#i'm supposed to be working on my NaNo!!

[headphones-ct-09978]

Sopapillas. 

Miguel O’Hara X Reader one-shot

Summary: You and Miguel share a small moment.

A/N: I haven’t seen the movie yet, so this is based on what I could scavenge from various Marvel websites and some spoilers. This in and of itself holds no spoilers, but I’ll tag it under “Spoilers”. 

Warnings: None. Maybe some really bad spanglish (I’m Mexican but my spanish is fucking AWFUL)

(If any of my spanish is cringe or bad, please please please, correct me and suggest phrases to me. I'm totally open to criticism here!)

. “Miguel? Eyo, ¿dónde está, man? I got you some sopapillas! I think some sugar could do you some good.” 

You wandered around the large room where most of the tech was located. Various holographic screens were up, displaying what appeared to be some kind of surveillance system. Miguel was the one working tirelessly to find a way to…well you honestly had no idea. All you knew was that you were here, in this corner of the multiverse, with others like you. Apparently you were supposed to be a spider person, but something in your timeline went wrong, and you ended up there. You had no powers, but also no motivation to return to your former life. To be fair, going back to that absolute shit show of a life was the last thing on your to-do list. Instead, you settled for being a sort of assistant for Miguel. He usually had you run small errands, maybe keep tabs on certain things, or help with technical issues. You often wondered why, since Miguel seemed more than capable of doing everything himself. But, he did seem very overworked and just downright stressed out 24/7, so perhaps he did need the extra help.

You looked around, holding the styrofoam box in your hands. You were about to call out to him again, when a screen to your left suddenly flickered off, revealing the towering man behind it, causing you to jump. “GAH!!” you exclaimed, startled by his sudden appearance. 

There were slight bags under his dark eyes and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days (which was actually the case).

“Geez dude, you keep giving me heart attacks.” you said as you handed him the small box. “Got you a little something to help with the night shift.”

His brown eyes flicked down to what you were handing him and he blinked, his nose twitching in what could only be confusion or exhaustion. After a moment he sighed and took the box. “Thanks.” he mumbled before opening the box, grabbing a sopapilla and biting it. You caught a glimpse of his fangs, which made you shiver. ‘Dioses, those things look freaky.’ you thought. 

“Did you double check that timeline I told you to investigate?” Miguel cocked an eyebrow at you, his eyes regarding inquisitively. You nodded. “Sí,todo bien. I triple checked too.” 

You waited for a snarky remark about something or other, or for him to suddenly get annoyed by something, but nothing happened. Instead, he just stared at the screen to your right. You turned and saw…another version of yourself. You, the you in the video, were at a party it seemed. You were dancing and laughing, looking happier than you’ve ever felt. 

“When is that?” you asked, pointing to the holographic display, the orange glow of the screen reflecting off the gold wrist cuff you wore. 

“It’s apparently you in earth-3499, pre-serum you.” he said before taking another bite of his snack.

“Pre-serum? I don’t get bitten?” 

“Nope,” he wiped some sugar granules off his bottom lip with his thumb, and licked the rest off. He put the box down on the consol beside him and brushed his hands off. “You, in this canon universe, were injected with this serum that combined the original super-soldier serum paired with an experimental serum that had both spider DNA and some other experimental tech.”

I cringed. “Oh no, not the nano robot thingies from earth-7569.” 

“Nah, it’s something else.” He turned the screen off and leaned against the consol. He nodded to you, beckoning for you to join him up on the consol platform. You hurried up the steps and joined him. Beside him, you could clearly notice the size difference, realizing how tall he was. You glanced at him and leaned against the black console as well. 

“¿Qué pasa, hombre? No eres tú mismo. Dime, ¿qué te molesta?” 

Unlike most of the spider people around, he seemed more relaxed around you. He shared things with you, usually about his family. You couldn’t fathom why, but you consider yourself lucky to at least be in this man’s good graces. 

He looked at you, curiously, brows furrowed as if he was trying to solve a puzzle. 

“¿Por qué no quieres volver? Tenías una vida, una familia, cosas que la mayoría de nosotros luchamos por recuperar…”

You started to fidget with the sleeve of your jacket. “No sé... Supongo que mi vida canónica no fue tan... genial como la mayoría supondría.” 

Miguel placed a hand on your shoulder, in a consoling manner. You continued, “No significa que no los ayudaré a todos, simplemente no me siento obligado a volver a mi antigua vida.”

He nodded. He was about to say something else when another screen popped up with a new developing timeline. He swiveled his head, and watched as the events unfolded. He groaned in annoyance. “Oh great, what now, another canon fuck up?” 

As you both watched the timeline thingy, you unflinchingly watched as the spider-person on the screen got hit by a train. 

“Canon?”

“Yep.”

“Anything I can do?”

He pointed to the box you had given. “You get yourself something to eat. I don’t want you hangry tonight.”

You scoffed playfully. “You’re one to talk.”

 He shot you a miffed glare and threw the box at you, which you caught with ease. You chuckled, both out of unease and nervousness. “¡Que era una broma! ¡Solo una broma!”

“Uh huh, yeah, sure.” he said, sounding unimpressed.

You chuckled to yourself as you left the room. Had you turned around, you would’ve seen him shake his head and allow a small smile to grace his lips. “You’re a pain in the ass.” he mumbled. 

-end-

[ollieofthebeholder]

Hi! I know you do NaNo every year and are quite involved with it; have you seen their new AI policy? And what are your thoughts on it?

https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/29933455931412-What-is-NaNoWriMo-s-position-on-Artificial-Intelligence-AI

Hi!

So first off, nonnie: My involvement with NaNoWriMo has, uh, declined significantly in the last year. I was an ML through last November, and there were...a lot of problems that all culminated in me (and my co-ML ) not only making the decision to step down as MLs, but disaffiliate our region from NaNo altogether. We're not stopping people from participating, just taking the groups we manage independent and starting our own, localized version. Global communities are great, but when you get to as big as NaNo got and start having to implement rules and make them apply to wildly diverse regions - and then have absolutely no policies in place for people in those specific regions to adapt those policies - it stops being fun, frankly. For organizers and participants.

All of which is to say, no, I hadn't seen this until now.

My thoughts are that, like so many other things NaNo has tried to do since November, it's well-intentioned (probably) but poorly thought out and even more poorly executed. It's also too broad and overencompassing. And it violates the spirit of the program they've been belaboring us with for the last 25 years.

