angelique fantasy story route, but it could be fun specifically to play on the princess competition premise. also didnt one angelique game let u play as the rival character? thats a bit intriguing...... but on the later highschool dating sim end of things i guess it makes sense thats not used as a setting that often LOL i mean I was playing storm lover kai like one wrong turn could kill me BUT that is not. the intended experience of these games hkjfdhjrkgfeldjfs but actually maybe it could be interesting for a horror or thriller story.... i just wanted to have fun being isekaied into my favourite romcom dating sim but everyones dying somehow????? this isnt in the programming?????????

i dunno its kinda fun to think about! i think usually among the english speaking audience the general consensus is that if they were isekaied into their favourite otome game they'd probably get killed immediately. if that says anything about the medium as a whole in the localized sphere.

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some-pers0n · 1 year ago

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Something about purple prose makes my bones hurt in a way I can't really describe. Whenever I see it, it just kinda hurts me. It makes the reading a chore and not really too fun.

It's overly complicated prose. Let's establish that real quick. Purple prose gets tossed around a lot, sometimes confused with flowery prose and the like. Purple prose is often a symptom of newer writers trying to look competent and perhaps mimic the style of the classic books. Your Charles Dickens and your gothic literature and all that.

The issue here is that purple prose is more of a poetic device than a literary one. Well, okay. What does that mean, exactly? I'll explain. Poetry a lot of the time is musical and symbolic. It's more like trying to tell an idea through lines and rhymes than with prose, which is telling an actual story. Of course epic poems exist (I've been reading The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), but generally in books and novels they are written in prose.

This would mean that the flowery language of poetry gets sloshed in with the prose. Poems try to explain an idea or theme through lines, whilst prose is trying to, well, tell a story.

In simplest terms, the overly complicated prose makes it more difficult to read and follow along with the narrative, as it puts more emphasis on the idea of scenes by using more complicated language to describe things that do not matter in the slightest.

Examples:

The ebony-haired woman fleetingly observed herself in the reflection of her apparatus, pushing back a coiled lock whilst admiring the extravagant glimmer in her glossy amber orbs.

Wow. That's a lot. So this single sentence when you break it down is about a woman with black hair and brown eyes looking at herself in a reflective device (apparatus is used for some reason instead of what is likely a mirror). She pushes back her hair (described as curly and "in locks") and admires the shine in her eyes.

The thing is that it gets tiring to read. I don't think a single example can really show how bad these things can get. It's the same with my rambles about phonetic accents. One example you can maybe discern and understand, but picture an entire book like this and I'd be shocked if you didn't put it down by page twenty.

So, how to improve this?

Well, I'd simplify it. There's no real need to be all dramatic and fancy when it's just a scene describing her looks.

She turned to the mirror, looking herself over. She pushed back a strand of her hair. It was long and black, curling into loose coils at the end. She then saw her eyes. In the warm amber hues held a sparkle she was proud of.

Still not too great, but I'd say chopping up one sentence of purply prose into five smaller ones, each focusing on an individual part, makes the writing a lot less confusing to read. The subject doesn't flip and flop between her looking into the mirror, then pushing her hair, then saying "damn, I got good eyes" in the same sentence.

I find it makes the writing a lot more dynamic if that makes any sense. Reading one sentence where it's long and flowery word after long and flowery word makes it a slog to get through. If a section of writing gets a bit purply in otherwise somewhat normal writing, it makes it look a bit more interesting. Drawing attention to this specific moment with eye-catching words and vague descriptors.

Purple prose can be good when used very sparingly in my opinion. Of course style factors into a lot of things, and, hey, you might even love this kind of writing! I don't, but you do you! At the end of the day, writing is all about fun and doing what you want.

#SP-rambles

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lizzie-tempest · 7 months ago

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I hope you don't mind me joining, but this looked really fun! :3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

At the moment, I have 23. But there are definitely more on the way!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

443, 916. Wow! I didn't know it was that many!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Undertale. At the moment, that's the only fandom I plan on writing for. Who knows? Maybe in the future, it'll change.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Cookie. Maybe In Time, You'll Want To Be Mine. Lady Fingers. When A Heart Breaks. Gilded Cage.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Absolutely! I always love reading comments and responding to them. I love seeing how my readers are reacting to what's happened in the story and chatting with them.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oooh good question. This is a hard one, because there have been a few one shots I've written with some real angsty endings. I couldn't possibly choose just one. So I won't. The fics I've written with the angstiest endings are:

When A Heart Breaks, Little Nightmares, Reflection, Goodbye My Sweet Sugar Skulls.

Honorable Mention goes to Gilded Cage. Even though it's technically not finished, it DOES have a Bad Ending.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

What Is This, A Hallmark Movie?

