#got to 800k a couple times

[saturnalorbit]

happy saturday saturday!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[holytragedycat]

I'm going to explain what crymua is, because most people in this app (or who speak English) don't know what it is and maybe they'll like it.

Let's start

Crymua is a ship between a Mexican influencer (now also a singer) (Yeri MUA) and a Spanish streamer (Cry) who previously made videos judging and criticizing her, because Yeri was very problematic before and got into a lot of controversies, the ship is created because Cry reacts to Yeri's first song, Yeri is asked about this in a live and she says that she knows that Cry is a boy who makes videos on YouTube talking about her and that she didn't remember if she had ever touched on the topic, she said that Cry is nice and his videos are funny, and says that although Cry has not said a single positive comment, he has his opinion and that there will be many others; Cry reacts to Yeri's reaction and is surprised because he didn't expect her to have anything good to say about him. He says that he even feels guilty and is shocked that she didn't take it personally.

Cry's followers (Cryboyers) start pairing him with Yeri to make fun of him, the ship gets bigger and Yeri and Cry complain about him, saying not to put them together, until they start joking themselves, however they don't speak , they only follow each other on Instagram, they communicate through reactions and fans, for example Yeri is asked again in a live about the ship some time later and she jokes "they are going to make us fall in love by simply matching each other", Cry see this, he says "I don't think so" and then he also jokes "what a pretty bang, hey, don't leave it like that for too long, I'll fall in love."

There were a couple of setbacks, the ship ended for a few days, but Cry put on Twitter (X) "where there was fire ashes remain", skipping all that, Yeri and Cry meet in Mexico City the same night because they both had events and They can meet each other (there were no cameras, not even a photo 😔) Cry and Yeri tell later, they hit it off very well, so 6 days later the long-awaited collaboration arrived (October 26, 2023), they tried on costumes and made Halloween pumpkins, incredibly, broke a record for the most viewed live on Facebook where they broadcast before moving to Twitch, there were 800k viewers, on Twitch there were 600k.

The transmission is about to end because Yeri tells Cry that she had a plan B in case the collaboration became awkward, which was to go to a Vogue event, Cry tells her that she should go, Yeri sends a message to her manager asking if she can take Cry with her and when they say yes, they say goodbye, they got together 2 more times in November (crymua 2.0/ crymua 2.5) and two more in December (for Yeri's birthday) and then for crymua 3 (Christmas) , which was the entire week before the end of the year together. They became best friends (they always clarify this because although they love each other very much, they have only known each other for a short time, they are not a couple) and they do crymua collaborations because they have fun. As extra information, they promised to go to events together whenever they can, they almost got married for a joke, the crymua fandom is called tomatitos and Cry and Yeri got a tattoo <3

[sizzlingpatrolfox]

What's the point of th's supposed popularity if no one is listening to his music? He's basically an influencer at this point. The Kardashians have more ig followers than Beyonce and Taylor Swift, but they could easily lose those followers, unlike Beyonce and TS, who have the most loyal fan bases in the world. Quality over quantity, honestly.

Wdym his instagram likes don't matter???!?!?!

I think it has to do with everyone's obsession with "GP". Kths started that conversation around some grammys red carpet, I don't remember what year it was when they said "locals" kept asking if taekook were a couple. That's the first time I remember being taken aback and confused about this "gp" and "locals" validation. Then it was because he was in that kitchen show and they all went "omg gp darling this, gp darling that". And it hasn't stopped since solo era started. Do you have any idea of how tired I am of reading "gp" - take a shot everytime you go on army/solos spaces and read those letters.

Nobody cared about "gp" when BTS got all those billboard hot 100 positions and streams thanks to the huge fandom. As I've said before, BTS had a huge fandom for a while but only became somewhat "popular" (as in, random people would know about them - oh sorry, I meant precious GP would know about them) after butter or maybe my universe. Mind you, I've never in 6 years heard anyone in real life say "BTS". Literally Never. Meanwhile I just started this new job a month ago and I've already heard 3 different groups of people of all ages talk about Taylor. I've got students umproptly coming up to me and say "Miss, I've been listening to Taylor Swift songs to practice my English".

You'll see.. kpop fans are stereotyped as white, chubby/obese high school girls with blue hair who spend too much time online daydreaming about celebrities and have no life and get no sex. The truth is that some fans -even if they themselves are white chubby blue haired girls- are obsessed with not being associated to that stereotype. They don't want Taehyung's fans to be some miserable, lonely losers. They want him to have "LOCALS" admiration and respect. When the members opened their own ig accounts, those interactions were a gateway to that, mostly because instagram is you know.. theee place for the skinny, tanned, successful, pretty LOCALS.

I've always thought the whole obsession with "gp" and "locals" was so stupid. There's absolutely nothing wrong in having a big fandom. That's literally how BTS came to be what they were until last year, and armys weren't praying and begging for "gp" support. Taylor gets the numbers she gets because yes, many people around the world know her name and willingly listen to her music; but also because she has a huge ass fanbase. She's been building that fanbase for more than a decade. Three years ago, if you listened to Taylor you would've been considered a pathetic, lonely loser too.

At the end of the day, all this popularity talk it's just fans' own insecurities and their itch to distance themselves and the idol from the image of a "fandom" because they know what everyone thinks of people who are part of fandoms. Ironically, most BTS fans started out as people who didn't know anything about kpop -gp- and two years later they're getting hit tweets calling Jennie a lazy slut and saying "my fave is so popular amongst locals."

Taehyung stans clung to his ig interactions because they thought having the likes of "locals" made him more important or better in every way than the other members. However, in music, it's always better to have a huge fandom that will make eight hours long playlists of your song and play it multiple times a day -investing their own money and time on you- than it is to have random people liking your ig posts. And if what I'm saying it's not enough, take his china bar activities as an example. They bought almost a million albums; there's no 800k "locals" that would've bought his album.

[coffeebanana]

20 questions for Fic Writers

Omg it took me ages to get to this but better late than never! Thanks for the tags @rosie-b, @monpetitchattriste, @lesbitorte, @kasienda and @celestialtitania!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Um. 107*... It's possible that I have a problem 😂

(*one is on anon. more on that later adfdsd)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

801,972!!! (fun fact i was just below 800k the first time i got tagged in this game so i was like "oh well i'm posting a new chapter tomorrow...i'll do this game after that so i can pass that milestone!" and then i posted the chapter but it took me close to a week to do this ahaha)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

mostly just ml. i have a few spop fics too but i don't really write for that fandom anymore. or at least not right now.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Gah. okay. I'm going to answer this honestly but to do that I first need to explain that my most kudoed fic is on anon because I'm annoyed it's my most kudoed fic aksjfbksdb. Like. It's only so popular because there's a bit of lila salt? and really the fic isn't about that but i don't really write that kind of thing anymore and i don't want ppl coming to my profile and sorting by kudos and seeing that first. There are other things i'd do a lot differently in that fic now too ahaha.

Break a Leg

Cards Against Ladybug's Identity

Ladybug And The Tramp Stamp

Imaginary Friends

The Sun Will Rise Again

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

I do!! I reply to pretty much every comment--unless it's particularly rude/rubs me the wrong way. I know commenting takes time and I appreciate the effort ppl put into it so I like to give my thanks back!

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Every Teardrop is a Waterfall. Although I think Girl Is A Gun is a strong contender too?

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

Uh...well, most of my fics have happy or at least hopeful endings. I don't think I can narrow this down to just a few haha.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I don't think I've ever gotten hate? Definitely some comments that aren't super nice but nothing too bad. (now i've probably gone and jinxed it 😂)

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

um. a little tiny bit but not enough to have a particular kind LOL. i've only posted it once so far. but i also have Entangled, which will have smut in the next chapter--and that's angsty smut. which i suppose would be my brand of smut if i ever write any more

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

i haven't! i entertained the idea of an ml/spop crossover a couple years ago but i don't have any interest in it anymore. oh and i ALSO had an idea for a marigami spyxfamily crossover. but i don't know if i'll ever get around to that

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of! (*knocks on forehead since no wood is nearby*)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

no, but that would be super cool!

