#fucking loved this anthology story

[neodiekido]

this happens to me every fuckin day

[cookinguptales]

just watched the dirty laundry ep where one of them talks about how he wrote a short story that worried his teacher and like

ohhh I had one of those when I was a kid. my parents still talk about it to this day.

when I was about 8yo, my teacher put a poster up on the blackboard and said, "I want you all to write me a story inspired by this scene." the scene was of a lush jungle that had animals hidden throughout.

"oh, okay," I said to myself. "I can do this."

see, what my teacher (and parents) didn't know was that my grandmother, knowing vaguely that I liked to read but knowing pretty much nothing else about children, had given me a stack of books that she got at a yard sale. these books were very nice quality and I was happy to get them. too bad that they were all alfred hitchcock presents!

for the uninitiated, AHP was a tv series and book series that collected short, scary stories. stories about murder, stories about ghosts, stories about monsters of all kind. you get stories like du maurier's the birds and blackwood's the wendigo and that fucked-up short story that roald dahl wrote about that guy who collected fingers or whatever.

all that is to say that I had been consuming wildly age-inappropriate atmospheric horror for months at this point and I was like, "yes, I know just what to write!"

I ended up turning in this story about an explorer who was lost in the jungle and he starts hearing this faraway howling sound, which he realizes is a howler monkey. and he keeps getting more and more lost and the howling keeps getting closer and closer and finally, as he is about ready to collapse with exhaustion, he hears the sound of howls all around him and the story ends with the implication that he got mauled to death by howler monkeys.

(I also, coincidentally enough, really enjoyed zoo books!)

lmao ~guess whose parents got a phone call~?

but it kind of backfired on my teacher, because my parents were fully delighted. they were like "WE DIDN'T KNOW SHE COULD WRITE LIKE THIS" and I did not get punished at all.

anyway, my parents still talk about "the howler" to this day when they want to embarrass me at dinner parties. :')

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price - Twice-Told Tales - Dr. Heidegger's Experiment (1963)

[garvalhaminho]

y'all'll never 🙅‍♀️ understand "the prophecy" by ts the way i, an aspec person, do 😔😔

[snezfics-n-shit]

I just think it's so unfair how after Turnabout Goodbyes we didn't really get to see Maya hang out with Phoenix, Larry, and Miles when I think they would have the best interactions and that's why for tomorrow's entry I'm forcing them all to hang out and be sillies

... you didn't think I'd end this post without mentioning how Shu Takumi said once that Larry and Maya's interactions essentially write themselves and he is so right their energy together is perfect for giving Phoenix and Miles headaches and that's what I live for 😈

[chevaliermalfets]

remember when I started watching tmfu and said I was 1-2 transmasc headcanons from. realizing things about myself. I have yet another hc and this number is getting dangerously close to zero

[qrevo]

you know what would be really really cool?? ordem paranormal ttrpg campaign in an SCP-themed setting

[juniperhillpatient]

I’m sorry to say it but I do quite enjoy when shows objectify & deadgirlify boys. Yes this character has absolutely no agency yes this character just kinda exists as an object of affection & desire for the other characters (girls) who are more complex to react to yes this character has been dead from the beginning & exists in flashbacks as a sad but beautiful memory (but he’s a boy) <3

[todayisafridaynight]

oh my god i forgot to share my delulu-ass dream where i made a masadai doujin

[emeryleewho]

Saw a fun little conversation on Threads but I don't have a Threads account, so I couldn't reply directly, but I sure can talk about it here!

I've been wanting to get into this for awhile, so here we go! First and foremost, I wanna say that "Emmaskies" here is really hitting the nail on the head despite having "no insider info". I don't want this post to be read as me shitting on trad pub editors or authors because that is fundamentally not what's happening.

Second, I want to say that this reply from Aaron Aceves is also spot on:

There are a lot of reviewers who think "I didn't enjoy this" means "no one edited this because if someone edited it, they would have made it something I like". As I talk about nonstop on this account, that is not a legitimate critique. However, as Aaron also mentions, rushed books are a thing that also happens.

