#i might post this to my ao3 if people actually like??? the idea???

[shippingmyworld]

Who wants to hear my very loose Tigerghost AU concept:

Miracle City and Amity Park are just different districts within the same big city. Manny and his dad are out superheroing one day, but fights are becoming too easy, and Manny gets cocky. This causes him to make a mistake, resulting in Randolfo being forced to save Manny by getting himself injured in the process. It ends up being pretty bad, and there's now rumors going around that White Pandera will have to retire. Manny, filled with intense guilt, is determined to make things right by any means nessassary.

He begins hearing whispers from kids about ghosts in another district with weird powers. Some are even said to grant wishes. So Manny travels to Amity Park, looking for this wish granting ghost. But everyone he talks to get super clamly when he asks about ghosts; a lot of questions are met with "I gotta go, I left the oven on at home!" or "Sorry, I don't believe in ghosts." or some other lame excuse (one blond jock-looking dude he asked just instantly paled and ran away screaming something about how he valued his life).

Eventually, Manny's questions cause him to get cornered by an older teen with long red hair. She demands to know why Manny is so insistently looking for ghosts, and while Manny is dodgy about the answer, he will slip and say he wants their help. The girl is surprised, but tells him to go to the local library and check out a specific book. When he gets to the library, he only has about ten minutes before the library clothes. So he instantly asks one of the assistants who's reshelving books where he can find it. The assistant is another girl, around his age, dressed in black from head to toe. She asks where he got the name of his book from, and after some back and forth, she relents and points Manny towards the back of the library with an ominous warning of "I hope you know what you're doing." He finds the book and barely has time to pick it off the shelf before the library's closing announcement rings overhead and he's forced to check the book out.

Once he's back home, Manny hops onto his bed and cracks the book open for the first time once he's in his room. The blinds are instantly pulled and his door slams shut, shrouding Manny in darkness. When he looks up, there's another boy with white hair and piercing green eyes, floating in front of him. The floating boy is observing him closely with his hand on his chin; like Manny was a bug under a magnifying glass. Their noses were just inches apart and the air in the room was so cold he could see his own frozen breath. He shivered, both from the cold and the sudden shock, but he didn't dare scream. He'd faced down behemoth monsters and heinous villains, but none of them compared to the energy radiating off the boy that now floated in his room.

"So," the boy said, floating in a slow circle around Manny now. "What do you want?"

"What do I want?"

The ghost gestured at the book in Manny's hands. The book was shaking, jumping in Manny's grip suddenly. He dropped it, and the book spun in the air before him, flipping through it's pages rapidly. The text on the pages glowed green before him.

"You summoned me, wanting something, didn't you?" The boy asked. "Human's always want something. It's the only reason you bother dealing with our kind, aside from hunting us."

Manny perked up, his fear slipping away. "Are you the ghost that grants wishes?"

"What would you do if I was?" The boy inquired. "What sort of wish would you make?"

"My dad's hurt." Manny said instantly. For a moment, he thought he saw a flash of surprise on the ghost's face, as if he hadn't been expecting that answer. "He got hurt saving me. The doctor says he might not ever walk again but I...I can't be the reason he gives up being a superhero."

The ghost observed Manny for another moment, floating gently towards the ceiling with his arms folded across his chest. "And to make this wish possible...what would you be willing to part with?"

"Huh?"

The ghost smiled. "Surely you're not expecting us to help you out of the goodness of our hearts, are you? After all, none of us have had a beating heart for a very long time."

Laughter filled the room, and Manny realized there were faces in the shadows on his bedroom walls. They all were leering at him as they laughed, lips curled up into venomous sneers. "Who are you?" Manny asked.

The ghost raised his hand, and the laughing stopped. He fooled a hand across his chest and bowed to Manny, as if this was all just one big performance to him. "Phantom, King of Ghosts, at your service."

Manny stared at Phantom for a moment. In the shadow cast by Phantom, Manny thought he could notice the shape of a small crown floating above the ghost's head. "You expect me to believe that the king of all ghosts answers the call of anyone that opens this book?"

"It wasn't always me," the ghost said. "But you humans got a little too comfortable approaching my kind. So I stepped in. The guard to a bridge, to say, between your world and mine and protecting ghosts from your kind. But enough chit chat. Are you willing to pay?"

"What's the price?"

The ghost smiled again before disappearing. He popping into existence right before Manny, grabbing his chin with his frigid hand and forcing them to look eye to eye again.

"Your soul."

"Fine."

The ghost blinked, his smile falling off his face for a moment before he broke out in laughter. He let go of Manny's face so he could hold his stomach while he laughed. "Seriously, just like that? You're willing to bind yourself to me for all eternity?"

"If you can make my dad walk again, I'll do it."

A wicked smile spread across the ghost's face before he snapped his fingers. The book's pages flew free from the leather binding, plastering themselves across Manny's bedroom floor in a glowing pentagram. The ghost touched down on the opposite side and extended his open hand. "Then all you need to do is step into the circle and take my hand."

Manny mustered his courage and slid of his bed, instantly stepping into the circle and taking the ghost's hand. The ghost was at least a foot taller than him, but scrawny as hell, so it was no issue for Manny to yank the ghost down to his level. A surprised look crossed the ghost's expression as Manny pulled him closer. "No funny business," he warned.

The ghost smiled widely again, his eyes tinkling like stars. "Deal."

And with a snap of his fingers, the circle beneath then flashed, illuminating Manny's entire bedroom in a blinding green light.

[s0fter-sin]

new poll time lads

[candyriku]

I unfortunately find myself unable to work on my current Soriku fic today due to my mental state, but I was able to make a bit of a teaser for the next big Soriku fanfiction that will be coming sometime after JTSYS is finished.

You can read it under the cut, but TW for blood, death, and uh, general misery. This has been cathartic for me to write but the whole idea of this fic is that things are impossibly doomed, so be warned - this is not the happy fun zone.

Blood. There was so much blood.

He had smelled it before even seeing it, the metallic scent thick in his nose before he had even rounded the corner. He had tried to convince himself that it was his own bleeding wound that he smelled, or maybe the blood of something else, someone else, but in his heart, he knew the truth. He picked up his pace, sprinting at top speed now, his sneakers splashing through shallow puddles on the wet pavement. 

When his eyes finally came to rest on the crumpled form at the end of the alley, the breath was knocked out of his chest as though someone had taken a baseball bat to his sternum. He knew, of course he knew, but he had hoped-

No. It didn’t matter what he hoped for. Hopes and wishes weren’t for people that walked his path. He had been denied the right to hope for anything ages ago. When he had signed that contract, signed away his soul, he forfeited all the cushy pleasures of a normal life. He had given up his chance of knowing peace.

But it had been worth it. If it was for Sora, anything was worth it.

Standing over Sora’s blood-soaked body, Riku tried to remind himself of that truth, the one thing that he had tethered his heart to all this time. It was worth it. Even if the chance of Sora making it out alive were next to none, there was still a chance. He could still fight.

One of these loops, Riku would get it right. He would figure out how to keep Sora safe, how to protect him from this accursed dimension where everything was designed to end his life. They would break out and live a normal life together, just the way they had always planned. 

There was a happy future waiting somewhere for the two of them. There had to be. Riku had gambled everything on it.

He crouched down, his shaking fingers gently brushing Sora’s tear-stained cheek. He could hardly stand to look at his face, but the sight of his broken, bleeding body was no better. The wounds were precise and lethal, and Riku was far too late.

No matter how many dozens of times he had watched Sora die, it never got easier. It never stopped feeling like his chest was a black hole caving in on itself, his heart squeezed until it was nothing more than dust. 

He couldn’t look. He couldn't look away.

Riku kneeled and placed both of Sora’s hands over his heart. He was about to speak and begin the incantation that would throw them both back to the starting point again, but Sora suddenly stirred, weakly reaching one hand up towards Riku’s face.

“Riku…” his voice was barely more than a whisper. 

“I’m here,” Riku said, the words catching in his throat. “Don’t speak. You can rest now. It’s okay.”

He hated to say it. He wanted to plead with Sora, wanted to beg him to stay. But if Riku had learned anything throughout the loops, it was that nothing came of begging. There was no one to answer his prayers; benevolent forces did not dwell here. At best, all it would accomplish would be making Sora sad in his final moments. At worst, future loops would be impacted by Riku’s words to Sora, twisting the knife further. He had seen it enough to know what to avoid now.

“I don’t want…” There was a weighted pause. “...Don’t want to leave you.” The pool of blood continued to grow. Riku knew - though he wished that he didn’t - that Sora wouldn’t be able to maintain consciousness for much longer at this rate. He could hardly believe Sora was awake even now. 

“We’ll meet again.” he assured Sora softly, trying to keep his voice steady. “Don’t worry. It'll be okay.” 

“You…” This pause was longer, much longer, and Riku was all but sure that Sora would not speak again. Finally, with a wet cough, Sora continued. “You promise?”

“I promise.” Riku lied. He leaned forward and kissed Sora’s forehead, his lips lingering there for several long moments as he took steadying breaths. 

“Mm… ‘kay.” Sora managed. “Love you… so much.” 

“I love you too.” Riku said, clenching his teeth so hard his jaw popped. He wanted to scream. After taking a moment to compose himself, he sat up and offered his best imitation of a smile to Sora. Better for him to see that than to see how broken Riku really was. 

The all-too-familiar faraway look settled on Sora’s face as the last of his breath left his body. Riku collapsed over him, the tears finally coming, the weight hitting him all at once with the force of a tidal wave. Even knowing that he would see Sora alive and well again in mere moments did nothing to comfort him. 

It didn't matter how many times Riku had seen it. It never got any easier to watch Sora die.