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I mean, there have been some comments that admittedly kinda discouraged me. Maybe it wasn't the commenters' intent for that to happen, but it kinda made me want to give up. Otherwise, no.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No. I wouldn't even know how to start.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Back when I first started writing fanfiction (back when I was in high school), I did actually write a few crossovers. I can't decide if it was the Naruto/Death Note crossover or the Rise of the Guardians/Alice: Madness Returns crossover that was crazier.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. I don't think my fics are that well known for someone to steal them. Not that I want that to happen!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but if someone wanted to translate one of my stories, I wouldn't mind ^_^

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope.

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

In regards to fanfiction? I'm a sucker for Sans/Reader. Especially if it's Underfell Sans. I just love Reader inserts in general. In regards to ships in general, well, I could go on all day naming all my favourite ships from different things that I like.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

It's not that I doubt that I'll finish. I'm trying to finish every fic I've ever started. It's just taking a while and sometimes I get side-tracked by a new idea. That being said, I think I'll name Spooktober. It was supposed to be 31 chapters of spooky one shots that I started in 2020. I've only done 11 chapters. I have an idea for the next chapter, but when (if) I get it written down, I'll probably mark it as complete. Not how I wanted it to go, but sometimes that's how it goes :(

16. What are your writing strengths?

Writing angst. There'll be times when I'm writing and I'll say to myself "Okay. Now this is a nice fluffy chapter and we're going to end on a good note! :D" and then by the time I've gotten to the end I've written the most heart wrenching angst ever. I'll stare at the page with tears streaming down my cheeks thinking "HOW?! THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A HAPPY ENDING! HOW DID WE END UP HERE?!"

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Sometimes I forget that I need to set the scene. Because I write mostly Reader inserts, I tend to keep things generally vague and so I forget that in some situations, I need to actually put some detail. But then there are instances where I think I can put too much unnecessary detail. And typos! I always find typos even when I read through my work at least three times!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I've never really had to, but if I do have to in the future, I'd want to make sure that the phrase I was writing was definitely accurate.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I suppose it would be Gorillaz. I wrote a couple of fanfictions for that back in the day.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

My favourite fic has got to be Cookie. It was the first fic I posted to AO3 and even though it's not finished yet, it's always going to have a special place in my heart ❤️🍪

tagging @emeraldhazeart @sweetlilbird @maxbruiser @rowanmutt and anyone else who wants to have a go ^^

Thank you for the tag @rhodophoria!! :D This was fun!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Just one (but there will be more soon ;))

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

127,025! I think Ashen Wishes is the longest story I've ever written (and it's still going, holy-)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mostly Undertale. In fact, I haven't written for anything else in years ^^' I need to have a lot of passion for a fandom to get myself to write. Unless the characters live 24/7 in my mind rent-free, no ideas will pop up.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Yes.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yeah, I love to! I really appreciate when someone takes their time to leave a nice message :] I always try to reply as soon as possible, or at least within a day.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I currently have a few one-shot ideas that have rather angsty endings, but I couldn't bear writing a whole longfic that ends on a sad note. ...I think.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Ashen Wishes will have a pretty happy, positive ending, so I suppose that counts (?)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Thankfully, I never have :)

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Well... not really. I've given it a shot a few times and I have a couple ideas, but I don't think I can bring myself to post anything too explicit at the moment.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I've never written one! I've always found them too difficult to execute well.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don't think so...? Though I never looked for it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope, but I wonder what that would look like! Although when it comes to writing fics, I'm much more comfortable writing in English than my native language.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not yet, but it sounds fun. I have friends who help with brainstorming sometimes, if that counts :)

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

I've never been into shipping characters that much. Sometimes I come across a ship and I genuinely like it, but then I move on. My reader-insert craze just never left me enough, I guess.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I strive to finish everything I start, even though it might, uh, take a little more time. I really hope I won't ever abandon my fics.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogues? Maybe? Those are usually the first things that pop up in my head when I'm trying to figure out a scene, and I build everything else around them. But I'm also really obsessed with pacing and trying to find a healthy balance between the events in a story. I'm not saying it's necessarily working, I just tend to pay more attention to it.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm very, very slow. I can linger on a single sentence for ten minutes because I can't get over how awkward a sentence feels, so I just stare at the screen trying to figure out how to fix it. Also, describing environments. I can't make them sound fun for the life of me. I feel like they always end up being very dry and unimaginative :/

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't run into them often, but I think they can spice up a dialogue sometimes. I especially like special short phrases that give the conversation a deeper meaning.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Oof, uh, Hollow Knight, if I remember correctly. I don't plan to post any of my older works though ^^'

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Ashen Wishes is probably the fic I've put the most effort in so far, and it's currently my favorite, too!