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

i have not! a few times i've planned to write things with other ppl but nothing that ever really made it to the writing stage ahaha. although the littlebug vday zine is a collab in the form of a series--not exactly co-written but similar vibes

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

to write for, definitely the love square. and then catradora is so special to me because it got me back into writing and also i started IDing as a lesbian in part because i binged spop.

aside from that i can't really decide because like. there are so many shows i've seen and books i've read and ships i've loved for so many different reasons asdfbk. and then i have OC ships that only live in my head but that i love to play with sometimes before i fall asleep at night. so please don't make me choose!!

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

uh. i would say none of them? because it's only when i completely lose interest in a fic that i lose the belief i'll finish it. and that's only happened with maybe two of my wips i can think of?

16. What are your writing strengths?

Depicting emotions! And using the setting to do that by establishing the mood/tone/etc...

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i guess like...self-doubt? not that i'm awful with it. in general i think i'm pretty good that way. but it's my biggest barrier to writing when i have periods where i get in my head about my writing, and it can make me overthink and not know if i LIKE my writing. and i think my writing is at its best when i'm having fun with it (which is probably true of most ppl), so...

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

i think it makes sense when the characters are actually speaking that language for a short time but aren't speaking it for most of the fic? like i have one ml AU set in new york so they're speaking english for most of it and i used french for the first couple lines that were french (and weaved the translations into the narrative). so that's the only time i do that personally--aside for maybe one word lines like bonjour--but as a reader it doesn't usually bother me when i see it used other ways

19. First fandom you wrote for?

ahaha the Vampire Academy book series. and NO you won't find those fics anywhere, even though they are still out there somewhere

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

currently Say Something. and i very much wish i could finish writing it, but it'll happen when it happens!

I think most people I would have tagged have probably been tagged by this point...likely more than once 😂. So whoever else wants to play should do so!!

[freneticfloetry]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Will I ever get enough of these? No? Thanks to @liminalmemories21, @strandnreyes, @welcometololaland, and @reyesstrand for the tags!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

45. RIP to the lost works of my OG fandom, published on a ship board/archive that no longer exists. (I still have most of them, they just won’t be seeing the light of day. Like ever.)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

368,184. (Again, RIP to all those now-unpublished words — with them I’d be somewhere around 800k.)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

LOL So glad this question is phrased the way it is. Right now, I’m only actively writing in 911 Lone Star fandom, though I have a WIP in Magicians fandom that I fully intend to finish. Historically, I’ve written in about 40 fandoms (36 on AO3), most with a single fic. Thanks, Yuletide!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Ashes and Flame (Every You and Every Me), The Hunger Games Trilogy (I get a kudos email for this one at least five times a week. How are people still finding and reading this little fic?)

Lost in Translation, The Losers

Deck the Halls with Daddy Issues, pre-film Avengers MCU

Big Girl Pants, New Girl

Shells of a Long-Ago Lifetime (Faces That Once Were Mine Mix), Supernatural

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

99.9% of the time, absolutely. Comments are my biggest motivation — the serotonin section fuels my muse. If people take the time to tell me they read and enjoyed a fic (especially if they tell me why), I like to at least thank them for that. There have been times when Real Life has been Happening A Lot and comments on the more popular stuff have gotten by me, and I feel weird about going back months after the fact to respond — that Hunger Games fic, for instance, has a couple pages of unanswered comments.

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

Posted, probably Of All Our Yesterdays. I am typically an Angst with a Happy Ending writer without fail, but the boys of the Black Dagger Brotherhood don’t do typical happy, and Phury is lowkey the angstiest of the bunch.

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

I’m actually gonna say scenes from an unfinished story, because I think Quentin Coldwater having this happy ending, the way this one happens, is the biggest fuck you to show canon and its creators that I could possibly craft.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I recently got my first hate comment! I posted about it, but I’ve also left it up in all its glory.

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

I do now! Not that I haven’t in the past — I wrote several het scenes for my very first ship, and Quentin and Eliot had some delightful married kitchen sex we picked up right in the middle in What Baking Can Do — but I feel like Tarlos has really helped me unleash my inner smut writer. My smut from Carlos’ POV has a lot of feelings (LOL), but the stuff I’m writing from TK’s POV is a little sillier and dirtier and more fun. With feelings.

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

I do love me a good crossover. Outside of canons I’ve crossed that exist in the same universe (We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, in Jessica Jones/Luke Cage fandom, plus And to All a Goodnight, for two Jennifer Crusie books), I once wrote tens of thousands of words of a ridiculously plot-heavy Roswell/Angel crossover that will forever hold a soft spot in my heart, a randomly cracky and super angsty Supernatural/Grey’s Anatomy, and a minor character-focused Supernatural/Sarah Connor Chronicles, Requiem, that I still sort of love a lot.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

That Hunger Games fic has been swiped a few times. Weird.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Again, the Hunger Games fic — it exists somewhere on the internet in Dutch. And that one, the SPN/TSCC crossover, and an old Dexter fic, Dinner and a Show, have been podficed.

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

I have! An old friend and I once cowrote ~25k of our idea of fluff, which was basically hijinks, smut, and torturing our leading man with a boom box and Billy Joel.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

For ships that I’ve written… Hmm. I think, before I wrote to build a home, I would’ve said it was a tossup between Tarlos, Queliot, Chlollie, and Jules/Robin from Troubleshooters, but now there’s just no contest. Weewoo Husbands for the win. For ships in general, Tarlos still tops the list, alongside the ones I mentioned, the OT3 (Eliot/Hardison/Parker), Arthur/Eames, Phedre/Joscelin from the Kushiel’s Legacy books, Frank/Karen from the Netflix Marvelverse, Aidan/Sally from Being Human US, and my MCU crack cube of Steve/Nat/Bucky/Sam.

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

God, this is such a throwback, but it’s probably Adagio in B-Flat, the Sherlock music porn murder mystery I half wrote and got hopelessly blocked on.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, I’d say, especially banter. And understanding characters, I guess? I’m good at making characters sound like themselves, whether they’re speaking or internalizing. And, I’m now proud to say, plot. That’s something I wouldn’t have dared to claim this time ten years ago.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Oof. Brevity. I have completely lost the ability to write short (and, by extension, to the point). I’m also the slowest writer in the world, thanks to my tendency to edit every sentence within an inch of its life.

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

My Lone Star mutuals are laughing right now. Clearly I hate it. 😊 I’ve written three fics that feature Spanish, two sort of significantly, and all my old Firefly fics have some Mandarin in there somewhere.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

OG Roswell. So much OG Roswell. Michael/Liz, specifically, with a side of Kyle/Isabel.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

It almost feels like cheating, since it’s my most recent fic (and the only one I’ve published so far in my current fandom), but I’m so stupidly proud of to build a home. Carlos is such a touchstone character for me that writing him was oddly therapeutic. And I think I’ve said this before, but writing the two of them together was like the evolution of the clarity I found writing Queliot, which was the first time I’d really explored a ship in fic where I loved both halves of the pairing even close to equally — it helped me unearth my Carlos and who he is in my heart, but it also helped me uncover the true depth of my love for TK.

No pressure tagging @orchidscript, @heartstringsduet, @never-blooms, @rmd-writes, @walkinginland, @paperstorm, @mixtapestar, @catanisspicy, and @alrightbuckaroo!

[bradshawsbaby]

Not anon

PB’s wife is more than just a tech CEO, she’s one of the leading executives in the world. They are such an odd couple - her all cool, calm, and serious and him a giant goofball. But they work so well, and people are pleasantly surprised when they get to know her that she’s loves a good laugh too. Hannix has definitely stayed at their NYC penthouse.

Coyote’s wife has been a Saintsation for 4 years and is currently team captain. She’s also an IG and TikTok influencer with around 800k followers on IG and 1.4 million on TikTok. She taught Mrs. B the thunder choreography, and Rooster loves it.

I love these headcanons you guys have been sharing!!!

I can imagine Phoenix not being sure how well she’s going to get along with Payback’s wife, but then they have the best time together in New York!

