#forgot to post every draft on Tumblr recently

[bigbronintendo]

Smilingtober Day 20: Sailing 🏴‍☠️

[always-a-king-or-queen]

hiiii i recently found out that there was a narnia side of tumblr through pure chance. i am frankly delighted that one of my childhood series actually has an active fanbase and i really wanna jump in, so i wanted to know if you had any fic recs? i am current chowing though madnessiseverything's narnia works but i would love to know what other staples exist on ao3

omigosh Im so sorry, I've had this in my drafts for a while and forgot all about it O_O but yes here are a few of my favorite fics/oneshots!!

a savage place: in which Trumpkin discovers the Pevensies are not what they seem; this is probably my favorite Narnia fic ever. under a swift sunrise: the Pevensies partake in a Narnian tradition of welcoming spring season of mists: Mrs. Pevensie's thoughts on her children's return.

a home for every season: Idk if you like Lord of the Rings but in this one Susan goes to Middle-earth and finds some healing after the death of her siblings. I really like this one :) untitled: in which the Pevensies seem too old, and their mother notices untitled: in which Mrs. Pevensie wonders where her children's childhood went The Runaway: Susan stays behind to mind the horses while Peter, Edmund, and Lucy investigate the thicket near the lamppost, and is left behind in Narnia when they return home.

I'll be honest though, I haven't actually read that many Narnia fics, or I've forgotten most of the ones I have read and they would be too difficult to find. I've come across some pretty disturbing/uncomfortable Narnia fics in the past, so I kinda just read them as I come across recs instead of really searching for them myself because of that, if that makes sense lol. But if anyone has recs or self-promo they'd like to add to this post please feel free to reblog with your additions!

[wannabevampire]

hello my vampires!

it’s allie! i don’t know how many of you remember me (goodness knows i don’t blame you considering i’ve been gone for TWO YEARS!!). but in case you forgot i use to write fanfics on here! mainly marvel, i was probably most known for writing fics about druig and matt murdock!

my life has changed A LOT since then. i moved across the country, started studying at my dream school in my dream program (#allieinstem), lived in THREE different apartments and dealt with oh so much roommate drama, became a bit of a party girl for a moment, worked a lot of different jobs, and fell in love :)

as we all know the world has FINALLY woken up and realized how hot Barry Keoghan is!! and a few weeks ago i caught myself thinking “huh i wonder what happened to that old tumblr account i ran that had over a thousand followers where i was a complete whore on the internet and wrote fan fics constantly??”.

i “abandoned” this account over two years ago, but I still think about it every now and then. i left suddenly and without notice for a multitude of reasons, but without getting too specific i was going through some insanely drastic life changes and my mental health wasn't the best.

I have retyped this post so many times because I'm not sure what to say! But I've been thinking about this account and how much it meant to me. As well as remembering my wonderful mutuals who were always so sweet, funny, and supportive <3

life has been really tough recently, not bad just…hard. and i remember how cathartic this community was for me. i’ve mentioned this before, but english is my second language and my writing has always been a huge insecurity of mine. and yet I felt so welcomed here and it gave me so many opportunities to write for fun!

to see that my fics, blurbs, and slutty fantasies are still being reblogged is so crazy and it makes me very happy! i'm not sure if i'll start writing again but i guess we’ll see :)

(regardless i might reblog a bunch of my old druig/barry content because of the current barry renaissance lol)

side note: went through my drafts and found an old matt murdock fic that i never posted???? it’s like 3.5k words lol and it's almost finished. so weird seeing my old work but like…should i post??

if you remember me at all or are interested in my old work please reach out to me! mutual, nonnie, follower, literally anyone!! i’d love to see how this little corner of the internet is doing <3

as always…

xoxo,

allie 🕊️

p.s. I have such a strong urge to reach out to my old mutuals who are still active because you guys are all such talented writers but I don't know if that would be weird since it's been so long! ahh!!! should I?? please say hi!!!

p.p.s should i post that matt murdock fic??

[kafka-ohdear]

so, my dumb ass forgot about this ask in my drafts so i'm remaking (?) it because i can't edit the original post anymore.

i love every blog related to the fandom so get ready to hear me rambling shits in this post.

i'd list my favourite hbo war related blogs hehe, and here they go:

*

@fkmylif3 - HELLO my favourite gif maker!!! literally the best gifs with best qualities + colouring <3 can't find anything i don't like about you for real 😭 i love the sisk gifs with my whole existence!!!

@mutantmanifesto - eugfjshksk another super talented and skilled artist! i love every painting that was posted on this blog.

@onefineginger - i love their art very very much, honestly i have saved a lot of them on my phone because every single one is so gorgeous.

@thewayisset - one of the first hbo war artists i know when i got into this fandom. unique and super gorgeous artstyle!

@fromcrossroadstoking - i love their m*a*s*h au very much! also the siskroe fanfics of them made me obssesed with their writings even more.

@ronald-speirs/@luckynumber4 - super supportive and amazing edits, writings + posts too! sorry i don't know which blog of yours to tag so yeah 😭 i'll go with these two.

@sweetxvanixlla and @footprintsinthesxnd - PRETTIEST MOODBOARDS OMG!! the theme and colour + pictures choices never failto amaze me.

@liptonwashere - beautiful edits omg!! the song choices, the quality and transitions are all amazing! lovely blog too.

@liptonsbabe - your memes make me rolling on the floor whenever i see them! keep them coming hehe i'm waiting for more memes from you!

*

other contents creators/blogs that i absolutely adore but never got many chances to interact/see their works:

@mylastresortiswriting - i love the baberoe fanart of yours very very much!! never read any of your writings before but a hundred percent they are amazing as well! loveliest person on tumblr <33

@deputy-buck - just got to know you more recently but i love your moodboards and literally your whole blog too!!

@david-sharkthot-webster - i saw the posts before i even own a tumblr account 😭

@incorrectbandofbrothersquotes - same as above 😭 eughfjsk i love the incorrect quotes with my whole being.

@auroargraves - you might have seen me spamming bunch of notes on your webgott + baby sisk posts and headcanons before eugjhfhks i'm sorry for that but i really adore them!!

@malarkgirlypop - !!! your oc fics and bofb imagines are so amazing and ypu're awesome too 😭 i love them.

*

sorry (again) if my dumb ass accidentally forgot anyone but that's all i could remember so far 😭. btw let me know if you don't feel comfortable being tagged 🥹 sorry in advance...

[girls-are-weird]

MASTER LIST: One Fic for Each Fandom [A-I]

i've been working on this for months now, y'all, i'm so tired. Dx

many, soooo many years ago, i came up with the idea of recommending one fic, not necessarily the best or biggest or most popular fic, but definitely my ultimate favorite fic for every fandom i was in at the time or had been in at some point up to then. there are some fics i love so much that i go back to them periodically, maybe every couple of years, even if i'm not active in that fandom anymore. so i thought having a list of them somewhere i could easily find them was a pretty good idea.

narrator: she forgot where to "easily" find the list.

but i still liked the idea a lot, and i told myself when i found the list again, i would update it with fics for all the fandoms i've joined/read for since then. well, a couple of days as of the first drafting of this post, i finally found my original list on my old livejournal (christ, i'm old) and decided i would start on that update, but to post on my tumblr blog instead.

so here it is. they're not all romance, though most of these will include one or more of my favorite ships for their respective fandom (which you can find at my ships archive), even if it's just in the background. some of the fics are the same as i had in my original list, but some of them are not, simply because i've found fics i love even more since then. needless to say, most of those that were 'ported from my original list are quite old or written before canon was finished (the list is from 2006… please refrain from commenting if you weren't born back then, lol. i'm acutely aware that my early fandom life is basically ancient history to most of you). even some from more recent fandoms might be pretty old or non-canon-compliant, simply because i've been collecting fandoms since time immemorial. some might contain elements that would be considered problematic in this day and age. some might be unfinished. they're all special to me in some way.

some fandoms seem to have slipped through the cracks in the transition between FFN (where favorites and alerts are very organized but i always forgot to use them, and there's no read history) and AO3 (where subscriptions and history are unreliable and impossible to search through, and there's no way to see which fics you've left kudos on)-- srsly, how hard is it to just save everything in this age of big data? smdh. some of the links might not work, as you might imagine-- it'll take me some time to find new links, or to figure out if the fic is still even on the internet. if you've heard of these fics and know where they can be currently found, please let me know! because of that reason, i haven't listed ratings for every single one, though i've tried to add that in where i can find it. still, i hope this is helpful for someone, and i'm going to keep it pinned on my blog so i NEVER, EVER forget where it is again (and can regularly update it as i am sucked into more fandoms).

back in the day, i had hoped this format could catch on as a meme type of thing, so that other people could take it as a template and make their own fandom recs lists. so i'd love to see yours! be sure to tag me if you decide to do this. :)

-

[ FANDOMS A-I BELOW, J-Z HERE ]

-

THE ADVENTURES OF SHIRLEY HOLMES

the case of the mysterious man (and sequels!) by HA senidal / @ha-senidal (PG/T).

with newcomer blake hewitt joining her and bo, shirley investigates a stranger who might know something about the recently stolen mona lisa.

-

AA! MEGAMI-SAMA / OH! MY GODDESS

no mere mortal (and sequels!), by ed sharpe.

keiichi's cousin kenji comes to visit the temple for a week. what mischief will he get in with the three goddesses?

-

AGENT CARTER

renegades by inkdust / @ink-dust (M).

or, peggy & daniel against the world

the real world doesn't have a hollywood ending. in fact it doesn't even pause. but they're a team. a wonderful team.

post-finale.

-

ANNE WITH AN E

the secret of distance by lil_redhead / @royalcordelia (T).

anne and gilbert embark on their journeys, but stay close to each other at heart. courting across 1000 miles isn't easy, but they're more than willing to step up to the task. (a post s3 story).

-

ARTEMIS FOWL

endings and beginnings by novawastaken / @nova-fanart-dump (T).

begins right after the second to last chapter of the last guardian and continues on to the final chapter and beyond. spoilers for the last guardian! SPOILERS! no romance in here, but artemis/holly romance in the epilogue.

