#i am also of the mind that i like my things being consolidated. so if smthng is a show i dont want a book

[reddogcollar]

yk I liked gravity falls better when bill was just dead

[dawnfelagund]

My Open-Source Tolkien Studies Data Sets

One of the best parts of being an independent scholar is that I get to be generous with my research. I am not counting on it for a job, and frankly, between teaching at a small rural school and running the Silmarillion Writers' Guild, I will likely never be able to do all that I want to do with the data that I collect and so love the idea that someone might do something with it.

Because I do love making sets of data. Everything from the mind-numbing copy/paste data entry to learning new spreadsheet formulas is enjoyable to me. I'm an introvert in a very extraverted profession, and after a day of being all on for my students, turning everything into numbers is like a cup of tea under a warm blanket with a Golden Retriever at my feet.

So please use these data sets if they interest you. Play with them. Write about and share what you notice. Expand and build on them. Publish using them. If you use my data or work, credit Dawn Walls-Thumma and link to my website, dawnfelagund.com, if possible. I'd also love if you'd let me know if you share anything using them.

Consolidated Timelines. I made this back in 2013. I was trying to arrange all of Tolkien's timelines side by side. I did some weird things with numbers that I'm not sure I fully understand now, but maybe you can make sense of this or maybe you just want everything Tolkien said about timelines in one handy document. (Make a copy of the Consolidated Timelines.)

Fanfiction Archive Timeline. Made for the 2023 Fan Studies Network North America conference, this timeline-on-a-spreadsheet shows archives in the Tolkien and Harry Potter fandoms, multifandom archives, and social networks and when they came online, were active, became inactive, and went offline, along with data about affiliated communities, software, and rescue efforts. I update this timeline annually with that year's data and will continue to add new archives when I have enough data to do so. (Make a copy of the Fanfiction Archive Timeline spreadsheet.)

References to Sources in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. In this document, I record each time a narrator's source is mentioned or alluded to. Ideally, this will one day include The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well! For now, it is just The Silmarillion for the selfish reason that I'm predominantly a Silmarillion researcher. (Make a copy of the References to Sources.)

Silmarillion Characters. A list of all of the characters in The Silmarillion, demographic data about them, the number of times they are mentioned, various aliases, and which "books" of The Silmarillion they appear in. The latter part is a work-in-progress. (Make a copy of Silmarillion Characters.)

Silmarillion Death Scenes (spreadsheet | document). For last year's Tolkien at UVM and Oxonmoot conferences, I collected every death scene in the Quenta Silmarillion and recorded various details about character demographics, cause of death, and grief and mourning rituals. (Make a copy of the spreadsheet. Make a copy of the document.)

The Silmarillion: Who Speaks? This is my newest project, which I hope to complete by the end of the year, documenting which characters get to speak actual words, the number of words they speak, and demographics about the speaking characters. Eventually, I would like to include as well characters who are mentioned as having spoken without being given actual dialogue, but one step at a time. Again, this is a work-in-progress. I have just started working on it. Come back in 2025 and, hopefully, there will be interesting stuff to see.

[whatswexceles]

I’m really tired.

This is I guess my big long official response to everything that's going on in the rainworld fandom

Since Tuesday I've been recording all my thoughts about this whole thing daily. This is something of a consolidation of all of that plus more. the original abridged version will be posted in a reblog.

I’d like to preface this with a few things

Firstly: This is a criticism of people’s ideas and philosophies. Not them as a person. I don’t despise anyone involved really either, I’m still friends with people on both “sides” of this dispute. I’ll try my best to avoid name dropping regardless

Secondly: if you DARE to harass anyone involved in this you are worse than everyone I’m talking about here

Third: I know there’s lots of misinformation floating around on this and I know I alone can’t clear it all out of my judgments. So if you spot anything I say that is blatantly wrong, I encourage you to tell me. Same goes for criticism, if you disagree with anything i say I wouldn’t mind being told RESPECTFULLY. If you just start attacking me I won’t really bother. I do want to have a conversation here

A few days ago, it came out that the single piece of evidence used to harass the biggest and most influential rain world artists off the internet was faked and spread with little thought or effort. And people have been scared that misinformation will be spread about them, or they’ll make a mistake and get harassed for it. Myself and my friends included.

My goal in this specific essay-post-ramble-thing is to give my thoughts and to write about how I believe to move forward In a way where that doesn't hurt people further, because I honestly don't hold a grudge against anyone who has spoken out against pansear or unwillingly spread misinformation in an attempt to help, or even people who wrote harmful stuff while angry or emotional.

There is, however, one individual who I will not spare sympathy for. I’ll get to them later.

Something I don't see being talked about that much is that misinformation about pansear and the shipping container have been spread since the initial post made calling out SC. The claim was thrown around that “SC is full of zoophiles and groomer defenders” which needless to say, is extremely false. Not only did nobody in the server know of the allegations until they went public (no hypothetical groomer defender would even know of a groomer to be defended), SC also had one of the strictest “no NSFW/suggestive material” rules of most servers I'm in. it was so strict that deez nuts jokes were off limits.

Was this a purposeful attempt to cause a harrasment campaign or just emotions clouding judgment? The answer doesn't really matter because this sentiment was doubled down on and hurt a lot of people, including myself

Why am I bringing this up? Because this misinformation had a similar, smaller effect to what we’re seeing now. People affiliated with SC were worried that they were going to be harassed for being affiliated with something everyone disliked. Today there are dozens of examples of people being worried about being harassed because someone might not like them and might spread misinformation. Let's hope this time we prevent this from going even further…

But, If it does. If the methods used to persecute pansear become the norm, then that hurts everyone, including the people spreading it. To quote myself from the past:

“…looking at how pansear was being nitpicked for problematic behavior, It just looks like the start of a cycle… …because if you foster a following that finds faults in normal behavior, what do you think will happen as soon as *you* make a mistake, or even a mistake you already made gets dug up. well then you’re gonna get nitpicked to oblivion. If You set the norm to be needless criticism that's what will be employed at your trial. People will try to erase your impact.”

A common sentiment I see being thrown around is that “although the main piece of evidence turned out to be faked, pansear is still deplorable because [X]” and while I personally think pansear has made their fair share of mistakes, a lot of things people put in that X factor is just… silly and can be chalked up to either coping mechanisms, panic attacks or just normal people mistakes. And every time I see that there's always a question in the back of my mind: “Is this an echo chamber?” And I'm inclined to say yes, but I also recognize I'm not exactly an authority when it comes to this, so I’ll leave it up to reader interpretation.

There's one specific person that I have a few choice words for, and that is the person who made the fake image that started this whole damned thing. And although we don’t know who you are, I know you are deprived enough to be reading this. I hope you don’t have a good ending, I hope you don’t have a bad ending either, I hope you’re FORGOTTEN, I hope nobody ever utters your name again. I hope you never leave the swamps of irrelevance. I hope you can see the people you’ve hurt thrive more than you ever will.

With the trash out of the way, how do we even move forward? my hope is that we can do it with forgiveness. Not all apologies need to be accepted but we should at least extend our sympathy to each other, it’ll be easier for all of us if we do. We should think about what we all did correctly and what we didn’t, and how to do better next time. We should think about how we all got taken advantage of with this misinformation and how to prove evidence next time. Does it even matter if pansear was deplorable or not when we’ll all likely never see them again? Can we all work on setting our grudges to the side? If we don't like someone we can just not interact with them.