And I mean, Coyote’s clearly got the moves, so it makes sense that his wife would, too 😂 I imagine Bradley is appreciative of any and all sexy cheerleader dances that his wife learns 😆

[rpfisfine]

(hi im back I got scared bc I worried I'd focused too much on myself in my last ask and the demons took over Help) idk why im shocked that there aren't any fics unique to wattpad I dont think the boyboy following is a wattpad bunch we're all old pretentious fucks (endearing). I rly hope they're cool with fics,,, i hope they Get It,,, that would be really sick. they've surprised me before, they can do it again!

you ARE being brave holy shit if I was in your position I think I'd shit myself to DEATH this tension is killing me but I agree your fics are so well written like they're rpf but more importantly they're really good??? truly moving?? literary even??? and i have hope that they'll appreciate that too

- 🌵

HIIIIIIIIIII noooooooo omg not at all!!! its just that ive genuinely sucked ass at answering asks in general since the dawn of time and in the past couple of weeks i have gotten more asks than ive ever received before in my entire life LOL plus my memory is shit so if i dont answer Immediately i forget ive even been sent anything in the first place and its just this whole thing but me not responding wasnt caused by anything you did in the slightest i LOVE getting asks from you!!!

god i literally know it makes complete sense but at the same time it surprised me as well maybe wattpad rly isnt what i remember it being anymore maybe it has fallen off in a pretty major way since 2014..... dude i literally cannot exaggerate how much i want that to be true LOL i rly rly rly hope they are too like i know logically they wouldnt be making the video if they werent but still...... tbh aleksa does strike me as someone who has legitimately written self insert fanfiction abt him & alex in the past so. i think there's some hope for us (joking obvs. unless..)

im gonna be real there hasnt been one moment in the past couple of days where i wasnt shitting and pissing and vomiting myself to death i literally wake up in cold sweat nowadays expecting my inbox to be flooded w anons being like DUDE THE VIDEO IS OUT FHFGNG.. like its BAD the tension is kiling me as well. ohhhhhmy god stop you guys are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo niceys to me i cant believe it..... god.....them apprer . them Complim , them ap- i cant even say it . is something i genuinely honestly cannot even begin to think abt like you guys r being so brave and normal abt this and r trying to comfort me constantly and i just feel like i havent made any mental progress at all since the day of the fateful discovery LOL like ever since i learned its not gonna be posted to their patreon w roughly 5000 subscibers like i hoped but instead to their yt channel with 800k+ subscibers i have been trying even Harder to gaslight myself into thinking my fics somehow wont make it into the video bc when i like sit down and make a serious attempt to entertain the possibility of 800k ppl potentially seeing my writing its just . Like my brain legitimately shuts down. i just cannot physically or mentally comprehend that number at all its not REAL!!!! to me!!!!!! get me out of here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[doodlestab]

Omgg recently I’ve been obsessing over CQ and deep-diving into a bunch of accounts to find out more stuff about it because there’s just so many characters! The world seems so vivid and alive, with a bunch of interesting concepts that I’m rlly interested in :000

But ahh, I’m still struggling to find out exactly how it came to be and what’s the whole idea behind it and such. If you feel up to it I would absolutely hear your own explanation of it, you as the creator, but only if you can obviously <33

Oh this is a dangerous question to ask me, because I could go on and on forever. I'm gonna write everything under a read-more and come back up top if I can summarize it all in a paragraph afterwards.

Okay I came back up like 6 paragraphs in. there is no way I will be able to summarize this so if you're really interested, prepare for the read.

So the concept of CQ sprouted first when I was probably about 11 or 12. I had nothing to do, I was often sick and stuck in bed at home, all I had was time on my hands. It was all conceptual for a while, until Adventure Time came out in 2010. That really inspired me to start drawing and developing my own universe because I remember being so fascinated with such an expansive world like the Land of Ooo. I was 13 at that point, and started drawing more too, so I had a laptop, a dinky little tablet, and still tons of free time.

The concept started out like this: I love bright colors, I love tons of characters, and I love silly antics. So I'll make a bunch of bright colors into characters, and make them be silly. In my mind they were always stick people, 2D abstractions, cartoony, etc. Those characters are what I call the mimes, which are the pale white skinned, single-color oriented characters you see me post all the time. Since the idea sprouted, they've become more than just 2D cartoons and sort of just their own physical characters.

After I'd curated that concept, I went on to flesh out the world. Made some "main characters" which were really just some of my first attempts at character designs that weren't weird animal creature thingamabobs. Tim, Gary, Samantha, Hannah, and Michael were the ones I believe I made first. That's sort of why Tim especially seems soooooo... bland. The average cis white dude with a silly T shirt. But as basic of a guy as he may be, he still is my guy and I love him so much and he will never not be my guy and also never not be the face of CQ. Even if he adds almost nothing extra to the group (ability wise), he will always be in the story just to be everybody's friend.

This feels like it's getting a little over descriptive, but really the concepts of characters and world building all came together in bits and pieces over the next couple years while I actually figured out a cohesive plot. I knew what I wanted but I wasn't sure how to communicate it, so I wrote out a sort of play-type script for it. I just slapped down dialogue, threw notes in on the side to remind myself what was going on in any given scene, and just went. I rarely looked back while I wrote, and it went on to be about 700 or 800k words of pure mess.

At this point, I was in a voice acting circle with a lot of good friends. So I gave the characters voices too!!! Because it was fun to see the characters come to life and I could tell my friends had a lot of fun with them too. The voices and talking to other people about the characters really helped me flesh them out even more. So I went back and revised the script to make it easier to be acted out.

I also got into animating around that time, too. So all together I was like holy cow. It's all written out, my friends have some awesome voices, I can animate... I could make this a little web series or something!!! And that failed. Cause I was like ambitiously 15 with really flimsy writing and a poor grasp on the flow of animation.

BUT! It was still a very exciting and developmental time for CQ. A lot of characters had been created, the concept of the mimes finally got fully fleshed out. It's much more of a spectrum now because of my love of character design, but at first I'm pretty sure the original mimes were Uppsulka (Red), Foxglove (Orange), Maggie (Yellow), Twiddle Niddle (Green), Holly (Cyan), TyV (Blue), and N & O (Purple).

I made more pretty quickly but those were the ones I'd had in my heart for a couple of years at that point. This was also around the time that my thinking got very very compartmental. As in, my OCD got the better of me. There had to be an be an opposite equal to everything. Not a bad thing, but ultimately something that would just make the world a little too complex for me to handle. Each mime had to have a living counterpart, it just felt like it had to be like that. So for every living person, there was always a new mime being designed alongside it. There was also the mimes concept themselves-- they're the concept of light. So of course, now I have to have a concept of dark, too. Weird creepy shadowy creatures were almost a thing.

Those shadowy beings still actually exist lore wise, but over time I melded that concept into the past of the plot. Light beat dark, dark is no more, influx of light (mimes), efflux of dark (shadowy dudes). It was right around here that I feel like I'd solidified what I really wanted to do with CQ? I think? I mean of course I'm still developing it all even now at 25, but right around then was like. Ah! Okay. Now I have a workable story.

Light beats dark, light rains into the physical land, the people that were already living in the physical land are like wtf get out? But these beings of light are like wtf we JUST got here. And also we're like way stronger and more abstract and creepy than you so *kills you*. And thus a band of heroes has to inevitably rise and resolve this issue.

So now at this point I have like 16 or 17 mimes and living people, so thats like wow over 30 characters. Also not to mention all of the side bit characters I'd made for side plots along the way. I love an expansive world, a huge roster of characters, and diversity in design and interaction... but I really had to settle on a limit for main focus characters. I still struggle with that. I still consider all of the characters you see me draw often as main characters. Now there's just more *mainlier* characters. Or rather, they've gotten their own story and development in groups. But whatever, because this is sort of getting too far from the topic to even be justifiable x_x

Basically the story is about concepts from a different plain of existence come to the physical realm, and everybody scrambles to figure out what the fuck is going on and how to get things back to normal. I don't call it an alien invasion story but it kind of is that. Just like. An accidental invasion that they can't reverse. Woops!!!

I'm not sure how to end this ramble because I know I could still go on for ever... but I'd probably just stray too far from the original question if I did.

Oh yeah also I did have a few attempts at launching projects for CQ. The really old comic from like 2014... an attempted video game... another comic.......... I've just never been happy with how I start it off. And the preferred method for how to tell the story I want keeps changing. Right now I want to animate it. I don't know how far I'll get. But I'll keep working on CQ until I get everything I want out about it out. (...so to those still interested even now, I'm honored that you enjoy the ramblings!)

