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v-i-r-i-d-i-a-n · 2 months ago

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The main question: What was after Will Byers?

(And a second more important question: what did it want?)

The show obviously wants us to believe that it’s a demogorgon, on first watch anyways. I believe we can infer there was a demogorgon in the shed with him- at least in the upside down. Even considering everything I’m going to talk about- I still agree with that, strangely. But before that? I’m calling bullshit.

(For reference this is technically the second thing I wrote about for the first episode, BUT I’m releasing this BEFORE that because it’s a more well thought out analysis, and can exist more as a standalone, I will probably add to this in the future. This is also technically unfinished? I don’t have a definitive answer to the questions I ask. I’m simply trying to bring more attention to it.)

🚨SOMETHING TO NOTE‼️ I HAVE NOT WATCHED A SEASON OF ST IN LIKE 6 MONTHS, PROBABLY MORE, IF ANY QUESTIONS I ASK GET ANSWERED IN LIKE AN EPISODE, DON’T BE A DICK ABOUT IT, I DONT REMEMBER EVERYTHING🚨

Also just one more thing before we get started, I’m sorry this post has a lot of exposition- I know that some of the things I say have probably been said before, hell the analysts in this community have talked about and seen this show far more then I have and I have nothing but respect for anyone whose put in that much effort- and I truly do not mean to copy or steal anyone’s work- if you feel like I’m not giving credit where credits due, or like I’m stealing something PLEASE tell me- i’ll @ you or cut something out- I don’t want anyone to feel disrespected by what I talk about, but I also don’t remember every post I’ve ever read or that’s on this app, this is merely supposed to my own fun twist and thoughts about the events

NOW, I know, I know, fifty billion other people have talked about how weird Will’s vanishing is, how it doesn’t make any sense and there’s something else going on, BUT, if I’ve learnt anything from this fandom, it’s that we love to read and write the exact same things over and over again. And!! That’s how discovery is made, so I’m doing it anyways >:3

Its hard to decipher where exactly to start with Will’s vanishing, because the entirety of it is completely jumbled and twisted and doesn’t make sense, whenever I think just a little too hard about it I feel like I’m being so completely mindfucked, like even now I’m sorting out things and every other sentence I realize something else and have to figure out where to put it- ANYWAYS

So I’m just gonna start at the beginning! In the Wheelers house.

Now, the first bit of strangeness we get in this sequence is when they’re all going home (I could also argue the DnD game has some weirdness, but that’s for another time, as we’re focusing something else right now) more specifically, when Mike waves Will off and his garage light starts flickering.

I think that’s supposed to be because of the like “town wide electrical problems” that are happening because of the gate opening up, and most likely not because of something already being at the Wheeler’s house.

i’m gonna argue there’s something there later in a different analysis I’m complying, because, I don’t believe that the thing following Will is the same being that killed the scientist in the lab, hell, I don’t think it was a demogorgon AT ALL, honestly I’m a little skeptical that the thing that killed that scientist was even a demo BUT that’s for my first analysis to cover >:))

I want you to think about this for later however, because I am desperately trying to stay on track, but I just have way too many thoughts about this little stupid show.

The sequence of Will Byers Vanishing

(And all the fuckery is includes)

For this segment, I’m going to take you through Will’s vanishing, and all the little discrepancies and “plot holes” that I’ve seen on my rewatch

The vanishing starts with the light on Will’s bike going out, he looks down, momentarily taking his eyes off the road, and looks back up to the “demogorgon” standing suddenly in front of him. We don’t see any obvious gate, or anything of the sort really, it just sort’ve appears (unless we think that for some reason it’s been stalking through the real world…which doesn’t make much sense considering how demo’s hunt.) And the thing that tickles my brain the most about this scene is that…the demo just sort’ve seems to be standing there? We only get a few seconds of it on screen, but the way it moves makes me feel like that it doesn’t even really know what it’s supposed to be doing. Like, it got zapped down from some alien spaceship or something.

Will, in response to seeing a horrific nether monster, veers off the side of the road, like any child would, and gets up slowly, which again, its sort’ve strange he’s able to get away with that? Most of the time, when a demo gets its eyes on a target, it’s pretty quick to act, not quite the “lie in wait” type of hunters when they’re in the regular plain. He gets up and just sort’ve stares for a second, and we don’t really get to see what he see’s, instead, we just a hear growl, which sends Will running in a panic.

The next few things are fairly normal in the sequence, he gets home, locks the door, pets his dog a little (me too bro), and runs around looking for his brother and mom.

He runs quickly back to the window, after he can’t find them, and as he’s looking through the clothesline…wait-

*wipes glasses*

Nope, I’m seeing this shit right WHY ARE THE CLOTHES THERE?? THATS NOT WHERE THEYRE SUPPOSED TO BE. Why is it so close to the window??? With how the lines are set up we should’ve seen them when he’s running into the house- but we don’t. They’re actually at a completely different location in the next scene at the Byers house in the morning.

(Put a pin in that)

Anyways, in the distance through the classic horror fog we see the demogorgon slowly walking up towards the house, on its back legs again. Looking like a person stalking through the night. Like some weird Jason knockoff, I half expected it to try and get through the door with a hatchet on my very first watch through.

WHICH AGAIN, isn’t how they act. Even back in the lab, in the very first scene it suggests that whatever is after the scientist is fast, he’s running, he’s hitting the button over and over again to try and get the elevator to come faster, he’s outwardly panicked and looks desperate to get away. He’s looking over his shoulder to make sure it’s not there yet. And then after that whenever we see a demo chasing someone, they’re quick to chase after their prey. They don’t slowly walk up towards a house.

It reminds me WAY more of how a human hunts their prey, slowly following and tracking it until it wears itself out. However, I’d argue it’s less like whatever is chasing him is actively hunting him, and more so like it’s corralling him, herding him. Attempting to manipulate him to go where it wants him to. If it wanted to kill him, it could’ve done so already (especially if we take into account the whole telekinesis thing). It had plenty of chances, especially when Will was in that ditch after he fell off his bike, that’s when a human hunter would’ve attempted to kill him. It’s as if, whatever was on that road, whatever is following Will, actively wants him to go to the Byer’s shed. To the demogorgon lying in wait ready to pounce.? That doesn’t sound quite right either.

All of these analysis are gonna be me going “that’s not quite right, that shouldn’t do that” over and over again LMAO

When you take everything into account, I think there’s a quite a bit more evidence that this thing didn’t want to hurt Will at all, at least not physically, at least not in this exact instance. Whether it was corralling him in hopes of figuring something out, or actively wanting the demogorgon to feed on Will. I have no idea. But you cannot decisively say that whatever was following Will had the active intent to kill him with its own hands.

Will gets scared once more and attempts to call someone, it doesn’t work and instead he just gets the static-y growling sounds of the upside down. Which is a tad bit strange considering that the reason Joyce hears that later on is because Will’s actively trying to communicate with her. But what number is that? Like 55 of “things that don’t make sense in Will Byers vanishing?” Oh, and then immediately after we get the whole DEMOGORGON USES TELEKINESIS SCENE. 56.

(Put a pin in this as well)

Will runs into the shed, and we know (WE DONT.) what happens from there, there’s a demo in there with him(?) and he’s somehow he’s pulled into the upside down- without any real evidence of a gate there. Unless you take…the slime in the shed the next morning that Hopper finds as proof. But I’ve learnt not to hold a suspension of disbelief here. (“Did Mike see it? Then it doesn’t count” worst vibes y’know? Gotta see it to believe it.)

There’s also the whole thing with instead of the light flickering it just gets really bright. Which is another thing I don’t believe we see often- especially if we assume the light glowing bright is because of a gate opening.

I’d actually like to talk about that point for a sec, because it genuinely doesn’t seem or feel or look like anything we see after that. The way that nothing really happens, and that’s what’s so terrifying about it, we don’t hear any screams or even see the signs of a struggle. He’s not dragged through a portal by vines or a demo.

Will just vanishes, he’s not taken, or kidnapped, he vanishes. It’s truly the only word that can describe it. And it truly doesn’t make any sense. We don’t see anything like it again really, at least not that I’m aware of or can remember right now. He’s there one second, and then he’s gone. The only thing I can really think of like it is El killing the demo at the end of the season and vanishing.

All and all we get back to the same point I started with and a point I think pretty everyone agrees with. Whatever was after Will was not a demo.

But then…why does it look like one? And sound like one? Well my curious little reader, I THINK I ACTUALLY HAVE A LOGICAL SOLUTIONNN

We’re being fucked with.

(And as much as it might sound like it, I’m very much NOT joking here.)

Remember everything I told you to put a pin into? Yeah this is the section where I want you to think about it more.

By now, I’ve described the entirety of the sequence of Will’s vanishing. I don’t want to say disappearance or kidnapping because I don’t believe that’s what it was. The oddness of the demogorgon, the strangeness of his surroundings. And I’ve come to only one seeable conclusion, which probably isn’t good on a scientific aspect, but it’s the only logical solution I can come up with.

Will is being fucked with, and since we’re in his eyes for this scene, we’re being fucked with.

Will has always been my favorite little unreliable narrator.

Now, what exactly could be happening? I don’t know yet, I’m still at the beginning of the series after all in this rewatch- these are all just thoughts I’ve been having after the first episode. I can’t present a de facto answer to whatever’s going on here because I don’t think we’re supposed to know yet.

My main guess? Some sort of upside down shit. With everything we know about timeline fuckery, and illusions, and visions, and memory sequences even being untrustworthy- isn’t it possible we’re being shown something that didn’t happen? Or maybe more accurately didn’t happen the way we’re being shown?

It might be a problem with the actual timeline, like somehow false memories were implanted and the universe itself is being tricked. Or, some sort of upside down related nightmare sequence only Will see’s- maybe Will got planted into another timeline directly who knows. MAYBE- it’s even Brenner’s fault (especially with all the TFS Brenner vs Will Byers stuff) Because I will find a way to blame that man for everything.

With all of the characters saying constantly that things are a nightmare, or that it isn’t real, we can’t trust what we’re seeing on screen.

The Duffers, don’t want their audience to know what’s happening. They’ll tell us when they want to.

So, if it wasn’t a demo after Will what was it?

A person, probably

Though in this show, it’s hard to tell exactly what that means.

God. Where do I start? There’s just so so many possibilities for this one instance that I can’t fully wrap my head around it. Now I’m going to say this again, I don’t have a definite answer to what’s going on, and my opinion will probably change as time goes on and I reread other analysis posts and rewatch the show- I’m small potatoes in the analysis community and I think this is actually the first analysis I’m posting(?) wow that’s crazy actually. So my thoughts are gonna be especially jumbled for this part because at this very moment it’s a pretty big question mark.

I will say this though, I don’t think it’s Vecna. At least not the Vecna we’re shown on screen.

Why do I say this? Mostly because it doesn’t really feel like Vecna gives too much of a shit about Will- if anything, the MF seems much more interested in him.

And I know that’s like the main theory in part of the fandom, that for whatever reason Vecna is super into Will but I just don’t agree with it. There is some substance to it but I think a lot of you forget that Vecna and the MF are two separate beings (Hell Vecna and HENRY are two separate beings). Vecna is not controlling the MF, even if he believes he is. That’s pretty much proven in the VR game, if you’re willing to look deeper at it than what it’s putting forward.

Remember, we cannot trust what we see. We’re actively being fucked with at any point in time. The Duffer’s do not care about tricking their audience, they want to. So it’s almost never going to be the obvious answer.

I guess this section just turned into me saying “I don’t know exactly whats happening but it’s NOT Vecward”

I wanna say Brenner, trying to find out something about the upside down or Will himself, but the whole telekinesis thing is really throwing me off. Hell maybe it is Henry trying to disrupt the timeloop by stopping a TFS William Brenner from forming.

Everything I try and think about and put forward just doesn’t really feel quite right, I don’t have enough evidence or backing for any of my theories right now to definitively say one thing or the other- so if anyone has any idea’s they’d like to bounce off of me I’d appreciate it, because I’m kinda at a loss at this exact moment.

None of it was real

(And what that means)

This is the only thing I’m really sure of right now. Nothing about what we see is what really happened. Maybe it’s how Will remembers it, maybe his memories were actively altered by the MF or Brenner or Owens or something.

But if nothing that we saw with Will was real, then how do we know anything we’ve seen is real. Especially through Will’s POV. Throughout the entirety of the story Will has always been an unreliable narrator, from the very beginning.

That also means that this show built itself around unreliable narration. There is a reason that the one of the first big scenes we get doesn’t make sense. There’s a reason it feels like it’s built on a shaky surface.

Id argue, that the literal first scene is unreliable, but that’s again for another time.

TL;DR Everything is fucked and nothing makes sense, and everything will continue not making sense until the Duffers decide to let it make sense, oh and Will was definitely not being followed by a demo no matter how much the show wants you to believe it

If you made it this far, thank you so much for listening to my relentless rambling! Sorry the format is kinda fucked again this is my first analysis I’m actually posting. Again I’ll probably add onto this in future- but for now I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, hope y’all have a good day <33 !!

#have fun with my insanity rambles #stranger things #will byers #s1 ep1 #the vanishing of will byers #my insanity #stranger things analysis #rewatching stranger things #THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER YHINGS I HAD PLANNED TO TALK ABOUT AND FIND A WAY TO FORMAT SO MAYNE PT 2 IN THE WORKS???

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stuckyevanstanfan · 7 months ago

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Tumblr is annoying...this was supposed to be under a read more and it is glitching...

So I've mentioned stuff in real life is cutting into my internet time. Sometimes I'll write comments in my notes app that I don't end up posting.

I've decided to compile them into one large part to get them out of there and hopefully move on from those feelings. The first bunch were written in April pre-hiatus and the second batch in May after 7x07.

The purpose is to let the thoughts go free so I can feel peace etc. Most of them probably don't apply any longer anyway.

Feel free to ignore this…if you do want to respond they're numbered.

(I actually have no idea if I posted or commented any of these thoughts before…just went through my notes app and copied and pasted the 911 ramblings I did, so sorry if you've seen one before)

1. I don't get this fandom...I see comments saying they haven't made Buddie cracks since season 2, they are so respectful of buddie's relationship, long-form storytelling, etc.

Then comments about how the way Buddie fans act will make them not reward Buddie fans with Buddie and that fans don't deserve it.

This implies they don't respect Buddie or long-form storytelling and they're willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.

2. I don't know why people say they'd prefer Buck and Eddie stay friends rather than get together in an unsatisfying way.

I didn't like the way Booth and Bones got together and ended up stopping the show. However I'm still glad to know that they are canon and in love. That's out there in the universe even if I never finished watching their story.

It would have been so upsetting if Bones and Booth hadn't gotten together at all.