As an author with 2 trad pub novels and 2 trad pub anthologies (all with HarperCollins, the 2nd largest trad publisher in the country), let me tell you that if you think books seem less edited lately, you are not making that up! It's true! Obviously, there are still a sizeable number of books that are being edited well, but something I was talking about before is that you can't really know that from picking it up. Unlike where you can generally tell an indie book will be poorly edited if the cover art is unprofessional or there are typoes all over the cover copy, trad is broken up into different departments, so even if editorial was too overworked to get a decent edit letter churned out, that doesn't mean marketing will be weak.

One person said that some publishers put more money into marketing than editorial and that's why this is happening, but I fundamentally disagree because many of these books that are getting rushed out are not getting a whole lot by way of marketing either! And I will say that I think most authors are afraid to admit if their book was rushed out or poorly edited because they don't want to sabotage their books, but guess what? I'm fucking shameless. Café Con Lychee was a rush job! That book was poorly edited! And it shows! Where Meet Cute Diary got 3 drafts from me and my beta readers, another 2 drafts with me and my agent, and then another 2 drafts with me and my editor, Café Con Lychee got a *single* concrete edit round with my editor after I turned in what was essentially a first draft. I had *three weeks* to rewrite the book before we went to copy edits. And the thing is, this wasn't my fault. I knew the book needed more work, but I wasn't allowed more time with it. My editor was so overworked, she was emailing me my edit letter at 1am. The publisher didn't care if the book was good, and then they were upset that its sales weren't as high at MCD's, but bffr. A book that doesn't live up to its potential is not going to sell at the same rate as one that does!

And this may sound like a fluke, but it's not. I'm not naming names because this is a deeply personal thing to share, but I have heard from *many* authors who were not happy with their second books. Not because they didn't love the story but because they felt so rushed either with their initial drafts or their edits that they didn't feel like it lived up to their potential. I also know of authors who demanded extra time because they knew their books weren't there yet only to face big backlash from their publisher or agent.

I literally cannot stress to you enough that publisher's *do not give a fuck* about how good their products are. If they can trick you into buying a poorly edited book with an AI cover that they undercut the author for, that is *better* than wasting time and money paying authors and editors to put together a quality product. And that's before we get into the blatant abuse that happens at these publishers and why there have been mass exoduses from Big 5 publishers lately.

There's also a problem where publishers do not value their experienced staff. They're laying off so many skilled, dedicated, long-term committed editors like their work never meant anything. And as someone who did freelance sensitivity reading for the Big 5, I can tell you that the way they treat freelancers is *also* abysmal. I was almost always given half the time I asked for and paid at less than *half* of my general going rate. Authors publishing out of their own pockets could afford my rate, but apparently multi-billion dollar corporations couldn't. Copy edits and proofreads are often handled by freelancers, meaning these are people who aren't familiar with the author's voice and often give feedback that doesn't account for that, plus they're not people who are gonna be as invested in the book, even before the bad payment and ridiculous timelines.

So, anyway, 1. go easy on authors and editors when you can. Most of us have 0 say in being in this position and authors who are in breech of their contract by refusing to turn in a book on time can face major legal and financial ramifications. 2. Know that this isn't in your head. If you disagree with the choices a book makes, that's probably just a disagreement, but if you feel like it had so much potential but just *didn't reach it*, that's likely because the author didn't have time to revise it or the editor didn't have time to give the sort of thorough edits it needed. 3. READ INDIE!!! Find the indie authors putting in the work the Big 5's won't do and support them! Stop counting on exploitative mega-corporations to do work they have no intention of doing.

Finally, to all my readers who read Café Con Lychee and loved it, thank you. I love y'all, and I appreciate y'all, and I really wish I'd been given the chance to give y'all the book you deserved. I hope I can make it up to you in 2025.

[faydingrain]

I know I'm working on so many goddamn things but! I've been thinking about Steam Train and it's gonna get a bit of an overhaul~ ✨

[mimiteyy]

i wanna go out and Do Things today. like go to a coffee shop n read then maybe go for a walk.

[sharry-arry-odd]

"Andy Wingham's skin glows in the dark," we told them, "and he smells like egg farts. It's unusual. He's unusual. We, his friends and colleagues, are concerned." We meant these as sincere warnings, as please for aid and guidance. We'd been around sick kids and kids faking sick enough to know the difference, and this was neither. This was something altogether new. "Andy is emitting an unusual amount of heat for a middle schooler," we stated clearly for the record. "Please advise." But no one listened, or if they did, they listened wrong. "Be nice," we were told, or else. "Think of Andy's feelings," which was frustrating, because it was Andy's feelings, along with his health and well-being, that most concerned us.