[birlwrites]

like when i was in 6th grade i started an original novel that i then abandoned mostly-complete, came back to a few years later, and finished it, out of SPITE because i didn't like seeing it in my drafts and knowing it wasn't done.

and was it cool that i'd written a whole novel? sure! do i wish i'd, like... enjoyed it more? ABSOLUTELY YES. but at the time when i began the story, i had no idea how to write something that would feel like me. when i returned to it, proofreading was a massive pain because i was constantly cringing at what seemed like sixth-grade-me's embarrassingly clumsy attempts at writing something Cool™. i didn't see any way to salvage the story. and that was because all it had originated in was that desire to write something Cool™. that goal drove every creative decision. not a shred of it was genuine. there was nothing to salvage. so i just slapped together an ending, out of a sense of obligation, and that was that.

in 8th grade, i wrote a psychological horror short story about someone trapped in a room full of unsynchronized clocks. i think i'd just read the tell-tale heart. it creeped out everyone who read it. it wasn't at all Cool™. it was leagues, LEAGUES better - more sincere, more committed, more impactful - than that novel i'd started a couple of years earlier.

fanfiction isn't Cool™. fandom is still often cringed at in the Mainstream™. but Coolness and the Mainstream are the death of creativity. if all you're doing is imitating whatever's recently achieved commercial success, it will feel empty. a pastiche of booktok buzzwords is just that.

but if you allow yourself to create something ~cringe~, fully and wholeheartedly, then you can connect with your readers. you can figure out how you want to write. and you'll enjoy the writing process, instead of staring at a draft you started years ago, wondering how to finish it with the minimum possible effort so you can cross it off your list.

[constellarcreator]

Might leave the one psychonauts discord im in lol

[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

Migu/eli :/

[archaeren]

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

[feedthefandomfest]

Comment Bingo: Old Fic Edition

Very simple rules: connect 5 squares in a line by commenting on fics that suit the task in each square

Very simple goals: encourage readers to comment on older fics; encourage fandom writers to KEEP WRITING

STEPS:

Download Bingo Card HERE (png) or HERE (jpg) or HERE (pdf)

Complete the tasks on the card, marking off each as you go, until you've completed 5 in a line (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal; NO double-dipping; center ♥️ is a free space)

POST your winning card (or list your filled squares) and tag @feedthefandomfest! Glory in your victory.

SEARCH TIPS:

This card requires some familiarity with AO3's search filters. Once you've narrowed your results according to fandom/ship/additional tags, certain squares require you to sort the results by Date Updated, which is the default. Other squares require you to search for fics posted within a certain range of years, which you can do by scrolling on the search menu to More Options:

Note that to enter a date range, you must format the date as shown.

REWARD:

✨ victory badges ✨

New badge for this card, but here are examples from previous cards:

Tag me when you earn a bingo (or double, triple, quadruple... FULL CARD bingo) and I'll reblog a shiny badge with your name on it to commemorate the win.

FAQ:

Can I comment on tumblr or only on AO3?

Either one is great! This card especially is more designed with AO3 in mind, but some can be adjusted to suit tumblr as well, so I say go for it. Tumblr fics deserve love, too.

Can one comment count toward multiple squares if the fic fits more than one category?

Since the goal is for as many fics to receive comments as possible, try to comment on a different fic for each square.

Is there a time limit?

Nope! Take your time or set your own deadline, whatever works for you. This blog is still in its early experimental stage, so feedback welcome. Play around and let me know what you like and what might be added/changed—including ideas for squares on future cards!

Do I have to record progress on the actual card?

Nope! If it’s easier to keep track in a different way, that’s fine. This is all very honor system, so if you say you earned a Bingo, we’ll call it a win 🎉

Some people have been tracking not just completed tasks, but the fics they read along the way, so that when they post a bingo, they can also promote the fics/authors in a little rec list. Not required, but definitely cool to see!

Can I adjust the task in a particular square to suit my comfort level?

Of course! If you deliver something in the spirit of the task, then it’s all good. Use your best judgement in constructing a comment that will make the author smile, and you can consider it a job well done.

In general, so long as each square has produced at least one comment, you’re golden and I salute you 🫡

Happy commenting!!

[valeriehalla]

I have gotten a lot of messages saying that they really love the presentation of CURSE/KISS/CUTE. Often the commenter in question can’t say what exactly it is about the formatting that they appreciate, but that it just reads well and looks good. Well!!! Allow me to bare my wealth of secret knowledge for you once and for all:

I sorta just did some research into book typography...?

Here’s something you should know about web development, alright: typography on the web is really, really bad. The tools we have at our disposal—HTML and CSS—are incredibly powerful, but they are set up to fight you every step of the way towards Good Typography. When you know what you’re looking for, you can fix all the common issues quickly and easily. But it’s not easy to know what to look for, because

problematic typography is overwhelmingly the norm on the web, and

good typography is invisible.

Here’s a screenshot from CURSE/KISS/CUTE episode 0:

Now, I don’t want this post to come across as prescriptive. It is not my intention to tell you, “This is what good typography looks like, so follow my lead exactly.” I made a lot of choices with the typography of my web novel: many of those choices would not make sense in other contexts. What I want to convey to you is what those choices are, so that you will know they’re available to be made.

I mentioned that the web “fights you” when it comes to good typography. What do I mean by that? Well, check this out:

This is how that passage of text renders “by default.” In other words, this is how a web browser would render that text without any input from me about what styles to apply. It kind of sucks ass! But it also looks pretty familiar, right? This is not that far off from how a lot of websites—even websites full of prose (looking at you, AO3)—render text.

I think the most illustrative thing to do here would be to walk you through my thought process and show you, step by step, what decisions I made to turn this unstyled text into the styled version you see in the novel.

So, first things first:

1. We have got to shrink that text column.

Computer monitors... are wide. They are wider than they are tall. They are so wide, and they have so many pixels. This means you can fit a lot of characters on them. If you wanted, you could just have a wall of characters from the left side of the screen all the way to the right side. Talk about efficient!!

You should never, ever, ever do this.

This is one choice that I actually will make a prescriptive statement about, because it’s supported by quite a lot of research: fairly narrow text columns are more legible. Specifically, research seems to support the idea that a width in the range of 50 to 70 characters per line is the most comfortable for people to read*. Every font is different, so it takes a little doing to turn that “characters” figure into a pixel measurement; I went with 512 CSS pixels for the maximum width of my text column:

Isn’t that just so much nicer to read already?

*A commenter reminds me that I’d be remiss not to point out that the research on column width legibility isn’t completely conclusive. You do want to limit the width of your text columns, but going over the 70 character-per-line recommendation isn’t necessarily the end of the world, and you might have good reasons to do so. I did not: as mentioned, one of my goals was to mimic book-style typography, and books by nature have fairly restrained column widths, on account of they’re books.

2. Picking a font.

I’m not going to give you the blow-by-blow on how I decided what font to use. The short story is that I asked some designers, and one of the recommendations I got was the free font Crimson Pro, which I took a liking to immediately:

It’s just an all-around attractive serif font, but one thing I really like about it for use in a novel is its highly-visible quotation marks. They’re just kinda jumbo! They’re real big! Easy to see! In a novel, those things aren’t just ornamentation. It makes a great deal of practical sense for them to stand out just a bit. It also has a fairly large x-height, unlike a lot of the more traditional options, which is good for legibility on a computer screen.

3. Adjusting the line-height

Web browsers default to a line-height of about 1.2em, which, as you can probably tell, is quite cramped. If you go and Google “optimal line height for legibility”, you’ll get a number of results right off the bat suggesting 1.5em. Sounds good! Let’s do that:

Well... hmm. That’s definitely an improvement, but between you and me, it actually looks a bit too spacey to my eyes. I wonder why?

I’ll cut to the chase: the 1.5em recommendation makes some assumptions about the font you’re using. In Arial, the letter “A” is about 0.6em tall; in Crimson Pro, it’s about 0.5em. That means that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to spacing your lines, because different fonts have different amounts of empty space baked in. How annoying!

Let me tell you something about the kind of nerd I am. When I had this realization, I grabbed some books off my shelf and pulled out a literal micrometer. I started measuring the line-heights against various font features to see if there were any patterns I could spot in professional typesetting. Here’s what I found:

Almost every book on my shelf spaces lines such that the distance between one baseline and the next is about three times the x-height. How cool is that? I clapped my hands like a seal when I put this together.

Adjusting the line-height to match what I observed in the wild gives us this:

It’s a subtle difference, but to my eyes it feels just right. It’s almost like magic!

4. Paragraph spacing...

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Probably the most controversial choice I made with CURSE/KISS/CUTE’s typography was to opt for book-style paragraph indentation rather than web-style paragraph spacing—like so:

I did this for a few reasons:

It’s what I’m used to. I’ve read a lot of books, and this is just the way that books are formatted. I think for something aspiring to the title of “novel”, there’s value in making it look the way a reader probably expects a novel to look.

A novel has a lot of paragraph breaks in it. A paragraph in, say, an encyclopedia entry might go on for half a page or more; whereas it is unusual for a paragraph in a modern work of narrative prose to run for more than a handful of sentences, especially in any scene with dialogue. Because paragraph breaks are so common, spacing between paragraphs in a novel results in a lot of wasted space. Also, subjectively speaking, the additional space seems to me to lend an undue amount of weight to paragraph breaks. I’m just starting a new thought; there’s no need for a 21-gun salute, you know?

Having said that, here are some good reasons you might decide not to do paragraph indentation anyway:

Doing it right requires a bit of extra legwork. Notice how the very first paragraph in the image above has no indentation. That’s because it’s the start of a new section, and the first paragraph in a section traditionally goes unindented. This is an easy detail to miss, and it can be difficult to wrangle CSS into doing it for you automatically.

Web users don’t expect it. For the first decade of the web’s existence, there was no good way to do paragraph indentation; by the time CSS rolled around and made it easy, paragraph spacing had already become the norm. And while CURSE/KISS/CUTE may be a novel, it is also, specifically, a web novel!