Us as a community have a responsibility to think through all this and figure out our priorities moving forward. We all have a responsibility to coexist with each other. We all have a responsibility to treat everyone with the benefit of the doubt.

I think I speak for everyone in this whole situation when I say that we are ALL tired of this

[cocogum]

Nora is being indirectly mistreated by her own family.

(And why my Noramalia obsession is slowly increasing-)

I don’t know why this happened the way it did but episodes 7 and 8 FED ME SOME GOOD NORAMALIA MOMENTS ✨✨

Also, let me just say how episode 7 ended up being the FIRST EVER recorded conversation between Amalia and Nora and it was WONDERFUL 💕💕

My girl is always the one complaining first but for once, it’s Nora who beat her to it 😭😭

I never thought I’d see the day when someone else would say their complaints out loud and it would be AMALIA OF ALL PEOPLE to try to look at the positives of the situation!

No matter how many times I keep analyzing how these two behave around each other throughout these two episodes, my heart keeps fluttering cuz I see NO FLAWS WHATSOEVER IT’S PERFECT ‼️‼️����💖💖

Just look at how Amalia keeps being the one supporting Nora and snapping her awake from her panic attacks!

You’d usually think the ones who’d help her often with her problems would be Yugo, Qilby, and even Adamaï, her actual BROTHERS, or even her own mother but NO!!! It’s AMALIA!!!

Amalia saw how Nora looked super out of it during the battle and decided to go to her and snap her from her trance AND EVEN HELD HER SHOULDER OMG ARE U FUCKING KIDDING ME?!!?

But you’re gonna tell me: “chillax dummy, she only did that cuz it was the right thing to do. Yugo was busy supporting Adamaï and Qilby’s just being a dick.”

Oh yeah?

Well I reject ur premise.

Amalia is such a good girlfriend that she KEEPS BEING BY NORA’S SIDE EVEN AFTER SHE CALMED DOWN.

Ankama could’ve made Joris support her instead since he was free but nope! It HAD to be Amalia 💕💕

Just look at how my girl keeps holding her from behind and making sure she’s alright.

Keep in mind that Amalia has no idea what’s going on with Nora. This is the second legitimate time she sees Nora like this (since Nora also had one of those moments back in the Sadida kingdom) and Amalia does not know if her frozen state usually happens when she sees something that triggers her or if this is just something that Nora gets from time to time.

Whatever Amalia may be thinking about this, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s the only one in the group who realized her peculiar case and did something to help her.

Not only is this character development for Amalia, but it also shows how she caught Nora’s odd behavior much more quickly than the others. And it only took two times for her to see it to do anything about it.

LOOK SHE’S STILL HOLDING NORA ‼️‼️‼️

Are you seeing this shit⁉️⁉️⁉️

How the hell am I the only one addressing Amalia’s care for Nora???

And Nora just lets her!

Even after her little panic attack ended, she still lets Amalia touch her back for support!

This is honestly such a cute detail and I love how the small noramalia moments are treated like this 💖

When you really think about it, the relationship could work, especially for Nora’s part.

Nora’s family is especially messy and chaotic. Her mother is too traumatized by the necromes to do anything about her situation or even ask her how she’s feeling. She didn’t even have an alone talk with Nora to properly talk about how she was feeling. I bet that even when Nora had managed to save the Eliatrope goddess and got to be alone for some time, not even once did the Eliatrope goddess ask her anything cuz Nora was too busy consolidating her mother while internally freaking out for her brother.

Yugo and Qilby are just fighting with each other while Adamaï stays on the sidelines and doesn’t try to get closer to his mother, preferring to put some distance between him and her.

So who’s left to talk about her troubles or to let out her frustrations and misery?

Amalia.

The only person who attempted to help and noticed she had something off.

The only person who, despite not being family or even a divinity, attempted to do anything about her case.

The only person who stayed next to her and placed her hand behind her back even when she stopped freaking out.

Amalia would be a good person Nora could choose to go to for her problems.

It’s clear to see Nora had no room to breathe or place herself first at any moment that we got to see her. Her mother and her brothers are taking too much space and they don’t seem to realize how much she’s got to lose despite the evidence plastered right in front of their faces. Even when Nora explains to them how she managed to find their mother and how Efrim had to sacrifice himself in the process, she gets absolutely no words of consolidation from her brothers or her mother.

Instead, she just gets looks of sympathy from Yugo and Adamaï but it’s clear that they don’t seem to be sad about Nora being stuck in her dofus but rather because she lost her brother. For a primordial eliatrope to understand that their dofus won’t hatch because their sibling got infected means that they’re aware they can predict their time of “death”, ending their continuous cycle and rebirth that was supposed to last for eternity. Since the eliatrope council cannot die and constantly come back to life, this could technically be considered their actual death.

Upon knowing that Nora knows this however, the Eliatrope goddess simply says :

What kind of answer is that?!

Her mother is basically implying that there’s no hope for Nora but at the same time is saying that she loves her??

She does realize that her words feel empty now that she told her she couldn’t let that happen again right?? She’s basically indirectly saying that Nora is a lost cause.

It's clear to see that Nora has much more to lose than her other family members.

She’s the only one who lost her brother for good and will likely not get reborn in her next life with him because she’ll be stuck in her dofus forever. To be able to get reborn over and over again but not be able to anymore because your brother froze the cycle is a fate worse than death. She’s the only one who’s hiding her sadness and pain to give space for her mother because she thinks her problems are way less important than what’s currently going on. She’s the only one having panic attacks and thinks she’s seeing her brother everywhere. She’s the only suspect who is likely the reason why the portal to the necrome world is even there and is very likely the sick eliatrope.

So to have Amalia do this small and kind gesture for Nora made my heart warm up at the fact that she IS worried for her and is still holding her up after she had her little struggle.

Their relationship doesn’t even need to be romantic. Just as long as I get to see Amalia be by Nora’s side for anything, I’d be happy.

Cuz to be real with you, I’m starting to get annoyed that her family doesn’t seem to understand the level of severity of Nora’s case.

If Amalia noticed Nora was having a panic attack, then she could notice her struggles hidden inside her if Nora confided in her. (this also means her family should be able to clearly see it but since they’re not doing anything about it, they shouldn’t be an option for Nora to go to).

And that’s what I would like to see.

A moment like this where Nora can properly rely on someone who isn’t her family.

But for a romantic relationship, I can definitely see it too lol

Amalia’s usually the one speaking her thoughts so shamelessly but Nora might as well take her place and be a boss ass bitch while Amalia’s the more caring side and supports Nora and hears her troubles.

That can be a good dynamic to see. We only saw a glimpse of it when Nora was complaining about the rulers of the world. So it’d be nice to see these two talking to each other again like this.

[deepdeanvsweston]

oh thanks for answering my George/Hazel ask (and wow those are great)! if you’re still answering for the mmu ask game, what would ur answers be for 17 and/or 18? also, for 30, there was a post about the dss ending, is there anything in particular you don’t like about it?

That's perfectly alright! I had so much fun answering idk if you could tell I'm really into the ship /j

I am ALWAYS answering the MMU ask game!