[olderthannetfic]

Ive been writing for fandom since 2013 and some how, some way, Ive only ever gotten ONE rude comment. and it was kind of hilarious ngl? Apparently headcannoning an anime character as half Japanese/half Spanish is 'erasing their ethnicity'. But today I finally got comments that pissed me off. AFTER NINE YEARS. See I have this finished multi-chapter fic that has some plot holes in it. They're not major and can easily be changed (basically, I took away a character's sense of smell but mentioned him smelling something a couple times, nothing big) but just keep forgetting to go back and fix it. Several commenters have very politely pointed this out, some asking if it was intentional and double checking that they hadn't missed something, and one lovely person even going so far as to c+p the exact sentences into their comments so I could find them easier. But today I got three comments in a row from the same person that were just downright rude and passive aggressive about every time this mistake happened. I've never deleted comments so fast 🙄 I feel like I've joined the writers table in a way though? Like damn now I too can complain about dicks in fandom who I've personally interacted with! And it only took 159 fics and 800k words!

--

Haha

[isabellehemlock]

For the Yet Another "Fan Fic writer Ask game". Questions 3, 9 and 15 :D

Thanks Wolfie for taking a moment to send me some fun asks 😀

What’s a fic idea that you have but haven’t written yet?

I got like thirteen of them on a list lol - I had been slowly closing in on the six month behind schedule for myself . . . Then 2022 has been one thing after another irl, so I'm about two to three months behind still - but!!  I'm chugging away, and, if I'm able to continue on the course I've kept treading in spite of it all, I think I'll have a majority of my WIP list done by late summer/early fall just in time for some grainy tog2 behind the scenes pics to come out and refuel me all over again lol

What’s your favorite line(s) or scene(s) that you have written?

Oh my goodness gracious I'm not sure I could genuinly pick one out of some 800k lol.  I think the first things that come to mind though are ones where someone shares feelings, or something deeply personal about themselves, and the other person holds space in a healthy way - so uh, self inserts moments lol because hey, sometimes the best things we can do for people is simply help them know they aren't alone. Can't fix it, can't do the work for someone else, but sitting in the discomfort with someone.

I will say a recent favorite moment was during Nicolò and Yusuf’s love confessions in my pre canon fic, because I used a lot of religious imagery and it made my heart soar to write that ♥️

Are there words, phrases, mannerisms or scenes you tend to use a lot?

Hm, I hope it's nothing too repetitive, but I have noticed that if I don't watch it carefully, I can easily use run on sentences with a few "-" to describe emotions and feelings . . . To the point where I think it could be distracting, vs conveying deep feelings. 

I also have to watch my italics and comma usage and repeating words every couple of paragraphs (but that's bound to happen even inadvertently when you're writing like several thousand k lol.  But I try to watch out for repeats).

Though all that's from a grammar viewpoint - when it comes to the storytelling aspects and if I have noticed any patterns, I will say I thoroughly enjoy writing out scenes where there's safe explorations and (I guess in some fics it could be close to kink negotiation?), but really it's about that explicit consent and once again, sharing feelings and desires - not even necessarily romantic.  Like just talk to each other people lol - most of the times we realize that when we strip away the outer layers, what we want deep down is universal: connection, in all its varied complexities and beautiful ways 💕

Thanks again love for sending me these asks - they are so fun to do 😊

[bedlamsbard]

Hi! Question about something in your recent post about season finales. When you mentioned dropping a current WIP, was that with reference to the Kanera “reluctant roommates” story? I have been wondering about the status of that one, as I’ve been enjoying it. Of course, whether you opt to continue anything or not is totally up to you, and I respect and understand that, especially with all the frustrations that SW media has recently been throwing our way!

Not specifically -- reluctant roommates is like a lot of my other concept writing, where it's an idea I'm noodling with without real intent to make it into a full title story. I don't tend to think of my concept writing as WIPs; it's the equivalent of doodling, I guess? I borrowed the term from the concept art that gets done for movies/TV.

I've been doing a lot of low-pressure concept writing over the past couple of years for a few reasons; part of it is that when Backbone was still in progress, it was just...a lot to deal with as a story when I was not having a very good time (I had a major breakup in the middle of it) and I wanted to still be writing but wasn't up to the finer points of Backbone's complicated plot. (There's some personal stuff in there, too, that's related to the breakup but which I won't talk about publicly; a lot of concept writing dates from immediately after that.) From 2013 to 2018 I was writing three major chaptered, titled fics (Wake the Storm, Queen's Gambit, and On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone), probably 800K+ in total (plus the Ouroboros ancillaries like Sound the Bells and Tales from the Eye of the Storm), and coming out of that I just really, badly needed a break from that kind of complex writing, and my attempts to go straight into another major fic failed because I kept freezing up. (For various reasons, many of which I'm not comfortable talking about publicly.) Concept writing was a low-pressure, no commitment way to keep me writing.

I've got three titled Rebels WIPs that are on hold right now -- The Starry Crown, Down in the Devil's Lair (sequel to Devil's Backbone), and Devil's in the Details (part 1 of other side AU, which is the rare piece of concept writing that actually got a full story). If Backbone hadn't been so far along when Rebels ended...I got really, really badly burned on Rebels S4, which also happened in a year that I was not having a good time (to put it mildly), and that rebounded in a lot of ways. I don't remember entirely clearly what happened with my writing at the tail end of S4 and after the finale, but I know I was struggling a lot. (I also didn't realize this until the next year, but all of my 2018 concept writing is "I thought you were dead" desperate reunions lol.) Backbone is also very firmly set in S1, and to finish it I basically had to turn my brain off on S2-4 and pretend they didn't exist in order to stay as firmly as possible in S1 headspace. I could do that for an ongoing WIP; it's a lot harder to do with a story that's not already 300K in. (Which is one of several reasons Lair's on hold.)

Crown dates from 2019, and it's another one I've struggled with a lot because it's...very angry, and I've had many, many days where I couldn't look at it because the emotions I have tied up with the canon and the events it's dealing with are not necessarily emotions I can put aside enough to work on it. Devil's in the Details started as concept writing but edits are a WHOLE 'nother kind of brainwork than fresh writing and I just don't have the energy.

(if anyone is going to ask about All Along the Watchtower, the third Ouroboros story, it is permanently on hold: I won't say never, but I get so much abuse on Gambit and Wake that the whole idea of writing PT characters, let alone writing within the Ouroboros universe, is an instant panic reaction. Every time I get a comment notification on Wake or Gambit I have to brace myself -- there's a reason I had to take a long break from posting anything to AO3.)

The thing with Star Wars specifically -- this is a problem with any ongoing live canon, but Star Wars has been my fandom for eight years and it's the one I can speak to -- is the CONSTANT VIGILANCE aspect, for me. You can't relax when the series or the season ends, even if the characters you're interested in have been killed off. They could come back at any moment, in another form, maybe contradicting something that's been well-established. They might not look the same or sound the same or act the same, but everyone will tell you that they are exactly the same. There are constant rumors about when and where they might appear and those rumors might come true or they might not. Maybe you thought the story you were interested in was important but now it's been given to another character, or it's been retconned, or it's been completely forgotten. Maybe something from the subset of the fandom you're into has already been rebranded as coming from a subset of the fandom you're decidedly not into. The canon will get retconned and everyone will tell you that it's always been this way, obviously, even though you know it's not true. I already have hypervigilance issues, for several reasons, and it's...exhausting. I feel like I've been fighting tooth and nail to stay in love with Star Wars for four years now and I'm just...tired, and there's no piece of Star Wars I love unreservedly right now that makes it worth fighting for at the moment.

This is probably a lot more than you asked for -- the short version is just that everything Star Wars is on hold for the moment because I'm exhausted and burned out on Star Wars.

[grxceblqckthxrn]

TDA characters as types of tiktokers

y’all KNOW i’m bored when i’m doing this shit lmao 

i’ll get around to doing the other TSC characters eventually TDA was just the first to come to mind also if you’re not actively on tiktok some of what i say might not make sense ahaha

also i named some tiktokers who yall can use for reference for some of them and from what i’ve seen they’re all fairly unproblematic so you should check them out!!