But it’s my house and I get to make the rules, so I went with indentation. Incidentally, there seems to be a dire lack of research into the question of whether indentation or spacing is more legible for readers—but the data that does exist appears inconclusive at best. So, the choice really does come down to vibes.

5. The tragedy of justification.

You’ll note that one way in which I did not make my web novel look like a paper novel is the text alignment. It’s un-justified: the right margin is ripsaw-ragged.

This is because it is not possible to justify text on the web.

Oh, you can try. Look right here: there’s a CSS property for it and everything. Just turn on “text-align: justify” and...

Nightmare! The interword spacing on that first line is almost as wide as the indentation!

Reader, I’m afraid that your web browser is simply too dumb. That’s not the browser’s fault: robust algorithms for justifying text without creating these distractingly huge gaps between words have existed for many decades, and modern computers are powerful enough to run them in real time with little performance impact. It’s just, uh—nobody has ever bothered to implement them into web browsers. It is the damnedest thing.

I tried, I really did. You can mitigate this problem a bit if you enable automatic hyphenation, but browsers are unfortunately also kind of dumb at hyphenating. Firefox, for example, will refuse to hyphenate any word containing a capital letter, so any sentence with a lot of proper nouns in it is a lost cause. I tried manually inserting soft hyphens with a text preprocessor I wrote myself, but still these overjustified lines plagued me: when the text column narrows, for example on a phone, even hyphens can’t save you. The line-breaking algorithm is simply too naïve to optimize for well-justified text, and that’s not something you can fix as a web developer.

As a result, my heavy-hearted recommendation is to never use text justification. It’s just too distracting.

6. And then some extra stuff just for me

I added drop-caps because it looks neat and I made the ellipses spacier because I think it looks good when it, uh, when they are spacier. I think that looks pretty good that’s just my opinion though.

That’s all! Hope you learned something bye!!!

[scary-grace]

hands-off, hands-on - a shigaraki x f!reader fic

This was inspired by this art and a comment left on it about the risks of trying to jerk off with a quirk like Decay. It was also inspired by @obsessedtomone and @scarlettcryptid, who encouraged me to write it and then to post it. The pun in the title was my idea and not their fault.

Shigaraki's quirk makes life difficult in a lot of ways, but there's only one he can't find a way around, and since you joined the League of Villains, it's gotten even worse. When the truth comes out at last, he's expecting it to be a disaster and nothing else. He definitely isn't expecting you to offer to help. (cross-posted to Ao3) Canonverse, one-shot, smut.

Shigaraki Tomura’s quirk is everything to him. It’s how he found himself alone in the world as a five-year-old, even if he can’t remember the details. It’s why Sensei took an interest in him, why Sensei took him in, why Sensei chose him to carry on his work. It’s the perfect tool for someone like Shigaraki, who hates everything, who wants nothing more than to destroy everything he doesn’t like. Decay is the best thing that’s ever happened to Shigaraki. And at the same time, it absolutely, categorically sucks.

Shigaraki might hate everything, but he doesn’t hate it all the time, and the times when he doesn’t hate it are times when he’d love to be able to just have whatever it is without being one wrong move away from ruining it. Name a thing he likes, and his quirk is ready and waiting to fuck it up – gaming, eating, sleeping, even reading the fucking newspaper. He can do all those things four-fingered, if he stays focused. It’s the stuff he can’t stay focused on that’s impossible.

He can’t stay focused when he’s horny, at least not enough to keep from potentially Decaying his dick off. Shigaraki doesn’t actually know if his quirk works on himself, and he’s not interested in finding out. And that means that no matter how horny Shigaraki gets or how many poorly timed boners he pops, jerking off is permanently off the table.

That’s not to say Shigaraki’s never finished. He has. He’s spent so much time humping pillows that he had to learn to do his own laundry. But there’s something really pathetic about being twenty years old with two working hands and still be stuck grinding on a pillow to make himself come, and it always takes so stupidly long. Now that Shigaraki’s got the League of Villains, now that he’s got plans to make and Sensei’s legacy to fulfill, he doesn’t have that kind of time. When he wakes up with the world’s worst morning wood after a dream he doesn’t remember clearly, there’s nothing he can do but wait for it to go away.

It fades – enough – but the feeling doesn’t, and eventually Shigaraki doesn’t have a choice but to drag himself out of bed. He slinks from his room to the bar, hoping it’ll be empty, with the rest of the League out and about preparing for the mission and Kurogiri somewhere nearby if Shigaraki needs him but not actually right there to ask him what’s bothering him. Shigaraki can pour his own drinks. Maybe he can get out of this if he gives himself whiskey dick on purpose. Kurogiri’s not in the bar, just like he was hoping, but it’s not empty, either. You’re there, sprawled out over the bar with a sweating glass of water on a coaster in front of you.

Shigaraki’s jaw clenches at the sight. “What are you doing here?” he demands, and you look up. “Don’t you have something to do?”

“I did it already.” You yawn. “Using my quirk tires me out.”

“Really?” Shigaraki can’t keep the irritation out of his voice. “Making people stupid is that exhausting?”

Your quirk is a weird one. It lets you increase or decrease a target’s ability to plan, reason, problem-solve, remember things, and learn – in other words, their intelligence. “From this distance, for as many people as you need me to hit?” You yawn again and drop your head back down to the bar. “Yeah. Remember, I have to keep them all being stupid the same way, right up until it’s too late. Or your plan won’t work.”

Shigaraki had the pieces of the plan before he made you use your quirk on him, but once you used the quirk on him, he did some fine-tuning on the strategy, and he came up with the idea of using your quirk the opposite way, too. While the rest of the League is planning to make the attack on UA’s summer training camp a success, you’re using your quirk every day on the heroes in charge of planning the camp itself. Shigaraki’s not actually going to know if it works until after the attack, and that pisses him off. “Go nap somewhere else, then.”

“I’m not going to bother you,” you say. “Where else am I supposed to go, anyway? Your room?”

Shigaraki’s this close to saying yes, just to get you to leave, before he remembers what his room looks like – and remembers that he spent a while trying to see if grinding one out would work this time. He can’t kick you out of the hideout. You look like shit, and you’ll attract a lot of attention. “Fine. Shut up.”

“Yep.” You fold your arms on the bar and rest your head on them, shutting your eyes.

Even when you aren’t looking at him or talking, your presence bothers Shigaraki. It’s bothered him since the beginning – as much as he’s bothered by the others, in a different way than he’s bothered by the others. While the others can at least manage to avoid pissing Shigaraki off, there’s nothing you do that doesn’t cause some kind of problem. If you’re talking to him too much, he’s annoyed because he doesn’t know why you’re talking to him. If you’re not talking to him, he’s pissed about that, too. If you’re not around, he’s mad that you’re avoiding him, and if you are around, he wishes you weren’t. The fact that you’re here was a big problem for him even before he started having the dreams.

Shigaraki can’t remember the details of last night’s dream, but he knows you were in it. He pours himself a drink, takes the bottle with him, and sits down at the far end of the bar from you. You don’t look up again, and Shigaraki finishes his first drink, then half of his second, with no improvement on the situation. He shifts on the barstool, trying to get more comfortable. He needs to find something else to do. Something that will distract him from how stupidly horny he is.

You’re right there, and being irritated with you for doing anything at all is as good a distraction as anything else. “If all you’re doing is making a couple of heroes slightly dumber, you’re not really pulling your weight, are you?”

You don’t stir, but Shigaraki sees your shoulders stiffen. “What else should I be doing?”

“More,” Shigaraki says. You lift your head to look at him dead on, and Shigaraki hates that so much that he loses his train of thought for a second. “I don’t want them slightly dumber. I want them so stupid they can’t walk in a straight line. You have to get closer to them for that? So get closer. Get out of here and –”

“If I make them that stupid, the heroes will know that something’s wrong,” you interrupt. “My quirk’s in the government databases. If I do anything too obvious, they’ll know I’m working with you, and they’ll change their plans. Or they’ll change who they’re using to execute those plans. For my quirk to work on someone, I need to know who they are.”

Shigaraki knows how your quirk works. He’s not stupid. “I could do what you want me to do, but it would ruin your plans,” you say. “I don’t want to do that.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I wanted to take a nap,” you say. You sit up straight on your stool, get to your feet and start towards Shigaraki. “Now I want to know what I did to piss you off.”

You’re coming closer. Shigaraki feels a surge of panic. “Get away from me.”

“No.” You sit down one barstool away from Shigaraki, but still way too close for comfort. Shigaraki’s skin feels hot, and in spite of the fact that he left his room wearing sweatpants, they’re getting tight. “You let me join the League, but ever since I got here, I can’t do anything right. You’re mad at me all the time, and today you’re even madder than usual.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” you say. You keep staring. Shigaraki looks away, and you say the first thing he’s ever heard you say that makes you sound like a villain. “Either you can tell me the truth, or I’ll use my quirk on myself and figure it out.”

Shigaraki’s stomach lurches. “I thought you were too tired to use your quirk.”

“Not on myself,” you say. Shigaraki glances back at you. You’re almost smiling. He’s seen you smile before, talking to Toga or Magne, but not like that. “You can tell me, or I’ll find out on my own. Your choice.”

You’re not screwing around. Shigaraki thinks fast. He could Decay you, but – Shigaraki writes off the thought before he can even complete it. He has to tell you something, and it has to be convincing. But he doesn’t have to tell you everything to keep you from using your quirk. It’s going to be humiliating, but nowhere close to as humiliating as the whole truth, and he opens his mouth and spits it out. “I’m horny.”

You blink. “So jerk off.”

“I can’t.” Shigaraki sees your eyebrows lift, skeptical as hell, and loses patience, even as his face heats up. “My quirk. Anything I touch with five fingers –”

“And you can’t jerk off without –” You break off mid-question, looking just as uncomfortable as Shigaraki feels. “So you’ve never –”

“No, I have, I just –” This is way more information than you need to know. Shigaraki grits his teeth. “You wanted an answer. There’s your answer. Leave me alone.”