Unsatisfying is a matter of perspective.

3. I'm very curious to know if all the tuck fics that feature just Buck/Tommy (no pining Buck or eventual buddie) imply that Buck and Tommy are a for now couple or if they're thinking of marriage and spending their lives together.

I won't read any of them though 😂

4. "Tommy can't replace you. No one can. You're the most important person in the world to be, besides Christopher."

#Buddie wish list

(This was presumably something I wrote when we thought the Tommy Eddie friendship was making Buck worry Tommy would replace him. And I had made a note to add it to my buddie wish list tag. As an aside, Tumblr is useless - I know I've had that tag or even mentioned "wish" on my blog before but when I search the posts don't appear

Anyway..... Now I feel I need reassurance in the opposite direction. Buck needs to make it clear that Christopher and Eddie are his priority over Tommy. This is why I don't understand people who want Buck and Tommy to get married, or write fics where Buck thinks Tommy is the one. Just make it clear you don't care about Christopher&Buck and Eddie&Buck and don't care if their relationship changes. If you're writing him to have the thought about Tommy being the one and he wants to marry him and he's the most important person to him, then he can't have the same thoughts he used to have about Christopher and Eddie.

If Christopher and Tommy are both injured in the hospital asking for him, Buck should choose Christopher.)

I’ve seen posts trying to argue the opposite and how they can all be his priorities and how Tommy loves that Buck loves Chris and Eddie, but they’re not good arguments

5. This is what I need Tim to say if he wants to convince me to drop Buddie:

"I know we said we'd leave it open and we like how you interpret Buck and Eddie, but I don't see them in a romantic sense and they never will be. These two men can love each other completely but have no desire to have sex with each other. Even if one or both is queer, I am writing them to love each other in a way that is not sexual or romantic. You may think they complete each other in a romantic sense, but I think it's in a platonic, familial sense. You can't control who you have that sexual spark with."

If he's not willing to say it, then that means buddie canon to me.

If buddie didn't go canon, then he baited fans. Relationship baiting is extremely annoying and I can't stand showrunners who act like that because they must not respect their fans enough. They care more about money than integrity.

I'd also be willing to accept this:

“I'm really sorry for stringing you all along, but buddie is not something I'll be writing. I know I put in so many parallels to the other canon couples, and that was a dumb thing for me to do when I never intended to make them a canon couple. I realize now that there were other ways I could have written their friendship not to come across as romantic at times. I'm owning that mistake, and moving forward I will not try to bait you into thinking buddie will ever be canon.”

6. Did they ever address Tommy talking about sleeping with grateful victims??

No one is willing to talk about it.

I've even tried using tumblr's search function to find posts about it but there is nothing (I’m not sure if people aren't talking about it or if tumblr's search function is that bad)

7. I always thought they'd be able to make Buck and Eddie get together while still feeling like Buck and Eddie, but something is off

The gifs I saw of 7x04 seemed OOC

8. I know we're getting buddie eventually, not from anything we've seen in the episode (because I haven't seen it - this was about 7x04), but because of Tim's quote in this interview:

Minear much preferred having Buck go through this experience with someone the audience already knew, rather than having to “invent some bi character for Buck to have an awakening with.” Fortunately for Minear, when he finally got them together, “they had chemistry!”

And it isn’t lost on Minear that Buck’s dynamic with Tommy echoes the one he once had with Eddie, calling it “almost a reprise of the dynamic from [Eddie]’s first episode where Buck was super jealous of the new guy. Now he’s jealous for a different reason.”

Tim would not be dumb enough to talk about the bucktommy situation echoing what happened with Eddie if it wouldn't eventually lead to Eddie.

If he wanted bucktommy to be a valid relationship on its own, he wouldn't piggyback off what happened with buddie and expect it to work.

9. Why did they have to make Buck and Eddie into pod people? There were better ways to do this storyline than turning thirty something year old men into fanfic teenagers

10. Honestly at this point with some of the sexual posts I'm seeing about bucktommy, I'm expecting those former buddie stans to say that Tommy will be the best sex Buck ever has and that Eddie will be a step down that he'll have to settle for just because he loves him, but he'll always dream of Tommy and hope for a threesome to have a proper dicking down again because Eddie can't find his prostate 🙄

I have no idea why fandom is gassing up an average white dude, none at all

[adding on: I ended up blocking tags during the hiatus so I haven’t seen anything since then and I’m not sure if this is still the case]

11.I know people are enthusiastic about Buck's first kiss with a man, but imagine if it were Eddie - wouldn't it be a disappointing kiss after all this time? It would be like the feeling after that pirate show kiss

12. Buck, who screams out "Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!" every time Eddie gets hurt or is in danger - that Buck, injuring Eddie and having no reaction? Illogical.

13. People can like the bi Buck storyline without needing to become a bucktommy shipper. People offline do it all the time: watch a show and like it and not become shippers.

14. Buck has been turning down Eddie’s invitations to basketball for a while??? What?? Since when?? Why does that not sound like Buck?

And then the show expects me to believe he has a crush on Tommy so he finally goes when it's not just Eddie but Tommy will be there?

(Apparently some thought it was because he wanted Eddie's attention but someone pointed out he stared at Tommy the whole time?)

Why are they writing Buck to be so annoying just to reach bi Buck?

It feels like they're changing Buck and Eddie's friendship and even minimizing it

15. What are the best buddie scenes and why are they

The shooting

The will

Buck falling asleep on Eddie’s couch

Some of 6x13

16. What were the buddie friendship moments in 7x04 since everyone liked them so much? It seems there were Buck/Tommy and Eddie/Tommy moments but I haven't heard anything good about buddie

I just heard about the 7x05 scene about Buck wanting to help Eddie, but no one was talking about that when the episode aired. So I feel like there were possibly other moments no one decided to talk about.

17. In what characterization of Eddie would he have Marisol watch Christopher twice in one week to hang out with Tommy instead, then ask Buck for a third time? I really don't get it.

18. Kristen introduced Marisol

Tim implied it wasn't a good job since he knew nothing about her

Tim wants this storyline to get to know her since he didn't know her

Yet Kristen had the nun idea?

He threw Kristen under the bus for not introducing her then decides to take her bad ideas?

19. I believe buddie is happening because I like believing the best in people. Based on various comments Tim has made and the way so many scenes have been written (jumping ship, wanting to help, etc.), he would either have to be dumb or cruel if it doesn't lead to buddie. Dumb if all of those insinuations and winks and nudges mean nothing, and cruel if he is doing them deliberately but it doesn't lead to buddie.

Why would I want to think that he is dumb or cruel?

-> within a day of writing this, I ended up seeing a post that basically said that Tim is cruel enough to do this… I don't understand why people want to think that Tim is gleefully cackling at stringing fans along 🤷🏻‍♀️

20. It's so interesting how both sides think the other is fetishizing:

Bucktommy fans think the other side just cares about a noncanon ship and should support the actual queer couple

Buddie fans think the other side just wants Buck to kiss a man, any man, and don't care who it is

21. So... Controversial opinion... Buck fans don't seem to understand Eddie, Eddie fans don't seem to understand Buck, and buddie fans don't understand either

I say this as a self-owning buddie fan: there are so many things I feel are out of character, but they happen on the show, so the show clearly thinks they're in character, meaning I don't understand their characterization

Those were the initial batch of thoughts I had in April. Here are some May thoughts:

22. Hey, so at least Buck and Eddie are both cheaters 🤷‍♀️

23. Anti-buddies were right but got the reason all wrong... they said Buck and Eddie won't get together because they're both in other relationships and wouldn't cheat....

But Eddie ended up cheating anyway 🤷‍♀️

I assume the Bommy fans are ecstatic whereas the Medisol/Eddisol and Eddie fans are upset

In a way I guess this is more proof for buddie though, since Eddie can't end up with either Marisol or Kim after what happened. Both those relationships are tainted so he needs a new one

24. I know it's supposed to be about the journey as well as the destination, but the journey to Buddie has been horrible so far.

People who said "Just enjoy the journey on the way to buddie" - how is this Eddie storyline enjoyable??

I really hope the payoff is worth it and not fizzle out like so many other storylines on this show

25.If buddie doesn't happen, how do you fumble such an incredible story? It's honestly like a train wreck.

26. I’m confused about what bommy fans think about the name for Tommy/Thomas. Earlier they thought it was Thomas and how it was all red string of fate because of the old man Thomas telling Buck not to find it but to make it. Then fans were happy the plaque said Tommy. What made people want Thomas and now want Tommy? It seems very inconsistent. And then out loud they said his name was actually Thomas?

27. The way people talk about Tim really makes me think buddie will happen because people seem to think he cares more about his reputation and what people think of him. He wouldn't want to be known as the showrunner who fumbled this.

28. Eddie may have been the misdirection/bait and switch (whatever people are calling it) for 7x04, but Tommy will end up being the misdirection on the eventual Buck/Eddie relationship

#random buddie thoughts from the past few months when I wasn't online #some negativity and some positivity #911 on abc

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inevitably-johnlocked · 4 years ago

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Hi Steph!! I was wondering if you knew of any really long fics (like 25k or more) that are only one chapter, I travel a lot sometimes and some places don't really have good enough internet for multi chapter fics. So yeah, any really long one chapter fics about John and Sherlock would be appreciated. Thank you!

Hey Nonny!!

LOL OKAY FUNNY STORY. I almost replied to this with “oof I’ll have to read EVERYTHING so I’m sorry.... and then... I remembered.......

I put chapter counts on everything 🙃😐

I’m not the brightest crayon in the box. 🖍

Anyway, so yes, I can definitely rec you some fics! BUT I should also offer you two suggestions you can totally do to read ANY fic!

On Ao3, you can click on the “Entire Work” button to load ALL chapters of a fic (it’s the very first button along the top) and in turn you can then just read it all there!

And the very last button along the top, you can Download copies of the fic to your phone or computer with eBook file types (AZw3 for Kindle, ePub for iPhone’s Books app, and MOBI is for other mobile devices and e-readers), the HTML if you want to read it as-is in a web-browser, or the PDF format which is a universal file format that is supported by everything, even web browsers, so it’s a good one to download if you don’t know what format you need :) If you read on an eReader, though, I can’t recommend enough just downloading the format for your device. You get to keep a copy of the fic AND the eReader keeps it nicely formatted. It’s a BRILLIANT, BEAUTIFUL feature that Ao3 gave us, because I like downloading all my fics and read them later in iBooks. Once you start that, Nonny, you can’t do it any other way. AND at the VERY END of the fics, it links BACK to the original post so you can bookmark, kudos, and comment on it!! <3

So yeah, two options you can do to solve your poopy internet and still read long fics hee hee! <3

ANYWAY EXCUSE FOR A NEW LIST LOL.

ALSO, side note, check out @silentauroriamthereal; a large chunk of her fics are both long AND one chapter, so it’s a good place to go and she’s a brilliant author so I don’t think you’ll be disappointed! <3 Plus a lot of her fics are on this list, so I am sorry hahah.

AND I wanted to make the list a bit longer than I had, so I picked fics over 20K, if that’s alright :) As always, if you wrote a 20k+ single chapter fic, let us know!

SINGLE CHAPTER FICS OVER 20K WORDS

A Life Well-Lived by Kate_Lear (E, 20,121 w., 1 Ch. || Original Male Character, Sherlock Woos John, Jealous Sherlock, Reluctant Bi-John, Past Abuse, Insecure John, Reassuring / Caring Sherlock, Protective Sherlock, Understanding Sherlock) – John got scared off men by an abusive past relationship. Sherlock has to try and woo him while not scaring him off with protective possessive rage.

The White Lotuses by SilentAuror (E, 20,340 w., 1 Ch. || Slow Burn, Domestic, Romance) – One day John realises that he just isn't where he belongs, which is back at Baker Street with Sherlock. So he goes back and Sherlock, in his own way, courts him. Romance.

Out of the Woods by SilentAuror (E, 20,471 w., 1 Ch. || Post S4, Romance, Slow Burn, Flirting, Drunk Sex, Practical Jokes, POV Sherlock, Bottomlock, Possessive John, Pining Sherlock, Frustrated Wanking, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, First Kiss/Time, Virgin Sherlock, Love Confessions, Soft Sherlock, Dancing, Bum Appreciation, Hanging out with the Yard) – Sherlock is fairly certain that John has taken to flirting with him of late, but can't be entirely certain of it. At least, not until a case takes them into a forest, along with Lestrade's team and something happens that will change everything about their lives...

You're On the Air by prettysailorsoldier (M, 20,616 w., 1 Ch. || Unilock, Matchmaking, Radio, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Sherlock POV, Pining Sherlock, Flirting, Bisexual John) – The Consulting Detective and The Woman dominate the airwaves of their university radio station, doling out advice on everything from meeting the parents to sexual positions. When their ratings start to dip before the holidays, however, manager Mike thinks it's time for some fresh blood, and who better to fill in the gaps than rugby captain--and notorious flirt--John Watson? Part 1 of 25 Days of Johnlock

whiskies neat by Ellipsical (E, 20,660 w., 15 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, POV Second Person Sherlock, Slow Burn, One Night Stand, Rimming, Blow Jobs, Anal, Soldier John, Crying, Emotional Lovemaking, Switchlock) – Home and hearth and whiskies neat, or, alternatively, Sherlock Holmes falls in love.

Achieving the Together-Coloured Instant by teahigh (E, 20,776 w., 1 Ch. || Est. Rel, PTSD, Codependency, Fluff & Angst, H/C, Smut, Demisexual Sherlock, Experiments) – John wonders if this is how it’s going to be: A life speaking in code, because they’re both too stupid to figure out how to say, “I love you.”

Winter's Delights by Kate_Lear (E, 21,173 w., 1 Ch. || Holmes Family, Christmas, Fake Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Bed Sharing, Domestics) – Sherlock takes John home for Christmas to meet the extended Holmes family. Part 1 of Winter's Delights

Love Is by SilentAuror (E, 21,508 w., 1 Ch. || Angst, UST / URT, Post HLV, Romance) – At Mrs Hudson’s urging, Sherlock finally decides to tell John how he feels about him. Part 1 of Love Is

echoes through time by chellefic (E, 21,619 w., 1 Ch. || First Time, Romance, ACD & BBC, Epistolary) – Mummy sends a trunk from the Holmes cottage in Sussex to 221B. Its contents alter the way John and Sherlock see themselves and one another.

Ghost Stories by SwissMiss (M, 22,256 w., 1 Ch. || Pining, Holmes Family, Christmas, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Bed Sharing, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, First Time) – Sherlock's parents think he and John are a couple. They might be onto something.