17. Least favourite canon ship (including past ones)

Hmmm I did have to think for this one! There's nothing I particularly hate with every fibre of my being sort of thing, but I'm saying Daisy x Amina. She was in 2 books max, and I felt I didn't really get to know her very well and also that the fandom was forced to make things up about her as opposed to simply doing it for fun. Additionally, it felt to me that Daisy was written as needing to have a girlfriend by the end of the series to consolidate her being a lesbian, which I also didn't like. In essence, their relationship moved too fast for me.

However, I can very well see the potential and think if Amina had been introduced earlier and they'd been academic rivals to lovers (NOT enemies to lovers mind you I despise that trope) I could well get on board with it.

18. Least favourite noncanon ship

Again, I don't hold particularly strong negative feelings for ships I don't like, apparently just really strong positive feelings for the ones I do! But if I had to pick one, probably Kitty/Beanie. I just find them as a ship a bit boring, though if someone were to write a passionate post being like "HERES WHY THEY WOULD WORK!!!" I might be swayed.

30. Free space!!! Ask anything MMU related :)

And in anon's case they've asked why I don't like the ending of DSS.

Do not get me started I dislike it so much and it makes me slightly uncomfortable??? Listen,,, I LOVE MMU I think everyone who sees my blog can tell this however this grates on me deeply. I HATE HATE HATE how all 4 of the main detectives were paired up at the end. There was no need for it and it felt forced, especially Lavinia (comphet queen in my, and trust me when I say this, professional opinion) and George. Hazel and Alex I can cope with fine. It had been building up and hinted at and so makes logical sense (I don't like the way it was done though as I think what Hazel needed then was not a bf but just friends there to support her). Daisy and Amina felt rushed too, like they had 2 books in which even their interactions were brief. Really felt like it was pushing the fact that Daisy had to have a gf to be verified as a lesbian, as explained above. George imo was soooo ooc to be like "rip Daisy, soz Hazel, but uhhh. Yeah. I wanna wife one of your dormmates up" especially as he usually seems so in tune with what's going on around him, as seen notably in DITS:

"It's not difficult to work out!" George protested, shrugging his shoulders. "Bridget looks rushed. I can smell beef tea boiling. Hazel looks tired, she doesn't have her handkerchief in her pocket and Daisy isn't here. Daisy can't be dead, otherwise Hazel would be crying with her handker chief in her hand. But, if Daisy were simply ill, it would explain the beef tea and Bridget and Hazel would have sat up worrying about Daisy all night, and given Daisy her handkerchief when hers were all used up. See? Elementary."

I suppose it could be blamed on grief but idk.

It also grates on me because of the kind of message it's sending, especially as the book series target demographic is 9-12??? Like 'oh no the book series is ending! All the 15/16 year old teenagers have to be paired up because they can't have satisfying endings otherwise!!!' but also I'm arospec so that is going to give me a biased view, but still.

[hubofhellfire]

Talking about blogs , or the downsizing of them .

I posted a poll a bit ago inquiring about whether I transition this hub blog into a single multimuse blog . . . the response has definitely proven to be interesting ! And I wanted to take the time to talk about my thought process and where I plan on going . . . for those that care to read this essay that's about to come:

Originally , this blog was going to be a multimuse blog , featuring . . . I think at the time I had like 25 muses in mind ? At the time I got cold feet , feeling as though that would be too many muses pulling for my attention and not enough time to give them all love . . . but then I ended up making like 30 sideblogs for this hub blog , so in reality I ended up at the same destination by just taking a different path .

I started the hub blog idea off the basis of utilizing the 10 carrds that I had , as well as giving people more freedom on which muses they wanted to be exposed to while also opting to choose if they wanted to follow the main blog for my ooc ramblings . . . and while this works to a degree , I also do think it potentially confuses a lot of people . . . especially when it comes to those that have their settings geared towards interactions only being with mutuals .

I think there are merits to both formats , and while I have trauma with trying multimuse blogs in the past . . . surely the third time around would stick the landing ? Right ?

That question has led me to decide to go ahead an slowly transition this main hub blog into a single multimuse blog . . . with some caveats .

What caveats ? Let's talk about them.

@spcrklefingers already has a well established footing , with multiple writing partners attached to it and several threads being discussed . It is for these reasons it will stick as a sideblog to the main multimuse blog . No ships , threads , mains , or exclusives will be discarded ; it'll be as though it is business as per usual .

@changedfate is the newest child to the hub , so it has yet to get a real footing . . . however given the nature of it being centered around a Disney character and Disney IPs ? I think it best to keep it distanced away from the transition . . . meaning that it will also stay as its own single muse sideblog .

So which sideblogs will be condensed into the "Sacred Multimuse Blog" ?

Great question . . .

@cunningvolt , @tealsteel , @signalsearched , and @pcrplelightning will be condensed from sideblogs into the main multi . Let's go over some reasons why.

Anby's blog was going to be condensed into the ZZZ multimuse anyway , and since it makes no since to have a multimuse blog be a sideblog to another multimuse blog ? The ZZZ multimuse blog shall be condensed into the main multi blog . . . albeit with some of the roster being lost in the process .

Which members of the roster ?

Miyabi , Koleda , Nicole , Soldier 11 , Ellen Joe and Grace will all be sealed away in the Destined Vault ™️

This means that along with Anby , Zhu Yuan , and Lucy will make the transition .

Reina's blog is interesting , as I am the only Reina in the Tekken RP space . . . so giving up that branding seems like a major L , but if I am going to throw another Tekken muse on the multi . . . Reina might as well make the jump as well . Hence her sideblog will be dusted .

Ezreal's blog is great branding , but I think it's also tarnished given several missteps and bridges burnt because of said missteps . . . so consolidating him onto the multi is the way moving forward . . . he's too special to give up entirely .

The branding of this main blog (the hubofhellfire name) will stay , the only things that will change being a new carrd and new promo post to coincide with the format change . . . everything else stays the same : all previously discussed threads , ships , memes , plots , etc . all stick around . . . just moved onto a place more easily accessible to all .

I am currently in the process of making all the new assets for this transition (promo pic/post & carrd) and hope to have at least a barebones version of the carrd ready sometime next week; until that time I will continue with things as normal on sideblogs .

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this update , please do not hesitate to reach out privately and ask ! I love and appreciate each and every person that follows this blog and wouldn't be here in this space without you !

Thanks so much for taking the time to read ! ! !