You don’t leave Shigaraki alone. You actually move over onto the stool next to his. “So you’re just going to be a dick to me any time you’re horny.”

It’s your fault Shigaraki’s horny. Before you showed up, he could deal with things on his own, but now instead of videos and games to fixate on he has fantasies – because he can imagine about what you’d look like under him, what you’d sound like, what you’d feel like. All of which are the worst possible things for Shigaraki to be thinking about right now. He’s completely hard, again. Maybe you can tell, or maybe you’re using your quirk on him after all, because you’re making a really weird face. “If you’re going to be a dick any time you’re horny –”

You break off. Shigaraki thinks, fleetingly, about Decaying you. At this point he’d rather Decay himself, because if even he kills you, he’ll still have to remember that this happened. You take a deep breath, let it go. “Do you want help?”

Shigaraki’s mind blue-screens for a second. “What?”

“If this is why you’re like this, then it’s easy to fix,” you repeat. Your hands are clenched into fists on your thighs, and you slowly uncurl them. “Do you want me to help?”

“Help with what?”

“Jerking off,” you say. You make an awkward gesture, and every muscle in Shigaraki’s body goes tense as he imagines your hands around his cock. You have to be messing with him. There’s no way you’re actually offering – that. “Yes or no?”

“Yes.” Shigaraki finishes his drink and stands up before he can think any more about it. He grimaces as his cock strains against the fabric of his pants, and feels a surge of embarrassment when he realizes you’re looking at it – but it’ll be over soon. In the face of getting some, and getting it from you, nothing else matters. “Let’s go.”

Shigaraki’s nerves kick in on the walk back to his room. Not enough to make the hard-on he’s coping with fade even slightly, but enough to remind him that this is probably a bad idea. But you’re following him, and you haven’t changed your mind. Shigaraki’s not chickening out first. The nerves get worse when he opens the door to his room and realizes what a mess it is. “Uh –”

“Where do you usually sit?” You don’t look impressed – or disgusted, now that Shigaraki thinks about it. “On the bed?”

Shigaraki sits down on the bed – which he didn’t make, because he never makes it – and you sit down next to him. You don’t do anything. “I thought you were going to help me.”

“Show me what you do,” you say. Shigaraki stares at you. His heart is racing, his pulse hammering so hard that he feels it everywhere. “Go as far as you can, and then I’ll keep doing what you do.”

That makes sense, probably. Shigaraki’s mind is startling to scramble. He decides to think about it later and catches the hem of his shirt, hiking it up and out of the way. He knows from experience that it’ll slide back, so he pins it between his teeth and reaches down to his waistband, shoving at it until his pants are down around his thighs and his cock is free.

His hard-on looks like it feels. Uncomfortable, leaking, hot to the touch when he wraps three fingers and his thumb around his shaft. Shigaraki tries a few of the same insufficient strokes as always and feels the muscles in his abdomen and thighs clench. It’s not enough. It’s never enough. A frustrated sound edges out around the fabric in Shigaraki’s mouth. Aren’t you supposed to help him? He looks at you. You’re looking away.

“Hey,” Shigaraki says, the hem of the shirt falling from his mouth, and you look at him. “You wanted to help. Pay attention.”

Your face is flushed. You nod, and you reach out – but only so you can grasp the hem of Shigaraki’s shirt and pull it out of the way again, your knuckles brushing over his abdomen in a way that makes him twitch. You’re sitting closer to him now than you were before, close enough that he can almost feel the heat of your body, and imagine how it would feel to have you pressed against him. One of your hands is holding his shirt up. The other comes to rest on his lower abdomen, fingertips brushing through his hair, centimeters away from the base of his cock.

Shigaraki squirms involuntarily, trying to move your hand lower and jeopardizing his own strokes at the same time. Even when he lifts his hips to meet his own hand, he can’t lose control the way he wants to, can’t chase the feeling he needs. He needs it. He needs it and he’s never come even close to having it, until now. Shigaraki tries to focus. You’re only going to help once he’s gone as far as he can, so he’d better get there as fast as possible.

He shouldn’t have told you to pay attention. Now you’re watching everything, your face still flushed and your eyes glued to Shigaraki’s every move, taking everything in. Do you like this? Do you like watching Shigaraki’s pathetic attempts to get himself off? Whether you like it or not, you’re still touching him when you don’t have to. Shigaraki’s fingers tighten involuntarily around his cock, his fourth finger almost coming down, and he loosens up in a hurry. But that’s no good, either. He tries again.

It’s the same as always. Shigaraki makes it one or two strokes before it gets dangerous, enough to show him what he could have and not enough to get him there. He’s sweaty and his heart is beating too hard and the same frustrated tears as always are stinging his eyes. He curses, lets go – and a warm hand slides between his legs to replace his.

Shigaraki almost comes on the spot. It takes every ounce of willpower he has, and he almost blows it again as he watches you adjust your hold on him, shaping your hand more closely around his cock. You’re slow about it, but you sure as hell aren’t hesitant. Shigaraki can’t look for longer than a few strokes. It’s too humiliating to see the intensity of his own reaction, precum oozing from the tip of his cock and his hips jerking upwards into your hand. He clenches his jaw and shuts his eyes.

“Hey. Pay attention.” Are you making fun of him? Shigaraki opens his eyes and finds you looking at him. “I need to know if I’m doing it right.”

“What do you think?” Shigaraki forces the words out through gritted teeth. “Do you need me to tell you you’re doing a good job or something?”

“That might be nice,” you muse. Your hold on him loosens slightly – not enough to complain about, more than enough to read as a threat. “Since I can’t do anything else right around here, I at least want to be good at getting you off.”

Your grip tightens again, and you run your thumb lightly over the tip of Shigaraki’s cock at the end of the next stroke. Shigaraki couldn’t pull a move like that if his fucking life depended on it, which it would. He was going to tell you not to ask stupid questions, like if you’re good at getting him off when he’s two seconds away from blowing his load all over himself, but instead he moans, so loudly that people can probably hear it two streets away. You replay the same stroke, slower this time, pulling Shigaraki’s back into an arch to match the upward motion of your hand, and then you spend a few seconds just toying with his tip, barely touching him at all.

Are you trying to make him squirm? Shigaraki hates that it’s working, hates that you won’t just give him what he needs – but then you’re back to stroking his cock again, and Shigaraki relaxes, as much as it’s possible to relax. It feels good, even better than he thought it would. And even better than that, because he doesn’t have to do anything. All he has to do is sit back and enjoy it.

“Hold your shirt up,” you say, and Shigaraki grabs it clumsily. Your now-free hand traces quickly down Shigaraki’s chest, along his stomach, skidding sideways over his hip before sliding between his legs. There’s not room for both of your hands. Shigaraki spreads his legs without thinking twice.

You make a weird sound – maybe a gasp. “Stop that,” you say, but now you’re cradling his balls in addition to stroking his cock, so Shigaraki’s not interested in stopping much of anything. “It’s working.”

No shit it’s working. Shigaraki’s entire body is wound tight, so much that he can’t even twitch or thrust or squirm – all he can do is strain, agonizingly tense, every atom of his body focused on the motion of your hands. Shigaraki squeezes his eyes shut. His shirt crumbles away as he claws at it, the sheets on his bed going the same way a second later as he fights to ground himself. He needs more. Shigaraki needs to come right now, before he grabs onto something he can’t replace.

The word struggles out of his mouth sideways, twisted and strained just like the rest of him. “Please –”

You don’t answer him, but Shigaraki feels you shift closer to him. He opens his eyes and you’re right there, close enough that he can feel your breath against his skin. You’re watching him, head tilted, lips parted, so close. Shigaraki’s so close, and he needs more from you. He seizes the front of your shirt to pull you down to him, only for it to Decay when you’re halfway there. But Shigaraki gets lucky. You lean in the rest of the way and press your lips against his.

It’s not because of that. Shigaraki’s coming hard enough to see stars, hard enough that he blacks out for a second, but it’s not because you’re kissing him. His cum spills everywhere, onto his sweatpants and his stomach and over your fingers, and you keep stroking him with slick hands. You don’t pull away until Shigaraki’s whining against your mouth and you’ve drawn out every drop of cum he has to give.

And then you sit back, and let go, and look away. “I need a new shirt.”

You’re sitting next to him, on his bed, in just your bra. The sight would get Shigaraki hard again in an instant if you hadn’t just made him come hard enough to disconnect his spine. He raises a shaky hand and points to his hoodie, slung over the back of his computer chair, but you don’t go for it. Instead you get up and head to the bathroom to wash your hands.

Shigaraki needs to wash everything. His sweatpants, himself – the stupid mattress, since he was dumb enough to Decay the sheets off it right before he blew what feels like the biggest load in history. What else was he supposed to do, though? No way was he going to be able to control himself while you worked him over. No way is he going to be able to think about anything else the next time he sees you do anything with your hands. Or with your mouth.

It occurs to Shigaraki vaguely that while he’s solved the initial problem of being too horny to function, he’s set himself up for something even worse – more dreams, made all the more vivid because he’s got experience to back them up. He might be good to go for now. Probably for the rest of the day, since it’ll be a miracle if he can do anything other than clean up and take a nap. But he’ll be right back where he started the next time he wakes up from another dream about you.

The water from the sink shuts off, and a moment later you come back out, snagging Shigaraki’s hoodie off the chair and pulling it on over your bra. Shigaraki feels a faint twinge of foreboding at the sight, but it fades fast. Sure, he could wake up tomorrow morning with the boner from hell and it’ll be all your fault. But now he’s got a way out of it, and the way out of it is so good that what it takes to get there barely even matters. And he’s in a good enough mood to admit to himself that you do things right a lot more than you do things wrong.