Sonatina in G Minor by SilentAuror (E, 22,574 w., 1 Ch. || Case Fic, POV Sherlock, Angst, UST, Sherlock’s Violin, Post-S3, Romance) – John has come back to Baker Street, but Sherlock doesn't understand the strange tension between them, even after he begins teaching John to play the violin at John's request.

The Kepler Problem by kinklock (E, 24,270 w., 1 Ch. || Sci-Fi AU, Alien Sherlock, Space Repairman John, Alien Biology, Horny John) – Working in uncharted space exploration was not as exciting as John had hoped, especially when it turned out to be mostly bot maintenance on uninhabited planets. However, the mystery of the repeated, unexplained malfunctions on planet BAK 2212 might turn out to be exactly the kind of adventure he'd been craving.

26 Pieces by Lanning (E, 28,236 w., 1 Ch. || H/C, Torture, First Time, Happy Ending, Schmoop, Past Abuse) – Mycroft gives Sherlock the apparently simple task of solving a puzzle box containing a stolen microchip. It isn't simple.

The Wisteria Tree by SilentAuror (E, 29,773 w., 1 Ch. || Post-S3, Emotional Love Making, Amnesia/Memory Loss, Sherlock Loves John So Much, Sherlock POV, Romance, Angst with Happy Ending, First Times, Hurt/Comfort, Est. Rel., Retirement) – Sherlock wakes up from a month-long coma only to discover that he has no memory of the previous six years to his own shock as well as John's...

Shallow Grave by SilentAuror (E, 31,672 w., 1 Ch. || Romance, Angst, HLV Fix It, Infidelity, Pining Sherlock, First Person POV Sherlock) – Starts as Sherlock's plane is taking off at the end of His Last Vow. When he finds out that Moriarty is alive and that he's being recalled from his mission, Sherlock decides that he should have told John how he felt before he left. So he walks off the plane and kisses him.

The Midas Touch by flawedamythyst (E, 32,231 w., 1 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Magical Realism || John has a Magical Cock, Dub Con, Healer John) – John Watson has a medical condition that means everyone he sleeps with is instantly healed of all illness and injury. This causes complications when Sherlock breaks his arm, and even more complications when Sherlock falls in love with him. Yes, this is a story where John has a literal magic healing cock. It's a lot less cracky than you're probably imagining. Warning: Contains complex issues of sexual consent, although not between Sherlock and John.

The Whore of Babylon Was a Perfectly Nice Girl by out_there (E, 32,897 w., 1 Ch. || Past Drug Use, Blowjobs, Toplock, Mentions of Switching, Rough Sex, Background Cases, Sherlock’s Past, Sherlock’s Sexual History, Experienced Sherlock, Past One Night Stands, Fingering, Cuddling, Possessive Sherlock, Paris Holiday, Bed Sharing, Naked Lie-Ins, Bathing Together, Confessions, Worried Sherlock, Laying in Bed All Day, Meddling Mycroft, Naked Lazy Day) – Sherlock walks into a room and takes all the space right out of it. He does the same inside John's head.

Our Enthusiasms Which Cannot Always Be Explained by withoutawish (M, 32,961 w., 1 Ch. || Christmas, Fluff and Angst, H/C, Post-TRF, Case Fic, Mild Gore, Sherlock Whump) – The list that is tacked haphazardly on the refrigerator of 221B reads, ‘Kidney(s), and/or a full cadaver (preferably male, late 30s, under six feet tall), bag of fresh toes, sixteen cow’s eyes (corneas retained), dual exhaust hand –held flame thrower, an unopened first edition copy of Joseph Conrad’s 'Heart of Darkness', and no less than ten abhorrently gruesome murders in the upcoming month.” The one neatly hanging next to it simply reads, “Sex.” One of these lists is not John Watson’s. If John Watson were to put what he really wanted in list form, to live in a land somewhere beyond ‘almosts' now that Sherlock Holmes has indeed returned to him, he would never be able to look his flatmate in the eye ever again.

Bedtime Stories by Liketheriver (M, 34,388 w., 1 Ch. || Emotional H/C, Romance, Angst & Humour, Bed Sharing, John First Person, TRF, John Whump) – John's POV during Season 2 and beyond when Sherlock takes up semi-permanent residence in his bed. A collection of codas and missing scenes wrapped up into one long fic and topped with a bow that takes the story beyond Reichenbach and into happy territory once more. Part 1 of Bedtime Universe

The Yellow Poppies by SilentAuror (E, 34,952 w., 1 Ch. || H/C, Nightmares, HLV Fix-It, PTSD, Trauma, POV Sherlock, Doctor John) – Sherlock is threatened and assaulted in the hospital immediately after having been shot in the heart, first by Mary, then by Magnussen. As he recovers at Baker Street with John and plans the attack on Appledore with Mycroft, he fights to work through the trauma caused by these two visits. Set during His Last Vow.

The Unfinished Letters by SilentAuror (E, 37,391 w., 1 Ch. || Post S3 / S3 / HLV Fix it, Angst with Happy Ending, Romance, Infidelity, Depression, Case Fic, POV Third Person Sherlock, Love Confessions, Pining Sherlock, Letters) – A fire at Baker Street leads John to read something he was never intended to see: a notebook of half-written, unfinished letters Sherlock wrote during his time away...

Set in Stone by SilentAuror (E, 39,309 w., 1 Ch. || Romance, Wedding, Therapy, Fluff and Angst) – Sherlock and John are back from Ravine Valley and planning their wedding. However, as they move past the trial of the human traffickers, Sherlock can't help but wonder if he's imagining that John is becoming a little distant. Surely he isn't getting cold feet about the wedding... Part 2 of The Ravine Valley series

Act IV by SilentAuror (E, 39,707 w., 1 Ch. || First Person POV Sherlock, HLV Fix-It, Infidelity, Angst, Drama) – After Sherlock is shot, John moves back into Baker Street. They spend the autumn together as John tries to make sense of his life and make some important decisions about both Mary and Sherlock. Canon-compliant, excerpts from His Last Vow.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by SilentAuror (E, 50,635 w., 1 Ch. || Post-S4/S4 Divergence, Case Fic, For a Case / Reverse Fake-Relationship, Conferences, Marriage Equality, Travelling / New York, Pride, Homophobia, Bottomlock, Marriage Proposal, John POV, Sexuality, Love Confessions, Emotional Love Making, Public Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, Passionate Kissing, Needy/Clingy Sherlock, Virgin Sherlock, Touching / Hand Holding, Bed Sharing, Little Spoon Sherlock, Intense Orgasms) – John and Sherlock go to New York to attend a conference run by the National Defence of Traditional Marriage Coalition in order to investigate the potential bombing of the annual Manhattan Pride parade. As the conference unfolds, John finds himself repulsed by the toxic ideology being presented, which becomes relevent to his own unacknowledged issues and his friendship with Sherlock...

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #my fic recs #long fics #single chapter fics #Anonymous

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fondnesses · 4 years ago

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roscoe’s notebook post

A while back I said I was going to write a post about the way I use notebooks for writing projects. This is the first of several posts about Writing Process I’ve been tossing around in my drafts for a little while as a result of conversations with friends, so bear with me.

I. Love. Notebooks. I genuinely would have to deeply overhaul my whole Process of writing anything on the longer side if I were to go paperless; I find physical paper pretty invaluable when I’m outlining, brainstorming, and researching, and I still probably write ¼-⅓ of all my actual content on paper first. (That proportion used to be a lot higher, but I’ve gotten better at being productive on a computer in recent years, which is great.) I’m a very visual person, so notebooks really help me visualize my ideas, story structure, etc. It’s very helpful to be able to use arrows and diagrams and physically strike things through, and the tactility is really soothing to me. If I show people my notebooks or talk about them, I often get a response like “this is so organized”, which is sort of true, but I have to stress that it’s “organization for a disorganized mind”; I can’t misplace ideas or notes if it all goes into the same physical object, vs. electronic notes, which are much more, like “Did I say that in a voice memo? PM it to myself on Discord? Leave it in a desktop sticky note? Write it directly into the Google Doc? Who knows! It’s lost to time!”. It’s very much an ADHD management strategy.

It helps that I’m a very neophyte stationery hobbyist and appreciate any excuse I have to use my pens, but I also will go off at any opportunity about how helpful I find them for writing projects, which is why I decided to just make a post about it. Right now I mostly use them for (fan and original) fiction projects, but I used a notebook for a very similar purpose when I was working on my undergrad thesis, and I have a slightly different but equally necessary-to-me approach to notebooks I use at work.

My typical structure for a notebook that’s devoted to one project only looks like this:

I always leave the first couple pages blank so I can go back and retroactively index bujo-style. I don’t always actually do the index, because sometimes I get too lazy, but I like having those blank pages there to give me the option. I also usually put epigraphs/inspo quotes on the first page.

After that, there’s often (but not always, I’ll talk about it) a couple pages at the start where I’m frantically jotting down loose brainstorming ideas before they've coagulated into a story structure. Just, like, vomiting into the void.

Stemming out of that, I usually write out about like 5-10 pages of outline-style notes in chronological order, laying out all the main story beats and charting out the story trajectory. This will inevitably get revised and rewritten many times, but I find the process of writing these wide-angle synopses really useful for dislodging ideas, making connections re: thematic threads, etc. from my brain.

I’ll devote a couple pages after that to specific things like "sex scene brainstorming", "random scene ideas/minor details that don't have a clear place in the outline right now but I'll turn to for inspo later" [this is what I refer to as “bits” in one of the later photos], "page where I just outline the Motifs And Themes", "research notes", "to-do list", "stuff to check on a second pass", "things to put in the a/n and AO3 tags", etc.--the specifics vary with the story.

Then, I skip ahead to approx. halfway through the notebook and cordon off the rest of the pages to be “free writing” space, AKA writing of actual content rather than planning, with the expectation there will be no internal organization and I’ll transcribe to laptop as I go. Writing on paper feels less binding than typing something on a computer; it’s like a little secret kept with myself, and it doesn’t need to go anywhere or be seen by anyone if I decide I don’t like it. Setting aside pages in the back half of the notebook means that, as more things come up re: planning, I can go back and add those in the rest of the pages that were intentionally left blank. This is how I avoid (for the most part) having the whole thing be a jumbled mess where there’s no separation between the notes and the actual story writing; I learned this the hard way via the first notebook I’ll show you in a second. I’ve recently gotten really into using Muji sticky note tabs to label any pages/sections of particular import that don't want to have to refer back to in the index and would rather just flip to instantly.

I do use notebooks that aren’t specific to any one project, but those are much less organized and less worth sharing.

Before I look at more recent stuff, here are some selections from my notebook for the project that got me into writing longfic, my Golden Kamuy canon divergence AU (with apologies for the bad photos, my phone’s camera is trash). I worked on this from Sept 2018-July 2019. It was a learning experience in a lot of ways, and notebook utilization was one of those. I’ve always used notebooks for keeping track of writing projects, as I said earlier, but before this it was largely without much organization or structure; just total chaos. Having a physical notebook became really important for this project because it was a sprawling multichapter story with rotating POVs and a lot of historical research. I also learned a lot about what not to do with a notebook, personally, or at least things that don’t work so well (for me). This was a college ruled spiral-bound Decomposition Book, for the record.

By the time I bought a notebook for it I already had a (very basic) plot outline in mind, so I wasn’t doing that very initial ground-zero brainstorming in here; I was copying out of my phone’s notes app, basically, and then going from there.

This is one of the first pages in this notebook; I wanted to visualize the relationship web between the four central characters in the story in terms of how they feel about one another. The two colours correspond to the POV characters (Sugimoto in orange, Ogata in pink), and I used this colour-coding throughout the notebook with highlighters, etc. to keep track of information that was more relevant to one character than the other. Tsurumi and Yuusaku aren’t POV characters, but they’re prominent in the story and their presence impacts the central relationship between Sugimoto and Ogata, and it was helpful to me to map out the emotional ecosystem, as it were.

(There are coffee stains all over this, because I wrote the vast majority of the story in coffee shops because I didn’t want to be around my roommates, lol. This is part of why I never do fiction writing in notebooks that are too nice, I get neurotic about needing to keep them tidy. I can’t use ones that are too shit though, either, so it’s a bit of a narrow window. I’ll talk more about brands and paper quality etc. later.)

As you can see, this is the first page of many I set aside specifically for jotting down different pieces of historical information relevant to my story. It’s about fictional characters who are members of an army division that existed in real life, and both the canon and my fic involve a high level of attention to detail with regards to which divisions were present for which battles, etc., as well as general historical details specific to the Russo-Japanese War setting--what did people eat in the trenches? What did they do to fill time? How did they get through the winter? What did third party observers have to say about the conditions? What were the specs of their weaponry (particularly important because one of the POV characters is a sniper and gun nut)? I did a lot of reading (and watching of antique gun collector Youtube videos... the things I do for love, eh), and it came in handy so many times, because it turns out it’s much easier to write trench warfare slice of life if you have factual details to pull from when you don’t know what to do with a scene! Imagine that!

This is the first of three “grid outlines” I made; this is a way I sometimes like to visualize a story outline all on one page, with the columns representing chapters and the squares within the columns representing sections/scenes within the chapters. As you can see, early on I was hoping to get this done in five or even FOUR chapters (whatmakesyouhaha.mp3), with POV switches happening internally within the chapters. This proved to be unwieldy for many reasons, so I revised the outline:

Here I’d come to terms with the fact this story was going to have a lot more chapters than I’d planned, and I rearranged things so that it would happen in ten, with each chapter belonging to only one POV character. This also needed revising later, and in the end the story looked a bit more like this (though it did in fact end up being twelve chapters, but only because Chapter Ten was like, 12k, and needed to be split in two chunks):

I must have remembered to bring my fineliners to the coffee shop this time, lol, because as you can see it’s properly colour-coded this time. This outline was made when I was already four posted chapters into the fic, which hopefully gives you a sense of the way in which I am sort of a planner and a pantser; I can’t get into a longer project without an outline, but the outline inevitably changes many times throughout writing and I often end up with a finished product that looks pretty different from what I was intending. My creative M.O. as always is Do The Maximum! Amount! Of! Work! Possible!

This is what a “free writing” page looks like, for me. In this notebook I didn’t set aside any specific spaces for free writing so it’s strewn throughout the notebook in a really disorganized way and I was constantly flipping through looking for bits I’d written and forgotten to transcribe, and I decided to be more organized in future as a result of that. If something’s crossed through, that means I transcribed it. As you can see, they’re often small sections, sometimes just a coupled decontextualized sentences. About 3/4 of what I write in a notebook makes it into the story, I’d say; some of it never goes anywhere, and that’s OK. I have less of an issue killing my darlings if they never make it off the paper page.

