#i'm now at 8k

[lit-in-thy-heart]

if i ever give an estimated word count for a fic that i haven’t finished yet, please add at least 5k to that estimation for a more accurate result.

[duckprintspress]

Urgent: Help Us Not Get Screwed

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

Our Anthology Kickstarter is being scammed.

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

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

Either way, we are fucked.

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

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

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

[cavesalamander]

Hey that one post you made in 2013 is almost at 10k notes

OH TRUST ME I AM WELL AWARE LMAO

My phone has been blowing up for this past week I swear kejfkebfbjdjdkfj

Way back 10 years ago when I said I'd do it, I was still in college and it had jumped to the 5 or 7k or so it was back then, I actually got started working on the damn thing because it looked like it was going to happen.

Then the notes dried up and I was like oh phew, I'm good, I'm fine, I won't have to.

BUT THEN.

This goddamn renaissance of notes has been orchestrated by @composeregg because I've just started playing Mass Effect for them and some other friends and of course my beloved Mako is right there, and I tell them about it.

And hey, what do you know, it turns out I actually do still have that canvas board I started painting it on?? It somehow survived college and like 5 moves.

So like, I guess if yall can do it, at least I won't have to start from scratch?

[ps-cactus]

Shades of Silver Lining - Ch. 4 - posted ✅

Ch.3 <- | -> Ch.5 , the first post aka story teaser + tags

word count: 4135 ✨ [ AO3 ] ✨ [ Wattpad ]

photos by @acslytherpuff girl you are amazing 💕

Thank you @accio-bagel for beta reading and encouragement 😭💖 love you 3000

a/n: Welcome to the other side ✨ Unreliable narrator✨ ! author's opinion ≠ narrator's pls I mean it

Summary: It's the only chapter there will be from an Antagonist aka Officer Roland Foster POV. He he doesn't trust people. Especially he doesn't trust a girl recklessly wielding the wild and destructive magic. And he despises the Gaunts, including that Gaunt boy, who thinks he's being clever with his defiance masquerading as wit. And he can't stand that stubborn and incompetent Ruth Singer.

a/n2: oh, and the next chapter will be Ominis POV. Boy has to go home to try to settle some things.

・・・

The officer’s eyes darted restlessly over the lines, ensuring the enchanted quill hadn't missed any details.

" … Why didn’t you contact the Aurors yesterday, Miss Salters?"

"People were already being threatened around here not so long ago. Contacting Aurors didn’t help. But Sebastian did. … " 

“... … you would entrust your safety to a schoolkid?”

"Yes, I would." 

"And how has that worked out for you, Miss Salters?"

The faintest smirk played in the corner of his lips. Sallow must enjoy regaling his peers with tales of his supposed importance here. Officer Foster didn’t mind. Though an unconventional addition to the office, his trainee was bound to be exceptionally helpful in so many ways.

・・・

This morning, right after Salters stepped out of his private office, was supposed to be the best chance to probe the youngest Gaunt for answers while they were still untouched and unrefined. The brief private conversation—not an interrogation, of course, that would have required too many formalities—had been fruitless, a combination of polished deflections, vague acknowledgements, and no actionable leads. 

The Gaunt boy’s posture, his deliberate pauses, even his final “Officer” and a curt nod as he left—all was too calculated. That kind of control didn’t come naturally; it was learned and practised.

・・・

Roland Foster slid his hand into his jacket pocket, brushing against the medallion he always kept with him. The faded portraits within would forever remind him of the danger posed by magic that strayed too far from the ordinary. Norms existed for a reason—everything beyond them would lead only to ruin.

・・・

“Tell me, you’re sure she remained in the castle the entire night?”

“Yes, sir.” Rexley’s patience in calmly repeating answers to Foster’s questions, as often as the latter required, was one of his finer traits. “She returned early and stayed there until Dinah Hecat escorted her here.”

・・・

“The Gaunts, yet again,” Rexley remarked grimly, gripping the letter. 

“You’re telling me.”

“Officer,” Rexley said, looking thoughtfully at the letter. “I’ve heard you want to investigate everyone who was in Hogsmeade last night. But with Bell’s absence still unresolved, I’d suggest it’s only fair to include Aurors in that ‘everyone.’”

“That’s exactly what’s going to happen, Rexley. But maybe you are implying something specific?”

“Merely that Singer’s squad appears rather prejudiced against the local criminals,” Rexley said, leaning slightly over the desk, eagerness sparkling in his hazel eyes. “After all, Bell is among her team. Naturally, we’ll include our people, too, so they can’t object,” he added, straightening again. 

“How about we start with you then, Rex?” Foster said with a grin, looking up from the second letter he was hurriedly writing. “Set the standard for the rest.”

“Not an issue, sir,” Rexley replied, mirroring the grin. “You know exactly what my wand’s results will be. Just make sure the others don’t get overly anxious.”

・・・

P.S greatly inspired by:

[eddiestightywhities]

love is stored in eddie diaz's kitchen

[ljubimaya]

Hi

[lockandkeyblade]

Something I think is really important to learn as a writer is how to kill your darlings. And I know this is mostly used as a reference to getting rid of scenes and side plots that do not contribute any value to a story but listen, listen.