-

ATTACK ON TITAN

stress relief by pepin-bones (M).

soldiers lead stressful lives, which means they need ways to unwind and cope with the stress of what they see and what they do - sometimes in unconventional ways. but eren thinks it's ridiculous, or at least he did…

-

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

annakpok by dariussobreitus (E).

a "stolen" wife amdist a world rebuilding after a century of war, a repentant fire nation trying to redeem its wrongs and earn good deeds. excuse for invasion or not, the wife who left the northern tribe chief will be reclaimed, even if the poles of the south, and the capital city of the southern tribe, annakpok, must melt.

an AU of the avatar series with events inspired by the movie troy and their versions of the illiad. there will be differences, in both characters and events, with emphasis on key characters, battles, war, strategy and hopefully some the nuance within.

while serving in similar roles to the illiad/troy counterparts, the avatar characters are very much themselves and not heavily influenced by the illiad characterizations.

-

BACCANO!

the successful wooing of chane laforet by splashfree (T).

“i’m in love with you, chane laforet,” he says. “and at the end of the day, that’s all there is to it.”

claire and chane go on a date. wackiness ensues.

-

BANANA FISH

fool for lesser things by snow_falls / @nightofviolet (E).

"he knew irrefutably that if eiji left he would take something fundamental to ash with him, and without that, what would be the point in living? he might as well have let Foxx finish him, if he was going to cop out now. no, sing was right, the little brat, what the fuck would be the point if he didn’t go with eiji? god, he was an idiot."

or the fix it fic we all need. the alternate ending i cherish in my heart of hearts.

-

BLEACH

next, home by inlay (T).

rukia was sitting in his room the first time he opened his eyes after. he does not know if this was a dream, or reality—remembers only that she looked very pale, and that there was a small, black hell butterfly perched on her finger. in this vision, she looked startlingly similar to the girl who used to crouch on his windowsill before school, shiny black shoes and black hair. he watched her for as long as his eyes could stay open, waiting for her to notice him and tell him what was happening. the battle hadn't felt like the deciding, dramatic finale he'd been subconsciously expecting, and he keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.

what next?

(or, sometimes it takes a couple lifetimes to learn the difference between a love and a soulmate)

-

THE BOOK THIEF

a changing of hands by antistar_e (kaikamahine) / @kaikamahine (T).

it happens like this, in a single fateful moment. a pilot sneezes, and the bombs, when they fall, are off-target. [AU].

-

CAPTAIN PLANET

heroes for earth (and sequels!) by stephensmat (T).

our world is in peril. the conscious soul of the earth is aware that since the error is ours, the power to stop the chaos must be ours as well. an updated retelling of the series pilot. an origin story based on the premise of the show.

-

CARD CAPTOR SAKURA

haikei (and its sequel, kitaku), by ciircee (PG/M).

when eriol left japan tomoyo promised to write. a history of time, in letters. ExT. part of third arc universe.

-

COWBOY BEBOP

tuesday's gone by neviana (M).

she always had a way of surprising him. everything from emptying her glock into the ceiling of the bebop when he left to the icy glare she gave him upon his return. though somehow, this stunt seemed to top them all … spikeXfaye.

-

DANCING WITH THE LION SERIES / ALEXANDER TRILOGY / ALEXANDER THE GREAT RPF

non frustra vixis by aramley, meretricula / @meretricula (NR).

in 2008, the previously all-women st. hilda's college at oxford began admitting men. in 2009, classics afficionado, rowing prodigy, and all-around posh bastard alexander macedon decided his new ambition was to join his best friend at hilda's and start a men's rowing dynasty.

-

DARK

face your fears by narrative_bear (T).

the inevitability of an event doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to experience. the recent birth of mikkel nielsen weighs heavily on michael kahnwald, who begins to withdraw from his family. in an effort to reconnect with his wife and son, michael decides to accompanies them to the nielsens’ where he is forced to confront his past.

-

DERRY GIRLS

maybe someday series by areseebee / @areseebee (T).

capturing moments when james and erin are growing up and growing together at 17, 19, and 27.

these fics all take place in the same timeline and build on the overall story in each part. while personal space can stand on its own, smoke break and someday are best enjoyed as companion pieces.

-

DIGIMON ADVENTURE

if you by chichamunkyhead.

sora poses as yama's girlfriend… sorato, takari, jyoumi, hint of kenyako. that's all of a summary you're getting!

-

DRAGON BALL/Z/GT

automatic flowers (and sequels!) by rayne.

running away was never the way of the son family and pan son learns this lesson the hard way as she returns home to face a problem she never could quite solve.

-

THE DRAGON PRINCE

a delicate arrangement by jelly / @jelzorz (M).

it’s not that it’s a bad idea. in all honesty, ezran thinks it’s a well thought-out, completely reasonable, perfectly sound idea that could solve a lot of his own problems, callum’s problems, and katolis’ problems, in one fell swoop - if it works, that is. it’s a little risky, he’ll admit, but it’s not the same as, say, running away from home at ten years old with his brother and a moonshadow elf assassin (whose mission was to kill him, mind) to return a dragon egg in the midst of a centuries-long war, and hey, they’d managed that all right. compared to that mess, politics should be easy, right?

right?

[or, the arranged marriage rayllum romantic drama no one asked for]

-

FINAL FANTASY VIII

new seed (and sequels!) by klepto_maniac0 / @klepto-maniac0 (E).

an accidental start to something not so innocent. how far can a relationship run on pure lust before it turns into something else? set in a time when things haven't gone downhill yet.

-

FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST (2003 ANIME)

he who searches for himself, by yuuki hikari / weatheringtea / @weatheringtea (M).

this story continues on fullmetal alchemist where episode 51 finished off. alternate ending to the series, not based on the movie. FMA gen!fic. characters and events up to 51 are included. the rating is for language and later violence.

-

GUNDAM WING

a toast to the bride and groom, by orla.

in this fic by orla, duo made the mistake of opening the floor for speeches at his wedding. see what everyone has to say.

-

HARRY POTTER

paradigm of uncertainty (and sequels!), by lori summers.

carla says: this fanfic series is the bible for any self-respected H/Hr shipper. lori's a wonderful storyteller. it is SO well-constructed.

-

HAVEN

aether or by callmehux (T).

paige came to haven for a new life. she didn't realize she was coming to find some old ones.

this takes place after the series finale and probably won't make sense unless you've seen the whole run of the TV show.

-

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

persephone by sunflowerb (M).

she was meant to be the price for peace; her life in exchange for the dragon master's mercy. her captor wasn't supposed to be a ghost from her past, and she wasn't supposed to become his ally…or his lover. and when news spreads of a blonde-haired girl at the dragon master's side, there will be repercussions for dragons and vikings alike.

-

THE HUNGER GAMES

lone star state of mine by jenye (M).

modern AU. there are three types of people in dawson, texas: those who are trying to flee, those who embrace their small town fate, and the mellarks. mellark ranch; largest cattle ranch south of dallas, employer of ranch hand, katniss everdeen, and home of the ohio state buckeyes' running back, peeta mellark. and peeta mellark is coming back home today.

-

INUYASHA

dressing wounds (and sequels!), by personification of fluff.

SM [completed] rated R for citrusy situations. when sango finds out how much miroku cares for her, it's the battle of the sexes! the prize? sango's heart, of course. fluff-filled chapters, and an attempt to break every cliche and fill each plothole!

-

[ FANDOMS J-Z HERE ]

[the-scaredy-crow]

Get to Know Your Moots Writeblr Interview

Template

Thank you for the tag @ceph-the-ghost-writer ! It's been like over a month, but I finally got a chance to work on this.

I'm leaving an open tag since it has been so long. If you see this, don't be scared to jump on and tag me in your post so I can read it!

~

Remember, folks; if any of the questions don’t spark joy, just delete ‘em. If someone tags you and this feels like a chore, don’t do it! This is for fun!

On the Tumblr Writing Community

How long have you had your writing Tumblr/Writeblr?

I've had this account for years, probably since I was 16 at least? Maybe longer? I only recently gathered the courage to start posting here, so I've been more active in Writeblr since around the beginning of 2024.

What led you to create it?

I created my account for the sense of community and belonging I found on here. I grew up in a tiny town, where I never really got to be myself. Even when I was writing, I either had to filter myself a ton or never let my work see the light of day. This seemed like a place I could be myself and be surrounded by people like me.

What’s your favorite thing about the Writeblr community?

The community aspect of it all, 100%. I've never had so many people who care about the same things as me and who are so completely themselves. It's so refreshing.

What’s one thing you’d like your mutuals to know about you?

I am super anxious, especially about social stuff, so if I come off as cold or distant or anything, I really don't mean to.

Is there anything you’d like to see more of on your dash?

More mutuals, always more mutuals! I also love seeing rambles about whatever y’all are obsessed with lately!

What tips/advice do you have for someone who made a Writeblr today?

Be yourself! Don't be afraid to reblog, like, and follow. Everyone I know loves that type of stuff, and even though it's scary to put yourself out there, it is the only way you will get to meet the amazing people on here.

WIP it Good

Which Works-in-Progress (WIPs) or writing projects are you noodling about, lately?

I am in the process of rewriting/finishing the first draft of Kindling Bones. My brain has been filling in a bunch of gaps and adding to it a lot lately, so I’m just trying to keep up.

How long have you been working on them?

I started Kindling Bones in 2022 (maybe?), but I really started focusing on it after I finished the first draft of a story I lost the spark for. I’ll eventually get back to that one I think.

Do you remember what inspired them/what got you started?

Kindling Bones was a mash-up of a couple ideas. Originally, it was a story of a hero-turned-villain desperate for revenge after his family was caught in the middle of a hero’s mission. I think it was partly inspired by one of my old WIPs. Somewhere along the way, it turned into a battered hero who loses everything holding onto his new life as desperately as a starved dog and finally learning to heal. I honestly forgot Rhys was supposed to be a villain!

How much time, in your best estimation, do you spend thinking about them?

Kindling Bones takes up so much of my brain currently. I see Spyder and Achy Bones in every cat I want so desperately to adopt. Rhys and Adam will not leave my brain alone with all their angst and fluff.

When someone asks the dreaded, “What do you write about,��� question, what do you usually say?

Uhhhhhhhh (I turn red and break down into a stuttering mess).

I don't talk about my writing to anyone except on here. It's usually a vague "fantasy, murder, that type of stuff" if I accidentally do mention it. Or just an “I haven’t really been writing lately.”

What do you want to say (if it’s different from what you do say)?