@imtrashraccoon if you'd like to join, but as always, no pressure! :D

#writing game #writer's game #fun #lizzie speaks

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m-jelly · 2 years ago

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if reqs are still open id like to send one :>

I was wondering if you could write a kind of Levi x flirty reader wherein their dynamic is the flirtatious teaser(?) and the "shut up but I won't do anything abt it cuz I don't hate your attention" but then maybe while they were eating at the mess hall and reader slips a flirtatious line that kinda embarrasses Levi (nothing too bad our boy don't deserve that!)

so Levi takes her aside and kinda blows up at her saying stuff he doesn't mean like "don't you ever just shut up" and storms off but Levi thinks he may have gone too far and wants to apologize but he opens his office door to find reader (maybe with a gift?) already there to apologize and confess then boom they talk it out and just a fluff scene in general and you can take it from there💗 :D

PLEA- SORRY ITS SO LONG HAHA feel free to change anything <3

@kenkopanda-art

A little flustered.

Pairing: Levi x Reader

Tags and genre: Canon world, romance, crushes, confessions, fluff, cute, Levi learning to talk.

Concept: You're a flirtatious person and most of the time it's directed at Levi because you have a crush on him and like him. During lunch in the mess hall, you make a flirtatious comment to Levi and it flusters him so much that he drags you out of the mess hall and has a stern word with you and storms off. He walks around the training grounds in the forest and realises he overreacted. He goes to his office and finds you with a gift. You both chat about what happened and air out your feelings.

You walked over to Levi and sat down with him and the other vets. "Afternoon Captain, it's so good to see you. You always brighten my day with your handsome face."

Levi blushed. "Tch, shut up."

"You know, you're more wonderful to look at than a sun rising over the rolling hills beyond the walls."

He groaned a little. "I'm not...stop."

You downed some of your tea. "It's been a nice day today, hasn't it?"

Erwin smiled a little. "It's been a delight."

You ate some of your food. "We should do something fun instead of all that training. Maybe go to the lake for a swim?"

"That sounds like a good idea. You are in charge of soldier welfare."

You winked. "Perfect! I'm so glad you agreed." You looked over at Levi. "I do hope you join us, Captain. Show those cadets what a real soldier looks like, yeah?"

Levi grabbed your upper arm and dragged you out of the mess hall. He threw you away and paced. "What is wrong with you?"

You folded your arms as you watched him. "I was just-."

"Just what!?" He snapped at you and stood before you. "Don't you ever just shut up? I don't want to hear it! Fuck sake!"

You jumped as he stormed off. "Wait! Levi!"

He hurried off to the woods and started a walk. He slowed down and started reflecting on how he'd acted. He let out a long sigh when he started to believe he had overreacted. He liked you, he liked you a lot and hoped your flirting was for him only, but part of him believed it wasn't. He wanted to keep you as his own and he just got flustered and frustrated with himself for snapping.

He turned on his heels and walked back to his office and thought about how to say sorry. He stopped when he saw you holding a cute bag. He softly said your name. "What are you doing here?"

You blushed. "Levi! Oh, I'm sorry. I'll get out of your hair. I just wanted to bring you a gift and say how sorry I am." You placed the present on the side. "I will drop this off and leave."

"Don't go."

You nibbled your lip. "Okay, well I guess you should open your gift."

He walked over to his desk and opened it to reveal the nice tin of tea. He smiled softly. "It's a new one I've never had before. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

He put it down and looked over at you. "I shouldn't have snapped at you, I'm sorry."

You sat down on his sofa. "I pushed you too much." You nibbled your lip. "I flirted too hard and you're not used to that sort of thing."

He sat next to you. "It's all playful, right?"

You blushed and laughed a little. "No, no, it's actually very serious. I have feelings for you, so my flirting is very real."

He blushed bright red as he gazed at you. "Really?"

You nodded. "Yeah. I really like you. I guess my flirting did the opposite of my intention. I was hoping it would hint I like you, but instead, you got annoyed. I'll stop."

"Please don't." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I really like you and I'm glad you like me just as much." He reached over and held your hand. "I umm...I thought you just flirted with everyone and it flustered me and frustrated me, but now knowing that you want me like I want you...it...it changes things. I'm still deeply sorry for snapping though even if you didn't."

You leaned over and kissed him making him flinch a bit in shock. "Too much?"

He cleared his throat. "I-I liked it. Again?"

You kissed him again and smiled at him kissing you back. "You have very soft lips, I like it."

He sighed. "Tch, you are flustering me so much."

"Bad?"

He shook his head and pressed his face against the crook of your neck and sighed. "Good. Just keep it between me and you, okay?"

You played with his hair. "Promise." You kissed the top of his head and hummed. "Want to cuddle for a bit or try the tea?"

"I would like to try this cuddling."

You shifted and lay back on the sofa and propped yourself up with the arm of the sofa. "Come here."

Levi slid over and used your chest as his pillow. He hummed as he held him close and your scent washed over him. "I really like this."

"Good. We can do this a lot if you want."

"Please." He lifted his head. "I would like to hold you next."

You giggled. "Deal."

#aot levi #levi ackerman #levi #snk levi #fanfic #aot fanfiction #levi fanfiction #levi x you #levi x y/n #aot x you #captain levi #levi attack on titan #levi aot #levi ackerman x you #levi x reader #levi fluff #attack on titan fanfiction #levi ackerman x reader #jelly fanfics

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