Which reminds him – “Hey,” Shigaraki says, still humiliatingly breathless, and you pause in the act of pulling the hood up. “You did a good job.”

He might still be out of breath, but your face is still flushed. “Good,” you say, and you turn to leave. Shigaraki doesn’t hear you speak again until you’re already out the door. “Next time I’ll do better.”

Better might kill him. Next time. Shigaraki pulls up his sweatpants so his dick isn’t hanging out, makes no other effort at cleaning up, and falls asleep with something that feels like a smile on his face.

[verstarppen]

summary; slowly but surely that fake dating plan you cooked up starts leaving its confined lines

pairing; mick schumacher x fem!reader [ no faceclaim ]

a/n; babe wake up star finally made a mick smau this demands a national celebration; title is count me in by they. because i was listening to it when this story idea appeared between my brain folds TW for mention of food poisoning and hospitals (comedic purposes) but if you're in a place where this might make you uncomfortable i strongly suggest you avoid this post and i'll see you for the lando series update tomorrow, take care

liked by georgerussell63, lewishamilton, mickschumacher and 295,953 others

ynusername favourite necklace

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georgerussell63 I so desperately wish my ability to read would disappear.

ynusername you got us in this mess now suffer the consequences georgerussell63 I didn't do shit, it's entirely on your shoulders.

mickschumacher why aren't you holding them

ynusername no hand holding before marriage please

houseofwebber if they ever break up you'll see me on the news actually

eastcoastbearman babe wake up micky/n are alive

lewishamilton Embarrassing.

ynusername just like this comment

liked by georgerussell63, logansargeant, mickschumacher and 590,201 others

ynusername took the dog out for a walk

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rothgothgasly stop calling me single in 29 different languages

albonite PARENTS ARE PARENTING

julyestie maman and papa

filipe3596 Hi God it's me again

setbackhamilttel mick the type of guy to say "i don't argue with my girl she tells me to shut up and i do"

ynusername it's true mickschumacher yeah setbackhamilttel THE LEGENDS REPLY!?

liked by estebanocon, totowolff, ynusername and 890,294 others

mickschumacher visiting my favorite corpse

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ynusername EXCUSE YOU I CAN EAT SOLID FOODS NOW

mickschumacher i did that on day 4 get good ynusername sorry that my guts aren't as cool as yours mickschumacher let me rearrange them, then ynusername that was smoother than my throw up

mclandolorian HE ESCAPED

baconforza weren't you also a corpse like 2 days ago

armstrongslayer ARE THE RUMOURS ABOUT THE FAKE DATING TRUE

ynusername anything to piss george off

liked by mickschumacher, lewishamilton, georgerussell63 and 201,506 others

ynusername if a doctor sees this for legal reason these are old pictures :)

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lewishamilton And to think this all could've happened sooner had you people had the balls to say what should've been said.

ynlantern just like a bowl of cereal that's been collecting dust for an hour, it's still delicious in the end innit lewishamilton All's well that ends well, I guess.

vertiddieenjoyer the only people on earth that can go on a first date after 12 months of dating

nandogoat ao3 friends to lovers, fake dating, only one bed, 294k words, alternative universe - europe, no beta we die like mick's career in haas

osc_pastry i don't think they realize how funny this is to watch from the sidelines

pic credits: instagram and pinterest

blog taglist: @coffeehurricanes @iifloweringnightsii @jsjcue @lanando4 @fastcarsandshit @christianpulisic10 (hi besties hope you're having a lovely evening and you aren't also crying about the qatar quali)

[ladyelainehilfur]

Literally insane to me how small the general webtoon fandom is outside of the webtoon app itself (and maybe reddit??)

I've talked to multiple people irl who LOVE reading webtoon, but the online community is borderline threadbare ! Most people on Tumblr have no IDEA who our blorbos are! I've checked tags for some fairly popular webtoon and it was like visiting that Tatooine town in the Mandalorian where there are 5 citizens total, but only if you also count the Mayor, the sheriff, and the deputy.

Lore Olympus is the most popular webtoon and has under 2,000 fics on AO3. Lookism has roughly 1,000. Unordinary, THEE legacy webtoon, only has 600, and it's been running for almost 7 years now. It has nearly 6M subscribers and still gets 50K+ likes each week. It's not dead by any means.

I guess it doesn't help that each webtoon is its own micro ecosystem and once a webtoon ends, that ecosystem typically fades with it. But webtoons can go on runs longer than most shows on streaming services, and those fandoms burn hot and bright even if only for the first month of a new season drop.

By comparison, webtoon fans are largely casual about their enthusiasm, even if they're highly invested in the story or characters. From my experience, only the most passionate try to connect with other fans online. But when you're passionate about one webtoon, I suppose it's hard to show constant excitement about the 20+ other stories one might keep up with. Still, between the 85 million monthly readers, you'd think each major webtoon would at least have a dedicated fan base (meaning people who regularly post theories, thoughts, fics, and fanart) of mere thousands outside of the app.

One exception for this is that Batman webtoon? It actually trends on Tumblr every now and again. But it doesn't count, because Batman has a built in fandom who'll eat up and yell in the streets about any content where he's a decent dad.

People who read romance webtoon all tend to read the same comics, and actively understand the references to other popular romance comics (Trashta, Team Seojun, SLS), so you'd think there'd be a greater sense of unity. More people actively searching out others to discuss with and posting their thoughts online and not just in that webtoon's comment section.

I mean, C'MON girls!!! Millions of people log into that app like everyday!!! WHERE is the community?? WHERE is the fanart?? WHERE is the fanfic?? WHY does Odd Girl Out only have 7 fanfics?? WHY are there like 2 people on Twitter posting about Weak Hero?? Head in hands fr

[mrsbarnesblog]

Mattheo Riddle headcanons

masterlist ko-fi ao3

Summary: what is it like dating Mattheo

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: fluff, no mention of y/n, you can be in any house, spicy content under the warning

Author’s note: For all my Bucky fanfic readers, I'm sorry that I haven’t posted in almost a month. This December is just too overwhelming, and every time I tried to finish my fic, it felt like I was wasting my time. I literally just miss the ending, and I hope to finish it as soon as possible.

For my possible new followers and/or HP stans, Mattheo is my current obsession, and I’m literally head over heels for him. And you know what they say: if you can’t find a fanfic that you like, write it yourself. So yeah, I'm trying something new, and I have a few ideas that are poisoning my head every single minute lmao.

sorry if there are any mistakes. hope you’ll like it💘🎀

Mattheo was never that much of a playboy because he didn’t like to share his space and, well, communicate with people in general

Due to his family, he was really reserved and refused to be weak

You weren’t that popular in school, so he had never really noticed you but one day, you suddenly started hanging out with Pansy and he could not get you out of his head anymore

He hated it

He hated that you occupied all of his thoughts for at least a few weeks 

Tried to ignore his feelings for you as long as possible, but from the moment you two had to work together on the project, everything went downhill 

He was scared to ask you out, not ready to be rejected by the only person he genuinely liked and thinking that maybe you secretly hated him like everyone else

At the beginning of the relationship, Mattheo told you that sometimes he might get cold and distant, but it wasn’t your fault and that you should just give him some time 

Mattheo is romantic and for his favorite girl, he always arranged the best dates

He was nervous to kiss you after the first date when he walked you to your dorm

Little did he know, but that sexy smirk and the way he looked at you all night drove you insane

So you just pulled him by the tie, connecting your lips

Since then, Mattheo has been addicted to you

Hands are always on you, holding your hand, your waist or your thighs

Looks at you as if you hung the moon and the stars

He kisses you in front of everyone to make sure that they know that you are his, and he is yours

Likes to pull into into his lap while he’s talking with his friends in the common room

Holding you close, slowly strokes your arms or your back, unable to keep his hands away from you

Whispers sweet nothings

Loves your smell and always buries his nose into your hair

He wears rings and allows you to steal them

His hoodies and t-shirts too

Secretly likes to be little spoon or lay on your chest while your hands are playing with his curls

Buys you everything you might possibly like, even though you always tell him to stop spending his money on you

Likes to study with you because you can actually get ready for the lessons while he has another opportunity to stare at you 

So overprotective and always snaps back at people who, even in the slightest way, disrespect you

He never lets you go to the parties alone in case some creepy guys decide to hit on you

Possesive

When you’re wearing revealing clothes, one part of him is proud and wants to brag that his girlfriend is the sexiest woman on the planet, but the other part wants to cover you with big blanket and keep you to himself

Always sarcastic and sassy

Fights a lot 

He had never gone to the medical wing because he wasn’t used to asking for help, but since you started dating, he let you heal his wound 

Loves when you scold him for those fights, just because you look so cute when you’re angry and he has an excuse to kiss and spoil you 

He has anger issues, but he has never raised his voice at you

Actually, you are like a sedative to him because only you can calm him down in a matter of seconds 

Will never make you feel uncomfortable or insecure

You don’t like something or someone? Mattheo will make sure to get you out of the room and won’t let that person come near you ever again

The way you call him “Matty” turns him into a literal puddle

Can’t sleep without you in his arms

spicy

During your first time, he was super attentive and always checked whether you were okay or not

Praises. A lot of fucking praises

“You’re taking me so good, my love”, “you look so pretty when you cum around me.” 

He likes every position, but prefers when he can see your face

There is literally not a single place in his dorm where you two haven’t had sex

Gets turned on literally by everything you do

He’s risky. As soon as he finds out that you actually liked it, he always teases you under the table, pulls you into the storage rooms, and talks dirty while there are a lot of people around

Got you two in detention a few times for getting caught kissing at night by Snape (you were lucky that he caught you before Mattheo’s hands slipped under your skirt)

His personal favorite is sex in the astronomy tower. The way you’re trying to hold back your moans drives him crazy

Also bathtub in the prefects’ bathroom, where you love to sit with him deep inside of you  

He usually dominates, but sometimes likes to let you be in charge and see how you ride him

He has a big appetite, and what is the best way to deal with it? Right, you.