EMMA CARSTAIRS

okay so she’s DEFINITELY super popular and she uses her platform for good

she’s really funny and a lot of her audios go viral posts videos of her dancing saying that she cant dance but she’s actually really good at it

6M followers and growing fast 

 hypes up her boyfriend’s account ALL the time

calls out misogynistic/racist tiktokers through duets and KEEPS THEIR TAG IN THE CAPTION  

 she is not afraid of starting drama lmao

occasionally hops on POV and transition trends but its usually satire 

emma can’t act for shit lmao 

super active on tiktok and has a spam account

people are always asking her to drop the skin care routine but she doesn’t have one?? 

*pushes Zara down* “and no one’s gonna help her?? WOW some world we live in”

JULIAN BLACKTHORN

there’s no way he doesnt  have an art account lmao

a lot of his paintings go viral but 90% of his comments are 14 year old girls thirsting over him

yall know that pottery guy on tiktok?? the cute one?? (i searched up his account just for this post he’s @/daxnewman769) that’s the best way to describe him

literally all the famous tiktokers commission him

probably has like 4M followers lmao

will occasionally make about how respecting women doesn’t make you a “simp”

doesn’t get into tiktok drama tho

posts candid videos of emma and all his jealous 14 year old fans get so pressed but he shuts down anyone who says anything bad about her

sometimes does painting or drawing tutorials and he’s really good at teaching stuff lmao

CRISTINA ROSALES

omg okay so like yall know those really pretty girls on tiktok who are literal models and are always dropping tips on how to frame your face for pictures and best clothes and poses and whatever  ( @/ameliezilber is the first person that came to mind as an example)

thats her

alot of her content is just for the aesthetic

BLING EFFECT

GRWM’s all the time

10 step skin care routine 

GOOD VIBES

has a pretty decent following?? like at least 2 million

has a spam but it’s exactly the same as her main lol

also calls out problematic tiktokers but not by name

her entire account is full of body positivity and does a bunch of stuff on loving yourself

sometimes does POVs and all the comments are like “@ netflix hire her rn”

sometimes posts crack videos with emma and cute vids with mark and kieran

MARK BLACKTHORN

does a lot of reaction videos and duets

a lot of his videos go viral but he doesn’t have a huge following like maybe 800k

 everyone still knows him

gets at least twenty “are you wearing only one contact” comment about his eyes every post

he’s really funny without even realizing it 

sometimes goes inactive for weeks at a time and just forgets that tiktok exists lmao

shows off kieran and cristina ALL THE MF TIME AND EVERYONE IS SO JEALOUS LIKE HOW ARE ALL OF THEM HOT

KIERAN 

doesnt have a tiktok lmao sorry

but shows up so much on mark’s and cristina’s that a lot of people know who he is

DIANA WRAYBURN

unironically does POVs but is actually good at them??

lots of videos talking about the struggles of minorities like LGBTQ+ and POC and women

posts a lot of those vidoes that are like “what to do if you ever get kidnapped” “red flags in relationships” “most powerful parts of the body” etc

probably has like 500k followers 

at the end of the day she doesn’t really use tiktok that much tho ahaha

LIVVY BLACKTHORN:

does a little bit of everything??

posts dance videos sometimes 

omg her transitions are SO good

everyone is in love with her and she has to remind them that she’s a minor (i’m just a kid plays aggressively in the background)

posts videos that are just vibes?? like her skating at night, dancing in traffic with dru/her friends, walking through the city at night etc

lots of lip syncing videos to whatever sounds are popular and all her comments are like “i wish i looked like this” “guess im not eating today” and she gets so upset :((

she wants everyone to know that they’re perfect the way they are!!

also posts POVs sometimes and she’s not that bad at them ahaha 

probably has like 1 million followers 

doesn’t even need a spam just posts everything on her main 

shouts out her sibilings accounts all the time

overall just great energy

TY BLACKTHORN

never posts his face on his main but he does on his spam

yall know those accounts that post fun facts or psychology facts?? his is like that except he talks to explain them and everyone finds his voice SO calming 

he posts a lot of content of animals and everyone is in AWE with how good he is with them

his username is probably theanimalwhisperer or something djkfskjd

every single time he posts Kit on his account all the comments are like “OOH ICU” and “SHIP” and “ASK HIM OUT ALREADY”

he gives 0 shits about popularity on tiktok he’s just posting for fun because he likes teaching people about his interests

so he has like maybe 500k followers

lots of philosophical questions that has everyone questioning their existence

ugh i love him

KIT HERONDALE

be honest this is what y’all were waiting for 

yall know those unproblematic ppl that everyone refers to as the “king(s) of tiktok”???

yeah thats him

SO FUNNY

LIKE HIS CONTENT IS GENUINELY HILARIOUS

lots of sarcasm and satire

think @/adamkindacool  ?? (one of my favourite tiktokers lmao)

does reaction videos for those “pov: im the annoying hot cheeto girl sitting next to you in math class” videos

dark humor (not like rude humor but actual dark humor)

like “i put the baby in the oven and the pizza in the bed” type of jokes back when those were a thing

has like 4M followers but almost every single one of his posts go viral so he’s gaining fast

lots of pranks

starts a bunch of trends

any video he posts of Mina goes viral

sometimes he posts some really weird stuff that has everyone laughing so hard irl (@/benoftheweek)

he NEVER thirst traps but still gets a lot of those weird sexual fairy comments on his posts (iykyk)

TO BE CLEAR I MEAN THE FAIRY EMOJI ONES NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM BEING FAE 

reacts to the comments with a video of him just staring at the screen with the “oh to see without my eyes” or “im just sixteen” audio going on in the background which only encourages them to make more weird comments

anyways everyone loves him

any of his povs are pure jokes meant to make fun of pov’ers

posts maybe one serious tiktok every 5 months that talks about being respectful and using your platform for good

“i miss old tiktok”

posts a lot of random videos of Ty where, again, all the comments are shipping them except even more so on his account because everyone can see his heart eyes for Ty

collabs with Dru a lot and does a bunch of duets of her videos

everyone loves him bye

DRU BLACKTHORN

SO many memes

she deletes any hate in her comments bc she honestly doesnt care to respond to them and doesn’t need that kind of negativity in her life

but one time she got a “the f in women stands for funny” comment and she WENT OFF

does really dark povs sometimes that are really interesting

CLOWN MAKEUP + SCARY CLOWN TIKTOKS ( think @/avani ‘s clown make up posts

REALLY good at makeup and sometimes gets julian to do scary makeup on her for tiktoks and povs (like those ones with stitches over the mouth or skin peeling off)

huge ally!! posts a lot about minorities struggles and white privilege, and acknowledges hers

does movie reviews and stuff sometimes

“types of” videos

pulls a lot of pranks on her sibilings with livvy and sometimes with Kit

lots of body positivity + self love

calls out back-handed compliments

also has a lot of content like Livvy’s of just vibing in LA

julian and emma and mark go off at anyone who sexualize her in the comments

probably has like 650k followers

posts a couple of times a week

BONUS: 

JAIME ROSALES

lots of skateboarding videos idk he just gives me that vibe

doesn’t post that often but is super popular

like maybe 1.5M followers

really passionate about systematic racism

HATES all those privileged white boys using the “this is america” audio to pretend they’re oppressed ( this is a may 2020 thing so it probably wont make sense to anyone who sees this after lmao)

POSTS A LOT OF THIRST TRAPS LMAO 

also posts lots of videos that’s just him yelling about stuff but they’re really entertaining to watch ( like that guy sebastian @/sauceyogranny)

everyone thinks he’s super hot he always shows up in those “hottest boys on tiktok” videos except sometimes he’s just the token POC boy and it makes him mad :( 

DIEGO ROSALES

HIS ACCOUNT IS SO PRACTICAL LMAO

lots of tips 

“what to do if you’re trapped in the desert” “what to do if you’re kidnapped and stuck in the trunk”

doesnt reply to comments EVER unless it’s to clarify a point he made in the video or answer a question

has like 200k

okay thats it lmao im done bye this took me like an hour to make

i’ll get to all the other characters from the other series’ eventually 

also if yall are wondering abt the lack of f*ckbois in this post they’re coming dw

TMI CHARACTERS AS TYPES OF TIKTOKERS

TID CHARACTERS AS TYPES OF TIKTOKERS 

TLH CHARACTERS AS TYPES OF TIKTOKERS

[onlyherefortheshowmances]

⭐️ and director’s cut of ‘and i’m in the bleachers’ :)

OH MY.