Much love & Keep moving forward ,

Destined

[whentherewerebicycles]

ok gonna journal a little bit about the first six weeks under the cut, with the caveat that i know a lot of people who have babies under one year old right now or are about to have babies, all of whom are having or will probably have different experiences than me. i feel weird talking about parenting in public because i don't want it to seem like i'm comparing experiences. i just want to write through it for myself to make sense of my own experience, i guess?? must reflective journal or i can't consolidate my own impression of what's happening haha.

some scattered thoughts:

it's a LOT of work. having good routines and practicing them a lot has helped make it feel more manageable, but it's absolutely a full-time or really more than full-time job (round the clock care!!). i cannot imagine going back to work while caring for a newborn. i am really really really really lucky to have six months of protected time (four and a half months of it paid!). but it's still a little scary to think about going back to work at six months... like how will there be enough hours in the day??

time passes SO weirdly with a newborn. i literally never know what day it is and i often have no sense at all for how long it's been since something happened. i can't believe i've been off work for six weeks... it feels like i've been away for six months and also simultaneously like i gave birth six days ago. i also totally get what people mean about developing amnesia around the newborn phase... i already am having a hard time remembering when certain things happened or when he made certain transitions.

my transition to parenthood was a little rough because of the hand pain + the wrist surgery, but it was massively, massively eased by having an easy, non-traumatic birth experience + then having my mom here to handle nights for the first three and a half weeks (with help from my sister too). like ultimately i think the wrist stuff was a blessing in disguise because it meant i HAD to rest and rely on other people. i went into parenthood with such a massive sleep deficit from two months of excruciating pain but then i was able to more or less sleep through the night for two solid weeks after the surgery. i think that meant 1) i got a lot of much-needed rest and was able to recover from birth faster, but also 2) i wasn't the person who had to deal with the most intensely fragmented phases of newborn sleep. my poor mom! but gosh what an incredible gift that was. i am sleep deprived and tired but i am not absolutely wrecked and it's 100% because she handled the most labor-intensive phase of keeping a little baby alive.

i think i have a pretty easy baby. he sleeps well (i mean after the first few harrowing weeks where they are somehow simultaneously asleep at all times and incapable of sleeping), eats well, and doesn't mind being alone in his crib for quiet time. i fully expect that if this particular phase is easier for me there will be much harder phases that are easy for other people... like probably he will be a baffling nightmare at some other phase other people's kids navigate with ease. but i'm enjoying this phase of things feeling semi-manageable. i also feel like, even though i read one million baby books beforehand, i basically did not do anything to get these results. i just got this (for now?) easygoing baby who is pretty amenable to whatever happens to him. it reminds me of what my mom has said about raising us... three of us were really easy and then my brother was the clingiest, loudest, most emotionally volatile, impossible-to-soothe, bad-sleeping little baby of all time, and my mom was just like yeah. really cures you of thinking you've got it all figured out! really makes you realize that 90% of it is just the baby's temperament and it has virtually nothing to do with how capable you are as a parent! i just want to remember this in case i do this again and the next kid is like my brother haha.

my therapist says some people get postpartum blues right away and others get a big surge of protective happy hormones that start tapering off around month three (so their postpartum blues come later). i suspect that i got the surge of happy hormones because often i am just walking along with a Song in My Heart and that feeling of 'i am overflowing with joy!!' that reminds me of the endorphin waves i get when i'm exercising a lot. so maybe things will abruptly start feeling a lot harder when this wave of hormones dissipates, and then i will have to weather that. but for now it is nice to feel really baseline happy/joyful even when i'm tired.

it took a bit longer to bond with him than i expected! for the first three weeks or so i was like, well this baby is beautiful and perfect, but also, he could just be anybody's beautiful perfect baby, you know? i liked him as a baby and was interested in him as a little guy living in my house but i did not experience an intense surge of maternal feelings at first sight or anything like that. and sometimes when he was extremely fussy or when i was really tired of taking care of him i was like aaaa great now i just have to be responsible for him forever?? he's a nice little baby but forever???? anyway i feel like it's only in the last couple weeks that i've started to feel more strongly that this is MY beautiful and perfect baby. and it's become increasingly fun and joyful to think about like oh! we just get to hang out for the next 18+ years! i get to be his mom forever! we are a little family now!

i want another one... i want another little baby... i am going to have to really scheme and save and hussle at my side jobs to make it happen, and i am very conscious of the biological window closing. i would ideally like there to be a larger gap between them (like i think in a perfect world he would be 5 when i had a second baby) but i don't think i will have the luxury of that much time. so i think i am going to wait the recommended 18 months and then start the process again. idk we will see how things feel once he is in daycare and i am strapped for time and $$ but i would sure like to do this again. and i would really like to give him a sibling. we'll see.

i just love him... i love snuggling with him... i love watching him look around at stuff... i love taking him to new places and seeing him take it all in... i love watching my friends and my family snuggle him and joke around with him... i love singing to him and watching him go from shrieking to totally relaxed just because someone's singing to him... i love lying in bed after i've put him down for the night and watching him sleep on the video monitor... i love feeling responsible for him and knowing that it's my job to take good care of him... i love watching him in the car seat mirror as he listens to taylor swift with a calmly contemplative expression on his face... i love seeing his little personality emerging... gosh! i just like this little snuggly guy who lives in my house. i like him a lot.

[misc-obeyme]

HI HELLO I'M BACK AGAIN. I've been so full of energy the past two days because it's been weirdly slow at work (Calm before the storm ig, grand opening celebration this weekend 😭). Like I spent an hour each on t shirts and yarn on Tuesday, and today I meticulously (?) recovered craft paint, ribbon, and consolidated two displays?? Plus I made a new end cap display?? I WAS BORED OUT OF MY MIND FINDING THINGS TO DO

anyway I'm here to talk about silly things, today being the dinner rotation at the HoL. The retreat in season 1 feels like the first time MC cooks for them?? But seven days in a week, do you think MC took over Belphie's day? I'm assuming Lucifer did at first, or it was used as a punishment to have extra dinner duty.

I feel like Beel and Belphie always cooked together on their days. Like they have their twin telepathy, they're probably passing things back and forth in the kitchen and able to keep each other on task pretty well. Belphie holds his hand out and Beel wordlessly hands him the salt. Belphie knows when to give Beel samples, while also making sure Beel doesn't eat everything. Beel will keep Belphie engaged and on task so that dinner doesn't get burnt. They've got their routine DOWN.

It makes me wonder how MC learned to cook Devildom dishes. Were they shadowing the brothers? Was Lucifer teaching them simple dishes? Were they given a cookbook? (Imagine Satan annotating it with substitutions if an ingredient wasn't human safe.) A list of ingredients that were human safe and told 'good luck'?

Imagine Beel comes into the kitchen on Belphie's days, even after the exchange program starts and MC has taken over. If MC was given a list of ingredients, Beel could probably think of a number of dishes and guide them. And MC would probably be letting Beel sample a ton to make sure they're doing it right.

Maybe this turns into Beel and MC cooking dinner together on their days! MC who wants to learn more dishes, and Beel who wants company. God he's such a sweetheart, I love him so much 😭 Brothers Under A Pact group will always have a special place in my heart.

I've had this idea planned for like three asks ago, but then I had other things I was dying to ramble about. I am currently fighting the parasites (have you heard that audio on tiktok?) to ramble about my mammon x solomon x mc crack ship. and also just in general about mammon (i feel you on the writing essays about your faves) !! i was daydreaming scenarios for both of these things, the second one involving my mc singing along to music AAAA

okay okay I'm done, BYEEE, I hope you have/had a good day!!!

- ✨ anon

Welcome back, ✨ anon! It sounds like work is going well, I hope things go well for the grand opening too!

Oh I'm loving this idea about the cooking rotation... I agree that it seems likely that Beel and Belphie would cook together on their days. And then Beel just shows up when MC takes over because he's so used to it. And then later, when Belphie is there, too, they both spend their time with MC in the kitchen...

I've thought a lot about how MC learns to cook in the Devildom. Because I'm not a terrible cook, but I tend to go with my gut on most things. Like I'll buy a bunch of random ingredients because they sound good. Then I'll follow my heart and make whatever I want.