AI - Artificial Intelligence - covers a lot of ground. Spellcheckers are technically AI. Speech to text programs could be construed as AI. Predictive text is AI. ChatGP and its ilk is essentially an advanced form of predictive text, at least at this point. And if you had suggested five years ago that someone might write a novel entirely based on predictive text, the official NaNoWriMo stance would have been "I mean, sure, you CAN do that, we can't really stop you, if that's what you're happy with." If your goal is just to have 50,000 words, do whatever you want. I guess from their wording, they're saying that this is in general, not specifically for NaNoWriMo, but this is still a pretty bizarre stance for an organization that pushed for years for everyone to start on November 1 with a blank document and not a single word written ahead of time.

Arguing that "opposition to AI is classist and ableist" is the kind of reductive bullshit I expect from Tumblr, not a major organization that is supposed to promote literacy. I especially don't get the "not everyone has access to all resources" bit. Yeah...that's true...but if you have access to AI, you have access to everything you need to participate in NaNoWriMo, i.e. a computer with a keyboard and an internet connection. If you just want the fifty thousand words to get the prize and don't care if they're good, just fucking write "banana" over and over again until you hit it. Boom, you're a winner, and you've done just as much work as someone prompting ChatGPT, and it'll probably make about as much sense.

Also, most AI programs in existence use up a ridiculous amount of energy and resources, and encouraging their use is kind of an iffy stance for any company to take, let alone one that's been making this much of an effort to be sustainable.

Frankly, I think this policy is just one more sign that NaNo has gotten a) too big to be sustainable and b) too far from what it was originally meant to be, and I'm honestly debating if I'm even going to participate in the global one this year.

[storiesbyjes2g]

3.117 The other shoe

We started the night at a bar in a fancy rooftop hotel in San Myshuno. Sophia and I didn't bother dressing up because our only goal was to meet the man that had my sister all googly-eyed, and that didn't involve nice clothes. Jace Laurent was his name. He was from Tartosa and frequented the bar where we had the party. His fancy job title didn't fool me once he explained the role. He said he was a nano-simfluencer for a company called Trend Team. Apparently, he was heavily into fashion and was seeking the attention of brands on social media so he could score an endorsement deal. Basically, he was unemployed. True, I was technically unemployed too, but at least I left home and come back with money like normal working sims.

But after a while, I had to admit he wasn't as much of a schmuck as I thought he'd be. He was definitely weird, but seemed like he'd be kinda fun to hang out with once we got to know each other better.

"Would you stop grilling him??" Alessia shouted.

"I'm not grilling! I'm just trying to get to know him. Isn't that what you want?"

"Yeah, but stop with the 20 Questions!"

"How else am I supposed to get to know him, Less??"

Like, seriously! What was up with her? First she yelled at Sophia on Winterfest for trying to stay in the conversation and get to know her, and now this? I hoped ol' dude was up to handle her moods because if I couldn't win with her, no one could.

"Don't mind her," Jace said. "She's just a little pregnant."

"I'm sorry...WHAT?!"

His proud, smug face melted into discomfort and mortification.

"Oh no...she didn't tell you."

"We're in love, Luca," Alessia shouted. "I asked him to move in."

So many questions buzzed around my brain like a swarm of bees, but the frustration flowing through my veins was stronger than the urge to get answers. I was so done with this seemingly endless stream of accidental pregnancies around me! The mere thought of another person turning up pregnant ignited a fiery anger within me so intense I could almost taste it. Okay…I wouldn't actually resort to violence, but the urge to lash out, to release my pent-up frustration, was as real as all these unborn babies in my life.

"We have to go," I said, getting up from the table.

Alessia yelled after us, questioning our abrupt departure, but I didn't care. My only goal was to seek shelter in the safety of my home because the fortress I built around my emotions had finally been breached. Falling apart was imminent now. As soon as I crossed the threshold, the pressure that had been building up all week erupted from my mouth as I hollered. I never felt so out of control before. I paced, tugged on my hair, and screamed some more. Sophia stood off to the side for a moment, watching, allowing me to get it out, but then she marched up to me and embraced me tightly as if she were trying to squeeze hope back into me. We collapsed onto the couch and cried together. I probably should have waited to tell her about my hospital visit, but how much more could it hurt? We were already at the bottom.

"Sophia," I said through my tears, "I gotta tell you something."

She sat up to hear my story and wiped my face.

"I went to the doctor. That's where I was earlier... I have low fertility too. I'm so sorry!"

To my surprise, she didn't sink deeper into despair, like I thought she would. She held my hand and showed me the most incredible display of bravery I had ever seen.

"Awwwww, Luca! Are you okay? This isn't your fault. It's no one's fault. It just...is."

I knew she was right, but life really sucked at the moment, and I didn't know how to withstand against all those blows anymore. I thought I was strong enough, but now my wife had to hold me up.

"It's just not fair," I yelled. "Alessia, Yasmine...and even Dub! None of them were trying to get pregnant! Why won't it happen for us? I feel like we're being punished for something, but I don't know what it is! I just want to start a family with you. What's so bad about that?? I've done everything to stay positive and hopeful, but I can't do it anymore! I can't do it, Sophia!"

She wiped my tears and tried to soothe me, telling me it was going to be okay, just like I did for her at the beginning of all this.

"Hey...listen...we can't give up yet, babe. We've got one more trick up our sleeve! How about tomorrow I do the IVF? Forget those treatments!"

"Are you sure? That's surgery."

"It's outpatient. This is my last chance to carry my own child. I have to take it."

"Okay. But only if you want to. I'm fine with adoption if you change your mind, but...I really hope it works."

"Me too."

[duskyashe]

CAMP NANO DAY 8/9

(please see tags for trigger warnings)

[first three chapters] [AO3]

============<×^-^×>============

It had been a long time since Bruce had been this unbalanced by the thought of a conversation. He was unafraid to admit, if only to himself, that he was terrified about the kinds of things he'd hear from the young woman now sitting across from him. On the way to his office, he'd asked her if she felt safe and comfortable talking to him by herself, or if she'd prefer having his youngest adopted son sit in with them, and while she was understandably hesitant to let an unknown fifteen year old sit in on their discussion, he'd also seen the way she'd unconsciously relaxed when she saw Tim walk in.

"Before we start, my name is Timothy Drake-Wayne, please call me Tim, and you have permission to hug me, cling to me, cry on me, or even squeeze my hand tight enough to break it. Whatever you need to do to get through this discussion. I'll even leave for snacks if you need to say something intensely personal or that you feel I shouldn't hear," his son said with a small, supportive smile. Bruce was so proud of Tim, he'd come so very far since first coming to them. "I'm very well used to standing in as an emotional support person when a foster kid gets comfortable enough with Bruce to want to tell him exactly what happened wherever they'd been before coming here, and I'm perfectly content to keep doing so for as long as I live here."