I want to tell them about how I write stories driven by characters, stories that I crave and that I hope others can look at and say, "hey, there's me". I want to go on an on about the stupid little gay people I write. I want to grab their shoulders and shake them and say "I write everything my heart tells me. I write love."

Let’s Rotate Blorbos

Name any characters you created.

My first gay character will probably never see the light of day. His name was Jackson, and he was just a side character, but he took up all of my brain. (Looking back, his story was terrible and I'm glad to have abandoned it, but I am grateful he existed for where he got me)

My current favorite is probably Katzyr, Viktor, or any character from Damsel Not in Distress, though they haven't seen much spotlight.

Who’s the most unhinged?

That's a toss-up. Katzyr definitely has his quirks and is the biggest loose-cannon I currently have. I also have one who is literally losing his mind. And there's the MC from the first wip I ever finished a first draft of, who got more unhinged throughout his story (I might go back to that story, but I wrote it under my old pen name, so maybe not).

Who comes the most naturally for you to write?

The characters in my wip, Damsel not in Distress, are easy to write because I focused so much on their characterization when plotting the story. The first character I wrote who falls under the asexual umbrella is my beautiful graysexual detective, Evan from Memento Mirror. He probably comes pretty naturally for me since I'm ace, and he opened the floodgates for so many more a-spec characters.

Do you ever cringe at them?

Not much honestly. Sometimes at the stupid mistakes and misunderstandings?

How much control do you feel you have over your characters?

My OCs are usually the type to write themselves and not leave me alone about it. I do a lot of work building them up in the beginning, but eventually they just take over my brain whenever they please and tell me how things are going to go.

Do you enjoy people asking questions about your characters?

Yes!! I would love to answer questions about my characters! Literally ask them through whatever means you want, and I will do my best to answer.

On Writeblr Engagement

What makes you want to follow another Writeblr account?

I'll admit, I'm pretty click-happy. If I see a profile recommended that looks interesting, I do a bit of surfing then follow. I mostly go by vibes, but I also follow if the WIPs are cool! If there’s a queer WIP, I am probably going to follow :)

What makes you decide against following?

I 100% don't follow- and will probably block- anyone hateful. I’m also really careful about cybersecurity (it’s a big part of my job and one of the fields I study) so I will definitely avoid any accounts that seem fake.

Do you interact with non-mutuals often?

I try to; I'll reblog any post that inspires me, but I usually only see the stuff from my mutuals and others I follow.

Do your mutuals’ characters occupy space in your noodle?

OMG yes! I was at the library a while ago waiting for my sister, and I was like oh, I can look for that book that's been plaguing me. After like fifteen minutes of searching the internet with vague descriptions, I realized it wasn't published yet... I was looking for a book from someone I follow on here. So yeah, I definitely think about your OCs/stories.

*If you have a story that's published or coming up, lmk so I can check it out!*

[mynameisnotsoda]

Lore dumping my fnaf au

I just remembered that I inserted myself and my best friend into the au for funsies (you'll notice I do that a lot. This is how cringe I am)

In my first draft I went on a rant abt how much I hated Wilbur's face but after going back to fix it I just needed to add his glasses LMAO. Initially I forgot about the face paint until I stared at my ref LMAO it's supposed to look faded and I think I did a pretty damn good job

Other than that the rest is fine. Erm. I didn't think I'd yap so much about that the actual lore is below the cut lawl

This is Maya!!!! (she/they) she's the mechanic in the pizzaplex, is addicted to caffeine, and is my bestest friend !!!!!! In the au we live together and also work at the same place that's so funny ‼️‼️

They usually work the night shift but if there needs to be emergency repairs during the day they're always on call for that. Nights usually consist of checkups and clean up of the animatronics and androids (will get into that later).

Clearly, I have a favorite, so he's also my favorite in the au itself LMAO cSoda works in the daycare but often leaves to bother the animatronics ☝️☝️‼️‼️

the daycare has an art station so that's where they work, they also help clean up and watch over the kids with the daycare androids !!! Who are *drumroll* Mumbo and Grian !!!!

(I forgot the makeup in this doodle,, and apparently the white stripe on the red part of the dress uggghh) the daycare androids are supposed to be more human looking to not scare the little kids, but cartoony (and tall) enough to differentiate from the human coworker. I like to imagine their faces are rly simple bc they're LED screens with projected expressions to make emotions n stuff. Plus I wanted to keep their faces similar to their skins with an in universe reason for it pfsjshgdhdh

Tumblr keeps bugging out every time I wanna post and it's DRIVING ME INSANE !!!! half this post got deleted and I'm SO MAD ABOUT IT but anyway here's the refs I made like 2 years ago. Their designs haven't changed since I made them so I probably won't remake them unless I start hating my old art enough LMAO

The canon heights I never wrote down so here they are: Ranboo 8'0, Wilbur 7'2, Maya 5'4, I'm 5'7, Grian 7'0, Mumbo 8'0, James 7'0, Tommy 6'6, Jimmy 5'5 and Schlatt wasnt in the AU at the time but he's 6'4

I didnt really make this au for anything except silly scenarios and because making the designs were fun pFF ALSO I FORGOT TO MENTION Sneeg is dj music man !!!! I never got around to drawing him before since I just figured out recently I wanted him to be dj music man so yeah !!

I know this isn't that much of a lore dump but I think I got all my thoughts out for now lawl everything will be under the animatronicfication au tag :v

I have GOT to draw Wilbur the way I used to. The biblically accurate animatronic eyes do NOT look good in my art style 😭😭 also I just noticed I basically painted the same thing into my sketchbook wtf I completely forgot about this doodle until I found it after digging for au art 🤯🤯

[emotionallychargedtowel]

9 People You’d Like to Know More

tagged by @wen-kexing-apologist and @thewayofsubtext  <3

Tumblr keeps eating every draft of this post that I write, argh! 

Last Song I Listened To

When I started writing this, I was being lazy and letting the YouTube algorithm pick songs for me and I was listening to this song, Unfucktheworld by Angel Olsen. I've been exchanging song recommendations with a friend for a while now and I guess she has gotten to know me pretty well because this is way up my alley.

But then another song came on--We Ride by Brave Girls (a.k.a. BB Girls)--and that became the new last song I listened to. It's another song that a friend recommended to me. This time it was a friend I've been emailing with back and forth about East Asian pop music. He's a big fan of City Pop, a genre that came out of Japan in the 80s, and he sent me a list of some recent kpop songs that are influenced by/reminiscent of City Pop, including this one. I took to it right away, and it was a big hit with my daughter. 

Currently Watching

I Told Sunset About You - I’m just one episode in to this one and I can already tell it’s going to hit me where it hurts. I took a break due to family visits and related stuff but I’m fixing to dive back in. 

Moonlight Chicken - I got stalled out on this one just as it was getting good, thanks to some life stuff. I need to pick it back up!

Star Trek: Discovery - I’m a big Star Trek fan and recently rewatched everything from TNG through Voyager, but I hadn’t kept up with any of the newest series in years. I’m so glad I decided to start Discovery because it is shaping up to be one of my favorite Star Trek series. There are a lot of reasons for this. Really great LGBT+ representation is a factor. This is also is the first Star Trek series that has inspired more actor crushes in me than DS9. Michelle Yeoh in a corset! Tig Notaro as a cranky engineer! I’m dying over here. 

Minato's Laundromat season 2 - I was looking forward to this as soon as it was announced, but with the usual anxiety that comes with a second season of a BL. I wasn’t 100% sure about the direction of the season at first, but now it’s settling in with some really interesting themes. 

Reservation Dogs - I wasn’t entirely sure about this show when I first started watching during the first season. But not only did it grow on me, it has also been getting better and better. The latest episode, which focused in part on an abusive government-sponsored boarding school (of the sort designed to rob Indigenous kids of their culture), was one of the best of the series so far. 

Edited to add: I forgot about Kamen Rider Geats! My family has been catching up on it and we're almost caught up just in time for the finale. I'm liking it a lot more than I thought I would when I watched the first few episodes, but not as much as my partner (who said he thinks it's one of his favorite Kamen Rider series he's seen). I'm really impressed with the cast, though. I'd especially like to see the actors who play Keiwa and Buffa in more things in the future.

Currently Reading

I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler for a while now, but I’m having an annoying situation where it keeps getting returned to the library even though I’ve renewed it. I could just start another book, but I don’t want to! This one is really interesting. 

The vast majority of people spend a significant amount of their time watching (non-documentary) movies and TV series, which involves watching actors engage in this specific art form. And we have opinions about what constitutes good or bad acting. Yet most of us know so little about how acting is done, what kinds of theories underpin acting practice, how actors prepare for roles and scenes. I wanted to not only find out more about that, but also dig a little deeper into the differences between approaches and how they’ve branched off and clashed and so forth. 

So far I’ve gotten a lot of good background and plenty to think about, even though I’m just getting to the point where the Method/System/whateveryoucallit is starting to take on in the US. I’m guessing it’s going to get even more relevant from there.

Current Obsession

I’m always obsessing about lots of things so I’m probably never going to be able to identify just one. Some currents ones are:

waiting for Utsukushii Kare: Eternal to be available with English subtitles somewhere, somehow

foraging blackberries, making jelly out of them, and baking biscuits to go with the jelly

waiting for it to be fall already because I hate sweating and I love wearing layers

finding my Animal Crossing character some decent glasses

thinking about possible BL/Jane Austen parallels for tumblr posts

finishing a post about psychological aspects of Utsukushii Kare that I’ve been writing off and on for months and that has gotten so long it will probably have to be split up into 3-4 posts

Serge Lutens Jeux de Peau perfume (my beloved)

I didn't tag anyone. It makes me anxious and I think pretty much everyone I know on here has been tagged! Except @porridgefeast, who's welcome to do it if she feels like it but (of course) no pressure.