But I feel like I wouldn't be able to do that if I don't know what the ingredients taste like or how they cook? And like... I've made food for multiple people before, but I've been cooking for one for years, so I think it'd be hard for me to make sure I have enough for seven to eight people!

If they have some ingredients that are basically the same, I could probably get by. But I think I'd have a stretch of time where I would struggle. I'd be like, listen if you guys want edible food, I'm gonna need lessons or a cookbook because otherwise you're getting trial and error until I figure this stuff out.

I really love the idea of Lucifer teaching MC how to cook simple Devildom dishes. That's such a Mom thing for him to do and I think it'd be really cute. I also love the idea of a cookbook annotated by Satan. Like I'm just seeing him scribbling out some ingredient like DO NOT USE THIS IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, MC followed by a list of human safe substitutes lol.

After that, it's all Beel telling MC about dishes he likes and sampling what MC makes as they go. I love that, it's so sweet. And it probably helps him when he's missing Belphie during season one. Aww and then when they're all together, it's just bonding time~

The other brothers probably show up from time to time for MC's cooking shift just to add their own ideas and instructions.

They sometimes get together so they can deliberately obtain human world ingredients to bring MC for their cooking day. Like maybe every time Beel is there (which is all the time lol), he asks MC about their favorite human world dishes. And MC just tells him all about the food they used to make at home. Beel won't forget what MC talks about, so he can tell the others. I'm sure Barbatos has a human world food supplier he uses or something.

Then they leave all the human world ingredients in the kitchen for MC to find 'cause they want to try something that MC would've made in the human world.

Feel free to ramble all you like, you don't have to hold back any parasites! (I had not heard this audio, as I'm not on TikTok a ton, but I went to find it and was entertained lol.) I'm definitely not one to judge about long rambles, that's like every post I create.

[trinitywc]

On chapter 15 of Endless Winter currently, and loving every moment of it but the lead up to some projects and finals is gonna gear up within the next week so I won't be able to finish as fast as I would like to. Given that, I wanted to verbally dog ear my place & jot down some thoughts before they escaped me (particularly my appreciation for the way you portray character dynamics and the nuance you provide that I could sit and stew on for hours).

I've been enjoying Rutherford and Pinefrost's interactions a great deal. I get the feeling he loves infodumping about his interests, and particularly likes how good a listener, as well as perceptive, that Pinefrost is. She's sharp in more ways than one! and I also particularly adore the way Pinefrost often uses his explanations and points when he is explaining things to her as an anchor for her wandering mind during the present in a way that doesn't make her feel as though she's out of the loop or excluded unlike past scenes when the gang is discussing whether to stay or leave the domicile. Those two bounce off one another so well, and in such a way that it makes it so apparent how isolated Pinefrost has been even amongst her surviving group, and even before that when Creek Clan was still intact. Her loneliness has been really keen in previous chapters, and it's nice to see her feeling like she has a companion that shows her just as many new things as she can with honing Rutherford different skills.

That being said, while I really enjoy Rutherford, I don't know if I trust him fully. He's been dependable and a great source of support for the group, but I can't help wondering about his intentions. Perhaps he just wants company! But it strikes me as odd that he's giving away resources when he was so skeptical of Pinefrost giving Sedgenose her fresh kill, and is directing them all out of the city purely out of the goodness of his heart and during the thick of winter, no less. It makes me wonder to what end he plans to act as a tag along with the group, and not to mention he'd have to make the entire trip back to the city by himself once they get to the river! He seems like too much of an intellectual city slicker to want to rough it with the gang when/if they reunite with the clans... clan??? (Creekwood consolidation with the survivors perhapseth???) Surely he's not doing all this JUST because he met our intriguing mule headed protagonist, could he?

Crackpot theory but maybe he's not leading them to where he say he is- but then again he hasn't lied even with the explanation of the atom to Pinefrost. Crackpot theory #2, he seems to have observed Pinefrost's reluctance to leave, and her feelings of insecurity that she confided over what they have the possibility to come back to with the clans and I have to wonder if he'll use that to either isolate her (unhealthy option) or encourage her (healthier alternative!!!) to stay with him instead. The summary certainly implies so! Crackpot theory #3 combination of both #1 & #2.

Then a random comment and some purely satirical jokes that are essentially nonsense, feel free to skip;

"She had one option, and that was through. Through the winter, through the atom."

SO INCREDIBLY METAL, LOVE THIS. HAUNTING, GUT WRENCHING, TRAGIC IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE- A CAR CRASH YOU CAN'T AVOID OR REDIRECT. So much of ch 11 in particular to be honest! Rutherford's entire explanation left me with dreams. I left it waking up and checking my little kitty cat's nose for black ash.

Pinefrost: Oh yeah we knew this would happen, sedgefrost had a vision from star clan that the great light would take us out :/

Rutherford: the FUCK? the HUH?

Everytime Sedgenose or Woolycloud have an interaction with Pinefrost, I'm that one twitter reaction video, "-and she's the mother, she's mother earth, she is mother gaia, she is YOUR mother 👁👄👁"

I AM ON THE FUVKING FLOOR WITH THOSE MEMES THATS SO FUCKING FUNNY

Good luck with your exams!!!

"I get the feeling he loves infodumping about his interests, and particularly likes how good a listener, as well as perceptive, that Pinefrost is" - It’s kinda shown but Rutherford starts talking to Sedge and Wooly first before diverting to Pinefrost, he couldn’t get the same conversation about the world and atom and stuff from them; they really just click. If they had a glass porch table and a bottle of wine they’d talk for hours and hours. They are both very curious cats, for better or worse.

"Those two bounce off one another so well, and in such a way that it makes it so apparent how isolated Pinefrost has been even amongst her surviving group, and even before that when Creek Clan was still intact" - they do have such good chemistry imho. I wanted Rutherford to be a friend for Pinefrost, genuinely. She is a very lonely little cat. As is he, they are both on each others level, she is able to understand his city/atom terms where other cats cannot, and he is eager to learn more about the world outside the city. Pinefrost needs that understanding/knowledge of the world to feel more secure, and Rutherford gives it her in spades.

"it strikes me as odd that he's giving away resources when he was so skeptical of Pinefrost giving Sedgenose her fresh kill, and is directing them all out of the city purely out of the goodness of his heart" -everything is a means to an end ;) As for your theories… i love em both. I love getting people’s midway theories!

There is no way but through!!!

[thefirstknife]

BEL?!???

NIGHTMARES? HAUNTING?? ROOT?!!

HHELLO NEZAREC?!?? HI HELLO HI?!?!

My best friend?? my pal, my homeboy, my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese, my good time boy, my nightmare manipulatior?!?!!

HELLO?!?!

(low key sad hes not a fair weather ally but a raid boss but hey! who knows? maybe he'll have dialogue and this is just him having a grand time and seeing if we're up to snuff? coping so hard please 🥺)

Just now saw that you also sent me this, oops. Actually a good opportunity because I re-read my other reply to an ask and thought I sounded way too convinced about stuff we know nothing about. Things are rarely super clear to the point where we can be confident about new expansion story and raid.