Bruce watched as Jazz processed everything Tim said and caught the question in her gaze before she'd even opened her mouth to speak it. "Tim has decided he wants to work with CPS when he gets older, take his own experiences with the system and use them to help improve it. I do whatever I can to help him, to help any of the children who find themselves in my care, achieve his dreams," he explained softly, pride warming his heart and voice. "I'm not sure how well you remember him, but my first adopted son, Dick, recently decided to open his own gymnastics studio here in Gotham. His experience with you and Danny when you lived with us really left an impression."

Jazz nodded in understanding before glancing at Tim, reached for his hand, and took a fortifying breath. "My—the Fentons are… scientists, inventors, innovators, they—they discovered, independently, an entire species of interdimensional beings with incredible powers and such a rich mixture of cultures, and… and they decided those beings were unnatural, that they were evil and needed to be experimented on and exterminated. They created a portal to these beings' home dimension in our basement without following any sort of safety regulations or protocols." Jazz took another breath, swallowing as she looked down at hold on Tim's hand. "Th-the green on me and Danny when we first got here, it's called ectoplasm. It's basically the lifeblood of these beings, it makes up almost their entire bodies. Their dimension is full of it, as any excess they produce gets shed off into the environment around them.

"When the Fentons created their portal into the Infinite Realms, they didn't realize they'd installed a secondary switch that also needed to be flicked for the thing to work. A switch that was on the inside of the portal shaft and could only be reached by physically going inside it." She shuddered as she tried to bite back tears. "I wasn't home at the time. I was tutoring a fellow student in English at the local fast food joint. Danny was at home with his two best friends. Mom and dad had left the day before to track down the supposed "ghost" that had caused their magnum opus to fail to work. He should have been safe.

"I got a frantic phone call from Danny's friend, Tucker, telling me I needed to get home ASAP, that Danny'd had an accident and wasn't waking up. The student I was tutoring asked me what I was waiting for, to get going, and so I did. I—by the time I got back to the house, Sam and Tucker had managed to drag Danny away from the portal, but i-it was pretty obvious what the accident was, I mean… the portal hadn't been on before I left…"

Bruce had a bad feeling about where this story was going. He'd seen the product of lab accidents too often to be able to con himself into thinking it could be going in any other direction. He almost stopped her from continuing, but while she was very obviously distressed, the process of telling him, of telling them, seemed to actually be doing her some good, so he kept his silence and watched as she clenched Tim's hand even harder for a brief second before relaxing her grip almost entirely.

"Sam was fussing over Danny's prone form, trying to make him more comfortable on the steel flooring without moving him too much, while Tucker was pacing between the two of them and the swirling mass of green that was the portal when I got there. As soon as they saw me, Tucker was on me with tears in his eyes. "We thought he'd died," he said. "The screaming—we thought he was dead. We're so sorry, he could have died—we're so unbelievably sorry,"" Jazz quoted with a strained voice. "Sam's makeup was running from how much she was crying. Sam never cries, and there she was, kneeling over my barely breathing baby brother, nearly sobbing in terror and guilt. They—Sam had apparently dared Danny to go inside so they could get a picture, and while in there, Danny tripped, and he hit the secondary switch. The Fentons had apparently not turned the other switch off after the thing didn't work the first time, and Danny ended up paying the price of their stupidity. He was alive, he'd survived, but now he's rightfully terrified of anything to do with electricity above what comes out of your stranded wall outlet. Only, come to find out, Danny hadn't survived. Not entirely… not unchanged."

Knew it, Bruce thought wearily as he leaned back in his chair. He resisted the urge to rub his hand across his face or run it through his hair and instead just continued to listen to Jazz's tale.

"The combination of all that electricity running through him, killing him, as a portal made pretty much entirely of ectoplasm opened up literally right on top of him changed Danny on a molecular level. He's no longer fully human. He's now something called a halfa, half human and half… half ghost."

============<×^-^×>============

FINALLY got that finished! I sincerely apologize for not getting this out yesterday, I had to take a general health day due to both my lactose intolerance realizing, three days after the fact, that I'd eaten dairy and decided it didn't like that at all, and my sleep schedule being crap the past two days (⁠-⁠_⁠-⁠;⁠) that's why today's post says "day 8/9", I'm counting it for both days since I *did* start writing it yesterday (⁠^⁠～⁠^⁠;⁠)⁠ゞ

For anyone reading this directly after day 6 but hasn't read any of the reblogs of day 6, this is actually chapter 4 of this fic, not chapter 2. I have two amazing co-writers who have each written an amazing chapter for this fic, which can be more easily read on AO3 by hitting the link up at the top!

Also, due to this fic having two co-writers for it, from now on, when I post a new chapter for it here on Tumblr, I won't be linking back to my previous chapter, since there will be two chapters between each of my own. Instead, I'll be linking back to the first post back on day 6 and to the AO3 version, where the entire fic will be readily available for reading.

Also also, because this is being co-written, any and all updates for this fic will be highly sporadic at best. Please don't harass me or my co-writers for quicker updates, we're all very busy people working together to write this purely for fun.

Have a wonderful morning/day/night everyone!

[bluberimufim]

WIP Intro

Title: Devourer of Souls

Genre + tropes: Fantasy, found family, fairytale retelling (Snow White and Rose Red)

Tag: devourer of souls wip

Themes (may be subject to change with the 1st draft): destruction vs creation, inherent contradictions of femininity, anti-war, choosing your own family, freedom from expectation, religious trauma

Status: outlining + first draft

Additional notes: I'm gonna (try to) do this for NaNo!! Wish me luck!!

edit: this is now a duology!

Plot

Seth was supposed to be a healer. That's what everyone said she would be. She would become a healer and fight in the war for the Goddess of Time. But her healing doesn't work like it's supposed to. Instead of giving life, she takes it away. People say she eats souls.

She tries to live a quiet life in the countryside, away from the war, but is rudely interrupted when Theo, a lost demigoddess, wanders into her life. Together, they try to find a place for themselves and their strange magic in this world. But war is never kind, and the Goddess of Time wants her daughter's power on her side - and she won't let some pesky healer get in her way.

Characters

Seth: a girl with terrifying powers who just wants a quiet life in a small town, alone, but learns to be happy after finding Theo. She was expelled from the hospital she was apprenticing for a failed healing that killed the patient and permanently damaged her leg in the process.