[eternalbuckley]

Insecurities. — evan buckley

SUMMARY: Reader gets insecure about their body after meeting Taylor Kelly. Buck is their to comfort them and tell them how beautiful they are.

word count: 1,166

genre: fluff, comfort | gn!reader, queer!reader, bipoc!reader and plus-size!reader friendly

warnings: a tiny bit of angst, heavy fluff, reader being insecure about their body, mention about weight lose, mention of comments from bullies, established relationship, use of pet names (babe, darling, my love), english is not my first language — if i forgot something, please let me know!

a/n: Thank you for this request anon, I'M SO SORRY tumblr deleted your request (i didn't know it would happen if you put in in your drafts.. guess i learned something new) but I still hope you'll find this story. I hope you had an amazing day as well! This topic is a very important one for me and I'm super sorry that it's so short but I still like the end result and I truly hope you'll like it. Might write more stories that are about comfort in the future soon! Enjoy reading 🫶

disclaimer: please do not repost or try and take ownership of my work or post this anywhere without my consent. i don’t give you my permission to use my writing for any ai related things, don’t do it. do not translate my work and post it anywhere — i give you no permission to do that. i only post my stories here, so if you find my work anywhere else please let me know! reblogs, likes and comments are appreciated and welcomed!

navigation | masterlist | taglist

Why was she so beautiful? Or is? Why would he be with you? He could go back to her immediately. Or even back to anyone else he dated so far or could date.

'She is prettier than you anyway,' you kept asking yourself these questions while you were standing in front of your mirror and looking at your body.

She’s skinnier than you, why would he be with someone like you? Taylor Kelly seemed to be perfect and you thought you were not.

“She’s so gorgeous…” you mumbled to yourself with tears in your eyes.

You slowly started sobbing more and tried to ignore your insecure thoughts but they were too much. You didn’t like your body, being plus size was always something you knew most of society wouldn’t accept. ‘You have to be skinny to get men’s attention’, ‘Be pretty’, ‘Don’t be fat’, ‘If you’re plus size you’re ugly’ and so much more. It was exhausting, especially hearing comments like these in your teenage years. They always made you insecure and you ended up crying in your room many many times. You didn’t know what to do and nothing ever helped. You tried a lot of ways to lose weight and get skinnier but nothing worked. People made fun of you for that and since then you never really got over your insecurities.

How can be the world such a cruel place for something you can’t control?

You didn’t want to let stupid comments from those people ruin your life. But your insecurities came back after you recently met Taylor Kelly, one of your boyfriends, ex-girlfriends.

You knew what she looked like from seeing her on your TV but in reality, she was much more beautiful and skinnier than you. And that made you insecure. You didn’t exactly know what happened between her and Buck and why they broke up. But if you would only go after looks, she would win against you. At least that’s what you kept thinking about yourself.

Buck on the other hand was the happiest person on earth knowing he had you on his side. It has been almost two years since you officially got into a relationship and he has been the happiest since then. He always made sure to compliment you every single day. Whether it was in person or over texts but he never forgot. Not one day. He loved seeing you blushing over his compliments and genuinely being happy about his words. They let you feel better. He just didn’t know how insecure it made you meeting Taylor, not yet.

Buck came up behind you and kissed your cheek. He wrapped his arms around you and eventually noticed the tears in your eyes and your sobs.

“Babe? What’s wrong?” He turned you around and hugged you.

You snuggled up into him and hid your face in his chest without answering his question. You finally let go of your tears and cried in his arms. He whispered sweet nothings to you and rubbed your back to comfort you. He sat down with you on your shared bed and let you cry it all out. Buck always wanted to make sure that you feel loved and comfortable in his presence. But one thing that was really important to him, was to give you always the time you need. It didn’t matter for what reason. If it was just for you to get ready for a date or even giving you all the time to feel comfortable around him. He would always wait for you. Which wasn’t the easiest part for you as well but you trusted Buck with your life. You loved him and how happy he made you. How he made sure that you feel completely safe with him. You admired this side of him the most.

You eventually stopped sobbing after some time and slowly got calm. You still didn’t let go of him but he tried to ask you again about the reason for your current emotional state.

You sighed, your voice was still trembling. “Taylor Kelly…”

He furrowed his eyebrows and tried to look at you but you still hid your face in his chest. “What about her? Did she say something to you? Do I need to talk with her to leave you alone? Did she-“

“No, no,” you slightly chuckled about his protective side and turned your head to look at him. “I just- Have you seen her? She’s gorgeous, Buck. Look at how skinny she is compared to me. I’m just me and she? She’s Taylor Kelly. A beautiful and no plus-sized girl. Like… Why are you with me? You could have her or any other person that is skinnier than I am, Buck.”

Your insecurities were growing again while you were looking at your boyfriend. You saw his admiring eyes but speaking your insecurity out loud was hard. That’s probably a reason you spoke faster than usual. His eyes showed a hint of sadness, about your words. Hearing you talking about yourself in that way hurt him because he didn't want that you are hurting. Buck knew about your past and what your former classmates did and said to you, he thinks it's horrible and you would never deserve that. No one would. Bullying is one of the worst things someone can experience and seeing what this can do to people hurts him the most. Especially seeing his most important person (you) like that. Buck wished he could take away all your pain and turn it into something beautiful.

Buck kissed your forehead, “And I absolutely don’t care about this at all. I have the most beautiful person sitting in my arms right now. And let me tell you, every time I look at this person my heart swells so badly because of all the love my heart holds for that one special person. That is sitting in my arms by the way, in case I didn’t mention that already.” He took a breath. “And I love them with my entire life, no one can compare to them at all. They’re the definition of beauty.”

Tears build up in your eyes again and you kissed his jaw. Buck chuckled and nudged your nose.

“I would never want to be with Taylor or any other person just because they look different than you. I really don’t care about this, my love. I only care about you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. You’re the most beautiful and kind person I’ve ever seen and no one can ever compare to you. I love you and nothing can and will ever change that.”

He eventually softly kissed you on the lips which caused a smile on yours.

“I love you too, Buck. And I never want to lose you," your voice was still a bit weak.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. You won’t get rid of me that easily, darling.” He grinned at you and kissed your nose afterwards.

[kaizsche]

hi, everyone!! this is my ao3 wrapped! (i for real almost forgot to post this... sorry i haven't been writing/posting lately, i've been busy with events here and i'm working as a cleaner/typesetter for a scanlation team! we are quite understaffed and have multiple projects to work on so...🥺🥺)

How many words have you written this year?

92,601k!!!  (excluding my wips) wtf i wrote A LOT??

How many works did you publish this year?

31 aiuhdiagdadad

What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

easy. skuld’s net - that one shot came to me so suddenly and i wrote it for 3 days straight w/o no breaks whatsoever!!!

What work of yours has the most hits?

my star wars one shot fic - the july writing challenge i believe is at 6,544 hits

What work of yours got more feedback than you expected?

my first ever tvd fic, the one inspired by arctic monkey’s 505. 

Favorite title you used

in the art of flaw, the bridgerton au fic (shoutout to my friend who helped me make it cause im not exactly great at titles lmao

If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most?

young the giant!!! their songs are just *chef's kiss*

Pairing you wrote the most for this year?

this is such an obvious question if you frequently visit my blog. Elejah and klena!!!!!1

Favorite pairing you wrote for this year?

elejah is a ship i’d die for but i think i love writing finnlena the most cause they’re sooo in tune with one another. at least i think they would’ve been if esther did not manipulate him. (i just love finn okay. cause he's so underappreciated?)

What work was the quickest to write?

skuld’s net (a klena fic) i wrote that thing for 3 effin days straight, looped lany’s 13 over and over and over again. (i wasnt aware of his allegations that time so…)

What work took you the longest to write?

in terms of published fics, i think it’s take my breath. it was created on oct 19 then i picked it up a maybe 2-3 weeks ago? then posted it on dec 4 so yeah

How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year?

i lost count. there is just too many of them.

What’s your longest work of the year?

the one shot fic writing challenge.

What’s your shortest work of the year?

It’s a lil fic which idea i got from a prompt generator in tumblr - i was quite new back then so i thought that maybe participating in it won’t hurt me. It’s called 709 which is inspired by one of my wips wherein elena returned to the past after death and tried to change her life.

What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

Oh boy, OH BOY this is a long list. I’ll be taking them all with me but the most noteworthy wips would have to be my princess diaries au and the miracle baby au fic for elejah + the elena & katherine time travel fic

What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag?

Probably unedited as hell and kol is a little shit

Your favorite character to write this year?

I think finn. his character in canon is just so unexplored (i haven’t watched the originals so…) and it’s so, so fun to explore his character and adding more to his background.

The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

I feel... elijah? Cause i am most certainly not as eloquent as he is with words, so i usually find it hard to write his dialogues and stuff in my fics. (but honestly, i have a hard time with all mikaelsons lmfao)

What’s one pairing you want to explore next year?

I want to explore more of wyler!! (wednesday x tyler) since i’ve just recently joined the fandom and have four wips in my drafts already.

Which work of yours have you reread the most?

I think i have an almost unhealthy obsession with re-reading my work. But it definitely has to be heaven help the fool who falls in love like… i love re-exploring my old ideas (and also wondering where that ‘writer me’ in that era went (cause i literally had to write every single day and not miss a single one whilst delivering good pieces was beyond me.)

How many kudos in total did you get this year?

I’ve got 1,812!

Which work has the most comments?

with 100 comment threads, it’s not at all surprising that its my may writing challenge tvd fic

Did you do any collaborative works this year?

I don’t think i did?

Did you write any gifts this year?

i did for the wyler secret santa event and one for @qvnthesia

Did you receive any gifts this year?

@qvnthesia and i are exchanging fics later this month, so yep! I’m quite excited for that!

What’s your most common category?

easy. f/m

What do you listen to while writing?

I made spotify playlists for each of my pairings, actually. so when i write for a specific ship like klena - i usually turn the volume up for some good ol 505.

Favorite work you wrote this year?

the love of a doppelganger. there’s just something about this fic that i can’t put into words. (it’s my finnlena one) i think it’s about the prospect of giving finn’s character a second chance whilst shedding light as to why his decisions, and his siblings had came to the point of, well, daggering him.

Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

Oh my gosh, as a person whohas short term memory this question is quite hard to answer. Lol. but this line just IDK IT MAKES ME FEEL A CERTAIN WAY, OKAY?!

“You will learn to love me just as you have loved Anakin Skywalker.” He breathes, a promise dressed in the trappings of a threat.

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

What honestly surprised me the most is what the tvd fandom did to me, tbh. i’ve been writing fics since 2017, but i’ve never been much hyperfixated like i was with tvd – i think that it also helped me that the fandom has an active community, AND tight-knitted as well we even have a discord server and follow each other on tumblr. So, yeah. I basically not only owe it to the wonderful TVD character (sans the salvatores, thank you.) but also to the people that inspired me, supported me and cheered me on with my fics! (i’m looking at you, @sunless-garden, @qvnthesia,  @wazman, @katherineholmes, @amandamonroe, @finnismyoriginalsin, @sevensistersofsussex, and everyone else!!