A very brief, top-down chapter outline, where the goal was not to get too bogged down in details and just to visualize the beats and pin down what they’re trying to accomplish. Chapters for this fic typically ran about 6k, and five or six scenes per chapter was pretty common, so the average scene length was about 1-1.25k words/scene. IDK why I called it storyboarding when I didn’t make drawings. (Margin numbers are to keep track of word count, since I was using a daily word count tracker while writing this.)

This page was, as titled, for keeping track of the various balls in the air when I was about 2/3-3/4 of the way through the story and really feeling the pressure with regards to tying up the various loose ends. This was... a struggle. I hadn’t ever written anything longish (this fic ended up just under 70k) that had an action plot before, let alone a canon divergence scenario where I had to engage with and explain away various canon plot elements so I could maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I learned various “things not to do” with my notebooks while working on that project. One of those lessons I learned is to be more realistic when assessing how big a project is likely to get, not least because I RAN OUT OF PAGES around the chapter 9-10 mark. In my defense though, that’s because I’d never written anything even half this long! But I know better now, and try not to be in denial. Finishing the notebook early was a way bigger problem than I’d anticipated, and was part of the reason the last few chapters took several grueling months to finish. The issue was that I needed to be able to use a notebook to maintain my workflow--attempting to do it only on a computer was dismal--but it seemed silly to start a notebook of a similar size to the one I’d finished (80pg, approximately B5 dimensions) when there was no way it would need that much space, especially since the reference pages, like the historical notes, didn’t need to be transcribed over. I was also pretty broke at the time and didn’t want to spend money unnecessarily, lol. I tried to get by using a Moleskine Cahier for a month or so because I had one lying around, but it was horrid; it was too small to be used comfortably, it wasn’t spiral-bound so it wouldn’t lay flat, the ghosting is terrible and I hate the way Moleskine paper feels, etc. Eventually I caved and went to Muji and bought a 30ish page A5 with closer to lay-flat binding, and I finished the story in there. I would take a comparative pic for you of the relative notebook sizes and include some of the scene staging diagrams, etc. I put in there, but I can’t find it :(

So I learned that specs really do matter, and it’s okay to be picky if the pickiness is going to make the difference between actually using a notebook or not. Things that are important to me in my notebooks:

Ruling (gotta have ruling, I can suffer through grid but blank or dot is a no-go)

Size (I can’t use anything smaller than at least a medium-large notebook, I find it claustrophobic and get miserly about page space)

Binding (twin ring is my preference because it looks and feels better than a classic spiral but has the same comfort of use with regards to bending the pages back to suit workspace size and laying flat with ease)

Paper quality and colour (I don’t like anything too slippery/smooth or with too much visible ghosting, and I strongly prefer an off-white paper to bleached paper--part of why I don’t use Decomposition Books anymore, the paper is scratchy and it’s too damn bleached!)

Pagecount relative to size of project

Portability (in non-COVID times; anything bigger than a B5 wouldn’t fit in the satchel I used to bring to work at my old job), etc.

But everyone’s taste is different in this respect, and the only way to figure out what works for you is through trial and error, I’m afraid. I also suspect I’m more neurotic and particular about the sensory experience of using a notebook than most people are, but I yam what I yam.

Now to talk about the notebooks for my current projects, where I’ve refined my approach somewhat. I’ve included less photos for these because they’re ongoing WIPs I don’t want to spoil completely, but I’ve tried to include some outline-type stuff to give you an idea.

My big bang fic is in the very ugly twin ring notebook on the right; I got it at a dollar store by my house because I needed something to work in and didn’t want to wait for an online order, but it’s been very serviceable for my needs. The paper isn’t even bad. The bigger notebook (B5) is my Sangcheng fic.

I wanted something with a lot of pages for this, because I knew it was going to be a long story, and for some reason the fact it’s smaller than my usual preference doesn’t bug me (I think it’s an A5?); it just fits this story, somehow. I’m not sure exactly how many sheets are in here but I’d guess about 150.

Because this notebook has upwards of 100 sheets, I made a lot of use of sticky-note tabs to label high-priority pages. The colour coding of these doesn’t mean anything, it was just whichever ones I had at hand at any given moment. These are those tabs from Muji I mentioned, I’m really obsessed with them--the shape makes them so much less obtrusive and more practical than conventional squares/rectangles OR flag shapes, IME.

My big bang story is nonlinear, so, similarly to what I did with colour coding for the two POVs for my GK fic, this story has two main colours corresponding to whether a given section takes place in the “before” or the “after” portions of the timeline, with blue as “after”, yellow as “before”. This is what the most current version of the outline looks like in there:

If you squint, you can see the alphanumeric notes in the top right of each section entry; I gave them each a code like “A3″ or “B5″ corresponding to their position in the story sequence (so, it goes A1, B1, A2, B2, etc., through to B9 and then the epilogue). [Unintentional that this schema overlaps with notebook size labeling and so is kind of confusing in the context of this post.] At first I was just keeping track of the sections via the highlighted titles, but it got confusing because I’d write down “Wedding” or “Yiling” in my notes and then refer to the notes later like “but there are multiple marriages?? and multiple scenes in Yiling??”. Stuff gets struck through with a straight line if it’s been written in a more-or-less complete form and crossed out with a squiggly line if it’s been cut from the outline or made redundant.

As I said earlier, I started out all the initial brainstorming for my Sangcheng fic in its notebook, instead of brainstorming it in someone’s DMs/my notes app/a voice memo/etc. and then transcribing it into the notebook in a somewhat more organized fashion, which is how my stories usually start out. Because of this, the first five-ish pages are basically just stream of consciousness rambling where I was trying to jot down every disconnected thought I had about the story concept. I don’t have photos for that because it’s too spoilerific for later developments in the fic, but I can show you some of the stages the outlines went through, once I was able to corral those initial notes into a story structure:

All the chapters in this fic have their own highlighter colour, so when I started trying to make sense of my initial brainstorm notes I just went through and highlighted stuff in the colour of the chapter it would make the most sense for, and then transcribed things more-or-less in chronological order into the relevant chapter outline. I later ended up rewriting all the chapter outlines AGAIN to refine them and divide them internally by the individual scenes, which makes them a lot more legible and less wall-of-text-y. They look like this now, with about four sheets per chapter:

Because this fic is on the longer side, I have some pages that are just for keeping track of other story elements, like this, where I refer back to whatever the fuck the “themes” are supposed to be whenever I forget what this fic is about:

It’s all about the visionboarding... Anyway, that’s most of what I have to offer, since most of these two notebooks is Forbidden Content.

With regards to brands/supplies, I really like this Kokuyo Campus Wide notebook that I’m writing Sangcheng in, it’s pretty perfect for me. I also like the B5 Muji twin rings, but those only come in 30 sheets, so I wouldn’t use it for anything above a ~20k project. The B5 Maruman Spiral Note 6.5mm ruled/80 sheet is another good one, though I wish it was twin ring instead of spiral. As you can tell, I like Japanese stationery brands because it’s easier to find decent paper quality and minimalist design without shelling out $$ than it is with American/European brands, at least IME. I like Rollbahns too. But honestly, I can usually find pretty serviceable random notebooks that aren’t brand-name from Asian dollar stores; it’s really not something where you need to shell out tons of money.

#notebooks #writing #idk how to tag this!

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your--isgayrights · 4 years ago

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Okay i actually have no clue on how tumblr works (hope I'm doing this right lmao) but I'm writing my first fic (I still can't really move on from orv so I decided to make my own content lol.), I really love your writing style, do you have any tips??

Hmmmm tips tips tips tips.... First of all I’m really flattered that you like my writing enough to ask me about it! I’ll try to give my best answer... I think that I used to read a lot of people’s “writing tips” but ultimately I ended up not really understanding them until I started writing a lot? Either way it’s fun to read how other authors think... It’s really cool that you’re writing your first fic and you thought to come to me... did I already say that? Okay long post under the cut.

I don’t think this will be all that helpful, but this is just things that I think about if that’s interesting!

For me a lot of writing is like struggling with motivation (I have ADHD so that’s probs why), I really have to pace myself while writing because I can’t just force myself to do it. If I go in every day and think “I have to write today I’m not doing anything so I should be writing” I can get burnt out really easily, even if I really like the thing I’m writing and know how it’s supposed to go. So one of my big things is that when I’m not thinking about writing I’m not thinking about writing. that gives my brain a break and refreshes me when I get back to my google document.

Something I’ve also struggled with having to remember is that there’s like. Never a perfect way to write. What I end up doing is thinking up ideas and fragments and sentences in my head and the very moment I think of something I like I have to write it down in my notes app. Most of my writing process ends up being like. Filling in the blanks and connecting the dots between scene fragments.

For fics in particular I’d also just recommend rereading your favorite parts of the og work! I’m the kind of person who has a pretty good reading memory, so people may have noticed that I include a lot of little details referencing the text in my fic. Just reading the work kind of helps you remember the voices of the character and the style of the narration, and if you just like. internalize it. you can probably replicate it pretty well if you wanted to.

OKAY I say that but don’t worry too much about replicating things in the og work perfectly. I find that a lot of times when I’m writing I’m inserting a lot of personal touches and putting things that are a part of me in the work. Writing is always going to be like. an extension of your voice, no matter what you’re writing. I think that when I heard about stuff like that from authors in the past I was always like. What? I’m not writing about things that happened to me. I’m writing about grown adult men having emotional issues, silly. But there’s like a lot more nuance to writing about yourself, I guess. Like you don’t have to have like a self insert or be projecting onto a character to have yourself reflected in something you’ve written.

I’d say that like, whatever you write as your first fic is going to be lovely, but when you grow up as a writer and look back on it, you’re not going to remember who you were when you wrote it. I think that’s why a lot of people look back on their first works and are like “I can’t believe I wrote that, what was I thinking, cringe cringe cringe ugh.” Like I definitely do that sometimes, but I’ve found that the old work I’m happiest with nowadays is the stuff where I can recognize myself in it, even if I’m not in that fandom anymore or if there’s old jokes or typos I don’t remember making.

With that being said, I’m the kind of person who always gives myself a mission statement when I’m writing. I sort of mentally go, okay, I’m writing this kind of thing, and this is why I’m writing it. It can be something like oh I’m writing this fluff piece because I love this character and wish they had a happier ending, or oh I want to write this multi chapter fic exploring an issue touched on in the original work but I feel like with my own experiences I could expand on it more than the author did. Just something that tells me why it is important to me to write this thing when I’m writing it.

AAAH I feel like I made that sound more dramatic than it really is, that’s just how I think I guess. I’m the kind of guy where its like things need to have like MEANING to me when I do them. I’m dramatic and gay and that’s my personality I guess 😔.

Hmmm maybe it’s also my BIGGEST writing tip tho. Like kind of just thinking things through when you’re writing is pretty important. When I was first learning to write at all (talking about baby baby me here this is like sort of a side tangent sorry) I think that a lot of times I would copy phrases and developments that I had liked in things that I had read without really fully considering why I would include those things other than the fact that that was just what I thought writing was. It’s important to consider what importance every scene and sentence has to do with the flow of the story. Are they just things that are happening, or is there a reason that the audience needs to know these things? The weight of your words should have some sort of consequence as a result of you writing them. Are you telling the audience information they need to know? Is it about how the character feels? What does this say about the character? Etc.

I suppose that’s sort of my own writing style. You’ll probably notice that I don’t write a lot of descriptive prose if you read my fic. The thing about me is that I never want to write something that makes my audience question why they’re reading it, I guess. I’m sort of self conscious and think about the reading experience a lot. All of the things I choose to describe are usually so that the reader can understand where people are in the scene and what emotions they are having. There’s a lot of emphasis that I put in like. A reader’s ability to read into things, which works against me sometimes because I’m not always certain if people picked up on different things that I put a lot of thought into (the curse of being seen... sob).

ALSO use paragraph breaks. In my first fic (that I’m not going to tell anyone what is even though its on ao3 because im shy) the thing I always regret the MOST is that there are big chunky paragraphs that are hard to read through at the start. Like my eyes get lost. I mentioned I have ADHD before but even though I like. physically can’t read a big chunky paragraph I will always write them that way if left to my own devices. Paragraph breaks don’t have to just be broken up by dialogue they can be wherever you feel like doing them. You need a lot of them. This post should probably have more of them... oh my god it’s so long...

OKAY FOR REAL THOUGH IF YOU COULDN”T SLOG THROUGHT THE REST OF THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT TIP IS RIGHT HERE:

JUST LET YOURSELF WRITE

I have a lot of like. academic trauma, so maybe this is just me, but the reason I didn’t write fic until I was like 16 was because I was always really scared that whatever I wrote wouldn’t be good enough for some impossible standard I was setting for myself. I was always telling myself that I had certain bad writing habits or that I was terrible for never being able to focus on things for very long and all of my projects were doomed to failure before I even started. But then I wrote my first like 8 chapter fic in the summer of my junior year and I was like... oh. that wasn’t so bad. Like. It’s okay to know your limits, but you don’t really know them until you start writing. Like I wrote an 8 chapter fic, and then a few one shots, and then I tried to take on a very complicated project that ended up being over 40 chapters and I had to put it down because I just wasn’t really at the writing level to finish it. I would advise against writing fics that take so long to write that you start hating the way you wrote the first chapter, basically lol. Know how whatever you’re writing is supposed to begin and end before you start writing it.

Nowadays I always have like. plot outlines in my head when I start a fic. Like okay this needs to happen here this needs to happen here etc. I like making lists if it seems to overwhelming when I’m writing something long, just to organize my thoughts.

OKAY I JUST TALKED A LOT. SORRY IF YOU DIDN’T WANT TO READ ALL OF THIS BUT I’M A LITTLE CHATTY IF YOU DIDN’T NOTICE.

Defo feel free to dm me if you have like questions or just want to chat about orv or whatever. I’m a lonely little man out here floating on my pile of words, and I’d love to hear what your fic is about!!

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spaced-out-julissx · 5 years ago

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this post is kinda long ngl

Last night, I came out to my friend as bisexual through text message. God I still can’t believe I did it. She’s bisexual too, so the reason I came out to her first was not only because I trusted her, but she might be one of the few that understands me. I would love to include screenshots of the text messages, but I’m typing this through a laptop and I don’t want pictures here because my whole family can login and can see them. I know I can delete them but I don’t want to risk it. Let me tell you what happened just in case you’re looking for a coming out story to read or help you out.

Me and her were just making small talk and talking about our new hobbies that we formed during quarantine and the sort. I was actually doing homework while texting her. And then, all of a sudden, I wanted her to know. Like, I’ve always known I was going to tell her first, but I thought it was going to be in person. But last night, as I was texting her, I just really wanted her to know. It was so powerful, this feeling, of just wanting to go through the screen and come out at her end and just scream it out. I was kind of scared of this all-of-a-sudden feeling, because it doesn’t come with bravery, but rather recklessness and this feeling could either be the best or worst thing for someone in the closet.