Theo: a powerful demigoddess whose magic is making her soul slowly wither away. Her adoptive family sent the Order after her after discovering her unusual powers and ends up finding Seth on her journey. Through her Goddess-Mother's influence, she becomes consumed by the war.

Flick: a teenager touched by the Goddess of Love, whose body houses two conflicting souls. They are cursed to have anyone they meet fall in love with them, and Seth takes them under her wing while on their journey to find themself.

Jane: a sort of puppet created by the Goddess of Time to replace Theo after her death, delivered to Seth when the Goddess couldn't stand her anymore. She's in the mortal world for the first time and trying to figure out who she wants to be.

The Goddess of Time: Theo and Jane's mother. By far the most ruthless - and broken - among her sisters. She lives in her Garden in the plane of the gods, where she takes her daughters to shape them into her champions.

Notes on the setting

everything in this world has a soul, or life force, which can be transferred by those with the right magical inclination

usually, healers can only direct the "souls" from themselves to other in order to heal them, and when their soul runs out, they die - it is the ultimate sacrifice and a healer's greatest honour, to surrender their very souls to their Goddess

there are three Sister Goddesses, each representing a core aspect of humanity, waging war against each other to see who is more powerful (I expand upon it here)

certain types of powerful magic can cause your soul to start eating itself if not kept in check, as is Theo's case

Edit: you can follow the development of Seth and Theo's relationship in the tag #the great Seth and Theo relationship liveblog

If you've read this far - thank you! I hope my WIP has interested you!

[possibly-j]

My Linux Journey

This was originally supposed to be a post on learning Linux but I got to rambling so enjoy my story about my journey with Linux. Expect a post on that topic at a later date.

~The early days~

I think my introduction to Linux was honestly quite smooth. See I'm poor and am not inclined to sail the seven seas when I can get by on a free option. And as I looked for free software I started to pick up that the safe ones were always "open source" and seemed to always support, sometimes primarily, Linux. Eventually my curiosity was piqued and I decided to look into it. I was confused by a lot of things, but I was setting up a Minecraft server for my friends and saw people recommend Linux, specifically Debian, for the job. So after unsuccessfully installing it once (I don't know how I think I got scared about formatting the drive) and not understanding how formatting works and deleting the operating system by writing it over with 0's (I keep adding comments but seriously where did I get the impression I had to do that?) and reinstalling I got it set up, downloaded everything I needed, and got it working in a few days. This taught me a lot. The command line, which I wasn't unfamiliar with but rarely used, was my new best friend, or rather only friend. I learned how to do updates, navigate the file structure, download software, and use Nano because, well, I had to. But most importantly, I like how clean everything was compared to Windows (subtle foreshadowing), and I wanted more.

~Adoption~

I was building my computer and really wanted to make the jump to Linux, so I researched and landed on Kubuntu. I installed it, smoothly this time, got some software, got confused by Snaps, opened Blender and- green bar. I had a new AMD graphics card, so driver issues weren't unexpected, but it deterred me enough to just install Windows instead. I did decide though to try on my laptop since it was older and mostly used for web-surfing. I installed Pop! OS because I thought the tiling was cool (more subtle foreshadowing) and... It worked great! I quickly got used to the nice GUI elements it provided and my prior knowledge of the terminal made it easy enough to fix odd issues that came up. However, and I'm sure everyone who knows anything about Linux sees this one coming

~Distro Hopping~

I'll save you most of the details but I think it went like this

Pop! OS, got mad at Gnome, switched to Manjaro with KDE (Which will be my DE of choice for the rest of this), wanted Arch but wasn't comfortable enough with the command line yet.

Broke something, switched to Debian, liked it on server thought I might like it on my laptop.

Wanted newer software, switched to OpenSuse Tumbleweed.

I used OpenSuse Tumbleweed for I think a year straight. It's just that good, but I can't leave good enough alone so

Alpine Linux, because I thought it was cool. Actually planning on moving back to it once I'm done needing my laptop to always be working because it meets that "clean" criteria like no other in my brain (See I told you it was foreshadowing).

And right now Endeavour OS, because I wanted something with good documentation and didn't feel like setting up Arch.

Oh and I use i3 now, to finish off the foreshadowing.

There were a bunch of short lived ones throughout that, but those are the memorable ones. Also I installed Fedora on the computer I built a few months back and now use it over Windows whenever I can.

~Where I am Now~

If it isn't obvious, I'm sucked in. I've almost built Linux From Scratch, three times, installed Gentoo a few times, and even tried expanding my horizons further with FreeBSD, which I love but the software support isn't great for my needs. Linux is natural to me and I even have my own bits of obscure knowledge on fixes for odd issues with my hardware. I have weird opinions about init systems (Weird because I don't actually care much, I just like OpenRC more than SystemD because it's simple). Windows feels slow to use, and not for hardware reasons it just takes me twice as long to do anything. I really love tiling window managers like I don't understand how I lived without them. I primarily use open source software when I can but flatpaks and web applications fill in the gaps nicely.

~Closing Notes~

I love Linux, probably a bit too much, but it's just a fun time. It works well for me and I've spent enough time in the ecosystem that it's what I'm used to. I see a lot of new Linux users on here so if you're new, welcome! Don't let the often toxic community (at least on Reddit, I don't know about here) get to you. My absolute favorite part of Linux is that you get to have choices. Make use of that, find what you like, and don't be afraid to reinstall Arch for the 10 millionth time. There's a lot to learn, and maybe my story will be of some help. To those more experienced than me, how the fuck do you understand chmod

:q!

[brammariek]

WAIT WHAT she actually animates beyond the door even tho we can’t see her after we talk to her? I wonder if the devs had originally had her accessible for a time

SHE DOES! it's just a few seconds looking at each paintings, and you can see her through the focus if you stand close to the vault door, so she's very much there, and she's very much walking around.

now since she doesn't have anywhere else to go (that we know of) I'm assuming she stays in the vault until Aloy brings Sylens "to heel" as she says. Thing is, you're not supposed to stay in an art vault for very long periods of time, because the air quality and humidity needs to be very exact for art to be preserved, the gasses in the air are not ideal for human lungs. When i visited a museum with my university, we were allowed entry to one of the storage vaults, to see how conservation works, and how art pieces are stored when not on display, and IIRC you're not supposed to stay there for more than... an hour, maybe 2 at a time? so that makes me curious as to how much of Tilda's body has been altered with the nano-tech the Zeniths have. (I haven't played burning shores yet, so i have no idea if more lore is revealed there, but my guess is that we learn a bit more about them)