[earthtooz]

hi earth! i was wondering if you possibly had any advice for anyone who wants to start a writing blog or general tips. if you’re comfortable with it, it would also be cool to know what your writing process is like! you write very well so i’m just curious. thank you for taking the time to read this and i hope you have a lovely day!

first of all, this ask was what got me out of bed in the morning to go to my laptop where i did nothing for like 2 hours.

ANYWAYS I’ve been awake for seven hours now and i still haven’t answered it LOL, but thank u for taking the time to pop into my inbox anon!! so honoured u thought of me 🤭🤭

i’m more than happy to answer any questions u may have!! i’ve only been writing here for like one and a half years but I’ll gladly share some tips for new writers <3

tips for new writers - writing on tumblr in general:

formatting and your writing style is very important!!! people most of the time will like stories that have good grammar and are easy to read, so know your punctuation- duh, i mean, most people know where to put their commas, full stops, and shit, but as even a native English speaker i still need to double check sometimes 😭😭😭

ALSO, figure out if you’re a writer who likes to write with proper punctuation or in lower case like i am rn. people on tumblr don’t care which one you opt for so it’s a matter of personal preference!!

personally, i like to use proper punctuation for longer fics with more plot, and lower case writing for normal drabbles, headcannons, etc, all up to you :3 depends on what i feel like tho, i just like the look of lower case hehe

also, you can totally write drafts on tumblr or another platform - i switch between docs and tumblr. shorter pieces on tumblr and longer pieces on Google docs !!

how to get attention on tumblr as a new writer - the importance of tags:

USE THE TAGS - DON’T BE SHY !!! USE A VARIETY !!!! it’s so easy to get reads on tumblr if you just know your tags. i also will say: be mindful of whether or not you stay in tags bc your post can suddenly just disappear- this has happened to me so many times 😭😭 to do that just search if your fic is still popping up in the ‘recent’ section of the tags AND EVERY TIME AFTER U POST SOMETHING, TAKE THE TIME TO SEARCH IF IT’S IN THE ‘RECENT’ TAGS.

(this part might make zero sense, but if it’s been a couple hours and your post still is not popping up, you can either edit it again, make no changes, and press ‘save’.)

general tips:

have an aesthetic layout.

obviously it’s not ‘essential’, but i always find myself more likely to follow blogs that are pretty or have an aesthetics

it takes so long to do but it’s so worth it 😭 if you looks at the fics that do very well, the formatting it very beautiful and pleasing to the eye.

if you’re struggling with a layout, there are so many inspos available on tumblr, just search up ‘blog inspo’ or ‘layout inspo’ and you’ll generally be pretty successful. if all else fail just go to your fav blogs and see how they set up their blog/navigation/aesthetic!!!

having a set colour for your blog can also look nice and less chaotic. for example; mine is red and it’s my (usually) go-to colour for a lot of stuff. just make sure u like the colour tho ☝️

also don’t be afraid to talk to people! AUTHORS LOVE WHEN YOU COMPLIMENT THEIR WORK!! getting mutuals is such a great feeling so PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE !!!!! MAKE FRIENDS 😮😮

my writing process:

i am that writer that likes to have a plot before i start anything, but it’s never complete. normally when i’m going abt my day, i suddenly think of a piece of dialogue or scenario that makes me go ‘hold on. let me write that down’.

for example, recently i thought of a piece of dialogue for an angst fic (that i don’t know if i’ll use) that goes:

‘no i’m not upset that you forgot about our anniversary, in fact, i already predicted you would.’

another idea i had was: you don’t ever want to leave nagi seishiro hungry.

sometimes I get these ideas when i’m in bed like bro 😐 let me rest…

if i feel inspired enough to continue said ideas, i do, but i never force the fic from happening bc then it’ll be mediocre and just… okay. not something i want on my blog 😭

but then i decide the wordlength, how many scenes i want to be in there. for example, my mistletoe todoroki fic i set out for 4k and met my goal. but my itoshi rin Xmas fic only met around 1k when my goal was 2k - sometimes this happens and i cant be mad if i think the story is done there.

it’s never that organised though, if you look at my drafts, it’s a scrabble of words. i jump from scene to scene with big gaps in between that i need to fill in later 😭 but that’s just how i write LOL ! you may be totally different from me which is a-okay :3

then i grind til the fic is done, reread then bam 💪 ! do my usual formatting on tumblr, tags, and then you’ll see the final result!! easier said than done bc when you want to be done with a fic and just post it, you then need to do all the actual presentation of the fic 😭😭😭

anyways yeah, that’s my process summarised lol!! hope it helped u get a little bit of an idea for what the earthtooz blog grind looks like 🫡

so yeah, i think that’s all i rly need to say!! if you wanna follow my advice or not, up to u, but once again, thank u for popping in my inbox anon and asking me!! gave me something to do whilst on my walk 🤭

cant wait to see what you write, always feel free to come back and ask if you need some ‘extra help’, but i believe in you! good luck and have fun writing, and i hope to see u in the tags someday :D

[madrcams]

So is it only me or Tumblr has felt a little... less stable than normal lately?

Semi-regularly I come across a friend on the dash commenting about their draft disappearing or Tumblr posting an unfinished draft, among other things. Of course I was not exempt from hiccups too.

So I’m listing things I do that I feel help avoid some of those problems (could be just coincidence though so don’t quote me on them.)

Clicking “Save Draft” but Tumblr posts it: Annoying as hell, do not recommend. But apparently before saving the changes on a draft, instead of clicking “Save Draft” you first change it to any other post option (Post, Queue, etc) then change it right back to “Save Draft” before actually clicking it helps? Hardly if ever I had Tumblr post unfinished drafts if I did this first-- and the few times I ate shit was because I forgot to do this little thing so I’m not taking chances.

Clicking “Save Draft” but the draft just straight up disappears: A roleplayer’s worst nightmare, 0/10. I only remember this happening to me once. But after I had added some other random things to my drafts, I found the missing draft back. I have no actual idea what the heck was up, but if I were to go I think it had something to do with the pagination and the draft’s placement on the page. I can’t guarantee this will always work whenever you draft takes a trip to Bermuda Triangle, so I suggest having a post editor up in another tab so you can copy-paste your entire draft in it (or do it in a Microsoft Word file) right before saving just to be on the safer side.

Image loading errors: Ah, a classic fucko. We’ve all been there. However I perceived less errors when I manually drag an image from my folder and drop it into the post editor (be it photo type of posts or adding images in the middle of a text post, or in reblogs,) instead of clicking “Upload Image” and browsing for it. Images dragged into text posts tend to always spawn on the very top no matter where you drop it but you can easily just drag it until it’s where you want it. Now I rarely experience loading errors compared to before, so at this point the drag-drop method of adding images is an habit for me.

Not getting notified of a partner’s reply: Yeah... that happens too sometimes. I still can’t safely state if this helps but I’ve been trying to make an habit of always @’ing my partner in every reply I post.

Not getting notified of new IMs: I’ve experienced this only somewhat recently and I don’t really know what to do about this one. All I can suggest is, if you have a conversation going on in IMs, check it from time to time to see if the other person said anything new even if there’s nothing notifying you of new messages.

[khaotic-kitsunes]

Alleyways

...I have absolutely no regrets over this. None what-so-ever and neither should anyone else because this glorious scenario was freaking fun to write. Probably even better to read, I dunno, I can never read a scenario that I’ve written again until I’ve forgotten it completely. Otherwise I start to remember the words a second before I read them and honestly it’s infuriating.

Anyways~

I hope you like the Dabi dose of today and again, sorry about the mishap! One was put in drafts by accident and this one I just forgot to press the post button until I went back to my tumblr tab to scroll through my dashboard...hahah

Whoopsie?

🥃 AO3 🥃

Cheeky Kitsune 🦊💋

.

 “Hey there, little cutie…what’re you doing with a guy like that huh? Why don’t you come with me? I’ll show you what a real Alpha is like!”

 .

 Dabi let out a low growl of displeasure from beside you as you walked through the dimly lit street together, his arm wrapped around your waist and keeping you close to his side; allowing you to soak up the warmth his quirk allowed him to produce.

 “You’re letting them get to you…” You trailed off softly, peeking up at your grouchy boyfriend when you felt his fingers dig into your waist and while it wasn’t painful, it certainly brought you no joy to see how upset he was getting over a few drunken morons cat-calling you.

 “Drop. It.” The words came out as an angry snarl of annoyance, not necessarily directed at you; yet at the same time, you felt the effects of your Alpha’s displeasure, a low whine spilling past your lips that still showed signs of a faint bruise. It was from Dabi’s most recent rut; he had gotten a little carried away with you and bit harder than usual. Nothing that wouldn’t heal.

 “Don’t whine at me, (Name). You know I hate walking around here with you” He spared you a quick glance, his brows furrowing when he noticed how displeased you looked with his current mood; earning a quiet click of his teeth. An upset Omega was never good, even he knew that much.

 “So, what? I’m the problem?” His eyes widened partially at your whimpered-out question, a string of uttered curses escaping him before he stopped walking to face you properly, calloused and scarred hands gripping your arms tightly.

 “Oi! That isn’t what I meant, stupid little…” He trailed off into a growl before loosening his grip on your arms, his shoulders slumping as he let go of his anger at the people that tried to take you from him; he needed to be calm to deal with you. Both of you knew that.

 “I don’t like sharing you with everyone. You’re mine. Those assholes are lucky I don’t murder them for even looking at you!” His possessive growl calmed you almost instantly, a soft snicker escaping you and while the noise settled Dabi’s fear of having to deal with an emotional Omega; he didn’t appreciate your laughter.

 “Think this is funny? Little shit” He scowled, reaching up to pinch your cheek, pulling firmly until you let out a noise of discomfort; resulting in him releasing you and moving back beside you, his arm returning to its’ place around your waist. Keeping you close.

 “…Hey, hey, if you’re getting so wound up about this, then that must mean you love me. Right? Alpha?” Your questioned received a grunt in response, the two of you slowly making your way through the almost empty street; the few people that were around, staring directly at you with looks you recognised from before Dabi had claimed you as his Omega.