Nevertheless, I decided to act on it. And I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but I felt these exact feelings: my leg, which was already shaking, began shaking even more violently. I could feel goosebumps all over my arms. There was a lump in my throat, and thank goodness we were texting rather than talking or else I would have never spit out the words. My stomach felt weird, like somebody was poking me all over, but through the inside.

I texted her, asking if I could talk to her about something. She said yes, and then my phone stopped working for a whole hour. Great timing. For that whole hour, I was reflecting if I should or shouldn’t. But this feeling was so strong, and I had no doubt in my mind that it was going to be tonight that I would tell her. My phone started working again, and then I told her that it broke down and whatever. Then she asked me what it was that I wanted to tell her.

So I typed up the words “I’m bi”. I typed them. I didn’t send them. There I was, staring at the blue “send” button, thinking how big that button all of a sudden became. Two words. Two small words. One of them I didn’t even type fully. But they were so powerful, because the second I sent them I knew there was no going back. You can’t just lock yourself back inside the closet.

I was feeling so overwhelmed, so I went into the notes app and typed up a reason as to why I was telling her. I typed up exactly these words,

“and you're the only one that knows idk i just wanted to tell someone and i really don't want to tell my family they're kinda homophobic hehe”

I was going to send “I’m bi” first and then the message above. So I went back to the text messages. I took a couple of breaths.

It was so much, I literally squeezed my eyes shut and my thumb hit the send button. I felt this huge weight on my shoulders. I felt so many feelings right at that moment, it was crazy. Goosebumps were positively all over my body. Immediately I pasted the message from the notes. That was probably a good idea, my whole copy and paste thing. There was no way my shaking fingers were going to type a whole sentence after sending that.

I stared at my phone, waiting. There was no way I could just look away from the phone. My eyes were glued. I wasn’t even blinking.

A whole minute passed. A WHOLE MINUTE. I kid you not a whole 60 seconds passed. Those 60 seconds were longer than microwave seconds. I was waiting and waiting. Surely she wouldn’t be mad at me, right? She’s bi. It would be hypocritical, and if I knew she would do something like that, I wouldn’t have told her. But do I honestly know her fully? I mean, I only met her a couple of months ago, but I feel like I’ve known her forever. She’s just so easy to talk to about literally anything! Was this an exception? And just like that, another minute passed.

That’s it. I can try to go back inside the closet as best as I could. I could tell her April Fools or something like that, and if she says that it’s not even April 1, I’ll just tell her I thought you were supposed to celebrate that holiday all through April. She won’t be suspicious, will she?

“Omg really I'm so happy how'd you realize?”

There. She responded. Immediately after reading that, all my stress, anxiety, every single fucking thing melted off me. My legs stopped shaking, and they always shake. Doesn’t matter if I’m coming out or not. But they were still. And I was just staring back at the screen, my mouth slightly open.

I felt so good. God typing this makes me feel kind of emotional. I did it. I actually did it. And I wasn’t embarrased, like how I envisioned my coming out to anybody every single fucking time. I wasn’t regretting it. I was smiling. And then I was full on grinning at the screen. I came out to someone, and they were “so happy” to hear it. I literally had to get up and hop on my bed a little. I know that sounds cheesy as fuck, but I got on my small sofa bed and hopped a bit. And I couldn’t stop smiling. I felt so good.

So I started telling her how I realized. How I think I kind of have always known but I would suppress it because my family wasn’t exactly open to it. How in middle school I had tiny crushes on girls and kind of...fantasize about kissing them. How I was in love with Lady Gaga, but then I realized it wasn’t just her music that I liked. How reading any wlw book or fanfiction made me feel kind of jealous of one of the characters. How after reading gay literature (such as Simon vs The Homo-Sapiens’ Agenda and Leah On The Offbeat) made me finally accept that I don’t just like guys, and that it was 100% normal. I don’t know, but when you know, you know. I hid it all these years because of my family. My mom literally told me she thinks my brother might turn out gay because he only has a bunch of older sisters, and that her and my dad were trying to “get it out of him”. Whatever “it” was. Guess how old my brother was when she told me that? Like 3 years old.

I don’t know. I know my parents won’t kick me out if I told them, so I guess I’m lucky on that end. But they just make all these jokes and whenever they meet someone who is gay, they make it point to point it out in a story they might tell during dinner. My mom’s cousin came out as lesbian last summer, and my mom’s aunt (not her cousin’s mom) was saying how she didn’t want to talk to her anymore and for her to not even think about visiting her. I watch old home videos of my mom hanging out with her cousins and throwing around words like the fa**** and great stuff like that. My dad was brought up in a very traditional Mexican family, where my grandparents from that side of the family might whip out a bible if I tell them. You know the sorts. Even my older sister has a bit of both of my parents. She loves stereotyping, in which for example if at work a guy gives her attitude, he’s probably gay. She talks about celebrities’ sexual orientations like she knows, and she makes the type of gay jokes that are not really hateful, but rather uncomfortable. I really don’t like those jokes. They’re like the equivalent to “I can’t be homophobic! I made eye contact with a gay on June 8, 2017!”

Woah there, I wrote a big one, boys! This was just supposed to be a coming out story but turned out to be a whole rant as to why I don’t come out. If you’re still reading this, thanks. It means the world to me.

But anyways, my coming out yesterday, overall, I rate it bittersweet. It’s like the word bittersweet was made for this exact experience. It was very sweet in the fact that I’m already starting my journey to being out of the closet. I’m not completely out, but let’s just say I unlocked the door, and someone noticed. I’m not out, but I’m not in either, and that’s the sweet part. The bitter is the fact that I felt terrible and like death before coming out, and that was to an open, sweet, BISEXUAL friend. Imagine how I’m going to feel when I tell other people? When I tell my parents? God the thought makes me nauseated. I don’t know how you people that are out do it. I mean, I can’t even stomach the idea, but I’ll get around it some day. If you’re out, you are such a brave little muffin, and I’m proud of you. If you’re closeted, I’m still proud of you for figuring out who you are and for being brave for just being here, having to restrain yourself when you hear homophobic shit. If you’re questioning, you’re still brave for taking the step to figure out yourself, and I really hope you’re comfortable with yourself and you take all the time you need.

Wow I’m a trainwreck. If you read from beginning to end, thank you you’re so sweet. I’ll keep updating this thread if I come out to someone else or if something happens. Writing makes me feel kind of liberated.

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livlepretre · 4 years ago

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I'm so glad you decided to do this ask game. I love your writing style and have been curious about 4, 11, and 54 for a while. Thank you for being so interactive about your writing!

💙💙💙 honestly thank you for asking! I love interacting with all of you here on tumblr, and honestly, talking about writing gives me a lot of energy to see through really long projects (you all know which one).

4. Do you have writing habits or rituals?

Yes! The most helpful habit I’ve developed is actually finding the right time of day (for me) to write-- I’m best in the mornings, so the first thing I do 2-4 mornings a week is caffeinate and open up my word doc with my wip. Often I’ll reread a few scenes from where I left off to get myself going, and then I write for an hour or two. My thoughts are so much clearer in the early mornings, before I head to work and exhaust my mental energies, that the work flows really freely-- I can often cover the same terrain by writing first thing that I might take all day to cover if I get started, say, on a Saturday in the early afternoon (sad but true).

I also do like to amp myself up with songs, but I don’t listen to any music WHILE writing-- only beforehand. I find music during writing to be way too distracting.

I only ever write sober, because I find even a glass of wine throws me way too far off my game (and I hate squinting at my screen). But the more caffeine the better.

Also, detailed below: I OUTLINE LIKE A FIEND

11. Describe your writing process from scratch to finish.

hmmm okay

so, often an idea will hit me and I will immediately have maybe 3-10 pages that flow really fast... but then I’ll stutter out

so after that comes the outline.

and I mean: OUTLINE

I put my outline at the bottom of my word document, below the scenes that I’ve already written-- for FE this started as a pretty basic series of like, maybe a dozen bullet points overall. As I kept brainstorming and writing and thinking about it, I started having more specific plot points. Every time an idea occurred to me, I added it to the outline. In the beginning this was a very flow of consciousness outline, not even bullet-pointed, just paragraphs and paragraphs detailing in often vague terms the broad strokes of what I wanted to happen and what the emotional beats would be. I think it really has helped me with FE that I had a lot of the BIG moments outlined before I started writing, including the ending, so I knew the narrative arcs and could foreshadow a lot of things, even if a lot of the chapters get written between updates and I have added in a lot of things that have just sort of naturally developed. The good news is that if you overall stick the outline, you can also add a lot of other things in.

I review my outline A LOT.

Before I write any particular chapter, I look through the outline, and figure out which pieces I want to include in the chapter. I then go through and MINIMUM outline by bullet point the scenes that will be in that chapter-- although, I like to have the next 5-10 chapters outlined that thoroughly so that I know exactly where I am heading. I cannot stress enough how hard it is for me to write without a blue print.

Sometimes I write a scene that I end up not using. Rather than deleting it, I move it to the bottom of my word document-- often these scenes can be revised later to fit into the story.

I also write at the bottom of my outline any scenes/dialogue that pops into my head that I know will happen later. This way, I have it on hand when I get to it.

For the actual writing, once I start writing a chapter, I pretty much work on it every day until it’s done-- sometimes all I do is tinker with the outline, or write a few sentences, and sometimes I wrote 4,000 words-- it doesn’t matter how much or how little, because in writing, every word is a victory.

I try to apply the same rule to my creative writing as to my essay writing--just get the idea/emotions/plot out, describe it as clearly as possible, and any finangling with words can be wrestled with on a later pass.

I usually reread each chapter 5 or 6 times before posting-- often it’s the first thing I do when I open the doc up to write. This is often a good chance to add in connecting scenes, change sentences slightly, or revise paragraphs so that they fit into any emotional arcs/discoveries later in the chapter. I often change lines because earlier writing contradicts something I want to say later in the chapter, or use the chance of the reread to change words/restructure sentences.

When I get lost, I make character motive charts. Like, I write down each character’s name, and I come up with a list of what each person’s motive is. I then try to come up with a definitive action each person can take to accomplish their goals. Hopefully at least some of these characters will be in conflict.

Whenever I get to a major inflection point in the story, like, whenever I am about to drop a major plot reveal or change the course of events in some way, I do a major reread-- I reread my whole fic start to finish and use the notes app to copy and paste any paragraphs that are important (from my view as the writer) into a note so that I can keep track. This could include any paragraphs with foreshadowing, plot threads that have not been tied up, characterization notes I’ve forgotten about... anything at all that will help me wrap up anything I may have forgotten about.

For that matter, the notes app on my phone is also where I punch in anything that occurs to me in the middle of the night or when I’m at work, running errands, etc.

I basically repeat this process, until I find myself at the end.

Long story short: It’s all about the outline!

54. Any writing advice you want to share?

Find your best time to write and take advantage-- when do you feel most mentally alert? when do you feel most inspired? for me it’s early in the morning-- I could potentially write 7 days a week if I wrote at night, but I find I can get a ton more done in 2-4 days of 1 or 2 hours of focused writing than I could blearily staring at my screen. So, even if your BEST window is only available a couple of days a week, that is still a HUGELY productive window of time that will lead to good things!

Outline. As mentioned above.

If you only write one sentence today, you’ve done the hardest thing: you’ve written. One sentence as often as possible will eventually make it easier to write two sentences as often as possible, and so on.

Writing is a continuous act of self-improvement. I try not to worry about revising my work too much after I’ve hit publish, instead recognizing that there are fics easily accessible on the internet that I wrote when I was sixteen and yes they are highkey embarrassing but they’re also kind of a badge of honor because wow, I’ve gone from struggling to write a short 2,000 word story to working on an epic length novel. And what people say is true: it is an agonizing process to hit publish, full of self-doubt and hand-wringing (I cannot tell you how often FE has made me NERVOUS because of the content), but the beautiful thing about writing is that when you put it out into the world, you’re giving it over as a gift for everyone else. So, try to let yourself just write as much as possible.

Be honest in your writing. Go ahead and squash that little voice in your head telling you to hold back on the emotions, to be more solemn, more restrained. So long as you write your heart, it will be true, and there will be people who will connect with the writing because of that.

#anonymous #ask game #on writing

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uzyplus · 4 years ago

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11. July 2020

Overview

Hello, long time no see ~who am I joking, no one ever reads this~. The life has been... fine I guess? Nothing really happened, other than I totally stopped watching anime, which I think was my last post about, or like 2-3rd last, who knows. So instead I’ve been reading manga a lot. Unfortunately I no longer have my list sorted by the starting date, as I had problems navigating through the piles of non updating mangas, so I sorted it into 2 groups: releasing and last released in 2019 or before, and even sorted the releasing into kinda: horror, slice of life, fantasy, adventure/isekai and manhwa groups. I’ll post pics of what I read later after finishing this.

I don’t read so munch manhua anymore, mostly coz the stories usually suck, all have the same setting and same cliche moments and well, the ones I packed on back in 2018 on webcomics finally came to their end, with only a small group still releasing. I don’t think I’ll be returning to them ever again; the biggest reason being that they just end without any notice, the author decides to not just continue their series anymore and so be it. Well at the time being I still have a few over dozen releasing on webcomics so I guess I have to just survive through it somehow. ~Tho it’s true that I can find most of them on mangakakalot, but well, I don’t want to spam my list with them, let them be quarantined in their own app~

On the other hand there are Korean comics also known as manhwa. Most of all I love how beautiful many of them are and how the stories even tho may have the same background setting always get developed in their own unique way. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed in any of them. I also love scroll style of reading opposed to pages so I like them a bit more over manga in that aspect. I have around 13 of them at the moment and out of them the ones I love the most are: A returner’s magic should be special ~for thrilling story and overall enjoyment of story~ Who made me a princess [also called Suddenly became a princess one day] which has the most beautiful art I’ve ever seen and lovely story;

In manga section I’ve been enjoying few Gyaru romances along with slice of life romances lately; I cannot really point out any of the slice of life ones, as they usually are fantasy and I just have too many of them to even remember the stories sometimes, but for gyaru one: Gal Gohan, which finished releasing few months ago, it was the first gyaru romance I’ve read ever and it kinds opened the whole school romance section for me, coz before I never touched that place, as I hate romance comedy combo, but as I read more and more I can safely note that it’s the animes that make the shows just total garbage, as most of the comedy romance animes I’ve watched and didn’t like actually have pretty good mangas.