Like the paintings were already really old when Tilda got her hands on them, the oldest piece being Lidded ewer, by Adam van Vianen, 1614, and the Aloy being born in 3021, that makes the piece at least 1427 years old by the time Aloy sees it, compared to it's 410 years today in our timeline. that is impressive conservation considering no-one was there to monitor the vault and it's content at all. like in comparison, art that is 1427 years old to us, is from 597 ad, that's when England adopted the Julian calendar, so wer're talking Byzantine art period, like the Hagia Sophia was built between 532-37 AD. and as a visual reference to what a lot of western art looked like around that time, here is a mosaic panel of Empress Theodora, from around the 540s, in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna.

like this is the span of time we're talking about, this is so fucking old, and i just fhjdshafjkds have a lot of thoughts around that.

ofc we can assume that conservation tech was pretty evolved from what it is today, but i still believe human hands would have a large part in conservation... as an art-history student, i just have a lot of thoughts around Tilda and her vault FJKDSJLKF

[mariyekos]

On the one hand the inconsistency/retcons in the DMC timeline frustrates me because I usually like having canon ages. On the other hand it allows me to play around with ages in fics more than I usually do, so it's kind of convenient.

...Although to be fair, I've done that in other fics. In my uh. 50k word, basically abandoned but not abandoned in my heart Estimeric longfic, I aged Heustienne up several years both for the convenience of the fic and also because I feel like she should be older in canon. She'd be like 15 at the start of the fic which wouldn't work, so I just made her 23 or something. I don't quite remember. It's been uhhh. 3 and a half years since I started that fic or something. I don't want confirmation right now because it still bums me out. It was supposed to be this epic fic and I didn't even get a quarter of the way through before I lost steam because I got worried about whether people would read a fic with an OC as a main character and tried to write him out of it before deciding no, I like him, and *I* read fics with OCs as main characters so why not.

But anyway back to DMC- Decided to go with the older side of the Deadly Fortune novel even though I normally prefer the old canon of Nero being Dante/Vergil's age in DMC4 (19) plus my HC of Nero being born within days of the Temen-no-gru. Unless I'm mixing things up, Deadly Fortune puts Verigl as having been 16-17 when he visited Fortuna, and Nero being the same age during DMC4. So for longfic wip #3, I'm going for Vergil having been 17 when he visited Fortuna and Nero being born when he's 18. DMC4 would then happen when he's 17...if I even get there. I have plans for it, but that might be sequel material. We'll see. I have 2 other longfics with higher priority, but for the sake of NaNo I want to try to get to 50k on this one if I can. I'll supplement with other fics if necessary but if I could get 50k in a single story that'd be pretty cool.

[songweretson]

In 2015, I really wanted to do NaNoWriMo, but I had no computer, no phone, no tech at all, because I was broke. At the time I was also breaking down so often I could barely breathe.

So I wrote 50,000 words by hand, in old notebooks. I worked out a system to track my word count in the margins. I figured out my average wordcount per page, so I knew how many pages I had to do every day.

So, please, NaNo. Tell me again how disliking AI is "classist".

And yes, I know that I'm very lucky that I was physically able to do that. But where there's a will, there's a way. If you want to write a book, you're going to write a book. (A few years later, my first book was mostly written on my phone, because I was writing every spare minute I had between work, while I was on the bus, etc.)

Nevermind that a large part of their statement focused on using AI tools to edit, saying not everyone has access to other people to help them edit and improve. But like... Wasn't that the whole point of having a community around NaNo? You have forums where people can connect, build friendships, share resources, and even help each other.

But, oh... Wait. You couldn't be bothered to make sure your forums were safe. You let someone run around grooming your underage members, saying there was nothing you could do about it, because he took it to different sites.

And when you're called out for working with questionable people, you give some nonsense about how gatekeeping, and how it's supposed to be about the art.

Whatever. The lack of understanding is just what I would expect from people who support AI.

So, thanks for the memories. But I'm glad I outgrew you a long time ago.

[nanostudies]

Hi op! Just saw that you're doing nanotech in your PhD! I'm trying to go into the field too (tbh generally material science but I've researched nanotech so hopefully I'll get into that), so I was wondering if you could tell us what you work on! Feel free to ignore this if you're not comfortable sharing it, and please go full on geek mode if you need to! I'd love to hear all about your field!

- @studyblr-perhaps (using anon mode cause tumblr still doesn't allow asks through side blogs)

Hi! Thanks for the ask, I'm so happy you're interested in this field! I may not be the right person to ask tho as many professors don't actually see my research fitting the nanotech field 😬 Since my bachelor studies (in the field of toxicology) I've been working on computational modeling. First in granular material, then as I moved to do master's in nanotech I switched to smaller particles such as exosomes. So my reasearch is supposed to be "transport of nano-/micro-particles in microfluidic devices for biomedical application" with focus on simulations which are supported by experiments.

To give a better idea what I work on:

effect of particle size on mixing of monodisperse granular material (0.5 mm - 4 mm)

exosome separation from polydisperse suspension in a microfluidic device (100 - 1000 nm)

hygroscopic growth of aerosols in respiratory system, in cooperation with Phillip Morris, (400 - 800 nm)

stem cell cultivation in a stirred bioreactor (250 um)

If you'd like to hear more I'll be happy to expand any topic! If this is nothing you're personally not interested in, I have colleagues who work with nanofibers or surface modification so I can talk about that as well :)

Have a great day! 🤍

[hushed-chorus]

WIP Wednesday

Hi folks! Thank you for the tag today @alexalexinii and everyone for all the ongoing tags, even as I dip in and out on WIP posts. It’s nice to know they’re waiting for me when I have the energy to engage.

Life continues to be a bit busy, but I’m sneaking in some writing where I can. Most energy is going into my long Watford fic (currently, likely placeholder, name is Those Glowing, Magickal Years), and I’m trying to approach it NaNo-style, i.e. getting the words down and worrying about revisions later. 

It’s still a bit rough and I don’t know when the first chapter is going up, but here’s a (long) peek.

Other students are moving now, each following an invisible thread that binds them to someone else. Daphne told me that’s what the feeling's like – like it’s a fishing hook and you’re being reeled in.  But I don’t feel anything. Nausea rolls around inside me. What if the magic won’t work? I’m not alive. Not really. I’m not even sure if I have a soul.  Does the Crucible only work if you have a soul? Does it know what I am? Will it expose me?  I glance towards the Mage. He’s not looking at me, not yet. Maybe I should leave now. Slip away before he sees that something is wrong, before he can finish the job of purging the vampires from Britain.  These thoughts leave me so breathless that I first mistake the tug in my gut for fear. I stumble forward a couple of steps, gritting my teeth against the sob of relief. It’s happening. The Crucible hasn’t exposed me. It’s taking me to my roommate.  I'm supposed to be here. This is still my place.