The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: Andy, Lord of Ruin, by Michael Andreasen

[duckprintspress]

Urgent: Help Us Not Get Screwed

Anyone who follows us has seen us screaming from the hill-tops about our current crowdfunding campaign for Aether Beyond the Binary (17 aetherpunk stories! Outside the gender binary main characters!). We've only got 50 hours left...and we just got screwed.

Our Anthology Kickstarter is being scammed.

About two hours ago, with us still roughly $1,500 from our goal, we got a junk pledge for almost $2,000. This pushed us into being marked as "funded" but there is zero chance it's a real pledge, it's from a shell account marked as being in Turkey. This kind of money doesn't just fall like a miracle into the laps of small business like ours.

The timing on this attack is devastating. The final 48 hours of a campaign are absolutely critical, especially for one as close to meeting our goal as we are. We were very likely to hit our target, but doing so was going to require appeals to y'all that started with "hey, we're so close, please help spread the word." Further, the campaign has hundreds of followers who will get a notification at the 48 hour mark, and many who might have backed to help get us to the finish line will now think "oh, they're there, they don't need me," and not back. Meanwhile, one of two things will happen with the spam pledge: either it will get removed by Kickstarter, which could take hours or a day+, totally nuking us during this crucial window, or it won't get removed until the payment bounces post-campaign, at which point we won't actually have enough money to do fulfillment.

Either way, we are fucked.

Please, please don't let these dipshits ruin the love and passion that 30+ people have poured into this project for over a year.

Our campaign IS NOT FUNDED, and it won't be without help. I'm begging, help spread the word about how we're getting screwed, and help spread the word about Aether Beyond the Binary (visit the link for so much info!) so that we can get enough real pledges to fund this project we've poured our hearts and souls into.

SUPPORT THE QUEER ANTHOLOGY KICKSTARTER FOR AETHER BEYOND THE BINARY (with your pledges or with signal boosts!)

[mcflymemes]

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT - THE ANTHOLOGY BY TAYLOR SWIFT PROMPT LIST *  assorted lyrics from the album, some lines slightly adapted for meme purposes but feel free to adjust as necessary

even if it's handcuffed, i'm leaving here with you.

trust me. i can handle a dangerous man.

i love you. it's ruining my life.

does it feel all right to not know me?

i am who i am 'cause you trained me.

quick. tell me something awful.

i loved you the way that you were.

we were just kids, babe.

i can fix him.

you and i go from one kiss to getting married.

you said i'm the love of your life.

way up there, i actually love it.

i just don't understand how you don't miss me.

do you hate me?

did you think i had it in me?

what if i told you i'm back?

i still miss the smoke.

i'm not trying to exaggerate, but i think i might die if it happened.

you look like stevie nicks.

it's hell on earth to be heavenly.

i still can't believe it.

this happens once every few lifetimes.

didn't you hear? they called it all off.

it's happening again.

my friends say it isn't right to be scared.

i might just die.

fuck you if i can't have us.

tell me about the first time you saw me.

are you gonna marry, kiss, or kill me?

no one's ever had me... not like you.

stay away from her.

there wouldn't be this if there hadn't been you.

i don't think you've changed much.

that's where i was when i lost it all.

life was always easier on you than it was on me.

i hoped you'd return.

do you believe me now?

what if your eyes looked up and met mine one more time?

what are the chances you'd be downtown?

is it something i did?

oh, we must stop meeting like this.

they say what doesn't kill you makes you aware.

i'm not a donor, but i'd give you my heart if you needed it.

looking backwards might be the only way to move forwards.

the story isn't mine anymore.

what a charming saturday!

none of it is changing.

wild winds are death to the candle.

one bad seed kills the garden.

i'm bitter, but i swear i'm fine.

this place made me feel worthless.

i didn't want to come down.

everything had been above board.

blood's thick, but nothing like a payroll.

you can mark my words that i said it first.

the professor said to write what you know.

all of this to say, i hope you're okay.

your words are still just ringing in my head.

i built a legacy which you can't undo.

who do i have to speak to to change the prophecy?