Okay, okay. This might be a novel, so I'll put a break here.

This fic was NOT supposed to be this long, but here we are not even 2/3 of the way done with the main story (the remaining outline is still a 31 page word doc and 8.4k words) and approaching 500k words. Current rough estimate of 800k when it is done, but probably more, honestly. I've joked at times that it may end up being a million words, and honestly, it might at this point. I also keep having ideas for things I want to write about after the main story ends, so expect this universe to continue.

Because I started writing and designed the au theory prior to S2 dropping there's a couple things I would change now if I could (i.e. Benji & Victor being in the same grade), but alas we're way too far into this to go back now. I did change out Benji's mom's name once we got it in season 2 just for consistency reasons and because that was an easy thing to fix.

I originally started writing it as a self-indulgent excuse to be a nerd (about band things) on main, tbh, but here we are 470k+ words later. I just really love where I've gone with the characters, especially Benji. While I took away his alcoholism for this fic, I feel like the added level of trauma from the Derek situation sort of puts him back to being this slightly mental ill, occasionally unstable, wildcard of a character.

I'm really enjoying playing with the dynamics of Venji's relationship as well (with both the sexual and non-sexual aspects of the relationship). I'm trying to handle the situation with care and make it realistic for the ages of the characters which I think I've accomplished fairly well. I know there's parts of this fandom that think 'but they're minors' and I understand the hesitancy, but to me, writing (and usually reading) smut isn't about sexual gratification, it's about story-telling and developing aspects of the characters and their relationships that would go severely underdeveloped without the sexual content. I think it's also important to remember that they are teenagers (both 16 currently in this fic) and it's perfectly normal, safe, and healthy for teenagers to be having sex (with each other) especially in the context of a loving healthy relationship.

Also, if you (or anyone else) has any specific questions about things that have already happened, things that have been alluded to, or anything else in this universe, please feel free to message me or send an ask (even an anon one). You can also send me random dates (between September 26 and January 1) and I'll tell you a brief summary of what happens that day if you want? I feel like that could be fun. lol.

[i-just-love-spop]

Overgrowth + raccoon for the ask :D

I was hoping someone would ask raccoon because I have a really dumb story for that one! I didn’t even actually end up stealing anything in the long run, but I did steal something for about two minutes before I realized I hadn’t paid yet😂

It was a hot summer day a couple years ago, and before getting home from school I was supposed to pick up a book for my brother at our local book store. Our book store has three stories, and the book I was looking for was way up in the third one. Now, the thing is, there’s only one checkout, and it’s in the first story, and when you take the stairs, you never even pass by the checkout when entering and exiting the building.

Like I said, it was very hot, I’d also had a long day at school and my brain was basically fried, and the fact that I was lost in thought and fandoms didn’t really help the case either. I picked up the book, walked down the stairs and only realized I hadn’t paid the book yet when I was already halfway across the outside parking lot – then I realized that I’d just accidentally stolen a book, froze for a second and then ran back to pay it, which I could do without problems – I’m not even sure anyone realized I’d existed the shop without paying. I still shop there today, and I’m really glad that situation didn’t turn into more of a problem rather than just being a story about me being a forgetful dumbass that I can laugh about today😂

And overgrowth got asked like three times, which I struggle with a bit because I’m not that interesting, soooo... I’m just gonna share something that I haven’t shared on this blog before?

I have written about 800k words (yeah you read that correctly) worth of Star Wars fanfics in my mother tongue over the last six-ish years.

Thanks for the ask :D

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 3x05-- The One Where a Nazi Gets Punched

One recap down, two to go. Think I’ll be able to write them before the next ep airs? I doubt it. 

The episode opens by confirming Maia’s gone from RBL: Her name’s no longer on what used to be her office, her documents are being shredded, and all her personal belongings are in a box.

Marissa decides to pick a fight with an associate over Maia. “If you didn’t like Maia, you could have just come out and said that,” Marissa says. Uh. I don’t think Maia got fired because one associate didn’t like her but okay Marissa. The associate insists she’s not happy because she didn’t like Maia, she’s pleased that the zero-tolerance policy is being enforced consistently.

I do wish people would stop saying “Maia’s been arrested twice” because one of those arrests was in no way her fault. Every time anyone tries to use that as an argument, it makes me want to defend Maia even though I totally believe the partners had reason to fire her.

“Maia didn’t use drugs,” Marissa, who faked a drug test on Maia’s behalf, insists. Alright Marissa.

The whole 22nd floor starts to bicker, and Julius goes to inform the other partners that Marissa is stirring the pot. “She’s only stirring the pot because she feels that Maia was made a sacrificial lamb to the fact that the partners don’t want to pay for true financial parity here,” Diane says in defense of Maia/Marissa. Does that mean Diane wants to take whatever pay cuts and struggles come with paying true parity? Or does that just mean Diane wants her goddaughter to be able to get ahead?

To pay everyone the same amount at each level (which I’m not convinced actually gets at the root of the problem if they don’t put measures in place to make sure performance evaluations and opportunities are also awarded equally) would cost the firm $800,000 a year. That’s less than I thought, if only because whenever the partners are personally liable for something it’s always at least a million a person and when they bring in a big client it’s always like 35 million dollars/year in billing. And didn’t they pay off lots of the women Reddick assaulted with at least 800k?

Adrian is very right: this strategy would also raise the lowest performers to the level of the highest performers (within their job title), and then the highest are going to want more, and then the problem resets. How do you determine who the highest are, and which of the highest threaten to leave and which stay no matter what, and so on.

“Maybe we should consider it a human resources issue,” Julius says. Maybe? MAYBE? You’ve got associates fighting while on the job and internal documents circulating and you’re only NOW thinking to involve HR?

Julius wants to hire an expensive sensitivity trainer to talk to the associates instead of paying them more. Sounds like something the partners need more than the associates. Also would that go over well? I’m imagining the associates being like, wait, they have money for this but not money to pay me fairly? And now they’re telling me I need sensitivity training to cover their own asses, as though I just decided to pay myself less? If they do this sort of training in conjunction with an actual fix, sure, whatever, they may need it just to deal with the infighting. But alone? Noooope.

This conversation gets interrupted by an assistant telling Adrian that Judge Dunaway is wondering why he’s not in court. “An associate” is there and Dunaway wants to know why no one else has showed up. None of the partners knew anything about a motion in this case, so they suspect Maia of trying to steal their client.

I think Maia could try to steal a client, but I don’t think she’d ever think to do it.

They put Maia on their biggest case? Just Maia and Lucca and the partners? This sounds wrong.

Maia’s not returning Diane’s calls. I think it’s pretty clear that Diane wants the best for Maia, but I can totally see why it might not feel that way to Maia. She’s not handling this in the most mature way, but I’ll cut her some slack. She was just fired, after all!

Lucca and Jay are in the middle of nowhere, poll watching. Lucca worries this assignment is punishment for stirring up the salary drama (though idk how anyone other than Jay would know to tie it to Lucca!) and I don’t think she’s wrong. She’s a fucking department head and they have her out poll watching?

Maia isn’t the surprise co-counsel: Blum is. That makes way more sense, but also, UGH. I’m over Blum.

This case is interesting but I’m still going to write it up as “Case stuff happens” for the most part. Its premise is more interesting than its execution. I kinda just want to Google what kinds of suits are pending against real life genetic testing companies.

Blum got on this case because of documents he stole from Diane’s office. It is very possible RBL has worse security than Alicia’s apartment building.

Maia’s got a new job at something called Consult-a-Lawyer, a phone helpline that charges clients by the minute (and makes sure each call takes many minutes). This seems terrible.