Hellos and tags below the cut! 

@artsyunderstudy @facewithoutheart @captain-aralias @raenestee @aroace-genderfluid-sheep @yeonjunenby @cutestkilla @ivelovedhimthroughworse @larkral @stitchyqueer @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @ileadacharmedlife @confused-bi-queer @aristocratic-otter @whogaveyoupermission @nightimedreamersworld @fatalfangirl @thewholelemon @onepintobean @shrekgogurt @theearlgreymage @martsonmars @blackberrysummerblog @orange-peony @palimpsessed @valeffelees @j-nipper-95 @rimeswithpurple @wellbelesbian @imagineacoolusername @youarenevertooold @iamamythologicalcreature @supercutedinosaurs @bookish-bogwitch @cosmicalart @bazzybelle 

[little-peril-stories]

nano 2023 let's gooo

Well, friends, it's that time of year again. Why I have once again decided to leap straight from Whumptober to Nanowrimo, no one knows, but here we go.

The difference from 2022 to 2023: last year, for both Whumptober and Nano, I was "playing to win" (so to speak —playing against myself, of course), while this year I wasn't/will not be. Like, if I end up writing 50,000 words this November, great!

But. I have an issue with being competitive (again, only against myself; I hate competing against others in most contexts) and I know I will get obsessive about 1667 words every day and getting every single badge, etc., etc.

So I'm just...not.

I don't have a word count goal. The goal is simply to finish the first draft of angsty heist wip. If I can, great. If not, great. I started it in April, got distracted by TQOL and life, and the poor story's been languishing around the midpoint since I put it aside. I think if I can push beyond the midpoint, I'll be all right. But even if that turns out not to be true—oh well!

I'm still going to work on TQOL, and since I've fallen into editing TPOT and have been looooooving that process, I'm going to keep doing that, too. So this Nano is really just going to be about doing the writing things I want to do and that make me happy, and if angsty heist wip gets finished as part of that journey, well, bonus.

Is this more a #CalmWriMo as coined by @winterandwords? Why, I suppose it is. Thanks for putting forth the idea and the hashtag. 😊

Anyway. Happy November, happy Nanowrimo, happy Calmwrimo, happy another day of being alive, and happy writing!

Bonus lines for anyone who made it to the bottom of this ramble lolololol.

From The Queen of Lies chapter whatever-the-hell-it-is-now-this-one-used-to-be-chapter-7:

In the faintest reaches of her heart, she allowed herself to grieve ever so little, and to wonder if she would ever see him again.

I made it to Chapter 30 in editing The Prince of Thieves, oh god oh god:

“I don’t know anything else,” she says, her voice shaking. She’s half off the floor, frozen now, breath coming in little bursts. I know, whether I live beyond today or not, I will never be able to forget this moment—her terrified gasping, her wide eyes, the way her chest rises and falls so fast it’s hard to follow. My hand tingles, fuzzy and warm in memory of how it clung to hers all night, and I am struck with how much the idea of Hatchett ending Bree Cooper’s life threatens to rip me apart from the inside.

nothing for angsty heist wip lol I'm sure those will be forthcoming throughout the month

[cass-phoenix]

2024 Writing Roundup

Tagged by @remedyturtles Thank you, cherie!

Words Posted: 200,698! It was a big year, and I didn't even do that great during Nano. That makes me happy that I was able to write so much. I'm also not counting my original works in that.

Additional Word Count: 100,052 .....what. What. What?!

Fandoms: Some original stuff, ROTTMNT, 2012 TMNT, Arcane, TFP, and TFOne!

Highest Kudos + Highest Hit One-Shot: Faults, Follies, and Fixes! That one makes sense. I wrote it earliest in the year, so it had plenty of time to accumulate love. It sits at 294 kudos and 1,781 hits. Pretty cool!

New Things I Tried: HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF SPRINTING?! SET A TIMER AND WRITE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN DURING THE ALLOTTED TIME MOST OF MY WORD COUNT WAS DONE WHILE SPRINTING I LOVE SPRINTING LET ME SPRINT MORE CHIEF My friends have referred to sprinting as my "life blood". Oh, also I go by Dray now.

Fic I Spent The Most Time On: Honestly? Ummm, not counting Shredder's Vendetta because that is a multi-year project, but probably Anywhere Just Not Home! I started developing it early in 2024/later in 2023, and it's become one of my favourites.

Fic I Spent The Least Time On: Violet Is The Colour Of Grief. Wrote that bad boy in probably thirty minutes.

Favourite Thing I Wrote: This is kind of a tie. Right now, the closest one I've got is I've Got You Under My Skin. That was a labor of love with one of my best friends, @pickledcarrotsandradish and beta'd by @mackself. It took me over for a full month, combing through it, making it perfect, rereading it over and over and over. The second one is a lot less cool, but it's Trample the Weak. It just made me happy to do.

Favourite Thing(s) I Read: So many. So, so many. I've narrowed it down to the ones I remember vividly.

firefight by remrose Obviously. By the way it auto-capitalized remrose which proves just how much I yell their name.

Oh, If My Engine Works Perfectly On Empty by Bemmiecake Wishing Bemmiecake all the best in their recovery... One time they commented on one of my stories and I felt like I had ascended as high as I could.

Minus One by carrot_top_munk What can I say but what the frag??? This changed me forever. So what if I cried?!

Waste Report by Caubool Another one that left me a sobbing mess on the floor begging for redemption and love and why would they write that

the soft animal of your body by taizi I am staring respectfully. I've reread it half a billion times. I love the concept so much and I need more from that universe.

Fight or Flight by pickledcarrotsandradish SO I'M BIASED WHAT ABOUT IT, IT'S A FIC FOR ME ABOUT TEAM A! MY FAVOURITE TEAM! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO, NOT INCLUDE IT?! Also, Radish, you don't have a pfp on AO3 and it threw me when I was copying the link for your username. /lh /t

Frigid Sliders and Flaming Feet by orchardkeeper This one is underrated. So underrated I might just cry and throw up. Everyone, read it, pLEASE it's so good it's got a hypothermia Leo or a Hypothermeo as I like to call him! It's so good. It's so good. Oh also Leo has depression did I mention that bit?!