 .

 “If even a single one of those fuckers says anything to you, fucking anything, I’ll burn them alive…”

 .

 You snapped your head up quickly at his words, surprised at the vicious promise behind them; your Alpha was a strange one. He wasn’t overly kind, nor was he a good person, but you found that he took good care of you, as best he could really and every time he threatened such a degree of violence; it sent shivers down your spine. You did love when your Alpha used his quirk for you, there was nothing better in your mind; his greatest show of love was slaughtering people that he decided weren’t good enough to even look at you.

 “Alpha~” You purred out the word softly, leaning into his side heavily while your hand went to his stomach, nails dragging over his muscles through the thin white shirt he had chosen to wear for your stroll throughout the neighbourhood.

 He opened his mouth to respond to you as he turned his head to look down, but the moment he looked into your eyes, the words appeared to have escaped him. Instead, they were replaced with a deep, rumble of a growl that you hadn’t heard outside of the safety of your small apartment before; a growl that meant you were about to have his knot buried inside of you.

 “Seriously?” Your head bobbed up and down in confirmation the instant the question left your Alpha’s mouth, causing an eager grin to tug at the corners of his lips; it appeared as though your Alpha wasn’t against the less-than-subtle hint that you had given him.

 “Such a naughty little thing you are…come on baby, you want my cock? You’re gonna fucking get it.” His words were a hushed promise as he tightened his hold on your waist, practically dragging you over to a nearby alleyway, not a care in the world that the two of you were in a public place; in fact, it almost felt like this was Dabi’s own way of telling the other Alphas where to shove their offers.

 “Is that a promise, Alpha?” You squealed when Dabi dropped his hand to slap your arse roughly, causing you to stumble into the wall he was about to fuck you against, the sound echoing down the empty little spot he had chosen; a reaction he seemed to appreciate, if his hungry stare was anything to go off of.

 “You know damned well that it is…now lift that fucking dress for me if you’re really that desperate for my knot” Your cheeks flushed in response to his demand, hands moving to tug at the edge of your dress; it hadn’t been the best choice for the walk, considering how cold it was currently. However, it was working out for you currently.

 You jolted in surprise when you felt a weight on your shoulders, looking back to see that Dabi had dropped his jacket over your shoulders, his scent enveloping you almost instantly and causing slick to start dripping down your folds.

 “Keep it on” His words were a quiet, concerned instruction while his hands went to your arse, squeezing until you spread your legs for him as best you could, giving a cheeky little wiggle until he slapped you once again; a soft noise of pleasure slipping out. Though Dabi had heard it loud and clear, the sound making him grind himself up against you through his pants; his erection made painfully clear.

 “Alpha…don’t tease me? Please…” Your whimper had him chuckling while he buried his head into the crook of your neck, his hands moving from your arse to deal with his pants; adjusting them just enough so that his aching cock was free and rubbing against you. Your panties were now the only thing keeping him from fucking you senseless and in that moment, you absolutely hated yourself for wearing them. Unnecessary things that they were.

 .

 “Are you beggin’ already?”

 .

 You huffed in response, pushing yourself back against him firmly in order to show your annoyance with him; a soft squeak echoing around the area when he tore your panties away from your body, allowing him to properly rub against you. You could feel the tip of his dick against your folds, nudging and rubbing just enough to let you know he was there but certainly not enough to satisfy you and your needs.

 “Dabi, come on…that isn’t fu-” His hand covered your mouth while his other arm went around your waist, pressing you further into the wall as he began to bite at your neck; the parts he could access since his jacket was partially in the way.

 “Shut up. You don’t get to tell me how to fuck you, (Name). You get what you’re given and you’ll fucking take it like a good Omega” He buried himself inside of you once he made his point, causing you to arch your back, a moan of relief muffled by his warm hand; preventing anyone else from hearing the noises that your Alpha refused to share.

 “That’s better…fuck, that’s it, move your hips like that baby…make your Alpha happy” Dabi groaned quiet praise into your ear while he rocked his hips, trying his best not to completely lose his control with you. As much as he wanted to do such a thing, if he were to lose control out in the open like this, it might cause problems for the both of you and Dabi preferred to avoid that kind of situation.

 You whimpered into his hand, grinding your hips back against him each chance you got, the feel of his not yet inflated knot against your folds driving you insane; you knew how good his knot felt and it was hard to resist the urge to sink yourself back onto it. The only problem with that plan, being that if you did dare to do such a thing; he would punish you for it.

 Dabi liked his control over you, disobeying the unspoken rules between the two of you wouldn’t end well.

 .

 “Shh, I know baby. Believe me, I know how bad you want my knot…but you need to be a good girl, otherwise your next heat is going to be a hard one”

 .

 Your entire body shuddered from the warning he gave you, muffled moans beginning to grow louder as his control began to slip, his thrusts and bites getting rougher with each passing minute that he fucked you in the alleyway. He was finding it to be an impossible task, holding back with you when your body was so inviting; welcoming every little thing he did to you.

 “Shit…shit, damn it!” Dabi cursed out loudly as he began to bite at the bonding mark you wore proudly on your neck, the sensitive and bruised flesh an instinctive target for his little shows of affection; alerting you to how agitated he was beginning to get.

 “Fuck it. I’ll just fucking kill anyone that tries to fuck with us when I’m stuck inside you” Dabi groaned out his resolution before removing himself from your body, quickly spinning you around to face him before suddenly, you were lifted into his arms, legs going around his waist and your back slammed up against the brick wall you had just been pressed up against; his throbbing cock buried inside of you once again.

 “I want to hear you baby girl. Moan for me, scream for me!” He snarled out his demand as he pressed his face against your chest, his teeth surprisingly sharp despite the material of your dress getting in the way of his bites; making you cry out loudly from all the pleasure he was showering you with.

 “Dabi…Alpha! More, I want more…please!” You whined out loudly as he continued to thrust his hips, his hands remaining on your arse so that he could keep a steady pace; though his grip was tight enough to leave you whining in need. It was times like this you loved being with someone that had no morals, your Alpha didn’t care that he was fucking you where other people could hear and smell what you were doing, the only thing he was paying attention to; was the way you felt wrapped around his aching cock.

 “Fucking hell…you’re such a greedy little Omega!” Dabi groaned out a laugh, throwing his head back as he pushed his knot inside of you, your loud shout of bliss music to his ears, he would never admit it sober; but he loved your reactions to his touches.

 You weren’t like other Omegas that he had fucked, you weren’t just after your own pleasure, you weren’t just an easy slut. He had to work his arse off just to get in bed with you in the beginning and when he finally managed to, well he had been shocked to find out that you could take everything he had to give.

 You were his perfect match and he had kept you ever since.

 .

 “Louder baby, I want the entire block to know whose cock is making you feel this good!”

 .

 You screamed out his name in response, baring your throat to him in submission while he continued to fuck you senseless; his knot throbbing and growing bigger as time passed, signalling that your Alpha was close to finishing. Just like you were. You could feel the familiar warmth beginning to build in the pit of your stomach, the pleasure rocking through your body; it was too much, having Dabi fuck you like this with the knowledge that everyone knew what you were doing but no one would be stupid enough to interrupt the two of you.

 “That’s it…close, aren’t you? Squeezing down on me like that already? Is it that good a fuck, baby? Can’t keep up tonight?” You narrowed your eyes at his groaned-out taunts, tangling your fingers into his dark locks while your orgasm got closer and closer; you weren’t in the mood for him to be a complete asshole to you and you were about to make that clear.

 “Just…shut up and knot me, Dabi! I wanna go home and nest…” You whimpered out, squeezing your eyes shut tightly while giving a harsh tug to his hair, screaming out his name when your orgasm finally hit; his knot swelling up inside of you once you started to squeeze down on him even more, his hot, thick seed filling you in a sudden rush.

 Dabi bit down on your bonding mark roughly, chewing on the spot while rocking his hips as best he could while stuck buried balls deep inside of you, his mind slowly processing the words you had uttered.

 .

 “Nest…? Are you going into heat baby? Fuck…don’t worry, I’ll get you home soon. You can get nice and comfy so I can fill you up even more.”

[msdanvers]

gif coloring tutorial

for @sappho-mia​

a photoshop tutorial on how to make gifs that look like the ones in this gifset. I will only explain how to do the coloring, so if there’s any other part of gifmaking that you’d like for me to explain, let me know and I’ll make another tutorial or send you some tips! 

I’ll show you how to go from this:

to this:

1. exposure

shows have the lovely habit of underexposing every scene, but you don’t want people looking at your gifs like this  

so: time to brighten that shit up!

I have a psd (an edited version of the one in this tutorial by @redkrypto​​) that I use and adjust for basically all my gifs, but for the sake of this tutorial I’ll do this step by step. 

photoshop has a few good options for changing the exposure. first, go to window > adjustments to get this: 

which is your biggest friend. the ones on exposure are these 4:

I’ll be honest, I have no idea what the difference between levels (the second one) and curves (the third one) is. they both adjust the tone of your gif - with the option to make the dark tones, the light tones and the midtones either brighter or less bright, separately. this’ll make your gif look less flat!

let’s take a look at levels:

this might look daunting but I promise I don’t really know how to read the histogram either, I just use the little sliders (cyan) and see how it looks. you can also use one of the eyedroppers (red) and click on a part of your gif that you want to be black, white or grey, and the rest of the image will adjust to this. it might be a little too intense - in that case you can lower the opacity of the layer (see image below). 

then there’s brightness/contrast and exposure. the difference between these two is that brightness will mostly affect the parts of your image that are already bright, while exposure will affect the whole image. the exposure window has another option I use often too, gamma correction. with gamma correction you can change the gamma levels of your gif, and I have no idea what that means but it sure does look good lmao

there not one ‘right’ way to do this, so just play around a little and see which ways you like the most :) 

after brightening, our gif looks like this. yay!

for comparison:

2. coloring

I remember feeling very overwhelmed with all of photoshop’s options at first. I will discuss all of the ones I used to create this gif, but you definitely don’t have to use or understand all of them in order to make beautiful gifs! 

two adjustments I use in pretty much every gif are hue/saturation (cyan) and selective color (red). 

first, selective color. selective color basically gives you the option to single out a color in your gif and change it. the most important thing to understand here is which colors are opposites: red and cyan, green and magenta, blue and yellow. so if you’d want your yellows to be green, you use the magenta slider. 