The point about the nightmares not being exclusively his still stands (that we know of!), but as I mentioned back then, we still don't know if the nightmares are inherently tied to Pyramids originally or if the Pyramids are making them by using a resource they acquired from someone or somewhere. That's one of the things I hope we'll find out! Because it is absolutely possible that Nezarec did originate the nightmares and then distributed the source for that power to other Pyramid ships.

Looking back at the previous ask and all of this and the insisting on the "nightmare" and "dreams" stuff (which can be seen in the soundtrack names), it might be possible that they're attempting to consolidate certain aspects of the Darkness lore. It's definitely easier to tie a few things together and give us a banger raid than to leave it open. Cleaning up loose ends and all.

NO clue how this could possibly tie into what appears to be a beam of Light and plants overtaking a Pyramid and why the nightmares would be related and why Nezarec would be there and in what form. Like, there's definitely a ton of absolutely WILD shit going down in Lightfall and predicting anything is basically impossible so pretty much any theory might be right.

For all we know, he could even be in the form of an ally due to the Light beam perhaps? What got me re-thinking things is something I've noticed in the video Bungie posted about their process of making the soundtrack no less. So, in the vidoc (0:50-0:55) I saw this bit and noticed the statue with a scythe in the right side of the screen.

It intriguied me immediately because of the scythe, but you can't see much of it so there's no point thinking about it. But in the music video today? Immediately caught my attention because they showed more of it (at 4:50):

That's a whole ass creature. It looks less like a statue also. It looks kinda like a Tormentor? But not really: it has a head. At first I didn't want to bother with it more because there's literally no way to know, but then later all this stuff with the raid was revealed and it got me thinking now. Especially with your ask!

This is also presumably the Pyramid that gets hit by the beam, since we later see the cutscene with the Witness going through plants and there's a long corridor in the background which looks like this one. We have no clue what the beam actually does, but from looking at the raid image, it very clearly is in some way overtaking the Pyramid. Which is also the vibe I'm getting from the scene itself, as the plants are bursting in:

Anyway, I am losing my mind now with overthinking every single piece of footage. I would still love something new and wild in the raid, but honestly with how this stuff is set up, even Nezarec would be new and wild. Because like, how. Is this why the Witness wanted his body parts? But then again, it didn't get them because we stole them. But then again, they're on the HELM and we're heading into battle with it, unless we secured them somewhere before.

This raid image is absolutely wild to me. Nezarec could very well be a boss or a character. At least parts of him. Don't get super excited (I'm trying to keep not too excited), but at this point I simply have no clue. Well done Bungie, you have bamboozled me. For all we know, maybe the Traveler is a raid boss at this point (that's a joke. I hope).

I'll always mention something that I never see Nezarec fans mentioning and I talked about it in this post which is also your ask and also about Nezarec (😂). That he was known to the Hive, or at least to Sylok, as Nastareth, and worshipped through pain. Just for good measure.

Anyway, be prepared to be surprised as I have genuinely no idea what might be going on here or in Lightfall in general. We're truly in the wildest territory now. Forfeiting any predictions and theories and any strong opinions about what the raid will be about. It could genuinely be anything.

[shylittlefrogg]

What is your opinion on the ML season 5 finale? What would you have done different?

Sorry I left this in my box for a while. too many things that I was concentrating on and put aside for later. I also procrastinated a bit eh.

I had to think about this for a bit and rewatch some episodes and think

Honestly though, I think it was a good season, slightly down but hey, good enough to keep me going to see what happens next.

"Staying to see the fire in the garbage dump and how the new firefighters try to put it out" basically

Felix's background story, consolidating the sentimonsters a little more, revolting the love square, giving the Miraculous to other people. I think those were pretty good things.

I personally wish they would have left Scarabella and Kitty Noir for more chapters, like maybe three and expanded things more with them while Adrien and Marinette did their thing and I don't know, maybe see that things were starting to get difficult for the new heroes and decide to help them??

It would have been nice and cute, something more natural to get the Miraculous back

thinking thinking about maybe Adrien getting Zoe in a group that knows her identity, both of them helping each other a little maybe

"Cat Friends"

Yeah, give Zoe more things instead of just using her conveniently and keeping the status of equal identities with someone who knows on each side

And honestly it gives me headaches that Adrien and Marinette were the only people without Alliance in their school group, more ADRIEN of all people, I feel like they don't make that much sense. (Also, Marinette broke her spine in that scene where Hawkmoth pushed her, no, I don't make the rules, it's basic physics)

Definitely trying more of the Sentimonsters thing from past seasons and not just something that came out of nowhere.

large parts of my complaints go to the end.

First with Chloe, she's honestly not my favorite character but I'm emotional with characters with family trauma, Chloe, Felix and Adrien being the main ones in canon, and emotionally with Kagami and Sabrina.

Chloe doesn't deserve to end up with her mother who can't even remember her name, disowned by her father according to the scripts, and without any friends or anyone else to cope. Alone with her abuser as her only support, that's... just tragic.

Felix's part in the play leaves me emotional, painful, I have already communicated what goes to my mind when a broken stuffed animal appears and I am happy that now he is better with his mother who seems to love him very much (although where was he while his father mistreated him??? I would like that to be resolved).

Finally Adrien.. He doesn't deserve to be lied to, not after all, not now that his father died and he's being praised as a hero, as a good father, when he wasn't, when he literally spent an entire chapter as Chat Noir talking about how his father sucks and ending that episode by locking himself up in fear of hurting others because of something his father caused him.

I feel bad for them and I personally would have changed that.

with Chloe being taken by some relocation program because her parents are definitely not doing good if she's in her care all that happened.

give her a good rehab family

and Adrien learning the truth, either as Adrien or as Chat Noir, because Ladybug had to have said something to her partner after so many trust issues they had before, right ??

Right?!!

I feel like the biggest problem with this season is that they didn't seem to follow a cohesive character evolution.

[transmissionsfromthebattlefield]

Not To Spit In The Fan

I turn nineteen tomorrow. It should feel like a bigger deal to me, but it doesn’t. It feels like just another day in my life is coming up.

So many people have never lived to see nineteen. Mortality has been on my mind as of late, mainly due to family affairs, but especially after yesterday. While we were driving on the highway, we saw a reckless motorcyclist whizz by us—not the least common sight, though most of the time it’s a car instead of an exposed man. I remember his medium length brown hair catching the wind, his pale shirt whipping up to expose his suntanned back. And then—in the backseat of my father’s truck, I couldn’t see much—there was a series of tracks embedded in the edge of the freeway jungle bed, and a faint puff of smoke.

One man gone in the blink of an eye before our own; a man at once becoming one with his maker. Was it an accident, or intentional? There was no way he could’ve survived. We considered pulling over, but two cars already had, meaning it only would have been to feed our morbid curiosities. We would have gotten in the way.

I am one of the last people to survey that man while he was alive. He went out in a terrifying blaze of glory. And all we could do was carry on. If the act was intentional, there will probably be no Wikipedia article detailing his reasoning; that was an act with barely any impact on the world other than his family, friends, and its witnesses. Did he view himself as a martyr? He was no suicide bomber, but was he fighting some war in his head that he could only win through complete self obliteration?

I’ve been taking the time to myself that summer has granted me to consider this archetype—one man against a world—in relation to my own life. So much has happened this summer. I feel like a more well built person; I feel more aware of how things work. I see better now what people are fighting for.