Lucca and Jay talk with their Republican counterparts; they disagree but can at least talk about their disagreements. Also, none of them are really there to be poll monitors; they are there to try to sway the election results by fighting to selectively enforce rules. I’m sure they’d take issue with that phrasing but that’s what they’re doing.

Marissa’s noticeably grumpy at work and tells Diane it’s because her “best friend” was fired. Marissa says and does so much stuff that no one else could get away with; this is not a proper way to conduct yourself at work-- especially towards the people who are on your side.

Diane is reaching out to other firms on Maia’s behalf. That’s privilege at work right there.

Diane tasks Marissa with watching Blum. She also confuses Marissa and Maia, which is weird since only one of them is her goddaughter.

I am SO OVER Blum. Why is he so loud?! When I watch these episodes first thing on Thursday mornings, the last thing I need is his maniacal screaming.

Marissa is unimpressed with Blum.

OH MY GOD MAKE HIS LOUDNESS STOP. I just don’t care. Just gonna let this next bit with the song play while I change my sheets, because I have nothing to say about it.

And then I did laundry, went on two trips, and visited a bunch of bookstores and now I’m back, three recaps behind.

I didn’t even get to the credits before I stopped writing!? Me of three weeks ago, what were you doing?! (The credits are 17 minutes in, to be fair.)

He’s so loud! So! Loud!

Some sort of white (male) supremacist group shows up at the precinct Lucca and Jay are monitoring.

Diane and Liz meet with the sensitivity consultant, who has them do an exercise as a test. It’s one of those games where you take a step forward/backward if a sentence describes you. Neither Diane nor Liz wants to participate, but the game ends up working on them: turns out they both like singing, Prince, Roma, and Hannah Gadsby. LOLLOL I believe every one of those things.

I don’t know what Lucca thinks Diane will be able to do to help with the white supremacists, but she probably doesn’t suspect Diane’s going to have her unwittingly help #Resistance.

Case stuff happens. It involves Blum singing. Go away.

Jay calls Naomi with the story about the Red Jackets, while Diane’s #Resistance buddy (what is her name? I’m going to have to pay more attention because she is “The Young One Who Does Computer Things” to me, but she’s been in enough episodes I should probably learn her name) gets the Red Jackets fired.

Case stuff happens. Blum puts another actor on a stand as a witness.

Marissa comes to visit Maia at work. At this job, Maia actually has to do work and gets negative feedback when she doesn’t do work well, so as happy as she is to see Marissa (and the Sunglasses of Badassery), she can’t chat long.

Maia is not as happy to help with work related things. In fact, given that I’ve seen the next two episodes (and the end of this one), Marissa reaching out to Maia about something work related may even make Maia feel like her work friends never really cared about her.

Marissa also brings Maia a list of three firms where Diane’s put in a good word. “Diane doesn’t care about me,” Maia, who got the only two jobs she’s ever held because of Diane, insists. Sure, Maia. But I won’t criticize her too much-- she WAS just fired.

Marissa loudly informs the entire Phone-A-Lawyer office that it’s “not fine” to work there. I love Marissa but she lacks self-awareness, like, all the time when she’s not undercover.

Maia’s supervisor isn’t pleased Marissa’s shown up during work hours. She asks her to leave, but does help out with the case.

“If you don’t call them, I will,” the woman in the cubicle next to Maia interjects, offering Maia some much-needed perspective. Maia’s been through a lot, but it’s still clear she’s not someone who has ever had to worry about money.

Lucca calls the police on two of the Red Jackets (they’re sex offenders) just as Naomi’s news van shows up.

Naomi and Jay are a couple which surprised me but, you know, I don’t hate it. Actually, I think I like it.

The judge Adrian is sleeping with does him a favor in court. This relationship? I don’t think I like it.

Diane and Liz regroup about the sensitivity consultant. Liz doesn’t think she’s worth the money, since no sensitivity game will ever solve racism (she’s right-- I don’t know that I think they’re completely useless but they are never going to get at the root of the problem). Diane suggests midyear bonuses instead; Liz points out they’ll know they’re being bought off.

Then something magical happens: Diane and Liz start SINGING! It’s so fun. It’s also a great character moment. We’ve never seen Diane have a female peer at work she could just be herself around, and this strengthens the Diane/Liz friendship that’s driving a lot of the season.

A sex scene quite rudely interrupts the wonderful duet.

If anyone’s written anything on Judge Hazelwood, I’d love to read it. I’m intrigued by her use of power but I think I need to read someone else’s take to fully understand what the writers are (attempting to) do with her.

“Your head is like a sculpture. I want to cut it off and put it on my desk,” is a VERY DISTURBING LINE.

Maia’s using her mom’s maiden name again-- smart. And she took Diane up on the interview offers-- also smart. (Yes, I’ll call her privileged for even having those offers, but I don’t take issue with her using connections. I don’t care if she’s privileged; I care when she lacks self-awareness about it.)

The job won’t start until November, which makes Maia angry. She sees this as Diane trying to fuck her over, when really she’s been offered a job 30 seconds after introducing herself because Diane’s recommendation means so much. Maia TURNS IT DOWN, even though it’s a promise of good work in six months and the best lead she has. Unless there’s going to be something in the contract about how she cannot accept another job if one comes up in those six months before she officially starts, WHY? WHY TURN DOWN GOOD WORK AT A TOP FIRM JUST BECAUSE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU COULD DO BETTER? YOU’RE WORKING AT PHONE-A-LAWYER.

And this dude gives her so many chances-- he even says to let her know if she winds up being available.

Her only question is whether Diane knew about the late start date. The interviewer thinks so, and Maia takes it as a personal insult. Oof. You know what most low-ranking people who are fired for drug use get? Here’s a hint: it’s not interviews at three top firms with the highest recommendation from a well-respected name partner.

NOTHING about this reaction from Maia is out of character for her. I just have no patience for it.

Adrian and Blum collaborate in one of the more interesting scenes they’ve done with Blum. He’s loud and devious, but he’s not stupid. And watching Adrian understand and go along with Blum’’s strategizing-- setting the stage for him to normalize all of Blum’s other, more illegal antics as appropriate workplace behavior-- is fascinating.

Naomi is polite when interviewing one of the Red Jackets, but she refuses to shake his hand. I like that moment.

Jay punches one of the Red Jackets after the Red Jacket antagonizes him. The Republican poll monitor sees the whole thing, but decides to say nothing. (The point, basically, is that we can find common ground with people we disagree with, and that only CERTAIN people we disagree with are actually the enemy.)

A riot breaks out and we see only a little bit of it before Jay starts monologuing about his belief that Nazis should be punched. Dunno to what extent I agree (slippery slope, etc) but I do know I’m not going to waste any time being outraged over one of them being punched.

More case stuff happens.

Lucca, Jay, and Naomi share beers after the riot. They’ve all emerged from the riot safely. This is a nice scene; I love watching these characters just hang out. Apparently Jay had a crush on Lucca for a little while, which I find kinda cute as long as it doesn’t go anywhere beyond that (SO OVER WORKPLACE ROMANCES ON THIS SHOW).

Maia calls Lucca, but Lucca can’t get any reception so she decides to be 2x14 Alicia and find a high spot on top of a car. Her phone still gobbles the call, though. Maia takes this, too, as a personal insult.

Diane calls Maia and Maia refuses to answer. Oh, Maia. If I got the sense she wanted to do this without help-- kind of like s7 Alicia not wanting to answer to anyone-- that would be one thing. This just sounds petty.

Oh goodie! We get MORE BLUM in the future: he’s now working with RBL on the Second Helix case for the near future. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Maia’s packing up her apartment now that she can’t afford the rent, and another firm Diane set her up with tells her the soonest they can interview her is in a month. Well, at least she’s still trying. She throws her phone on the floor in frustration, and I do feel bad for her. Just, like, not that bad.

Lucca shows up at Maia’s door, since Maia’s now not answering her phone. Lucca explains her day and why she wasn’t near her phone-- and her reasons are, of course, valid-- and Maia just doesn’t care. You’ll remember that Lucca doesn’t have friends and that when Lucca shows up for someone, she’s all in. Maia, who is actually friends with Lucca, has not picked up on this (or is not willing to acknowledge it). Lucca offers to get dinner (and to pay), and to spend time away from her baby after a stressful day. She says she feels awkward about how things went down at work.