the effects were temporary.

no, i'm not coming to my senses.

babe, you gotta fake it 'til you make it.

you know you're good when you can even do it with a broken heart.

i guess a lesser woman would've lost hope.

thought of calling you, but you won't pick up.

you're a professional.

long may you reign.

you're an animal. you are bloodthirsty.

now i seem to be scared to go outside.

i don't believe in good luck.

i hate it here.

if i'd been there, i'd hate it.

only the gentle survived.

i'm lonely, but i'm good.

you have no room in your dreams for regrets.

i thought it was just goodbye for now.

are you still a mind reader?

let it once be me.

i haven't decided yet.

i still dream of him.

i'm so afraid i sealed my fate.

it was always the same searing pain.

i can't forgive the way you made me feel.

it wasn't a fair fight or a clean kill.

she used to say she wished that you were dead.

tell me all your secrets.

they tried to warn you about me.

you're in terrible danger.

i'm the life you chose.

yes, i'm haunted, but i'm feeling just fine.

no one asks any questions here.

tell me i'm despicable. say it's unforgivable.

i'm running back home to you.

you should see your faces.

you knew the price going in.

was any of it true?

who the fuck was that guy?

i don't ever want you back.

did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?

you don't get to tell me you feel bad.

you wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.

am i allowed to cry?

there's no such thing as bad thoughts. only your actions talk.

they're going to crucify me anyway.

i know i'm just repeating myself.

that's the closest i've come to my heart exploding.

[cameronspecial]

Rafe Cameron's Masterlist 1

Series:

Thorn In My Side, Rose In My Hand (Complete)

Before The Last Petal Falls (Complete)

Let Me, Angel (Anthology)

Assisting In Deception (Complete)

A New Kind Of Normal (Complete)

Oneshots:

Some People Can Change

I Don’t Share My Candy

Cheese Head

Do You Want Those Things?

The First Son And The First Spare (Part 1)

The Prince Consort And The First Daughter-In-Law (Part 2)

Violation Of Privacy

Bad Friend

The Story Of Them

To Earn Your Love

Really, Rafe?!

Death By Clothes Rack

Stubborn Little Girl

You Deserve Better

Mistakes That Can Be Undone

The People We Used To Be

The Gymnastics Coach

Not Going Anywhere

Mr.Right

Always There

The Obligation of A Fuck Buddy

Whispered I Love Yous

Safe In The Arms Of The Enemy

Everything Was Blue

Helping Hand

Blurb:

Boyfriend Rules

I'm Here

Fight or Flight

Summer Secrets

The Lesson (Part 1)

The Lesson (Part 2)

Rafe To The Rescue

Pretty Girl

I Want To Be With You (Part 1)

I Want To Be Your Boyfriend (Part 2)

Miscommunicated Silence

The Lies You Tell The Other Woman (Part 1)

The Lies She Tells Herself (Part 2)

Pretty Abs

Picture Perfect Snow Globe

Shit Friends

Clingy Bitch

You Are My Lover

His Saviour

Too Big

Two Happy Kitties

Violation of Privacy

No Recognition

Rafe’s First Love

Who Do You Love?

Dude, That's My Sister

Don't Know How To Show I Care

Hammocks, Massages and Cookies

Missed Connections

Fading Memories

Her Wildest Dreams

Can't Deal With Your Shit

Dirty Floors and Wrinkly Hands

One Lock, Two Locks, Three Locks More

My Particular Girl

Maniac

Candle-Lit Dinners

Cute Asshole (Part 1)

Cute Pogue (Part 2)

You Will Always Be My Business

Matching Hair

I Know

The Help

Bow

Mrs. Cameron All But In Name

At Her Beck And Call

Ghost Of A Memory

The Speed Of Light

Musical Chairs

Smell My Shirt

Neverending Texts

Burning Obsession

Little Subway Things

Oedipus Rex

Red Light Kisses

Lifting My Own Weight

Setting The Standards

Meant To Be A Cameron

Crazy Christmas

Who I Am

You're Breaking My Heart

Drives Me Wild

Rule Number 3

Slow Death

Clumsy Princess

Elizabeth’s Replacement

Busy Hands

Dead Dad Club

Bed Companion

Headcanon:

Anxiety Whisperer