Say Something True by Dandy So funny story. I named myself Cassandra, and only afterwards did I learn about the prophetess' curse. Every so often I'm reminded of the inherent angst tied to the name. This fic reminds me of it OFTEN mostly because I reread it like crazy.

like_theletter So I know I'm supposed to recommend fics here. But I don't want to copy the link for every single one of his fics. So I recommend this author. I came to a section in my bookmarks that was just a wall of L's stories. I love him so much. Don't tell him but I think he's my favourite author.

helpless by splinnters Almost every One-Shot I read leaves me begging for more. This one is no exception. In fact, it's top of the food chain. How dare they just END it there I need MORE

Writing Goals for 2025: Oh, we're doing goals? Then 500,000 words. I bet I could make it. It'd suck, but I bet I could make it.

New Works: Promises, Priorities and Protocols. (Someone who wasn't even in the TF fandom told me they want to read this one because of the snippets I've sent in the sprinting channel. I'm so excited to write more, but I got stuck.) A Matter Of Silence. Playing Favourites. What's In A Name. Incessant Buzzing. Honey Hunt. Entomology Mount. Names are all subject to change, but if you're in the TF fandom, I bet you know immediately what character is my favourite.

Tagging: @griffin-stone, @pickledcarrotsandradish, @mackself, @orchard-keeper

[silver-scripts]

Lockyle: Only One Bed Preview

When confronted with the ~only two rooms~ debacle at Albury Castle in The Creeping Shadow, I'm sure I'm not the only one who immediately imagined a "only one bed" fic.

It's one of the projects I'm working on for nano and probably won't be edited until December, so here's a sneak peek :)

This isn't edited so sorry about any typos

The group of them stared at the two sets of keys in front of them.

Two.

“Well, personally I’m too tall to fit in a twin bed or on the couch, so I’ll be taking the room with the big bed,” Kipps said. He reached out to snag the key, and Lockwood lunged forwards as well. Evidently their old rivalry still went deep enough that neither of them was willing to concede to the other.

But there were two keys, and they each pulled away with one. The game changed.

Holly eyed George and then Kipps, calculating the odds. “Well I’m not sharing a bed, so I will be taking the cot,” she said quickly, taking a step towards Kipps. She slung her bag over her shoulder and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, smiling tightly. Kipps grabbed his kit bag and the two of them headed upstairs. A moment later, a door closed.

And then there were three.

George, Lockwood, and Lucy stood staring at each other. A breath passed, and George took his glasses off to clean them on the bottom of his shirt. Carefully, he replaced his glasses and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He teetered on his heals as if he was waiting for someone to say something.

“Well,” Lucy started. She wished, suddenly, that she hadn’t bitten her tongue and had asked Holly to split the twin. It would have made the most sense. And yet here she was now, resigned to taking the couch. She could already imagine how much her back was going to hurt in the morning. “I suppose it makes the most sense for me to-”

“I’m more than happy to take the couch,” George said simply. “Personally, I like my personal space. And I can’t imagine either of you would be rather fond of spending the night with me.” He smiled at them delightedly and grabbed his bags, heading off to plop down on the couch by the fire. “Have a good night!”

“Wait,” Lucy called. “You-”

But George had already disappeared, and she was alone with Lockwood.

If he was phased by the idea of having to spend the night with Lucy, he didn’t show it. Instead, his eyes sparkled the way they always did, and he sent her one of his signature grins. He grabbed both of their kit bags.

“Onwards,” he said, swinging the key merrily around his fingers. He headed for the stairs.

Lucy felt jittery in her skin, but she took a heavy breath and forced herself to follow him. Might as well get this over with.

Upstairs, Lockwood meticulously put the key in the lock. He turned it, and the door popped open with a resounding click. He nudged it open with his foot and dropped their kit bags just inside the door.

“Charming,” he said.

Lucy followed him inside. The room was smaller than she’d imagined — even smaller than her tiny room in the attic. There was just barely enough room to walk around the twin bed, which was fitted with a faded, brown, hand-made quilt. Matching nightstands adorned either side of the bed, and each was outfitted with a reading lamp and small bowls of lavender.

A fireplace stood at the foot of the bed, and its dusty mantle was lined with old, black and white photos of the town. An ancient, tarnished mirror hung above it, and Lucy stared at herself in the reflection.

Lockwood walked to the window and gave a curious peek outside. The night glittered back at him, and his eyes shone as he looked out at the town.

“Well Danny’s right about one thing,” he said simply. “There are quite a few ghosts out tonight. No sign of the so-called ‘Creeping Shadow’ though.”

“That’s not altogether surprising,” Lucy said.

Lockwood shrugged. “Maybe. But you never know. We can do all kinds of research tomorrow — I suspect the townsfolk will have quite a bit to say. In the meantime, we should probably get some sleep.” He stepped back from the window and ruffled through his bag on the floor, withdrawing a toothbrush and a set of pajamas. “Shall we?”

Lucy’s heart fluttered in her chest. “Of course,” she said quickly.

Lockwood stepped past her and into the hall, where he disappeared into the bathroom. She closed the door to their room behind him and locked it, that nervous feeling in her chest growing stronger. She pulled the over-sized t-shirt she always slept in out of her bag, suddenly aware of how ratty it was and how badly it probably needed a wash. Her pajama pants weren’t in much better shape. She changed quickly, feeling overly self-conscious about her choice of sleepwear.

Why should she care, anyways? She never cared when Lockwood saw her in the mornings — hair disheveled, teeth unbrushed, imprints from her pillow still on her cheek as she stumbled into the kitchen for tea and toast. This shouldn’t be any different.

There was a knock at the door, and Lucy opened the door to be greeted, unsurprisingly, by Lockwood. He held his suit folded neatly in his arms and had changed into a pair of neat white pajamas. “Bathroom is free,” he said, heading into the room. “You might want to get in there before George does. Or Kipps, god knows how long his nightly routine probably is. I imagine it takes a good amount of upkeep to prevent him from looking like a ghost himself every day.”

Lucy snorted. She gladly followed his advice and headed to brush her teeth — partially to get away from him, but also because she’d made the mistake of using the bathroom after George once, and it was safe to say it was not a mistake she was ever going to make again. Even the skull had wrinkled his nose at the odor, and he didn’t even have a sense of smell.

Teeth brushed, she pulled her hair up into a ponytail and headed back into the bedroom. Lockwood had started a small fire while she was gone, and had turned off the main lights in the room. His reading lamp was on, and he was tucked beneath the bed covers already and had his nose buried in a local newspaper. When he had acquired it, Lucy had no idea.

“Erm,” she started awkwardly. “Would you prefer it if I took the floor?”

Lockwood looked up at her from the newspaper and blinked. “What?”