Another section of manga are the slice of life married romances, which I like for not having the whole shy aspect to them and well it doesn’t take the characters whole story to just confess their feelings that were introduced to us in like chapter 1 to 10. And also it doesn’t have just one kiss scene at the end of the whole thing, which is just the most annoying thing about these school romances. Out of them I love Tonikaku Cawaii the most. It has already a good amount of chapters and plentiful of romance, kisses, hugs, all these things you don’t get from these shy romances, that I strove for back in my anime times, but not often got. Apart from that one there also is On the way home, I got a bride and twin daughters, but they were dragons; [this era will be remembered as the long manga names one and I’ll drag about it to my grand kids, if I ever have any]. It’s not a long one, just 9 chapters so far [11 in raws], but well I love it; I actually put it into the not releasing group, but it released just few days ago, which made me really happy, coz it has so much potential to grow.

Adventure or Isekai is well, just as the name suggests; all these mangas in RPG world, where they fight monsters, get levels, skills and complete quests belong here, most of them Isekais, coz well that seemed to be popular at the time I picked them. Oh oh and also the majority of them have stupidly long names, because of course, nothing identifies isekai adventure more than name so long it doesn’t fit on screen. I dunno whether it’s even possible to pick an individual one out of them to write about, as most of them have the same settings, backgrounds or developments, either it’s being summoned, killed and being reborn or just being the part of the part of the adventure set world to begin with [tho only a few actually have that setting]. Well from hat I wrote it can be noted that they’re very cliche, but I use them as sort of stops in reading longer mangas, as most of them are up to 20 chapters long at the time. Well actually now that I’m looking at the list I see one that I can bring up a little more, called I Was Kicked out of the Hero’s Party Because I Wasn’t a True Companion so I Decided to Have a Slow Life at the Frontier, I had to copy paste this name, coz reasons... In this one the mc is actually a resident of the world the story is set in, which is a bit more of a rare sight in these, tho the part about being kicked out of the hero’s party is really common. The main difference is that instead of it focusing on the adventure part and having mc train, get skills etc, as most of adventure/isekais do, it develops the romance, it’s just 21 chapters long and I already love the way it’s going.

Then there’s supernatural or fantasy mixed with romance. There are very few of these, as majority of them can be either placed into slice of life romances or adventure romances. There’s not really much to talk about, the only difference between them and adventure/isekais is the leveling system and all.

After that I have few slice of life and romance fantasy pieces, out of which I already talked about few of them already, Tanikaku Cawaii, Gal Gohan or you know the long name one On the way home...

Horror genre is my most recent preference, you see, over time my taste degraded so much that I sometimes like to just watch characters suffer through gore and so on, or actual horror romances, which is basically romance between a human and a ghost or zombie apocalypse, vampire love, these kinds of things. Usually as long there are demons or other beings tha devour humans I put it in here. The ones I’d appoint would be Dreamcide, a great Korean zombie apocalyptic manhwa, it surely doesn’t lack content to read, with its 171 chapters, the story is mostly about the main character’s chaotic ability to time travel and his will to save the future before the shit can go down. The second one is called Sachi-iro no One room. I greatly enjoyed reading it. It’s in this group even tho it’s not really a horror, I just noticed... But well I’ll leave it be. The genres are romance, slice in life, psychological, drama. What I love about this one is that it doesn’t reveal the thoughts of character and just leads you to believe something, to then blow your mind, showing you that the actual motives behind characters’ behavior is just the total opposite of what you expect.

That’s basically all the groups. There are just 6 more mangas on the top of my list, basically the ones I want to immediately notice when they release, because I l love them the most of all on the list or are just left at the cliffhanger.

With that I end my post. It was really lovely to let my hands let free and write this, I really lacked it during the last few months, but never really felt like going here and just spending one and half a hour writing, coz well, with the online school and stuff, pc was the last thing I wanted to see really and then the time for me to pick graduation topic and start working on it came and all, and I just felt like it now, tho almost turned around when the stupid 2 step verification kept rejecting me for 15 minutes, really glad I didn’t.

Also 1503 words, this post is a beast among the beasts.

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blackbird-brewster · 8 years ago

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Libraries are Magic!

Around age 10/11 I was diagnosed with ADHD. As long as I took my meds, I could focus in school and could continue my reading habits. But I was only on meds for a few years. I’m not really sure why the meds stopped, maybe my new GP didn’t agree with pumping a young child full of stimulants? I honestly have NO recollection of why my treatment stopped. But it did. So around age 14, I stopped reading regularly.

I would read the mandatory novels for school (maybe, mostly I used Spark Notes) and I would read one or two novels a YEAR for recreation. This continued into adulthood. The problem was, with untreated ADHD I had such a hard time following a book that I would just give up reading anything longer than a short story. It was SO frustrating as someone who had always loved reading.

The only way I could read a novel would be if I set aside the time to read it front to back in one sitting. Otherwise, if I read a chapter here and a chapter there, I would totally forget what was happening. This lead to re-reading the previous chapters over and over, which is not only time consuming but so infuriating. Reading became hyperfocus/all at once or zero focus/none at all.

Because of this, if I feel the urge to read I just re-read the same few books over and over time and again because I’m familiar enough with them that I can follow them if I read them over a longer period of time. (It’s like putting on your favorite movie in the background that you don’t actually have to pay attention to in order to enjoy)

Okay, enough of the tragic backstory. Let’s get to the plot...

Libraries are Magic.

A few days ago I needed to print some stuff and my flat mate’s printer stopped working. Rather than trekking into town to go to the office supply store (where I usually do my printing), I decided to wonder down the street to the library... Before this week, I could count the number of times I’ve been in a public library in the past twenty years on one hand. I haven’t had a library card since I was 9 years old. This was back when you had to look through the card catalog to find a book, it was a LONG time ago.

Because of my reading difficulties, I’ve had no use for public libraries. They give me anxiety. I haven’t actually finished a book in over FIVE years. I’ve started a few, but I never finish them. This is not something I am proud of. I feel shame for not being able to read and enjoy novels like I used to when I was a kid. I was always ahead in reading comprehension compared to other kids my age but I feel like now, I still have the reading comprehension of a 12 year old.

Now, Christchurch has a lot of libraries. The Christchurch City Library network consists of 22 libraries for a city with a population of 375,000. I mean, maybe other cities have this many? But I wouldn’t really know since I’ve never paid attention to them. That just seems like A LOT of libraries in one city!? And the thing is, they are AMAZING libraries.

I had previously been in about three of them around the city and they are all very modern looking. I remember thinking they seemed pretty nice but I was usually just there to use the computer for 5 minutes, so I never actually explored.

Last week I read [this post] about libraries and I realized how long it had been since I had REALLY explored a library. Libraries I remembered didn’t have any of these modern wonders people were writing about. I was pretty inspired by that post and so I decided to overcome my anxiety this week and get back into the library. Instead of just running in and out of the library to print what I needed, I decided to get a library card.

When I walked in, I timidly asked a woman at the help desk for assistance. I told her I wanted to get a library card and she took me over to another desk. Because of my anxiety regarding libraries, I had done extensive research on what I needed to get a library card -- so I was already prepared with my ID and proof of address. She had me fill out the membership form and she opened a drawer and asked me what colour I wanted. You get to pick a colour of library card! (I obviously got pink, seeing as it is the best colour) She registered my card in the system and wrote my name on it and handed it to me.

I guess she registered that I looked like a lost puppy because she asked if I knew about all the things my brand new card entitled me to. I admitted I hadn’t had a library card in nearly twenty years and she looked as if that was her absolute favorite thing to hear.

She pulled up the CCL website and walked me through EVERY part. I mean EVERY part. She showed me how to search the entire city catalog online, how to places holds (if you want a book from a different branch they will transport it to your favorite branch and keep it on hold for you for only $3!! OR if you have disabilities which limit your access to the library it’s FREE!!), how to create reading lists, how to see what I have checked out and when they’re due back, if I have late fees, basically everything you need when you want books or media.

THEN she showed me the eLibrary!! With my library card, I have access to over 47,000 ebooks and audio books to download FOR FREE. Including everything from major literary works to cookbooks to scholarly articles to resources on how to learn new hobbies. Basically anything you want is available to you digitally now. Click of a button.

There are also all sorts of community events and classes you can go to that are all sponsored through the library.

At this point, I am blown away. I am actually crying at the idea of all of this knowledge and all of these resources being readily available to me FOR FREE.

This woman looks at me, sees I’m crying and just smiles the most genuine and loving smile any stranger has ever given me. (I suspect most adults don’t usually have this reaction to getting a library card. But I’m not most adults.) I imagine it must have been pretty satisfying to her to get a REAL reaction to how MAGICAL the library is. Look Claudine (I asked her name), I am 100% here for you taking me on this incredible journey from my faded memories of cranky old librarians and dusty books and jettisoning me into the 21st century. THANK. YOU.

Once she releases me to browse on my own, it is like I have landed in some uncharted territory that is full of spectacular things to experience.

Our library is complete with self service checkout and return stations, computer areas, flat screen tvs, cozy reading areas, huge media libraries, free wi-fi, some apparently have cafes, others have Xbox360 or PS4 to play, and of course...thousands upon thousands of books. I eagerly approached the catalog computer and type in the title of a book our midwife recommended. Bam. Not only does it show me all copies available within the 22 libraries, it shows availability, holds, wait lists etc. I click on the title and navigate to the page that shows it’s available at that branch and where to find it. It was as if I just became my own librarian!

I’ve always been a fan of numbers so the dewy decimal system is a fave of mine. I have absolutely NO trouble finding the book on the shelf. I traced my fingers over the library sticker and thumb threw the pages and clutched it close to my chest. It was my first library book in twenty years and I was emotional.

I wandered around every section, mind racing with what I should read. I sort of ended up psyching myself out about the fact just because I had access to the library didn’t actually cure my ADHD and reading issues. So I decided to just go print what I had originally come in for and check out the pregnancy book.

During my two hour visit, I had to ask for help about five times. But after my experience with Claudine, I didn’t feel ashamed to have to ask questions that were probably common sense. The workers helped me every time and never made me feel judged, even when I asked where the kids chapter books were. Or how do I log in to the computer now that I have a card. Or how do I check stuff out.

When I scanned my card at the checkout computer, it felt like that beep was the indication of a whole new exciting part of my adult life. I cannot even describe how happy I was to check out a book.

I now have the CCL app on my phone, a list of books to check out and a plan to go back this weekend. I even applied to be a book shelver at one of the nearby branches AND I started reading a new novel today!! I am really obsessed with the idea that these great big, amazingly accessible, places of adventure exist and it’s FREE. I feel like I’m a kid all over again.I cannot wait to see where this rekindled passion leads me.

TL;DR: LIBRARIES ARE MAGICAL! AND FREE! AND EVEN IF YOU HAVE DISABILITIES PEOPLE ARE (PROBABLY) GOING TO BE NICE TO YOU AND HELP YOU FIND WHATEVER YOU NEED!

So go to your local library, check it out. PLEASE! I bet it will blow your mind.

#libraries #books and reading #public libraries #book appreciation #actually adhd #about me 2k17 #long post #story time

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mageoffarts · 7 years ago

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To Summarize:

Things have been happening. Things are still happening. It will be difficult to post everything in order. For now, let me start off by posting a copy of the message I sent to Last Podcast on the Left, as I feel it’s a decent summary of my situation, as of yesterday.

Hey Marcus, Ben, and Henry. My wife and I are big fans of the show. But let’s get to the real meat of my email. My house is haunted and y'all are partially involved.

So we live in an apartment complex, specifically a two-story townhouse. A couple months back, one of our neighboring tenants dies. I don’t have a lot more details than that at the moment, as we are not the type of people to go around asking for details about other people’s business. What little we’ve heard indicates that whoever it was died very suddenly.

This next paragraph is a little hazy in my mind, but I wrote about it in text messages to a friend. I’ll locate them and verify this soon.

About a week after the neighbor’s death, in the middle of the night, I feel something grab my ass. It was a sudden, jarring thing that wakes me up. I immediately ask my wife to see if it’s her, but she’s too groggy to answer properly. As I’m laying there, wide awake, trying to figure out if I imagined it or not, something grabs my ass again.

Of course I freak out and don’t sleep for the rest of the night. My wife remembers none of this. Also worth mentioning was that earlier in the night, the white noise app I use on my phone started malfunctioning. Instead of the usual thunderstorm noises, I woke up to the sound of it screeching an unidentifiable stream of sounds at me. I was unable to shut it off by normal means, I had to physically take the battery out of the phone to make it stop. It has never done this before or since.

For the next couple of months, things are quiet. In its absence, I assumed the ghost had either moved on to the other side or started haunting other residents in the apartment. And now we get to the present, and where you all fit into the story. I listen to your episodes on the Enfield Poltergeist, and it honestly kind of changed my views on ghosts and hauntings in general. And this is where shit gets more intense.

Saturday night / early sunday morning, Aug 12/13, around 2 AM. My wife is asleep. We have two cats, they’re downstairs. I’m lying in bed awake, having a mental conversation with myself (as per usual when I can’t sleep). Right now I’m thinking about the paranormal. I’m thinking about how plenty of people (like Henry) believe very strongly in the paranormal without ever experiencing a paranormal event themselves. I think to myself, very clearly, “I’m like that. I’ve never had a paranormal experience either… well, except for the time a ghost grabbed my ass.”

Loudly, clearly, I hear from the stairs: THUD THUD.

I immediately flash back to the infield poltergeist, where they used the one-knock no, two-knock-yes system. I am freaked out. We have a poorly built apartment, noises are not uncommon from the building’s weight shifting or air pressure or whatever. That’s not what this was. This was a clear, heavy knock, in response to my casual mental statement. This is even stranger, because I didn’t say anything out loud, I only thought it. But I also remember that in the Enfield Poltergiest, the ghost was also noted to respond to the investigators’ thoughts as well as their actions. This Thing is responding to my thoughts. Being a coward, I spend most of the night trying not to actively think any more thoughts that a ghost might want to respond to.

Before the night is over, I hear one of the cats meowing from downstairs. It’s the type of meowing she does when she wants help with something. This isn’t uncommon, this is an older cat with bad eyesight in the dark, and she sometimes gets lost even in our own house. We’ve got smart lighting, so from the bed I turn on the downstairs lights so she can find her way back upstairs. But she doesn’t come up the stairs, and she doesn’t stop meowing. A few minutes later, I come downstairs myself to check it out. The cat is sitting at the front door, staring at it, and meowing in distress.

My first thought is that there’s a possum or some similar animal in our yard. But i also think about that Dear David haunting story that’s been getting popular on the internet lately. One aspect of the story is the cats sitting vigil at the guy’s front door and meowing in distress. And I notice that the other cat, who is usually super cuddly and friendly, is nowhere to be found. Finally I pick up our elderly cat and carry her up the stairs to the bedroom. She does not argue or try to squirm away like she usually does when someone picks her up. But when I set her down on the bad, she jumps in shock, like she got shocked by static electricity. But she quickly recovers and settles down on the bed. She doesn’t meow for the rest of the night. She doesn’t seem tense. But for the rest of the night, any time I look at her, she’s watching the stairs.