Mattheo would’ve spent hours in between your legs if you allowed him

He never asks for anything in return, but still seeing you on your knees for him is a fucking miracle

Your hair are around his hand, while you’re taking as much of him in your mouth as you can

Eye contact

He’s willing to try in bed anything that you want, except things that might get you hurt

He likes to keep his hand on your neck while he’s thrusting into you but never actually squeezes

Can be rough and fast or really gentle and slow, depending on the mood

After someone pisses him off or if you had a small fight, he always fucks you into the bed with your hands pinned above you until you’re literally crying from pleasure

By the way, when you don’t have time to put a spell on the room, it gives him satisfaction to know that everyone hears the way you moan for him

He always makes sure that you came, and if you didn’t, he’s more than happy to go down on you

Love confessions 

Aftercare is a must

Hugs, kisses, food, baths—anything you might want

He always keeps you close until you fall asleep and then just stares at you, wondering how he could be so happy to have you  

[tina-mairin-goldstein]

For the love of whatever divine force you believe in, STOP USING AO3 AS SOCIAL MEDIA!

This goes for new writers and old writers alike, sadly. And this is specifically the Hannibal fandom I'm talking about, actually.

Ao3 is an archive. Renewing your works once they're complete is rude and pointless; people are going to read what they want, no matter what you shove in their faces. Your fic will get filtered out and not read by some. But those who want it will find it!

Posting 'test work' 'I'll right the fic later, take these tags and a wave for now! I'll post the real work when I actually get time! 😁', and 'I loved the tags, but the work isn't done, so I'm posting!' are NOT what ao3 is for.

Ao3 is not for discussing your headcanons. The comments are fine for conversations with the author, even if they don't relate to the work by the end. BUT it is not for posting a little blurb of, 'Oh, my God, but what about this and that and that and who wants to TALK?!'

Ao3 is not for posting a 'fic' for finding writing buddies, people to animate your ideas, draw your art.

All of these are against the Terms of Service.

We do not 'tag for reach' on ao3. A lot of people will come to your work, yes, but only because you lied to them. They might even leave you a bitchy comment for it.

We DO tag for things like rape, non-con, murder, gore, vore, self-harm, violence, abuse of all kinds, smut, sexual content, cannibalism, child death, character death, underage sex, graphic depictions of everything above, and anything else that is definitely known to be potentially triggering for a lot of people. If you don't tag it, it can't be filtered out, and you could actually cause someone distress and/or harm.

We do not use r@pe, r!pe, r*pe, k!lling, deth, 'other rapey things', ✨murder✨, bl00d, or any other fucking Tik Tok slang. These can not be filtered out unless someone knows they're there in the cheat way you included them. This is rude.

Learn your manners. Read the Terms of Service (they're long, but this can save you from getting reported and potentially banned!). It's okay to ask for help. If you didn't know for some reason, you can learn.

But doing it on purpose? Fuck you.

Thank you all for coming to my TED talk.

[grifffins]

🔮 The Fool’s Journey (Into Trouble)🔮

Lilia Calderu x fem!reader

tags: Older Woman/Younger Woman, Slow Burn, Alternative Universe, No Magic AU, Age Gap, Oblivious Lilia Calderu, Yearning, Fluff

summary: I was just looking for a job, not an existential crisis—or a crush on my eccentric, older boss who calls me ‘baby’ like it’s nothing. Now I’m working at her tarot shop, falling harder by the day, and she has no idea I’m flirting. Desperate, I turn to my chaotic friends for help. What could possibly go wrong?

wc: 3.5k (Chapter 1/?)

a/n: this is like the first time posting in forever and I’m kinda scared, but Lilia&aaa really got me writing again. I’m so gay. No magic, just chaotic friends. Also, I aged Billy up because I can’t write kids.

also on ao3

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I’d been looking for a job for what felt like forever. The kind of soul-sucking search that made me wonder if I was doomed to an eternity of scrolling through online postings, drowning in rejection emails, and contemplating whether selling my soul to a demon might be a viable career option. But then, one rainy afternoon, tucked away in the classified section of an old newspaper, an actual newspaper, for God’s sake I found it.

"Seeking shop assistant. Must be comfortable with the mystical and the eccentric. Call: 555-3827."

Did people even put ads in newspapers anymore? And who still had a landline in this century? Curiosity got the better of me, and before I knew it, I was dialing the number, half-expecting it to connect me to a dusty relic of a shop run by someone who spoke only in riddles.

Instead, a smooth, lightly accented voice answered. “Yes, hello?”

And that was the first time I heard Lilia Calderu.

The shop smelled like old books and incense, and the air had that thick, mystical quality that made you feel like you’d stepped into another world. The walls were lined with shelves stacked haphazardly with tarot decks, worn-out copies of books, and shelves of delicate crystal spheres that seemed to hum with some unseen energy.

And then I saw her .

Lilia Calderu stood behind the counter like she’d stepped right out of an old eccentric novel. Her dark curly hair, streaked with grey, was pinned up in a loose bun, with wild tendrils escaping to frame her sharp face. Those deep brown eyes, sharp as a blade, met mine with an amused glint. She had the air of someone who had seen it all and was quietly entertained by it.

“You must be y/n.” She smiled, and something in my chest tightened. “I must say, I wasn’t sure anyone read the paper anymore. Yet, here you are.”

I nodded, feeling far too awkward in her presence. “Yeah. Thought it was a joke at first, honestly.”

She laughed softly, an elegant sound that sent shivers down my spine. “Many people do, but this shop has its ways of finding the right people.” She extended her hand. “Welcome to your new obsession.”

And boy, was she right.

Lilia mostly handled the tarot readings, slipping into that almost trance-like focus as she read fortunes with an effortless grace that made me want to sit there and watch her forever. My job was…well, everything else. Cleaning, organising, taking inventory, manning the register when she was busy. The shop wasn’t exactly bustling, but it had its steady flow of customers mostly the kind who came in with wide eyes and a quiet reverence, seeking answers in the cards.

Lilia and I quickly fell into a rhythm. We’d talk about everything and nothing in between customers, and though she had a dry wit and a quiet confidence, there was a warmth to her that made me feel at ease.

Unfortunately, I also had an embarrassing, all-consuming crush on her.

And Lilia, bless her oblivious heart, did not pick up on my subtle flirting. At all.

I’d linger a little longer when we brushed past each other. I’d compliment her hair, her outfit, the way she shuffled cards like it was second nature. I even tried playful teasing, asking if she’d ever read my cards and tell me if I had a shot with someone older and devastatingly charming.

Nothing. Just a soft smile and a gentle, “Ah, love is such a mysterious thing, isn’t it?”

I should’ve given up.

But instead, I called in reinforcements.

Agatha, Jen, Billy, and Alice had been hearing about Lilia this and Lilia that for weeks. It had gotten so bad that the last time I brought her up over drinks, Agatha groaned and banged her forehead against the table. “y/n, I swear to all the gods, if you don’t make a move, I will.”

Jen sipped her wine, nodding. “I feel like I know this woman better than my own mother at this point.”

Billy leaned in, far too intrigued. “She’s hot, though, right?”

“Billy. ”

“What? I’m just asking.”

Alice, ever the voice of reason, gave me a sympathetic smile. “Alright, we need a plan. Operation ‘Get y/n Laid’ is a go.”

I choked on my drink, while Jen rolled her eyes. “Or, you know, date. ”

Agatha smirked. “I vote chaos.”

And so, it began.

The plan was simple.

Step one: The coven (as my friends liked to call themselves, despite having zero magical abilities) would ‘accidentally’ drop by the shop to scope out Lilia. Subtlety was not their strong suit, but I’d given them a strict list of rules— no embarrassing me, no obvious flirting on my behalf, and under no circumstances could Agatha challenge her to a tarot reading battle.

Step two: Once they confirmed Lilia was, in fact, into women (something I was still trying to figure out without outright asking), they’d casually encourage me to ask her out.

Step three: Success. Or mortifying failure.

I should’ve known better.

The day of the plan, they arrived with the grace of a train wreck. The bell above the shop door chimed, and in they strolled. Agatha with her signature overconfidence, Jen trying to look composed, and Billy and Alice whispering conspiratorially behind them.

Lilia, who had been arranging a set of tarot decks, looked up with mild interest. “New customers?” she mused.

I winced. “Uh, yeah. Friends.”

Agatha stepped forward, extending a hand with a grin that was far too wolfish for my liking. “Agatha. Nice shop you have here.”

Lilia took her hand with that calm, effortless grace. “Thank you. I do my best.” She glanced over at me with a raised brow. “I see y/n has been spreading the word.”

Alice beamed. “Oh, you have no idea.”

Kill me.

Lilia was polite but wary, and I could tell she picked up on something , whether it was the fact that they were clearly vetting her or just the general chaos my friends brought with them. But she handled it like she handled everything else: with quiet amusement and a touch of suspicion.

I could also see the way she lingered on me when she thought I wasn’t looking, the way she’d glance over when Agatha not-so-subtly hinted at my interest in “older, experienced women.”

And when Billy, in all his chaotic energy, ‘accidentally’ knocked over a shelf, Lilia just sighed and gave me a look that said, this is your problem now.

God, I was so gone for her.

I didn’t know if the plan was working, but when I caught Lilia watching me across the shop, her expression softer, more contemplative than usual, I had a feeling things were shifting.

I just had to make sure I didn’t screw it up.

The coven’s “casual” visit stretched far longer than I’d anticipated, and Lilia, ever the picture of grace and patience entertained their probing questions with a wry amusement that had me both sweating and swooning.

“So,” Agatha drawled, leaning casually on the counter, “how long have you been in town? A woman like you must have quite the stories.”

Lilia smiled knowingly, her dark eyes glinting. “Oh, I’ve been here longer than most would guess. The shop’s been in my family for generations, though I suppose I’ve... modernised it in my own way.”