for the gif we’re making, we want kara’s cape to stand out, because red is going to be the only color left. these are the settings I used:

now it’s gonna look a little oversaturated, but we’ll fix that later on. I also made the yellows more red and less yellow and increased the blackness a little. 

another way to make a color stand out is by removing the other colors -- the background is mostly yellow, green, cyan and blue. so we’re gonna go to hue/saturation and completely remove their saturation, which will make the wall behind them look gray. 

in the saturation window, you also get the option to reduce the lightness (and the hue, but we’ll get to that later). reducing the lightness does not do the same thing as increasing the blackness in selective color: reducing the lightness will give it more shadow, while increasing the blackness in selective color will make for example a lilac go to a purple, or a red to a deep red. 

for our gif, I reduced the lightness (-13) and the saturation (-3) of the reds. now it looks like this:

the next step will make the gif look weird at first but after we add the other layers, it’ll look better. go to adjustments > photo filter and select ‘sepia’ (it’ll be a warming filter first - click on that and you’ll see all the other options). then increase the density: 

next, we’ll move to channel mixer. channel mixer is one of my favorite adjustment layers because it’s the easiest way to make your colors look really different. there are three channels (red, green and blue) and the best way to use it is to just try things out and see how it looks. my settings for this gif were: 

then I added another saturation layer and reduced the saturation for the yellows, greens, cyans and blues, and removed the saturation completely for the magentas. for the blues, I also decreased the lightness, and for the reds, I changed the hue a bit so it looks less yellow: 

another selective color layer (with opacity and fill both at 65%):

then add a gradient map (bottom right in the adjustments window). make sure it goes from black to white, and isn’t reversed. this will make the gif look a little softer! opacity: 20% fill: 50% (or your whole gif will be black and white)

increase the red saturation a bit and increase the blackness with selective color, so it’ll look like this:

see if your exposure needs some tweaking, remove all the colors you don’t want (the background is mostly yellow now) and add another photo filter, a cooling filter this time, and set it at 4%.

finally, one last selective color layer: 

and that’s it, we’re done!!

3. some final tips

it matters which layer is on top. if you use selective color to turn all the green into cyan and put a saturation layer on top of that, not a lot will happen if you increase or decrease the green saturation. but if you increase the cyan saturation, every part that photoshop recognizes as cyan now will become more saturated. 

some scenes are a lot harder to color than others, and you’re allowed to just ignore the existence of those scenes. :-)

use folders or “groups” to put layers together. my psds are very chaotic but this helps me find things! 

when making a set, your gifs should look good together, not just on their own - sometimes seeing my gifs together makes me realize I need to change the coloring / brightness in some of them. to make sure this realization doesn’t happen when I’ve finished all of them already, I always put them in a tumblr post in my drafts while I’m still working on them. 

use creator tags when posting your gifs. so don’t just tag it as “supergirl” but also “supergirledit” and not just “kara danvers” but also “karadanversedit” - this is the easiest way for other people and other creators in your fandom to find you! if your set doesn’t show up in the tags (when you search supergirledit and click on “recent”), send me a message and I’ll help you figure out what went wrong.

try to make your coloring match the ‘mood’ of your gifset - is it dramatic? soft? angsty? romantic? should there be intense contrasts? lots of reds, or calmer blues? same goes for the font you choose, but that’s a whole other tutorial (that I am probably not qualified to give haha, but I can point you in the direction of some people that are really good at it!). 

you’re going to make a lot of gifs you don’t like, and that’s okay. it doesn’t mean you’re not good at it, it means you’re learning and improving! and it can also mean that you forgot to turn off the night shift on your laptop and your ‘red’ gif turns out to be... definitely not red. lol

if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!! good luck & have fun :) 

[indomies]

#showyourprocess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES - When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag up to 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours.

sabrina @lanwangiji tagged me to show how i made my zayn’s birthday edit! check out her explanation on this mesmerizing zayn’s edit

1. PLANNING

It’s Zayn’s birthday, I ought to make something because so far I have made birthday posts for Louis, Niall and Liam. I didn’t participate in his birthday challenge so I had more time to create something for his birthday. I saw this post by @spaceniall​ and instantly fell in love with it. It's so clean, so neat,  an amazing edit. I had that post tagged for inspo and because my Louis’s birthday edit was a bit “grand”, I thought I should make something simple. 

I went to look for some photos of Zayn everywhere. Literally e v e r y w h e r e. I saved every photo I found beautiful and there were a LOT. I asked my friends for adjectives that describe Louis best and added them on my Louis’s birthday post, and I followed that approach for this edit. I asked several friends what they think of Zayn and collected the adjectives. 

This was a time where I haven’t used trello board, so I put all the adjectives in a google doc. Seriously I swear by trello board, they make my life easier.

After I had all the photos and the adjectives, I went to pinterest to look for the color palette. I forgot how and why I came up with this color scheme, but I believed I wanted something pastel and muted color. 

I had this idea to make an evergreen birthday post. I didn’t want to state any “happy birthday zayn” or his age on the graphic. I didn’t want to make all the edits to have his face because I wanted to showcase my graphics and typography style lmao. So I came up with 2 pictures with Zayn’s face and one central picture with his name. And I’m obsessed with space stuffs so this birthday edit is space themed.

2. PROCESSING

This is one of my earliest edits that I made in Illustrator, though I used Photoshop as well.

2.1 REMOVING PICTURES BACKGROUND

Remember I saved a LOT of Zayn’s photos? Yeah? Well I had a hard time choosing the right one. I asked Sabrina to help lmao. After I agreed with myself which photos I would use, I opened Photoshop and prayed it won’t crash after 5 min.

I uploaded the 2 photos and then I used selection on Zayn and then clicked inverse and deleted the background. Recently I found this website who can delete your background in 1 min, tbh that’s a life saver. I recommend using them, if you hate removing backgrounds with Photoshop. 

I saved the backgroundless Zayn’s photos as png. And we’re moving on to the next step

2.2 THE TYPOGRAPHY

I only used Photoshop to remove the backgrounds. Now onto Illustrator. Always pray it won’t close by itself every 5 min.

I don’t really remember which dimension I used, but I suspect it’s 600x700 px. I made 3 artboards and loaded the color palette I found from Pinterest. I made 3 rectangles as the backgrounds for each picture and filled them with my desired colors, 2 pink and 1 green. Green being the standalone was put in the middle.

A bit of excursion based on my experience

When you open an artboard in Illustrator, you’ll see a white background. When you save the file you’ve worked on, it’ll actually be transparent. That’s why I always draw a rectangle as a background so it has a solid color. 

I focused on ZAYN (middle pic) first because I wanted that to be the main focus. I don’t remember the font I used and I already deleted all files. I followed this tutorial to make the text. Basically you write your text first and choose effect > 3d > extrude and bevel > isometric top. Changed the colors according to my color palette. 

I moved on to the first picture, Zayn and the adjectives. I uploaded his photo to the artboard and put it in the middle. I wanted the adjectives to encircle him. I just followed this tutorial on how to make the effect. I made that text effect because that reminded me of the saturn ring lmao. 

2.3 THE GRAPHIC DETAILS

Once I got the typography done, I made stars and moon to make the edits merrier and more space themed. 

For the stars you can follow this tutorials. For the moon I made 2 circles, one of them was bigger. I put the smaller one in front and click minus front (I think). For the saturn planet, I made a circle with filling and an oval with stroke only, putting the oval infront of the circle and delete the back part of the ring (I hope this makes sense). 

I have these lines around Zayn, my intention was to make Zayn pop and kind of crown him or give him a glowy effect sort-of. 

All I did was follow this tutorial and delete the lines at the top, because I didn’t want it to be too crowded. Then I put some stars and planets at the top to balance it.

2.4 FINISHING TOUCHES & EXPORTING

I rearranged some things, zoomed out the artboard so I could see everything as one post and picked and deleted some unwanted things. After I was satisfied, I added my watermark and it was my old url, I just typed louistomlinboo. (Now I made a logo-ish and use that as my watermark and the logo is not dependent on my url)

Ok I lied I used Photoshop again… so I had these adjectives in 2.1 that encircled him right but some parts of the texts are above him. I exported my Illustrator file as a psd, uploaded it on Photoshop and used layer mask magic to delete the texts that were above him to create an illusion that the texts went around and under him you know. See the picture below, some texts are beneath him.

For this picture I exported the png file from Photoshop, the rest directly from Illustrator.

This was when I learned I needed to scale up, because on Illustrator they all look good in terms of quality. But when I posted it, the quality was reduced. That time I just exported as big as the dimensions and I was disappointed with the quality when it’s on tumblr.

3. POSTING

I uploaded the 3 pictures I have on tumblr and chose “happy birthday zayn” with star symbols/emojis to keep up with the space theme.

So I always write out what my caption will be with the “rich text” option.

 Then I go to this color html website to add the gradient color in the caption and remove the “;” with “ “ in here. Once I have everything, I change rich text to html so I can put the text with color in html mode. 

Put some tags related to Zayn. (self promotion time lol. i have compiled tags for 1d creators check them out here)

I finished I think a week earlier before Zayn's birthday so I saved it on draft. I posted around midnight (my timezone is CET), because oh boy it is a competition with birthday post lmao. That’s what I feel like at least. You know, everyone wants to make a birthday post, I feel I have a better chance If I post something first. Whenever I have something done earlier before a certain due date, I either save it on draft or schedule it so it’ll be posted automatically.

Yeah that’s it! It’s not as detailed as before I think because the files are deleted sorry! 

i’m tagging:

@spaceniall​ for this wonderful niall’s birthday edit

@she-fearlesss​ for this magnificent louis’s birthday gifset

@finewalls​ for this mesmerizing animation

@louitomlinson​ (i know you’re not that active but if you want and can!) for this amazing edit

and @tomlinsun​ for this cool edit

[mostlysignssomeportents]

20 years a blogger

It's been twenty years, to the day, since I published my first blog-post.

I'm a blogger.

Blogging - publicly breaking down the things that seem significant, then synthesizing them in longer pieces - is the defining activity of my days.

https://boingboing.net/2001/01/13/hey-mark-made-me-a.html

Over the years, I've been lauded, threatened, sued (more than once). I've met many people who read my work and have made connections with many more whose work  I wrote about. Combing through my old posts every morning is a journey through my intellectual development.