Sometimes killing your darlings is being 2000 words into writing a chapter and allowing yourself to open a new document and write from a completely different beginning. Sometimes it's opening a blank document and writing that part from the perspective of a completely different character.

Sometimes killing your darling means sitting back because you have in your head the idea that things must go this way, even though it feels like you're pulling teeth to get even one additional sentence out, and you've gotta go-- no. It's okay. I can start again.

Kill your darlings. Let yourself play until the words flow again.

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

okay well. one thing that i absolutely adore abt ieytd3 specifically is their dedication to The Bit. The Bit, in this instance, being the telekinesis.

i first heard of ieytd pretty much the year it came out- although i wavered in and out of the community until a few months before the sequel was announced. within that time, there was this trend in what few ieytd fics were published that they would reject the telekinesis mechanic entirely. they would pretend it didn't exist. they brushed it off as a mandatory game mechanic for a VR title, but obviously it doesn't actually matter in canon. it's unnecessary.

but seeing schell games literally go "nuh uh". and take what's a pretty significant step in a unique direction from their source material. and say "actually, not only is telekinesis canon, but we are going to make it's existence critical to the plot of our entire third installation" was so much fun. i respect them so much for that.

a lot of times i find the best sort of games are those that take their silliness seriously. they don't feel ashamed of doing their own thing- breaking the mold a little bit, if it means developing a deeper sense of identity. they took this mandatory mechanic- essentially the only obstacle between them and an untarnished james bond-esque experience- and said "we can roll with this". and just did.

i love a game that's not ashamed to be what it is.

[leupagus]

Title: Sailing By Writer: leupagus Fandom: Broadchurch Wordcount: 7,695 Rating: T Summary: Six months pass without a word from anyone in Broadchurch. Not that he's bothering to stay in touch himself; he's busy.

~

His only constant is Thursday afternoons, when he skives off early and picks Daisy up from school. They see a film or walk in the park or, when she gets insistent, go to the local where she drinks a lemonade and decimates him at darts. "Did you practice at all while you were in that horrible place?" she asks, landing a beauty of a triple-17. She'll need thirty two to double-out on the next visit; he suspects she stretched out this one to give him another chance.

"Oh aye, made loads of friends down the pub for a friendly match," he says, instead of admitting that it hadn't been that horrible. He takes his stance and just manages an outer bull. "In between my weekly quilting circle and pottery class." He gets a proper bullseye on the second try, but muffs it completely trying for the double-19. "Fuck me running," he mutters, and gathers his darts while his own daughter gasps theatrically, her hand over her mouth.

"Language," she says, and he bides his time until she's up at the line before he pokes her in the side with the flight of a dart. She shrieks and almost takes his eye out, and it's a good afternoon. A good day — maybe on its way to being a good life, again.

[idontwantrobyntodie]

i think i finished the-girl-who-was-born-of-a-fish???

[mariyekos]

One day I want to write an AU where Dante and Vergil were actually born a few hundred/thousand years pre-story, which is something Dante tries to hide while Vergil doesn't. I have 2 main ideas for it- DMC1/3 Fusion AU and DMC4 AU. These got long, so I'm putting them under the cut!

In the DMC1 AU, it'd be sort of like a combination of the anime, DMC3, and what you see in DMC1. Dante'd look like he's in his late 20s for this one. He and Lady would meet because they've both been hired for the same job, then encounter each other on some odd jobs before they end up working together on a big one. Maybe Arkham killed Kalina Ann when Lady was a teenager, but didn't manage to enact the rest of his plans right away so Lady's been chasing him for a decade, hunting demons in hopes of finding a lead. Dante meanwhile just likes the human world, so he goes from place to place hunting demons until it gets too suspicious he's not aging and he has to leave. This AU'd have branching paths at the big job they take take together: the Temen-ni-gru or Mallet Island. In both cases Dante and Vergil haven't spoken for a while. Vergil's gone silent for years or even a decade or two in the past, but he'll have a bad feeling about this particular silence (for good reason).

The main difference between the two would be who Arkham allies with. In both cases, Lady isn't aware of how old Dante is, or just *who* he is until partway through. She knows he's part demon, but with the way he acts she assumes he's actually in his late twenties and the kid of a demon that was probably fairly powerful, but unknown. But the truth would come out partway through, which...would maybe change things, maybe not. It would be a shock regardless.

Back to the branches though, in Mallet you could go with the plot where Arkham is trying to revive Mundus, so Dante intervenes. This one would have a Nelo Angelo bit (making Dante feel terrible because he'd just allowed Mundus to do whatever he wanted with Vergil for who knows how long, all because he hadn't bofhered to check up on his unusually silent brother). I might have a sort of B-plot involving Lady, Arkham, and Trish to accompany the Dante, Mundus, and Vergil angle.