Finally, that night is over. Let’s fast forward to Sunday night / early Monday morning, August 13/14. You may notice my notes are getting more specific with each incident. I have begun to take notes immediately after each incident. The following is a slightly edited version of my immediate notes.

It was 2ish AM when I woke up feeling extreme nausua. I’m lying on my back, my wife is on her side facing away from me. There was a cat on the bed, the younger one, on my wife’s side of the bed. A few minutes pass. As I’m trying to will the nausea away, I feel something grab my dick. I was entirely awake for this. Afterwards the nausua was mostly gone.

Immediately i checked to see if my wife or even the cat could have been responsible, but the wife’s hand wasn’t close enough, and the cat was even further away, and both were asleep. As far as I could tell there was no possible source. My surprise woke my wife. I told her what happened, but I am not sure if she was awakened enough to understand me. I quickly checked the time on my phone (2:53) and wrote down immediate details on my notebook app.

At about 2:58 I went to the bathroom to clear my head, and write down any further details as I remember them. On my way, the wife noticed my distress, but mostly just seemed annoyed by my waking her up. I need to stress again that I was awake during this entire incident. The nausea has come back a bit, but not nearly as strong as the initial wave that woke me up.

The nausea was very unusual. At first i wondered if the chicken I cooked for dinner was underdone, or drank too much (2 beers, 2 gin and tonics), or some combination thereof. It’s still very possible. It’s also possible that the rush of adrenalin i felt when something grabbed me pushed away the feelings of nausea, and now it’s coming back because my adrenalin wore off.

The wife, now fully awake, also feels nausea, though her dick remains ungrabbed. She correctly points out that neither cat seems at all agitated by these events. The older cat is sitting on the reading chair fast asleep.

Typing it all out, all of these events seem dumb as hell to me. I’m even leaving a few minor events out for brevity’s sake, this is already much longer than the email I intended to write. But nevertheless I am convinced that some Thing is in my apartment. I know how much Henry wants to have a haunting, he is more than welcome to take this ghost off my hands.

I have no idea what to do next. I don’t want to communicate with it, I just want it out of my apartment. I am out of ideas and I am googling how to burn sage for purifying auras like an idiot. Any advice and/or moral support would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time, - [redacted]

#witchcraft #paranormal #paranoia #witch #ghost #poltergeist #infield #last podcast on the left #lpotl #wicca #wiccan #medium #spirits #magick #haunted #haunted ass #haunted dick

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whattheschmuck · 8 years ago

Photo

(click through pics to enlarge and view)

Intellectual property has been stolen from me.

Not just me, this was stolen from @darktonic too--seemingly with the intention of posting its content in personal works given the context of the situation. I really didn’t want to have to actually call out the person I’ve been having problems with and potentially identify them but this is something I can’t ignore. Before I continue, I’m going to objectively give context for the situation and explain what happened and also clarify that the issues are only between me and [person]. So, here goes...

About a week ago I had a fight with a now-former friend and collaborator. Now, this person has been in a pretty shit position so I, doing what I felt was right without being asked to because that’s just the type of person I legitimately want to be, decided to try to be there to help said person because I did care and I did want to help. This isn’t the reason why I was so livid with the individual in question but it is important and it is related. Let me be clear, the way this entire situation started wasn’t so bad. It was enough to piss me off (which is very difficult to do, might I add) but it wasn’t something that I’d hold a grudge over. It’s what happened afterwards that made it bad. It all goes like this: in the past I’ve already had some quarrels with [person], and the thing in this instance in particular was an issue that has come up several times in the past. And every single time it has come up I felt like it was very clear that I was bothered by it.

I was excited because I met a pretty awesome girl on a dating app (Her) and was expressing that. As some of you may realize, if you live in/go to school in a conservative area of a conservative state like I do, a lot of LGBT people try to fly under the radar (myself included for a time) for their own safety...thus making it really difficult for me to find a girlfriend the “organic” way. So Her is more than just a last resort, it is the only safe way that I currently know of to find a girlfriend. [Person] knows this.

Despite that fact that [person] knew this, they once again made me feel kinda bad for using “lame” dating apps because I wasn’t meeting people “organically.” Given the fact that I have had this debate several times prior to this, I became irritated and reminded them that I have been punched in the face at school for being gay. For being gay. So yes, I thought it was really insensitive to say that when [person] knew I was attacked. I also thought it was doubly insensitive given the fact that [person], who isn’t a U.S. citizen, knew what was happening with Trump and knew how anxious I was about the entire situation. Despite this, in response to “yeah, but you’ve never been punched in the face for being fucking gay,” [person] said “no I haven’t, but I have been for being white, for sticking up for someone, for no reason at all, etc. etc.”

I wasn’t insinuating in any way shape or form that this type of stuff only happens to gay people. But the point is that we get attacked for the same reasons and then some! I can’t walk up to random women and start flirting with them--the fact of the matter is that being gay is not as socially acceptable as being straight. Redneck guys will punch you in the face like they did to me. You will be sexually assaulted for being gay...like me. Yes. That happened. I managed to get away before it got really bad but that still freaks me out to this day. I said all of this in the conversation and then because I was so livid, I just said “fuck it, just forget it,” and left the chat to cool down. But not before being further angered by their response: “Don’t get sore at me over nothing, you brought it up like it only happens to gays or something. Jesus.”

So by this point, I’m completely pissed off and it normally takes me a few days to simmer down before I can have a calm discussion after the fact. But here’s the thing: they just kept going. And I kept getting more angry. First of all...

1) I had confided in [person] about the issue a while ago because it had happened a while ago. It is not my problem if this was not deemed important enough to remember. 2) Since when was making a point equated with weaponization? What right-minded individual would want to weaponize sexual assault? I did not appreciate that insinuation, and I was still really livid at the time so I just didn’t respond because, again, I knew things would escalate if I did. So I’m already a bit stung by that on top of still being angry but I let it go to calm down instead. Then I got another message about 14 hours later: “This is getting out of hand. What you're doing is >actual emotional abuse<, and I know you know how it affects me, because we've talked about it before. You're being cruel.”

Now tell me something, how is taking time to simmer down suddenly equated to emotional abuse?! I know I said I was going to be objective but what?! I was actually emotionally abused up until I left for college. I think I know what emotional abuse is, and I would never emotionally abuse an individual. Never. And after how much I cared and was there for [person]? That hurt. A lot. Because it basically told me I was an abusive POS and that my help apparently meant nothing. That despite the fact that I always drop everything to be there for anyone at anytime, I’m abusive and cruel? I made it very clear after that point that I was angry, that it took a lot to get me that pissed off, that I need time to simmer down, and then I told [person] to leave me alone until I could calm down.

They didn’t leave me alone. They continued messaging me. Then they essentially decided our friendship for me before I even had a chance to calm down by deleting/unfollowing me on all forms of social media. Then they’re still actively monitoring my social media despite not following me anymore, actively venting to a mutual friend over posts that I had literally just made, seeing every single post as being about them, and then they started to message me again after reading a post I made on here expressing how hurt and emotionally exhausted I was.

This was really befuddling to me considering they removed me from all social media and essentially sent the message to me that they didn’t want to be friends, and yet just because they randomly changed their mind I owed them a response after all of that? They also tried tactics like pretending to get Skype call notifications from me when I had very apparently not tried to call them just so they could get a response out of me. They tried again and again but after being as hurt as I was, I was to the point where I didn’t even want anything to do with them anymore. I was also deeply unnerved by how much they were messaging me and I was also unnerved by some other stuff that I know happened that I’m not going to discuss on here to be respectful. So, it got to the point where I was forced to block them.

So getting to the theft now with this context... [Person] collaborated on a fic with me and Dark in the past and they apparently wanted a part they wrote. I was obviously leery initially because it came across as very sketchy and seemed like another attempt to get my attention (why did they need to ask me for it? They could have asked the other collaborator). I didn’t know their intentions for writing material from a fic that is currently being rewritten. Ultimately, it was determined that the excerpt was indeed 100% theirs and we released that and nothing else--we weren’t going to give them access to all of the fic for obvious reasons. Anything that is collaborative is not any one person’s property and should not be used for personal submissions if other people have participated in it. I also want to clarify really quickly that we are not using any of [person]’s ideas in the fic rewrite because we have more integrity than that.

So fine, but now I’m finding out that they’re trying to claim that chapter 17 of the fic is basically entirely theirs too which it very much is not. Then I checked the Croft Manor e-mail to see that it had essentially been hijacked and the recovery e-mail changed. Then I saw that they stole a copy of the chapter in question for themselves--seemingly with the intent of using its content for their own submissions. I feel like I don’t need to tell you why that isn’t okay but in case I do, let me be very clear: just from looking at the doc’s detailed revision history I found that out of 7712 words in the chapter’s content, and based on criteria like who had the ideas behind content and stuff I wrote in the chapter alone/with [person], I own 3590 words. 47%. And I could probably claim more if I decided to look through my old writing notes. Just writing something doesn’t mean you automatically own the ideas/concepts behind the content.

So no, that chapter is not entirely theirs and it is plagiarism if they even try to post it. So that’s why I’m posting this. And that’s why I put images of the chapter in the beginning (with the slashed-through parts being the parts that I actually own to my knowledge so far). They do not own all of the ideas in there. The scars thing? That was inspired by a poem that I wrote. I own that idea (I forgot to slash out the content associated with it so my word total is actually probably closer to at or above 50% ownership). They do not own any of the past fanon referenced via character dialogue and if they try to reference that, they are plagiarizing a collectively collaborative work’s canon. In all reality, they only have a right to naked Salara woundcare and that. Is. It.

If they post anything else, they are thieves and they are plagiarizing my intellectual property as well as the intellectual property of others and gaining a readership off of mine and Dark’s fic. Yes, they worked on it but they are not entitled to anything. Just like how Dark and I wouldn’t be entitled to anything either. Because we only have a partial ownership of the fic. So I’m telling you now, if they publish this chapter in any way, shape, or form whether it be verbatim or including my writing or ideas they are thieves and deserve to be treated as such.

#S.S. Endurance #Salara #Lara Croft #Sam Nishimura #tomb raider #plagiarism #intellectual property theft #triggers #writing

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justplainkimmi · 6 years ago

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Chrome Extensions Every PPC Pro Should Try: 2019 Edition

Back in 2017, I wrote the post 11 Google Chrome extensions that every PPC pro should try. I would guess that I have used one of those extensions every business day since then.

I love Chrome extensions because they’re an easy way to save time and automate some of the mundane or difficult tasks that make up our workdays. (And some extensions are just plain fun!)

Since 2017 there have been more and more awesome extensions added to the mix that are worth mentioning, so let’s hop in.

Twitter Pixel Helper

This pixel helper is a must-have when setting up a new Twitter tag on your website.

The extension also helps to ensure dynamic parameter values are passed properly and that the information is formatted correctly.

Right now, the extension is only available in English but should be rolling out in other languages soon.

You can see the instructions and frequently asked questions here.

Keywords Everywhere

This extension is one of our favorites for keyword research.

Not only does it suggest new keywords, but it also features Google keyword search volume, cost per click and competition data. You can easily download the data in Excel, CSV and PDF file formats.

When you use the add-on in Google, you’ll be able to see the data displayed beside the keywords in the search bar dropdown.

You’ll also be able to see “related keywords” and “people also search for” with supporting volume, cost and competition data in the sidebar.

This tool is currently supported for the following sites:

Google.com – Data shown under the search bar.

Google Search Console – Data shown on the Search Analytics page.

Google Analytics – Data shown on the Search Engine Optimization > Queries page.

Google Trends – Data shown in the Queries widget.

Google Keyword Planner – Data shown in a new column.

Google Search – Data shown under the main keyword and related searches.

YouTube – Data shown under the searchbox.

Amazon – Data shown under the searchbox.

eBay – Data shown under the searchbox.

Etsy – Data shown under the searchbox.

UberSuggest – Data shown alongside keywords.

AnswerThePublic.com – Data shown in the popup on the spoke of the wheel and shown in the alphabetic listings.

Soovle.com – Data shown next to each keyword all over the page.

KeywordShitter.com – Data shown under the main text area next to keywords.

Majestic – Anchor Text Report.

Mox Open Site Explorer – Anchor text report.

GTM and Google Analytics Debug

If you need a way to debug GTM and GA implementations, this is your tool!

Updates rolled out for this tool back in November, so if you tried it previously and it was buggy or didn’t do what you needed, give it another shot.

Click & Clean

As a professional who utilizes a computer for work, I can imagine that a lot of people have too many tabs open, need to clear their cache, delete cookies, etc.

I also imagine that being a digital marketer in 2019 means that a lot of you have these issues even more frequently than the normal professional. I know I do.

This add-on can delete browsing history, remove download history, clear cookies, empty cache, clean up hard drives and even scan your PC for malware.

Desktop for Instagram

If you thought Instagram was only an app for your phone, you were wrong!

This add-on allows you to access the mobile site as you do on your smartphone. You can upload full HD photos.

Note that there are some drawbacks on any non-app based Instagram solutions including the fact that you cannot access, send or receive direct messages.

Google Dictionary

Before I found this add-on, I was constantly opening new tabs for the dictionary and thesaurus.

You can select a word and Google will provide the definition. You can also use the search bar to research terms, get definitions and access synonyms.

It’s a copy writer’s best friend!

Project Management Extensions

If your team uses project management solutions like Basecamp, Airtable, Monday, Asana, etc., you can likely find an extension that would make using this solution even easier.

Call Provider Extensions

UberConference, BlueJeans, Cisco WebEx

If you use a call provider, there is likely an extension to make use even easier.

Our favorite call provider is UberConference and the add-on allows you to quickly copy call line information and start conferences with just a few clicks.

Extensions Manager

If you have this many extensions, you might want to consider one more add-on to easily enable, disable and uninstall extensions.

What’s your favorite add-on for digital marketing? We’d love to hear in the comments below!

from http://bit.ly/2XTCNTk

#Facebook marketing

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sheminecrafts · 6 years ago

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Squad is the new screensharing chat app everyone will copy

Squad could be the next teen sensation because it makes it easy to do nothing… together. Spending time with friends in the modern age often means just being on your phones next to each other, occasionally showing off something funny you found. Squad lets you do this even while apart, and that way of punctuating video chat might make it the teen girl “third place” like Fortnite is for adolescent boys.

With Squad, you fire up a video chat with up to six people, but at any time you can screenshare what you’re seeing on your phone instead of showing your face. You can browse memes together, trash talk about DMs or private profiles, brainstorm a status update, co-work on a project or get consensus on your Tinder swipe. It’s deceptively simple, but remarkably alluring. And it couldn’t have happened until now.