Jen, ever the detective, sipped her overpriced coffee and murmured, “Modernised? You still have a landline.”

Lilia shot her a look that could cut glass. “It has a certain charm.”

I stifled a laugh behind my hand.

Billy, who’d been poking around the shelves, suddenly perked up. “So, Lilia, do you do, like, love spells?”

I nearly choked on air.

Lilia tilted her head, tapping a perfectly manicured finger on the counter. “Love spells are tricky,” she mused, her voice low and velvety. “You can’t make someone fall in love, you know. Only... reveal what’s already there.”

My face burned so hot I thought I might spontaneously combust. Agatha shot me a smug grin, and I swore I’d kill her later.

Lilia, however, seemed unbothered. If anything, she was watching me with a knowing glint, as if she’d caught the edge of something in my expression.

“Love is a delicate thing,” she continued, her gaze still on me. “It’s best handled with care.”

Jen snorted. “Tell that to y/n.”

I groaned. “Alright, you guys have had your fun. Let’s not traumatise my boss any further.”

Lilia’s lips quirked up. “Oh, y/n, it takes much more than this to rattle me.”

And with that, my brain short-circuited.

Once I’d finally wrangled my friends out the door—after no less than three separate goodbyes and a thinly veiled attempt by Agatha to invite Lilia to a “casual” group outing—I collapsed against the counter with a groan.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled into my hands. “They’re... a lot.”

Lilia chuckled softly, arranging a set of tarot cards in a neat pile. “They’re delightful.” She paused, her voice quieter. “They care about you.”

I peeked up at her through my fingers. “They do. Sometimes too much.”

She gave me that soft, unreadable smile that made my stomach twist in knots. “That’s never a bad thing.”

There was a moment of silence, comfortable yet charged. I watched her work, her fingers deft and graceful, and I couldn’t help but imagine what they’d feel like trailing over my skin.

Which, of course, led to me blurting out the world’s most humiliating sentence.

“So, uh... are you single?”

Lilia’s hands stilled. She looked up at me, one perfectly arched brow lifting.

Oh. Oh no.

I swallowed thickly. “I—I mean, just curious. You know, for... um... business reasons?”

She stared at me for a long beat before a slow, knowing smile spread across her face. “Business reasons?”

I wanted the floor to swallow me whole. “I’ll shut up now.”

To my absolute horror, she looked amused . “No, I don’t mind the question,” she said, voice smooth and far too indulgent. “Yes, y/n, I am single.”

My brain froze. “Oh. Cool.”

I was going to die. Right here. In this shop.

Lilia leaned on the counter, eyes twinkling with mischief. “And you?”

Me? Functioning? Unlikely.

“Uh, yeah,” I stammered. “Very single. Like... aggressively single.”

She laughed, a low, rich sound that made my knees weak. “Aggressively?”

I groaned. “I have a lot of free time.”

She gave me a long, thoughtful look, and for the first time, I saw something flicker in her expression, curiosity? Interest? God, I hoped so.

“Well,” she said finally, “perhaps we should do something about that.”

I blinked. “Do something?”

Lilia just smiled. “You’ll see, baby.”

I was definitely going to die.

I called Agatha that night in full-blown panic.

“She called me baby, Agatha. She called me baby. ”

On the other end of the line, Agatha groaned. “And you didn’t throw yourself at her feet?”

“I panicked!” I hissed. “I just stood there like an idiot and nodded!”

Jen’s voice chimed in. “Classic y/n.”

Billy snorted. “You need to make a move before someone else does.”

Alice, ever the gentle voice of reason, hummed. “Maybe she’s interested in you, y/n. She wouldn’t call you ‘baby’ if she wasn’t, right?”

“I don’t know,” I whined. “She’s so cool, and she’s older, and I feel like a dumb kid around her.”

Agatha clicked her tongue. “You’re not a dumb kid. You’re a hot, chaotic disaster, and that’s charming. Now, listen, next time you see her, flirt intentionally. Make it obvious.”

“Oh yeah, because that’s gone so well before.”

“No more subtlety,” Agatha said firmly. “You need to show her you’re serious. Flirt, y/n. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“She could laugh in my face?”

“She won’t,” Alice assured me. “She hired you, didn’t she? That means she likes you.”

I sighed, flopping onto my bed. 

The next morning, I walked into the shop, determined. Lilia glanced up from where she was rearranging the display, her smile soft.

"Good morning, y/n."

I swallowed hard, shoving down the nervous energy bubbling in my chest. "Morning, Lilia."

She tilted her head, observing me for a moment. "You look... focused today. A special occasion?"

"Oh, uh... just trying to be more productive," I said quickly, forcing a smile and internally cursing myself. I had one job: flirt. Be charming. Sweep her off her feet. Instead, I was standing there like a starstruck teenager.

Lilia gave me an amused glance, completely unaware of the internal screaming happening inside my head. "Well, productivity is always admirable," she said, turning back to her tarot deck. "Let me know if you need something to do, baby."

Baby. There it was again.

I nearly tripped over my own feet on the way to the back room.

Later that evening, I flopped onto Agatha's couch with a dramatic groan. "It's hopeless."

Billy, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a bowl of popcorn, rolled his eyes. "You're hopeless. There's a difference."

Alice patted my knee reassuringly. "Tell us what happened this time."

I sat up, rubbing my hands over my face. "She called me baby again."

Jen raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"And?" I repeated incredulously. "I blacked out! Just stood there like a moron and stammered something about productivity!"

Agatha groaned, sipping her wine. "You are acting like the least seductive person I have ever met, and I have literally watched you seduce people before. What happened to that y/n?"

I threw my hands in the air. "That y/n wasn't crushing on someone three times my age who also happens to be the most sophisticated, intimidating woman I've ever met!"

Billy snickered. "You're acting like she's some kind of ancient vampire."

I glared. "She might be, okay? I don't know her life."

Jen smirked. "You could get to know it. Y'know, if you asked her out."

"That's not how this works!" I groaned, leaning back against the couch. "I need subtlety. "

Agatha rolled her eyes so hard I was worried they'd get stuck. "y/n. Sweetheart. You've been subtle for weeks, and she hasn't picked up on a damn thing."

"She has to know," I insisted. "She’s too smart not to have figured it out."

Alice smiled kindly. "Or maybe she’s just... not looking for it? You said she’s wary of the age gap, right?"

I sighed. "Yeah. I get the feeling she’s aware of it, but she doesn’t say anything. It’s just little things, like, if I compliment her, she brushes it off like I’m just being nice. She never takes it seriously."

Jen hummed thoughtfully. "Sounds like she's putting up a little barrier. Maybe she's worried it's inappropriate?"

Agatha smirked. "So we need to show her it's very appropriate."

Billy nodded eagerly. "Okay, Get y/n Laid 101 is officially back in session."

"Can we call it something else?" I muttered.

"No," Agatha said flatly. "This is what we're calling it." She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. "Here's the new plan. We need to escalate. No more lingering looks and awkward compliments. We go big. We're talking bold flirting, unmistakable signals. She won't be able to ignore it."

I groaned. "Agatha, I don't do bold. I trip over air when she looks at me for too long."

Jen smirked. "Then it's time to fake it till you make it."

Billy grinned. "You know what would help? A little jealousy."

I groaned again. "No."

"Yes," Agatha said, pointing at Billy. "Yes. We make her jealous."

"Guys, this isn't a teen drama," I whined. "What am I supposed to do? Flirt with some random customer in front of her?"

Agatha snapped her fingers. "Exactly!"

Alice frowned. "That seems a little childish."

Jen shrugged. "It could work."

I buried my face in my hands. "You’re all terrible."

Billy patted my arm. "We're terrible, but we're effective."

The next day at the shop, I was feeling good. Confident, even. The plan was simple, escalate my flirting game, but not with Lilia just yet. No, I needed to show her what she was missing. And I was good at flirting. Really good. Just… not with her. Lilia was an enigma, a walking temptation wrapped in decades of experience and elegance, and I turned into an absolute idiot in her presence.

But with other women? That was easy.

The bell above the door chimed, and I looked up to see a gorgeous customer stepping in, tall, blonde, and effortlessly stylish. She glanced around the shop with interest, her gaze landing on me, and I caught the faintest flicker of a smile. I could work with that.

I straightened my posture, strolling over with a relaxed smile. “Welcome in,” I said smoothly, letting my voice drop just enough to be inviting. “Looking for anything in particular? Or just... browsing?”

She smiled, intrigued. “A little of both, I think.”

“Oh, mystery.” I leaned lightly on the counter, letting my fingers trace the edge of a crystal display. “I like that. Means you might need a guide.”

She laughed softly, tilting her head in a way that told me she was enjoying this. “And I suppose you’re volunteering?”

I grinned. “I’m more than qualified.”

We slipped into an easy banter, her eyes bright with interest as I smoothly navigated between flirtation and shop talk. She leaned in a little closer, and I let my gaze linger, deliberate and playful.

And then I felt it.

That unmistakable presence.

I glanced up and yep. Lilia was watching from across the room, her dark eyes focused, her expression unreadable. She was leaning against the shelf, book in hand, but I could tell she hadn’t turned a page in a while.

I ignored the way my pulse jumped and turned my attention back to the blonde, offering her a charming smile. “So,” I said, handing her a small charm, “this one’s for luck. Not that you look like you need it.”

She laughed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re good at this.”

“I try.”

Lilia’s voice cut through the moment like a blade, smooth, unhurried, but somehow commanding all the same. “y/n.”

I turned, heart skipping a beat. “Yeah?”

She strolled over, eyes flicking between me and the blonde. “Everything alright here?”

The blonde woman, oblivious, smiled. “Just getting some expert advice.”

Lilia hummed, arching a brow at me. “I see.” There was nothing in her tone that hinted at jealousy, but something lingered beneath it, something sharp and assessing. “Why don’t you help me with something in the back when you’re done?”