With the Temen-ni-gru, it would be your classic Arkham+Vergil relationship, but with a much older Vergil he wouldn't be tricked by Arkham this time. Arkham would think he has Vergil in the palm of his hand until he clearly doesn't and Vergil deals a fatal blow as soon as Arkham pulls off his betrayal. I think Lady would be pissed Vergil stole her kill, but ultimately have to back down for the Dante vs Vergil fight because with that many extra years under their belts, she'd be no match. Seeing them would be an interesting contrast though, because Vergil so clearly clings to the past (he'd be in a more Renaissance style than Dante) while Dante's all about the present and human world. This one...I think would be harder to resolve than the other one, because I'm not sure how Dante would convince someone so set in his ways (again, hundreds of years old at a minimum) to change, but it could be fun to play with.

As for the DMC4 AU, this one would be a case where Nero is still a teenager, and Dante's really surprised because oh boy, who in the *world* managed to convince Vergil to sleep with them when he'd been so uptight for centuries? And Dante's excited to have a family member and can't help but mess with them.

I think in this one it might also be fun if Fortuna was aware that Sparda had children because then you'd have a case where people potentially worship said children, whether or not they realize it's Dante. Maybe Vergil ruled Fortuna for a little while after Sparda left and that meant people knew he existed. Dante hadn't been aware he'd apparently come back, but Nero's proof enough so he's really going to have to have a talk with Vergil the next time he returns from his travels. I'm not set on whether the people of Fortuna would know that Sparda had twins, or if they'd just know about Vergil and thus be in denial that Dante could possibly be the son of Sparda because he's *so* different. In either case eventually people (or at least Nero and Kyrie) would have to reconcile Dante with the figure they'd been worshipping and that would be hard (and for Dante, hilarious). I think in this one I might make Lady part of a bloodline that has fought alongside Sparda since he split the Human and Demon worlds, sort of like the Castlevania series with Alucard and the Belmonts, while Trish would be someone Dante recruited a few decades to centuries ago (importantly, she's younger than him).

In this one I think part of the driving force would be that Dante wants humanity to be able to protect itself/prove its worth, or for Nero to protect them/prove his worth, because if they/Nero don't then Dante's worried Vergil might instead deem humanity a scourge and do something bad.

The plot of DMC4 revolves around humans using demons to fuel their own power, and in this case I think Dante will have found out about what Fortuna was doing too late to erase what they've done, so it's a case where humans need to prove that there are more good humans than bad humans so Vergil doesn't slam down the hammer. Dante can encourage them in the right direction, but he can't carry them the whole way. If he does then Vergil will deem his interference proof of humanity's weakness and do...Dante isn't totally sure what, but he doesn't like how Vergil's been the past few decades and he's increasingly been feeling like Vergil might decide he's had enough of the human world and side with the members of the demon world Dante *knows* have been slipping through the border to speak to Vergil. And while Dante doesn't think he'd *lose* to Vergil, the battle would lead to immense destruction and would weaken them enough that Dante's fairly sure Mundus or some other demon would take advantage of the chance to invade the human world while they're in no state to defend it.

...Anyway! That's two/three ideas for first that I will...maybe get to, one day, once I finish the million other fic ideas I have. I just really like the concept of "totally goofy guy is actually super old" or "frustratingly unserious guy is actually one of the guys you grew up worshipping, somehow." I think there's a lot of room for fun there.

[salparadiselost]

I often get asked how I worldbuild my fanfictions and honestly it goes something like this:

Me: I should put this three word phrase somewhere towards the beginning to help with lore building. Also me: then writes 800 words that are tangentally related to that phrase

[cinderflower]

Incredible how despite being 120k words into this fic I still have to stop when editing and ask myself "is there too much happening in this chapter?"

[hecatesbroom]

You know how you sometimes say "I could write an essay on this" and you know you could, but could you really (and moreover: do you actually want to?) so you never end up doing it? Yeah. I said that and might have ended up taking myself a little bit too seriously. (Many many thanks to everyone who encouraged me <3)

Summary

Vulnerability and emotional moments: themes left far from underexplored in The Golden Girls. But how exactly do our four Girls handle these feelings -- and how do the show's writing and genre play into their individual relationships towards vulnerability? In this essay I will-

[eyeballs-in-my-head]

It's been a while since I came up here to bitch about something absolutely unimportant so here I am

People who have good vision don't realise how good they have it, because wdym I can only cosplay specific characters, because my eyes are so bad that without my glasses I'd exist like an amoeba..?

And yea yea, I know, "you can cosplay characters who have no glasses, cosplay should be fun yada yada I'm sure it won't brother anyone"

Brother it bothers ME!

It bothers me!! It bothers me SO much!!!

Just like my eye color. Like I thought mutations survive and remain ONLY if it gives some kind of benefit to the person? There's ZERO benefits to this shit and I hate it.

But that's a whole other topic. Anyway...

I've tried searching for every media I like, hoping at least one of em is gonna have some glassed characters in them, but the mental whiplash I got, holy shit.

Why do characters with glasses have such insignificant quantity? And better question, why am I only noticing now..? Me! I have glasses, and I'm only noticing this now. What. I mean that's kind of funny, but. Man...

There's exactly one (1) character I can cosplay with my glasses (that I actually know and like) isn't that fun?

[amtrak12]

I've got my Bering and Wells gift exchange fic fully outlined now 🥰 I'm sooooo excited to bring it to life.