The lone motorcyclist from the other day sought glory, but he also sought closure. He sought transgression—transgression from the image of the makeuped body neatly displayed in an ornate casket in a dusty beige funeral home. He sought a death that was thrilling. He sought a death on his own terms.

If only more people sought to live life on their own terms as he found such in destruction.

The marching masses subject themselves to the name tags and identification badges, always updated as to not offend, that those in power dole out in scratch-and-sniff candy flavors. They take pride in being liberallibertariancentristcommunistsocialisttraditionalconservativemaggot like the little boy who got a rare card to trade on the playground. We take pride in consolidating our perspectives, our opinions, our idiosyncrasies into business cards sharp as razor blades to flash at all who pass and slash at those who got sorted into another pile. But we only leave surface level paper cuts. We do not cut deeper into the fertile dirt; we do not let our true colors flow like rivers of blood. Instead, we reinforce ourselves out of fear. We do not want a soul to see the problems in our individual biologies, the DNA-level mutations that don’t fit alongside our assigned prescriptions. We don’t just fight a war within our own heads—we fight a war against our heads.

We fight a war against deviation from the norms our chosen cultures have built up for us. We lash out at our hypocrite friends without considering the inherently flawed nature of humanity. We forget that human is the only label that truly means anything. We label, we observe, we scheme, we divide. We succumb to the allure of the fascist brain. But we never conquer.

We are trapped in an ever overloading warfare—“us” versus “them”. We let people in power make problems out of things that were never problems to begin with, and we allow ourselves to play along. We follow the rising tides, the rising prices, the rising temperatures. But we save the backlash for those that the powers that be tell us to fight—or some figurehead who cut a little too deep for our liking, who may retreat but will never truly exit the stage. But those cuts still are surface level. We attack the facade but never think to pull back the curtain to find the Wizard. We trade the truth for comfort and self doubt. We build ourselves up to the point where we think we have everything to lose, to keep safe and sanitized as some supposedly upstanding example of purity and sanctity. We forget that the people pulling the strings—and maybe one lone motorcyclist—already live as if they have nothing to lose.

But living like there is no tomorrow does not equate oblivion if your will is strong enough. The people we claim—and fail—to fight against know this. Their voices would not echo on, much to our dismay, if they did not know this. We just cannot hide behind excuse any longer. We must allow ourselves the strength to make impact in the name of what we truly believe in, no matter what anyone else thinks or tells us. We must allow ourselves to take control, and then we must allow ourselves to lose control. We must allow our true colors to bleed out down the highway; and the world will drink from that endless river; and then the world’s hands will finally show their true dirtiness, with every speck of soil and gushy worm entrails creating a disgusting, entrancing, beautiful portrait of what it means to be human.

At age nineteen, I want the truth. At age nineteen, I speak my truth. At age nineteen, I reject dilution and suppression. At age nineteen, I reject the fascist brain.

[hegrowings]

oki I would like some input please owo;

I'm trying to decide on how to organize my new carrd, and I've always been worried that I have... too much info, spread across multiple pages ? I'm wondering if I should consolidate, put all ooc info in one page and all ic info in another, etc... or keep my current layout, of having separate pages dedicated to rules, notes, ooc stuff for ooc and dossier, meta, and universes for ic etc

and feel free to provide your thoughts in the comments / by messaging me ! I'm honestly really on the fence so I appreciate your perspective and input <3

also yeah I totally recognize that I am wordy as fuck but I just feel things need to be said ! I don't want people to misunderstand, I want to cover my bases and ensure I'm being genuine. I don't know.

and, personally, I like having multiple pages. honestly, reading a long bit of info / page is overwhelming and sometimes gives me anxiety. it's just intimidating I guess. I like things cut into bite sized pieces, helps me parse what I read better.

anyway. I appreciate yalls feedback. <3

[mollybecameanengineer]

✨🌻💝 for the fic writer ask :)

Thanks for the ask, @lilolilyr! Here is the orignal post.

✨What's a fic you've posted you wish you could breathe life into again and have people talking about it? (or simply a fic you wish got more credit)

I have two answers for this. (As you all probably noticed) I've recently become fixated on the X-Files, but before that it was Star Trek: Voyager, so most of my fic is for that show. But I'll give one from each, because it's hard for me to consolidate the two. I was in a very different mental space writing Voyager (circa 2015-2017) than I am today.

For The X-Files: Keys,Wallet, Phone. It's the first one I wrote for this fandom, and it's very different than anything I'd written before. One of the asks on here was 'which fic would you like to be a podfic?' and this one would be my answer as well. It has a lyrical quality that I really like and I think would be great read aloud.

For Voyager: My baby, The Lament of a Daughter. This is all B'Elanna backstory... the culminations of years and years of thinking about this character. This, and The Sea of Gatan are probably some of the best things I ever wrote.

🌻what makes you want to give up on writing? what makes you keep going?

What makes me give up? Two things: anxiety and lack of head space.

For the anxiety bit, this is why I stopped writing in 2017. Trying to improve and what not was just driving me insane. This is also why, despite the fact I want to, I'll likely not participate in exchanges. When the prompt is right, it's magic. But man, it can really get to me if I can't think of anything. So this time around I've been posting things unbetaed (which likely leads to way more typos, sorry) but this has really been a path back to joy for me. Just write and release.

On lack of head space: I have a job that could consume every moment of my life if I let it. I have an idea for an original novel, which I started writing, but I found my mind was always preoccupied with it, and I wasn't thinking about my research (and therefore not making progress.) So, I don't really know what to do about that. The problem is less one of time, and more about have to pick and choose what I think about. (Which might be a weird problem to have.) It seems to work better for me to write short things to get the idea out of my head, and then move on. I am looking forward to a stage in my life where this won’t be an issue anymore.

Moving on to what makes me keep going: it’s fun (if I'm not busy being my own worse enemy). I like getting my thoughts out of my head and I like the reaction others have to those thoughts. Most of my stories are about something that is going on in my life, so it’s cathartic (or amusing, depending on what it is) to put OTP of the week in those situations. Sometimes I wonder if I could write professionally, but I do that would remove the fun and the joy. I do like my job, but there are for sure times that are NOT joyful.

💝what is a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

Well, I didn't expect people to like Qualifying Life Events this much! I wrote it in like an hour on Monday when the internet went out, so I couldn't do work. (Well, really, I should have been reviewing papers, which were saved on my computer, but see above comment on not concentrating on work so well these days.) In general, all the pieces I’ve quickly written and posted have been way more enjoyed than I expected. They tend to be silly little things (ex: The Case of the Nip Slip, The Joy of Cooking, and the above-mentioned Qualifying Life Events). I have other pieces that took way more effort, but they are just as enjoyed as the short silly ones. So, I think it’s been freeing to break the association of my effort to other people’s enjoyment (which is probably a capitalistic way of looking at things, anyway).

(Aside: for some reason, the tumblr editor isn’t spell checking, which is a huge issue for me. So I had to write this elsewhere and paste it in and Tumblr was being a dick… Why is this editor so bad?)

[steeleumbra]

Yeah...

I'm back. But, I'm definitely repurposing this for more of a creative writing and newsletter, kind of thing. Maybe with some poems sprinkled around like pixie dust. Maybe sprinkled around more like salt on an icy road. Mostly because I've never seen pixie dust...that I know of.