“Would you prefer it if I took the floor?” she repeated, motioning to it stupidly. “I’m sure I could drag down a pillow and blanket or something.”

“What are you talking about?” Lockwood asked. “Why on earth would you sleep on the floor?”

“Well…” she trailed off, suddenly feeling incredibly stupid. “I just… wanted to make sure you’re comfortable, is all.”

“Why should I ever feel uncomfortable in your presence?” Lockwood asked. “Anyways, I hope you don’t mind, but I started a fire. It was feeling a bit brisk in here.” He folded the newspaper over and tossed it onto the nightstand. “No offense to Aldbury Castle, but its news is incredibly dull. They haven’t even reported on any of the hauntings. Their front page news story is about how some farmer’s sheep went missing.” He huffed. “What’s the point of even having a newspaper if you’re not going to talk about anything important?”

Lucy snorted, thankful for his change of topic. “So getting into it isn’t one of your goals, then?”

He grinned. “I never said that.”

Shaking her head, Lucy closed the bedroom door behind her and stiffly slipped into bed. She pulled the covers high up over herself and turned to face away from Lockwood. It was a twin, so there wasn’t exactly much room to spare, but all the same she put as much space between the two of them as possible.

She felt Lockwood move, and a moment later his light switched off. “Good night, Lucy,” he said softly.

“Good night, Lockwood.”

[mosylufanfic]

21 and 30 for the year in review meme! ❤️

21. What's something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story?

So I actually have two for this, and they both surprised me because they're quite dark, and I don't feel like I generally do dark.

One was the reveal at the end of One Fighter with a Sharp Stick. I had the premise from a prompt, and how all the characters fit in, and as I was about halfway through figuring out the plot, some part of me went "Hey, you know what would be messed up?" And then I went OOOOOOOOO and giggled about it all day as I wrote. It didn't change the plot exactly, but it changed the tone and some of the little asides I dropped in. There was definitely a lot more Unspoken Angst between Jyn and Cassian, for one.

The other was how I chose to end A Watched Pot, an Avatar!Zuko AU I did. I always intended to have Azulon die, but as I wrote along, I slowly began to realize that in the context I'd set up, <spoiler> was gonna have to die, too. With that in mind, I went in and added a lot more emphasis on how the Fire Nation used their pet Avatar.

30. What would you like to write next year?

I have a good chunk of a Zutara arranged marriage fic written. It was supposed to be for an exchange, but I realized that I wouldn't finish it by the due date without some serious grinding, and after doing NaNo, I didn't have the spoons for that. But it's a really fun idea and I'd like to get back to it.

I may also finish a story that I abandoned years ago, from a very old fandom of mine. It was really close to the end - in fact, I'd written and posted the main climax - but I never got around to writing the denouement and wrapping up all the loose story threads. I got a DM from ff.net (that's how old this is) from someone who said they reread it all the time, and I thought, "man that was a good story, I should finish it."

My other fic-related goals for 2025 are to go through and answer the backlog of comments on AO3 (they go back years) and finish moving all my old fic from ff.net to AO3. I just have the feeling that ff.net is circling the drain. One day it may just fold in the night, and I have a lot of fic that I'm not willing to lose.

Year in Review asks

[goodluckclove]

I have a project that I started for Nanorimo. I won Nano but after it was over I lost the motivation to write the last of the first draft. I think it’s a combination of not knowing exactly how to end it, not a lot of people to share it with, and being worried that I’m gonna re-read what I have and just find it bad.

Hello, Friend! Please, sit down. Take a deep breath. I'm going to say a variation of a form of writing advice that I'm sure you've heard a lot, but I'll hopefully elaborate it to the point where it clicks. I actually started writing through NaNoWriMo, it was a really great way to build up the muscle of consistent practice. Did my first six or so novels like that. Fun!

But I have good news and bad new about your first draft. The bad news is that it probably isn't perfect. The good news is that that's a great place to be in.

For one thing, NaNo specifically is not a traditional way to write a very stable first draft. People will spend years on what you've done in 30 days. To compare them is comparing your blanket fort with someone else's McMansion and thinking "dang what if my blanket fort never has faux-Roman arches".

Some people say their first drafts are perfect. This confuses me but I accept it and believe them when they say it. I do think that these people are not talking about drafts they carved out of word-flesh in a month or less. That's an entirely different game to play. When you hear people talk about how you're supposed to have a shitty first draft it could be hard to swallow. We don't want to feel like we put in all this hard work to make something shitty. So maybe I can say it a different way:

Your first draft is the skeletal structure of the story as a whole. It is the frame to what you're trying to achieve.

And I can say from experience that not liking your first draft doesn't feel the way you might think it will if you go at it the right way. I've written twelve books and there's only maybe two that I read fragments from and genuinely cringe. And even then there's still stuff I like about it.

Maybe you went into some kind of fugue state for a month and wrote a bunch of stuff that you hate every part of. You're a big high fantasy fan and you wrote a gritty detective novel. You love Dark Academia romance and when you read your NaNo you find it is just a list of every slur you could think of and new ones that could be added to the lexicon. If this happens to you then yes, your first draft is objectively terrible and you should probably take yourself to the hospital.

More likely your thoughts will look like this:

Maybe I should cut this. It's not really needed.

Oh I forgot the protagonist has this specific trait, I should remember that and incorporate more in the rest of the book

Hah yeah I see where I was going with this.

I should add more details about this concept, considering I now know about this other concept.

Hah man that's a lot of typos. (Assuming you're like me)

These are the types of things I have thought when I looked over literally every first draft I've ever edited since the dawn of my time as a writer. You are not likely to rend your clothes in shame and burrow underground. Even if you find some weird shift that happens in NaNo novels, like the genre or tone changing midway through the document - professional writers do that too. It can be a more efficient way to explore the space you're working it.

It can be a really interesting challenge! It helps too that you took some time off - I try and take at least a week between draft edits, even though it can be painful. You'll be able to see it with fresher eyes.

My usual strategy for editing my own drafts is to read from the top with curiosity and excitement and treat it like a puzzle. Is this what I want? Can it be better? Was there something I missed? Incidentally, when I'm stuck at a point in the novel I use the same trick and it helps every time. It's how Chuck Palahinuik did Fight Club!

So yeah you already did a huge thing by finishing a NaNo. Why not take a look back, if not just to enjoy the crazy and chaotic fruits of your effort?

Also - in regards to people not reading your work. Out of 12 novels I've probably had 3 read all the way through. It can suck, but it's okay and it doesn't mean they aren't good. Validate yourself and enjoy your own writing and start putting shit online/self-publishing/querying to take a chance!