It wasn’t a request.

I swallowed. “Sure, just a sec.”

The blonde handed me the charm with a wink. “I think I’ll take this. Lucky, right?”

I rang her up, feeling Lilia’s presence like a shadow at my back the entire time. When the customer finally left with a lingering glance over her shoulder, I turned to Lilia with what I hoped was a nonchalant smile. “What’s up?”

She studied me for a moment, then gestured toward the back room. “Come on.”

I followed her, nerves prickling under my skin. Was she... mad? Intrigued? God, I couldn’t tell. She closed the door behind us and crossed her arms, regarding me with that maddeningly unreadable expression.

“Flirting with customers now?” she asked, tone light but with an edge I couldn’t quite place.

I shrugged, leaning against the wall. “It’s good for business.”

Lilia’s lips twitched, but she didn’t quite smile. “Mm. I suppose it is.”

Silence stretched between us, heavy with something unsaid. She tilted her head, studying me like she was piecing together a puzzle. And then, just as quickly as she’d pulled me aside, she turned back toward the shelf, and pointed at the boxes to unpack, business as usual. “Well,” she said, voice as smooth as ever, “let’s try to keep things professional, baby.”

And there it was again. Baby. The way she said it effortless, affectionate, and utterly devastating.

I cleared my throat. “Got it. Professional.”

But as I left the back room, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Lilia wasn’t quite as unaffected as she seemed.

That night, I sat at Agatha’s with my head in my hands. “She pulled me into the back room.”

Jen perked up. “Wait, what? ”

Billy nearly dropped his drink. “Define ‘pulled into the back room.’”

“Not like that,” I groaned. “She just... I don’t know, it felt like she was calling me out for flirting, but it wasn’t clear if she was mad or—”

“Jealous,” Agatha supplied smugly. “She was jealous. ”

Alice, ever the voice of reason, frowned. “Or she thought you were being unprofessional.”

Agatha waved a hand. “Unprofessional, please. y/n’s been working there for weeks with no complaints. She definitely noticed.”

Billy grinned. “What did she say exactly?”

I sighed. “She told me to keep things professional. Baby. ”

Jen’s eyes widened. “She called you baby again? ”

I nodded miserably. “I’m losing my mind.”

Agatha leaned in with a smirk. “Then we escalate. She’s watching now.”

I groaned, burying my face in a pillow. “Why is this so hard?”

“Because you actually like her,” Alice said gently. “And that makes everything ten times scarier.”

I peeked out from the pillow. “So what do I do?”

Agatha smirked. “You keep flirting, y/n. But this time, aim it at the right woman.”

[kuwdora]

A Vidding Primer

A guide written for @wren-of-the-woods who asked for advice about how to start vidding! This is far from comprehensive and I tried not to make it too dense because it's a big subject. I still wanted to share a variety of topics about getting into vidding because it's a hobby and art that is near and dear to my heart.

First Piece of Advice

watch a lot of vids and rewatch vids multiple times. Seek out vids on YouTube, AO3, Watch the TikTok and Twitter/X vids that show up on tumblr or wherever you’re browsing. They all have distinct styles and tools/techniques they use to make their vids and edits. Rewatch the vids and ask yourself what you like or dislike about them. The song, the editing, the source. That can give you a good starting point about how you might want to approach making your own fanvids. The TikTok style of 30 and 40 second edits are very different what you find on YouTube. YouTube editors tend to use a full song and a lot more effects and a lot more overlapping dialogue. Whereas the fanvids - Vids - from people who came into vidding in the mid 2000s/2010s have their own culture, different ways they approach song choice, clip choices and narrative. I also suggest watching vids for shows/films you’re not familiar with as well as your fandom favorites. You can learn a lot about how vidders try to tell a story even when you might not grasp the context behind certain scenes but you can still follow along with the emotional arc of the vid.

Second Piece of Advice

Have fun and enjoy yourself. Everyone starts a new hobby as a newbie. It can be a lot of effort to make 30 seconds or a 3 minute vid, but it’s such a unique type of fanwork that is fun to watch and fun to make. It can also be migraine inducing because of all the learning and technical issues along the way. But!! omg when you make a clip fall on the perfect beat with your blorbo crying that perfect tear or you find an idea and sources for the bestest perfect lyrics of the song, it’s a magnificent high. It can make you feel like a god. At least that’s how I feel a lot of times!

There are about 10 steps* to creating** a fanvid/edit:

• select your platform and software (phone/computer video editors) • gather your video and audio files • create a new project in your video editor • import audio into the editor • import the video into the software and mute audio tracks that contain your video’s audio • review, label and cut up the video into shorter clips - this step is known as ‘clipping’ in vidding parlance, but it’s also optional. Some people pull in movies and scrub through the whole film and just pull it directly onto the timeline • move the various video clips around on the timeline to match the audio track you’ve chosen for your project, add video effects and additional dialogue if you like • export the finished timeline • upload the video to a streaming platform and/or downloadable service • share your project!!! posting to ao3 and/or social media or share on discord, etc * there are a lot more steps involved with each of these steps. What what software to use, where to find video, how to deal with copyright blocks on Youtube, etc. Some of that will be covered in the links below but is not comprehensive. That would require separate posts and links and I don’t want to drop an encyclopedia on you right now! I’m happy to provide more resources that I can curate if you want more direction and pointers to resources and amazing vidders.

** like any hobby, there can and will be a learning curve and frustrations. Blank page for a writer, blank timeline for a vidder. Is anything you put down is any good, self esteem and confusion about what actually makes sense is part and parcel for any creative work. Once you're in the vidding process and committed, as long as you're enjoying yourself you gotta just keep going to get it done.

Getting Started Vidding

My knowledge and background and learning how to vid from people on livejournal and dreamwidth from 2007. I don’t have any experience in editing with a phone but if that’s something you’re interested in, YouTube will be a place for you to start finding tutorials for various apps and tools. Probably discord communities, too. Vidding Workshop - a great how-to/guide when you're starting out. This is on dreamwidth from the WisCon vidparty in 2014. Some of the tech discussions might be a little outdated but there’s a ton of relevant information. It covers technical subjects as well as developing vid ideas and actually getting started. If you have any questions about what you’re reading you can leave an anonymous comment and ask - some of these vidders responding inthe threads are still active. You can find them on AO3/YouTube, tumblr, discord and actually leave them questions about their vids. Many vidders are more than thrilled to talk about their vids and answer questions. Vexcercises - this is a dreamwidth community for short-form vid excercises. This is a very structured way of introducing vid concepts and constraints so that you can produce a vidlet. I highly recommend you check this out and participate! There’s even an AO3 collection so you can check out how people have done the different exercises, too.

The Process of Vidding

Watch Me Edit - @limblogs put together a fantastic playlist of YouTube editors who will show you beginning to end how they made their vid. A lot of these editors appear to be using Sony Vegas but the general process of vidding end-to-end will be similar with other nonlinear editors like DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, etc. It’s a great way to actually see the vid come together if you don’t know what that even looks like. Every vidder will develop their own workflow and approach (which might even change from vid to vid), but it’s useful to see in video how people actually DO the thing. @limblogs also created a handy YouTube playlist some vidders from Bradcpu’s Vidder Profiles (Fanlore page). These profiles are basically like a director’s DVD commentary on their vidding process, featuring the vidders talking over their own vids! So cool. Phenomnal insights from these vidders about how they choose song, use effects, think about their narratives.

Self Rec: I recently did a vidding textpost series called: do it for the process - a naked vid draft: What (Yennefer of Vengerberg). How I Edit by @vimesbootstheory is another textpost about their vidding process. Self rec: Here’s my text interview: Vidder Profile - Kuwdora 2011. I talk about my process with a lot of specific examples from my previous work and lots of screenshots. This profile is over a decade old but a lot of this still holds true for me today! videlicet - this is an incredible vidding zine that @limblogs put togegther with a lot of amazing contributors. These articles and discuss about specific vids and aspects of vidding. It’s really detailed and a fantastic piece of vidding culture. I highly reading recommend the Demystifying Vidding article by lim and the A History of Vidding by @meeedeee and…pretty much every article in the zine!

Doing the vidding!

I recommend joining exchanges and watching vids that come out of exchanges and checking out fannish cons that have vidshows and discords to get more exposure to vidders and vids. Many people have joined @festivids (AO3 collection here) and made their very first vid, it's a very fun and great way to get into vidding. It’s not quite festivids season right now but time flies and it will be time to nominate sources and do sign-ups in the blink of an eye. Follow @festivids and check out the AO3 collection and see what people are making. Join the Vexcercises community and make some short vids and share them on your tumblr or on discord or somewhere and bask in the thrill of making your first fanvids. Check out who reblogged the vidder ask game - go and read other vidders responses and ask some new-to-you vidders questions. Everyone has their own take on process and tech and everything. It's great to hear and see what a lot people are doing and making.

Final Advice - talking about vids and doing the vidding

• watch vids • rewatch vids • leave a comment and ask a question about something you saw in their vid! • Again: find someone’s AO3 page of fanvids and ask them something about their vid in a comment or send them asks on tumblr (people usually have the same alias or link to their tumblr or dreamwidth pages somewhere.) • YouTube can be a valuable resource for tutorials so if you don't know something, there is likely someone who has made a tutorial about how to use a cross dissolve transition or anything else you might want to replicate in a video that you've seen in a vid. • start making a vid, scream and cry, ask for help, and keep going until you get it done. Celebrate and bask in your completed vid and share it with everyone! • Follow vidders on tumblr that you find from the vidder ask game • Check out the vidding discord for community and questions and vid recs and news about vidding exchanges and cons. • Have fun!

Hope this helps you get started! Thank you so much for the ask! Let me know if you have more questions and I can help you out or send you to cool vidders who have great advice and suggestions. And please send me your vid if you make one!