Maia doesn’t just decline the invitation or say it’s not a good time. She says she and Lucca were “work friends” and shuts the door. Well, that’s harsh. I don’t really fault Maia for feeling detached from her old workplace or awkward around her old work friends, or for needing time to herself. But wow, this is a phenomenally awful way to treat a friend. (And not that I need to pile on more, but Lucca and Marissa have both been FAR more supportive of Maia than Maia’s ever been of them.)

[varaxous]

An image of my base, in total

The “front” view (formerly the front view, was absorbed in my great expansion)

Second view from the side

Behind view!

The other side view

And finally, another angle on the front.

This door is where everything ORIGINALLY was but then I expanded and forgot that was there, as I have crafted creative flight :I

The first view we have, here you can see my cobblestone and seared brick generator (right). I checked and the compression thing I have there has 9,366 double compressed cobble stone, which comes to a total of 758,646 cobble. Woah! (I have about 1.8 million in my other storage :P)

On the left you can see an old coke oven, which promptly fell out of use when I found out immersive engineering steel was interchangeably with other types of steel and also just didn’t want to use immersive engineering.

Let’s move on!

Moving upstairs, we see what was once my storage area and main crafting area. The pink wood over there is a leftover from a fire I needed to patch up (cursed soil is a pesky thing >:V) The storage stuff in the back is LONG out of use and just has some nuggets of stuff I don’t need anymore.

In that back corner, we have my lava storage for tinkerers and also my really big smelting tower! I installed a few mods because I didn’t want to deal with some craft recipes so I don’t really use it anymore. 

Now finally going outside, we can see my main crafting area. Those machines on the right I rarely ever use and are a leftover of my former crafting area. The stuff in the middle though is still used a TON! Those are my AE2 crafting stuff and once I unlocked autocrafting, I stored EVERY SINGLE RECIPE I used. Took a while but it was super nifty in the end. I’ll get back to the autocrafting in a bit.

My automatic pure certus, fluix, and pure fluix crystal crafting area, which use teleporters and a 6 facet seed speed up thing, which reduce the time needed from 12+ hours down to about 2 minutes. 

This is the only machine I use from immersive engineering, the elusive bottler. For 500 mb more of ender fluid stuff, I can automate the tesseract building a lot more. And that’s all I use it for :P

Here’s where I make all my charged certus and some various machines. The stuff on the left (the green things) do my soul binding stuff and that green rod thing store experience from mod farm. It was at about 347 levels which is…a lot to say the least.

One of my capacitor banks! You can’t see it too well here but that right there stores about 10 million rf there, which is useful as a buffer before it goes off to the various other machines and my quarry.

Here it is! The heart of my auto-crafting. These hold probably like 300 recipes ((I’ve never counted lmao) and each have the max speed cartridge things. 

This is the heart of my AE2 system total! AE2 is a pain in the ass and I hate channels. 

And a quick rewind! Here is where I power everying, with my two reactors. I’m not sure how much rf they’re actually producing per tick, but it is enough to fill that 300 million rf bank up in like an hour or so. As much as that is though, it’s still draining at about 10k per tick and I’m running out of fuel soooo…not good.

Back to autocrafting! Here I alloy, smelt, and macerate and all that jazz, as well as some extra goodies!

This is the other half of my alloying thing, which does the special ores ™ such as vibrant alloy or redstone alloy. 

This is where 90% of my ore processing occurs! Here, ores of any type filter in from my various quarries and are macerated then smelted. I have somewhere in the realm of 100k of most metals.

Right by that I have my shiny metal processing thing, which is surprisingly difficult to do. It involves this part, which smelts ferrous ore, cinnebar, and…

Cryotheum dust ;) Entirely automated and I have like 20k of it lmao.

Backpedal just a bit, here is where I make all of my circuits and stuff.

AND OF COURSE STORAGE!!! Here is pretty much all of my misc items, from blaze powder to gun powder. I’ve got all this storage interfaces hooked up to my AE2 system and it works like a charm. 

And metals! Here are all my metals with a bonus shot of my auto alloying stuff. I fell out of making more when I realized it was super inefficient and really hard to make automatic past “filling a block with 64 stacks of stuff and just make more when you run out.”

Which brings me to farming. Ah, how annoying but also not annoying it is. In the back, I’ve got my ender lily farms producing ender pearls and on the left I’ve got my nether wart production. Apart from that, here is rather vanilla.

Here we’ve got my breeding area and crop storage. The sprinklers make it work super fast and the machine breeds for 10/10/10 crops. Speeds up a process which would otherwise take a while.

And here is the cream of the crop (ha ha). This produces a SHIT LOAD of mystical leaves which is super useful for botania. I think, however, I overdid it a little. I’ve got like 200k-800k of each leaf. On the left, minicio essence, of which I have 8.5 million. Not useful right now, but should be in the future. Also got some rubber production, wood production, it’s pretty neat. But where do all those leave go, I wonder?

Here is my botania set up! I’ve automated every single rune and the petal apothecary. I had to cheat just a little bit and install buildcraft for the pipes, but I don’t care cause otherwise it would have been essentially impossible.

This right here is where I automate the elf stuff, with a nifty cannon and some coal eating flowers. This process, combined, is incredibly wasteful but I have too much coal so we’ll just keep going until it becomes a problem :^)

Down back in the basement, this is where I automate my mana steel production. I use a bunch of ender lilies, coal, and some fancy redstone stuff to automatically facilitate the production of terrasteel. The pipes ensure that only one operation is attempted to be completed at a time. The Redstone stuff ensures that the stuff in that buffer chest are ONLY dropped when there is enough mana to create one terrasteel ingot, which avoids the pesky item despawn timer. As for botania, that’s really all I’ve got.

Blood magic, woo! I’ve got mixed feelings on this mod but whatever, it was fun. This set up automatically produces me life points on two different rings. That giant stone structure over there is where I automatic minor demon spawning for a bit. I ended that because they tended to two shot and also just clip through the walls :/

And now down here. Where I’ve automated EVERY. SINGLE. BLOOD MAGIC. POTION THING. This took hours to finally do but it was so worth it.

My witch reactor, which has the benefits of A). not despawning B) not dying to the damage ticks and C) all of them are named some variation of “fart.” Real mature, I know. 

The mystical realm of…thaumcraft…

Here we have my thaumcraft base, which I built out of a tree because what the hell else would I do with it? Also because all the machinery and WATER SPRINKLERS RUNNING 100% OF THE TIME, my main base slaps my computer down to an entire 9 frames every second. 

This was my only real attempt at actually building something visually pleasing. I think I did alright?  Anyways, front door pics.

In the hall of the mountain king…

And here’s the inside! Completely empty! 

The courtyard!

My little viewport on the side because what wizard tower is complete without creepy eyes? This modpack was not the place to start thaumpack because it came at a time where I had automated everything else and I just hit this massive roadblack. It looks interesting but the stuff is a bit confusing and It’s frustrating having a shit ton of resources and just being forced to sit on them because you don’t need any of them for the first half of thaumcraft (at least not in amounts that would have any measurable impact). Right here is where I stopped playing the pack because thaumcraft, with the jacked up recipes and tweaks in this, was just boring.

Circling back to my main base, here are my various portals! The dimensions added by divine rpg, im sorry, suck. They suck super fucking hard. Every single one is the same reskinned dimension with the same reskinned enemies. The only reason you need to get in there is for like 1k of the ore, 1k of the enemy drops, and nothing else. 

Smol wittle nether base uwu. Here is my nether stuff. Accidentally put a quarry to dirt replace right in the middle. Woops.

May have done it twice actually…

Here is where I have my wither skeleton farm and ghast farm They run constantly and are big.

And that’s it for the tour! Have a couple stats pages:

And that wraps that up :) The pack is Divine Journey, slightly edited configs to adjust some recipes and drops and a couple of mods added. If you’ve got any questions or want to see a specific part, just ask!

As for the pack itself, a lot of fun but very grindy. I couldn’t make it past thaumcraft because of the aforementioned stuff and this is an awful first pack (lmao woops). For experienced players tho (or with friends of various experience), I expect it would fun and also a lot more doable.