Oh, and, hey! The blog title has changed! Gee, how did that happen?

Surprise! It was me.

Okay, it's not really a surprise. But I've been up all night, and now I have to stay awake as long as possible just trying to reset my sleep cycle, so give me this moment of confusion and pretend it's the best thing you've ever seen. I'll be watching you do that from my place over here in this corner, drinking my half caff maxie-hous and trying to decide if catching the bus to the store is worth it or not.

I'm heavily leaning toward not.

But I need the liquid stuff that goes in coffee that makes it not as black as my soul...and goes well with cereal.

.

..

...

I also need cereal...Fuck.

Anyway...I'm leaving a lot of things from the past version of this blog up. But, it will be mostly a writing blog from now until...I don't know. Whenever I change my mind about it or jump to another site, I guess.

Anyway...er, number 2? I recently had started a Substack that I enjoyed uploading to. However, since Substack decided to partner with a waste of internet space, I have stopped posting there. It's okay, though. I only had six stories up. I mention this because I think I'll transfer those stories over to here. If for no other reason, it would be nice to have a record of them on a site that I'll come back to using at some point rather then abandoning them somewhere I have no intention of ever returning to.

And...I guess, Anyway, number 3? In the past, I posted artwork and other things on this blog, and some of those things-that I created-were for sale on Etsy. But, I no longer use Etsy. So--I edited the item a couple of posts back to say part of this, but.... A) If you see something that I was selling on Etsy, that you would be interested in buying, DM me about it. I have a Ko-fi now, and if whatever it is happens to still be available after all this time, I can set up a sales page for it so that you can buy it, and we can both have an official record of sales. Really looking just for sales here in the States, though. International shipping is a bitch--I can make exceptions, but you would need to pay shipping, because I'm poor as hell. And it's still going to be a bitch. And B) I'll be posting my artwork, whether for sale or not, to my art blog. I should have a link to it someplace on my Tumblr profile, but if not then I'll edit this later to add that link. probably at the bottom of this post. I'm still trying to decide what to do with my other Tumblr blogs, but the art one will probably both stay up, and stay the most unchanged other than being the one I post about any pieces I have for sale on, and posting links to any art pieces I have on other sites. I will, however, make that page inclusive of all forms of my art, both digital and physical (no, I won't take off my watermarks, nor tell you where my hidden signatures are). I say that because I believe I have the categories separated over 2 blogs, and I feel the need to consolidate them into one. We'll see how that goes. Oh--and I doubt this is going to do any good, but...NONE of my images-neither those taken as photographs nor those images of my creation-are posted for use to train A.I.

Okay. No more anyways. It does seem that I am back on Tumblr now. For a while, at least. We'll see how this goes.

When I was posting to substack, I ended my posts with the French phrase, "C'est la vie," which makes no sense because I speak almost no French at all. I barely speak English. Hell, I barely speak human. I don't remember why I used the phrase as a sign off to begin with. But it quickly became a habit that I liked. So, I think I'll start using on here, too.

And, with that...C'est la vie.

---The Art of J. Monty Steele - https://jmontysteele.tumblr.com/

[whentherewerebicycles]

okay i am feeling a little overwhelmed by the volume of stuff i have to do and learn and read!! i think that what’s making it more challenging is that i don’t have a good mental schema yet to hold all these disparate tasks & pieces of advice & bits of information that are flooding in, so it’s hard to know where to put stuff or how to prioritize certain tasks over others.

here are my big urgent priorities, which i am defining to mean “stuff that needs to happen in the next 2-3 work days”:

i need to closely read & take notes on these two position descriptions we’re hiring for so i can have an informed conversation with the other hiring manager early next week. however, I don’t have that meeting until wednesday, so i am shifting this task to tuesday after the holiday.

i need to read my student worker’s job description and do some thinking about how i want to approach our first expectations-setting meeting together. i’m sensing there is going to be a tricky balance here - it seems like the student role has been treated very casually as there hasn’t really been one direct supervisor in place... but also people have made some offhanded comments about the student that make it seem like there are some reliability/followthrough/communication issues that probably need to be addressed. i need to read the job description closely, gather some more information from the coworker who was informally supervising her, and then figure out how i want to structure our first meeting next tues. i think i can save some of this for tues morning, but might want to take advantage of my coworker being in the office today to have an information-gathering conversation with her where i ask some more specific questions about the issues people have mentioned & get her thoughts on how/when to address them with the student. so today’s task: have that conversation and take some notes for myself so i can let the question simmer in the back of my mind over the long weekend. tuesday morning’s task: read the job description & think about whether i want that first meeting to incorporate an expectations-setting thing of some kind (maybe using some of alison green’s AMA stuff).

i need to create some way to track & map the names of people i’ve met so far or been told i should connect with. i think this will tentatively take the form of a freeform board (for now), since the post-it option will let me easily record & cluster names in a mind-map board. that said, i don’t want to get sidetracked into putting a lot of information into the board right now, as i think i could easily lose a whole day or more on that. so today i will limit myself to JUST adding the names, a one-sentence description, and a note about whether i’ve scheduled a meeting with them yet. i think i would like to set a timer and spend 30 min max on this.

i need to read the long onboarding document they created for me so i can figure out whether there are additional things i should be thinking about or doing. this also has a more detailed description of my primary responsibilities, which will be helpful for building that mental schema. some tasks on the list will be little practical to-dos, like register for benefits or get my ID card photo taken. others will be more substantive, like sit down and do some journaling to consolidate my understanding of my role & what my first 3-6 months will look like. i think that to keep myself from getting sucked into the journaling work (which could also easily swallow an entire day), i want to skim through the document first and pull out ONLY the concrete to-dos (trainings i have to complete, benefits enrollment stuff i have to do, practical tasks). THEN i want to read through 

we have this gigantic messy sharepoint folder that has tons and tons of info relevant to my job, but is not organized in a way that i find especially intuitive. i do NOT want to get sucked into reading stuff today because there are so many files in there and not all of that info is immediately relevant. i think that what i’d like to do today is just a VERY deliberately surface-level skim of the folders, where i don’t let myself actually read any documents in-depth but just look at first pages of stuff and make a list of folders or files that seem like they’ll be useful to read in greater depth. once i’ve created that list, i want to figure out how to organize it (maybe ordering the entire thing in order of priority or relevance, so i have a list of stuff to steadily work through during my downtime, or maybe loosely grouping stuff by theme/category so i have a better sense of where information is when i need to access it later on.

at the end of the day, i want to take about 15-30 minutes to check on my list, jot down possible priorities for monday (though i don’t have to set my agenda just yet), and record any priorities that are not immediate (next 2-3 work days) but should be shorter-term (next couple weeks).

i think that these tasks will easily take up the entire day! my number one obstacle is: i know that as i work through this list i will feel a VERY strong impulse to delve more deeply into individual items and lose myself in the highly enjoyable work of reading, researching, reflective journaling, etc. however, i want to remind myself that i will have lots of time for that later, and at this stage it’s much more important for me to build out the skeleton infrastructure of this job in my mind so i can start fitting pieces of information into it. to combat that tendency, i will keep a catch-all notebook page or document to the side where i can write down threads i want to follow later or questions as they come up. that way i can feel sure that i’ll remember those things i want to explore later, but i don’t have to actually dive into them right now.