It's been almost exactly a year I left Boing Boing, after 19 years. It wasn't planned, and it wasn't fun, but it was definitely time. I still own a chunk of the business and wish them well. But after 19 years, it was time for a change.

A few weeks after I quit Boing Boing, I started a solo project. It's called Pluralistic: it's a blog that is published simultaneously on Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr, a newsletter and the web. It's got no tracking or ads. Here's the very first edition:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/

I don't often do "process posts" but this merits it. Here's how I built Pluralistic and here's how it works today, after nearly a year.

I get up at 5AM and make coffee. Then I sit down on the sofa and open a huge tab-group, and scroll through my RSS feeds using Newsblur.

I spend the next 1-2 hours winnowing through all the stuff that seems important. I have a chronic pain problem and I really shouldn't sit on the sofa for more than 10 minutes, so I use a timer and get up every 10 minutes and do one minute of physio.

After a couple hours, I'm left with 3-4 tabs that I want to write articles about that day. When I started writing Pluralistic, I had a text file on my desktop with some blank HTML I'd tinkered with to generate a layout; now I have an XML file (more on that later).

First I go through these tabs and think up metadata tags I want to use for each; I type these into the template using my text-editor (gedit), like this:

   <xtags>

process, blogging, pluralistic, recursion, navel-gazing

   </xtags>

Each post has its own little template. It needs an anchor tag (for this post, that's "hfbd"), a title ("20 years a blogger") and a slug ("Reflections on a lifetime of reflecting"). I fill these in for each post.

Then I come up with a graphic for each post: I've got a giant folder of public domain clip-art, and I'm good at using all the search tools for open-licensed art: the Library of Congress, Wikimedia, Creative Commons, Flickr Commons, and, ofc, Google Image Search.

I am neither an artist nor a shooper, but I've been editing clip art since I created pixel-art versions of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood glyphs using Bannermaker for the Apple //c in 1985 and printed them out on enough fan-fold paper to form a border around my bedroom.

As I create the graphics, I pre-compose Creative Commons attribution strings to go in the post; there's two versions, one for the blog/newsletter and one for Mastodon/Twitter/Tumblr. I compose these manually.

Here's a recent one:

Blog/Newsletter:

(<i>Image: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QAnon_in_red_shirt_(48555421111).jpg">Marc Nozell</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en">CC BY</a>, modified</i>)

Twitter/Masto/Tumblr:

Image: Marc Nozell (modified)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QAnon_in_red_shirt_(48555421111).jpg

CC BY

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

This is purely manual work, but I've been composing these CC attribution strings since CC launched in 2003, and they're just muscle-memory now. Reflex.

These attribution strings, as well as anything else I'll need to go from Twitter to the web (for example, the names of people whose Twitter handles I use in posts, or images I drop in, go into the text file). Here's how the post looks at this point in the composition.

<hr>

<a name="hfbd"></a>

<img src="https://craphound.com/images/20yrs.jpg">

<h1>20 years a blogger</h1><xtagline>Reflections on a lifetime of reflecting.</xtagline>

<img src="https://craphound.com/images/frnklogo.jpg">

See that <img> tag in there for frnklogo.jpg? I snuck that in while I was composing this in Twitter. When I locate an image on the web I want to use in a post, I save it to a dir on my desktop that syncs every 60 seconds to the /images/ dir on my webserver.

As I save it, I copy the filename to my clipboard, flip over to gedit, and type in the <img> tag, pasting the filename. I've typed <img src="https://craphound.com/images/ CTRL-V"> tens of thousands of times - muscle memory.

Once the thread is complete, I copy each tweet back into gedit, tabbing back and forth, replacing Twitter handles and hashtags with non-Twitter versions, changing the ALL CAPS EMPHASIS to the extra-character-consuming *asterisk-bracketed emphasis*.

My composition is greatly aided both 20 years' worth of mnemonic slurry of semi-remembered posts and the ability to search memex.craphound.com (the site where I've mirrored all my Boing Boing posts) easily.

A huge, searchable database of decades of thoughts really simplifies the process of synthesis.

Next I port the posts to other media. I copy the headline and paste it into a new Tumblr compose tab, then import the image and tag the post "pluralistic."

Then I paste the text of the post into Tumblr and manually select, cut, and re-paste every URL in the post (because Tumblr's automatic URL-to-clickable-link tool's been broken for 10+ months).

Next I past the whole post into a Mastodon compose field. Working by trial and error, I cut it down to <500 characters, breaking at a para-break and putting the rest on my clipboard. I post, reply, and add the next item in the thread until it's all done.

*Then* I hit publish on my Twitter thread. Composing in Twitter is the most unforgiving medium I've ever worked in. You have to keep each stanza below 280 chars. You can't save a thread as a draft, so as you edit it, you have to pray your browser doesn't crash.

And once you hit publish, you can't edit it. Forever. So you want to publish Twitter threads LAST, because the process of mirroring them to Tumblr and Mastodon reveals typos and mistakes (but there's no way to save the thread while you work!).

Now I create a draft Wordpress post on pluralistic.net, and create a custom slug for the page (today's is "two-decades"). Saving the draft generates the URL for the page, which I add to the XML file.

Once all the day's posts are done, I make sure to credit all my sources in another part of that master XML file, and then I flip to the command line and run a bunch of python scripts that do MAGIC: formatting the master file as a newsletter, a blog post, and a master thread.

Those python scripts saved my ASS. For the first two months of Pluralistic, i did all the reformatting by hand. It was a lot of search-replace (I used a checklist) and I ALWAYS screwed it up and had to debug, sometimes taking hours.

Then, out of the blue, a reader - Loren Kohnfelder - wrote to me to point out bugs in the site's RSS. He offered to help with text automation and we embarked on a month of intensive back-and-forth as he wrote a custom suite for me.

Those programs take my XML file and spit out all the files I need to publish my site, newsletter and master thread (which I pin to my profile). They've saved me more time than I can say. I probably couldn't kept this up without Loren's generous help (thank you, Loren!).

I open up the output from the scripts in gedit. I paste the blog post into the Wordpress draft and copy-paste the metadata tags into WP's "tags" field. I preview the post, tweak as necessary, and publish.

(And now I write this, I realize I forgot to mention that while I'm doing the graphics, I also create a square header image that makes a grid-collage out of the day's post images, using the Gimp's "alignment" tool)

(because I'm composing this in Twitter, it would be a LOT of work to insert that information further up in the post, where it would make sense to have it - see what I mean about an unforgiving medium?)

(While I'm on the subject: putting the "add tweet to thread" and "publish the whole thread" buttons next to each other is a cruel joke that has caused me to repeatedly publish before I was done, and deleting a thread after you publish it is a nightmare)

Now I paste the newsletter file into a new mail message, address it to my Mailman server, and create a custom subject for the day, send it, open the Mailman admin interface in a browser, and approve the message.

Now it's time to create that anthology post you can see pinned to my Mastodon and Twitter accounts. Loren's script uses a template to produce all the tweets for the day, but it's not easy to get that pre-written thread into Twitter and Mastodon.

Part of the problem is that each day's Twitter master thread has a tweet with a link to the day's Mastodon master thread ("Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? Follow these threads on the #fediverse at @pluralistic@mamot.fr. Here's today's edition: LINK").

So the first order of business is to create the Mastodon thread, pin it, copy the link to it, and paste it into the template for the Twitter thread, then create and pin the Twitter thread.

Now it's time to get ready for tomorrow. I open up the master XML template file and overwrite my daily working file with its contents. I edit the file's header with tomorrow's date, trim away any "Upcoming appearances" that have gone by, etc.

Then I compose tomorrow's retrospective links. I open tabs for this day a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and (now) 20 years ago:

http://memex.craphound.com/2020/01/14

http://memex.craphound.com/2016/01/14

http://memex.craphound.com/2011/01/14

http://memex.craphound.com/2006/01/14

http://memex.craphound.com/2001/01/14

I go through each day, and open anything I want to republish in its own tab, then open the OP link in the next tab (finding it in the @internetarchive if necessary). Then I copy my original headline and the link to the article into tomorrow's XML file, like so:

#10yrsago Disney World’s awful Tiki Room catches fire <a href="https://thedisneyblog.com/2011/01/12/fire-reported-at-magic-kingdom-tiki-room/">https://thedisneyblog.com/2011/01/12/fire-reported-at-magic-kingdom-tiki-room/</a>

And NOW my day is done.

So, why do I do all this?

First and foremost, I do it for ME. The memex I've created by thinking about and then describing every interesting thing I've encountered is hugely important for how I understand the world. It's the raw material of every novel, article, story and speech I write.

And I do it for the causes I believe in. There's stuff in this world I want to change for the better. Explaining what I think is wrong, and how it can be improved, is the best way I know for nudging it in a direction I want to see it move.

The more people I reach, the more it moves.

When I left Boing Boing, I lost access to a freestanding way of communicating. Though I had popular Twitter and Tumblr accounts, they are at the mercy of giant companies with itchy banhammers and arbitrary moderation policies.

I'd long been a fan of the POSSE - Post Own Site, Share Everywhere - ethic, the idea that your work lives on platforms you control, but that it travels to meet your readers wherever they are.

Pluralistic posts start out as Twitter threads because that's the most constrained medium I work in, but their permalinks (each with multiple hidden messages in their slugs) are anchored to a server I control.

When my threads get popular, I make a point of appending the pluralistic.net permalink to them.

When I started blogging, 20 years ago, blogger.com had few amenities. None of the familiar utilities of today's media came with the package.

Back then, I'd manually create my headlines with <h2> tags. I'd manually create discussion links for each post on Quicktopic. I'd manually paste each post into a Yahoo Groups email. All the guff I do today to publish Pluralistic is, in some way, nothing new.

20 years in, blogging is still a curious mix of both technical, literary and graphic bodgery, with each day's work demanding the kind of technical minutuae we were told would disappear with WYSIWYG desktop publishing.

I grew up in the back-rooms of print shops where my dad and his friends published radical newspapers, laying out editions with a razor-blade and rubber cement on a light table. Today, I spend hours slicing up ASCII with a cursor.

I go through my old posts every day. I know that much - most? - of them are not for the ages. But some of them are good. Some, I think, are great. They define who I am. They're my outboard brain.