How Squad screensharing looks

Squad takes advantage of Apple’s ReplayKit for screensharing. While it was announced in 2015, it wasn’t until June 2018’s iOS 12 that ReplayKit became stable and easy enough to be built into a consumer app for teens. Meanwhile, plus-size screens and speedy LTE and upcoming 5G networks make screensharing watchable. And with Instagram aging and Snapchat shrinking, there’s demand for a more intimately connected social network.

Squad only launched its app last week, but droves of Facebook and Snap employees have signed up to spy on and likely copy the startup, co-founder and CEO Esther Crawford tells me. Screensharing would fit well in group video chat startup Houseparty too. To fuel its head start, Squad has the $2.2 million it raised before it pivoted away from Molly, the team’s previous App where people can make FAQs about themselves. That cash came from betaworks, Y Combinator, #BUILTBYGIRLS, Basis Set Ventures, Jesse Draper, Gary Vaynerchuk, Niv Dror, and [Disclosure: former TechCrunch editor] Alexia Bonatsos. Next, Squad wants to let people tune in to screenshares via URL to unlock a new era of Live broadcasting, and equip other apps with the capability through a Squad SDK.

“People under 24 do video chat way different than people 25 and above” says Crawford. Adding screensharing is “an excuse for hanging out.”

Serious ideas are preludes to toys

Screensharing has long been common in enterprise communication apps like Webex, Zoom and Slack. I even called a collaborative browsing and desktop screensharing app my favorite project from Facebook’s 2011 college hackathon. But we don’t just use our screens for work any more. Teens and young adults live on the digital plane, navigating complex webs of friendships, entertainment and academia through their phones. Squad makes those experiences social — including the “social” networks we often scroll through in isolation. Charles and Ray Eames said “Toys are preludes to serious ideas,” but this time, it is happening in reverse.

Squad co-founders from left: Ethan Sutin, Esther Crawford

“The idea came from a combination of things — a pain we were experiencing as a team,” Crawford recalls. My development team is constantly sending each other screenshots and screen recordings. It seemed ridiculous that I can’t just show you what’s on my screen. It was a business use case internally.” But then came the wisdom of a 13-year-old. “My daughter over the summer was bugging me. ‘Why can’t I just show what’s on my screen with my friends?’ I said I think it’s not technically possible.” That’s when Crawford discovered advances in ReplayKit meant it suddenly was possible.

Crawford had already seen this cycle of tool to toy before, as she was an early YouTuber. Back in the mid-2000s, people thought of YouTube as a place to host videos about eBay listings, professional presentations or dating profile supplements. “They couldn’t imagine that if you let people just reliably and easily upload video content, there’d be all these creative enterprises.”

Use cases for Squad

After stints in product marketing at Coach.com and Stride Labs, she built Estherbot — a chatbot version of herself that let people learn about her. Indeed, 50,000 people ended up trying it, convincing her people needed new ways to reveal themselves to friends. She met Ethan Sutin through the project and together they co-founded FAQ app Molly before it fizzled out and was shut down. “Molly wasn’t working; it had high initial engagement sessions, but then they would drop off. Maybe it’s not the right time for the augmented version of you,” noted Crawford.

Crawford and Sutin pivoted Molly into Squad to keep exploring new formats for vulnerability. “What excited Ethan and I was this mission to help people feel less lonely.”

Alone, together

Squad recommends apps to screenshare

Squad worked, thanks to a slick way to activate screensharing. The app launches to the selfie camera similar to Snapchat, but with a + button for inviting friends to a video call. Tap the screenshare button at the bottom, select Squad and start the broadcast. To guide users toward the best screensharing experiences, a menu of apps emerges encouraging users to open Instagram, TikTok, Bumble, their camera roll and others.

People can bounce back and forth between screensharing and video chat, and tap a friend’s window to view it full-screen. And when they want another friend to see what they’re seeing, Squad goes viral. One concern is that Squad breaks privacy controls. You could have friends show you someone’s Instagram profile you’re blocked by or aren’t allowed to see. But the same goes for hanging out in person, and this is one reason Squad doesn’t let you download videos of your chats and is considering screenshot warnings.

What’s so special about Squad is that it lacks the intensity of traditional video chat, where you constantly feel pressured to perform. You can fire up a chat room, and then go back to phoning as you please with your screen displayed instead of your blank face (though the Android version in beta offers picture-in-picture so you can show your mug and the screen).

“There’s no picture-in-picture on iOS, but younger users don’t even really care. I can point it at the bed and you can tell me when there’s something to look at,” Crawford tells me. A few people, alone in their houses, video chatting without looking at each other, still feel a sense of togetherness.

The future of Squad could grant that feeling to a massive audience of a celebrity or influencer. The startup is working on shareable URLs that creators could post on other social networks like Twitter or Facebook that their fans could click to watch. Tagging along as Kylie Jenner or Ninja play around on their phone could bring people closer to their heroes while serving as a massive growth opportunity for Squad. Similarly, colonizing other apps with an SDK for screensharing could allow Squad to recruit their users.

Squad makes starting a screenshare easy

The startup will face stiff technical challenges. Lag or low video quality destroy the feeling of delight it delivers, Crawford admits, so the team is focused on making sure the app works well even in rural areas like middle America where many early users live. But the real test will be whether it can build a new social graph upon the screensharing idea if already popular apps build competing features. Gaming tools like Discord and Twitch already offer web screensharing, and I suggested Facebook should bring the feature to Messenger when in late-2017 it launched in its Workplace office collaboration app.

Helping a friend choose when to swipe right on Tinder via Squad

In June I wrote that Instagram and Snapchat would try to steal the voice-activated visual effects at the center of an app called Panda. Snapchat started testing those just two months later. Instagram’s whole Stories feature was cloned from Snapchat, and it also cribbed Q&A Stories from Polly. Overshadowed, Panda and Polly have faded from the spotlight. With Facebook and Snap already sniffing around Squad, it’s quite possible they’ll try to copy it. Squad will have to hope first-mover advantage and focus can defeat a screensharing feature bolted on to apps with hundreds of millions or even billions of users.

But regardless of who delivers this next phase of sharing, it’s coming. “Everyone knows that the content flooding our feeds is a filtered version of reality. The real and interesting stuff goes down in DMs because people are more authentic when they’re 1:1 or in small group conversations,” Crawford wrote.

Perhaps there’s no better antidote to the poison of social media success theater that revealing that beyond the Instagram highlights, we’re often just playing around on our phones. Squad might not be glamorous, but it’s authentic and a lot more fun.

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fmservers · 6 years ago

Text

Squad is the new screensharing chat app everyone will copy

How Squad screensharing looks

“People under 24 do video chat way different than people 25 and above” says Crawford. Adding screensharing is “an excuse for hanging out.”

Serious ideas are preludes to toys

Squad co-founders from left: Ethan Sutin, Esther Crawford

Use cases for Squad

Crawford and Sutin pivoted Molly into Squad to keep exploring new formats for vulnerability. “What excited Ethan and I was this mission to help people feel less lonely.”

Alone, together

Squad recommends apps to screenshare

Squad makes starting a screenshare easy

Helping a friend choose when to swipe right on Tinder via Squad

Via Josh Constine https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years ago

Text

WHAT MADE LISP IS SO GREAT

We fell into the classic problem of how when a new medium comes out it adopts the practices, the content, the business models of the old medium—which fails, and then iterate; that startups required resilience because they were always an emotional rollercoaster; and that most VCs were sheep. Ignorance can't solve everything though. They have an interesting business. Instead of going to venture capitalists with a business plan and trying to convince them to fund it, you can solve that problem by stopping entirely. I never felt that in Boston. Work people like doesn't pay well, for reasons of supply and demand. They may also make the biggest investment. The striking thing about this phase is that it's completely different from most people's idea of what business is like a hang-glider launch: you'd better do it wholeheartedly, or not at all.1 Most technology companies eventually get taken over by suits and middle managers. The phenomenon isn't limited to startups.

That's only off by a factor of 10 or so. Once something becomes a big marketplace, you ignore it at your peril. One group got an exploding term-sheet from some VCs.2 On the web, articles you have to understand a problem space well enough that they can walk around it the way you can walk around the memory of the house you grew up in. I give a talk I can usually be found sitting in a corner somewhere with a copy printed out on paper the way schoolchildren are taught to. Their only hope now is to buy all the best Ajax startups before Google does.3 In retrospect, I wonder what's new online.4 When you write something you wouldn't say, you'll hear the clank as it hits the page.5 How little money it can take to start a startup.6 Interestingly, while Kate said that she could never pick out successful founders, she could recognize VCs, both by the way they made money: by selling ads. Slowness is to the advantage of investors.

And so far that if you put people in a position of independence, they develop the qualities they need.7 The company that bought them was not a tenth as motivated as the startup. Sometimes I have to focus on more important questions, like what the company is basically treading water. They have an interesting business.8 Once something becomes a big marketplace, you ignore it at your peril. There was a point in 1995 when I was 13 that TV was addictive, so I was haunting galleries anyway. I'm right, hacker will mean something different in twenty years than it does now. So steam engines spread fast. What students do in their classes will change too. Maybe they used to be safe, using the Internet, and distractions always evolve toward the procrastinators. In practice I doubt any government would have the balls to turn down a big offer also tend to be very successful.

Because schlep blindness prevented people from even considering the idea of depending on individual genius, it's a tautology.9 Suits, for example—can't help but look smug. On the web, and they clearly have existing VCs in their sights. So make a list and try to buy some.10 And yet they're probably the most productive part of the money.11 Are you still in NYC?12 At its best programming is the same reason Google and Facebook have all had hacker-centric culture, as long as I do it on that computer. The Ajax boom didn't start till early 2005, when Google Maps appeared and the term Ajax was coined.

Ask Is this the way I'd say this if I were talking to a live audience makes you think of new things, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction.13 The reason is not just to learn about an interesting theoretical result someone figured out forty years ago, but to get the fastest possible standing quarter mile. How tech-saturated Silicon Valley is. It's that way with most startups too.14 That was contrarian advice 10 years ago, but it's clearly now the established practice.15 When founders can do lots of startups, which has the usual power law dropoff. Tip for acquirers: when a startup turns you down, consider raising your offer, because there's a good chance the outrageous price they want will later seem a bargain. That's when you have a US startup called X and you don't have x.

But seeing what startups are really like will at least show other organizations what to aim for. But are these just outliers?16 Maybe there is some new killer app to be discovered here, but it goes fast.17 And board votes are rarely split. But you can't browse the web, and they don't care where you went to college. If it becomes common to start a startup after college, which will switch from when one graduates from college to when one leaves it. So are talks useless?

What a solitary task startups are. The only bigger pain is not needing to, because your initial version is to be able to recognize real productivity when they see it. In big companies there's always going to be. Here's a handy rule for startups: competitors are rarely as dangerous as they seem. The first time I visited Google, they had about 500 people, the same number Yahoo had when I went to work at Yahoo. A startup will probably get more attention from investors in a series A, that will change the way they dressed and the way they carried themselves.18 If they merely extracted the actual value, they'd have made less. We know from Google and Yahoo that grad students can start successful startups.19 It's part of the conversation.

Notes

VCs and Micro-VCs and Micro-VCs. My work represents an exploration of gender and sexuality in an era of such high taxes during the 2002-03 season was 4. Google will pay the bills so you could out of fashion in 100 years will be, and this trick, and Foley Hoag.

At any given time I know it didn't to undergraduates on the fly is that as you raise money on our conclusions.

But that oversimplifies his role. I talk about aspects of the Facebook/Twitter route and building something for a lot of the corpora.

Moving large amounts of money.

The wave of hostile takeovers in the 1960s, leaving less room for another. And it's just as it's easier to take over the details. In a country richer; if there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs, and as we think. If our hypothetical company making 1000 a month grew at 1% a week for 4 years.

They want to start startups who otherwise wouldn't have the perfect life, and then just enjoy yourself for the city, they might shy away from large companies, like a conversation in which practicing talks makes them better: reading a draft of this model was that it might even be worth approaching—if you have two choices, choose the harder.

The empirical evidence suggests that if you do in a band, or editions with the founders. Google is not always as deliberate as its sounds. Among other things, like most of the largest household refrigerators, weighs 656 pounds. 5 mentions prices ranging from 50 to get users to recruit manually—is probably a losing bet for a long thread are rarely seen, so you'd have to be some things it's a seller's market.

Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991. Of the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but he refused because a part has come unscrewed, you can't avoid doing sales by hiring sufficiently qualified designers.

There are fields now in which internal limits are expressed. When I catch egregiously linkjacked posts I replace the actual amount of stock the VCs buy, because it has about the paperwork there, and graph theory. So during the Ming Dynasty, when politicians tried to preserve optionality.

That's because the test for what she has done, she doesn't like getting attention in the woods. Unless you're very smooth if you're going to drunken parties.

Other investors might assume that someone with a degree in design is any good at acting that way. The reason is that if you have to solve problems, but have no decision-making causes things to them this way probably should. VCs and Micro-VCs.

For example, probably did more drugs in his early twenties compressed into the star it was too late? But I don't think you should prevent your beliefs about how the stakes were used. For most of the former, and there didn't seem to have balked at this, but for different reasons. Other investors might assume that the word as in e.

What they forget is that your peers are chosen for you. Statistical Spam Filter Works for Me. In fact the secret weapon of the recruiting funnel. The second biggest regret was caring so much on luck.

One way to answer, and no one thinks of calling that unfair. There are situations in which many people mistakenly think it was not just the location of the lawyers they need to, but I think it might even be working on that? It's interesting to 10,000 computers attached to the Internet.

Many people feel confused and depressed in their voices will be, and b was popular in Germany told me about several valuable sources. As willful people get older. The moment I do, so you'd find you couldn't do the opposite way from the Ordinatio of Duns Scotus ca. Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college or what grades you got in them, and he was notoriously improvident and was soon to reap the rewards.

Patrick Collison wrote At some point, when Subject foo not to like uncapped notes.

Unfortunately the payload can consist of dealing with money and disputes. The closest we got to the frightening lies told by older siblings.

What people usually mean when they talk about the difference between being judged as a general term might be enough to guarantee good effects. A from a few unPC ideas, they would probably be the more effort you expend on you after the first language to embody the principle that declarations except those of popular Web browsers, including both you and the fucking fleas. And the reason the young care so much attention.

And you should be your compass. Investors are fine with funding nerds.

Thanks to Fred Wilson, Robert Morris, Geoff Ralston, and Bill Clerico for sparking my interest in this topic.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #frightening #effort #Ajax #Google #Valley

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