#idk I’m tagging as many random tags that are relevant-enough that I can think of

[scandalsavagefanfic]

Hello! I am a huge fan of ur writing. I've loved everything I've read of yours. I've read alot of what you've posted, except for a couple of the tags that are squicky for me (so I'm very thankful you tag very thoroughly). No judgement for the squick, it's just not for me. & when I'm having a bad day, I usually just go thru ur ao3 and find something to reread. I think about Therapy's Bruce & Jason every damn day. While I obvs appreciate ur darker more "problematic" content (I really vibe with some of the themes you write about bc of my own trauma, & so it's very cathartic to read about in a fictional setting), I am truly a sucker for ur more happy content. The Happily Ever After verse also lives in my head rent free. Idk more wholesome stuff just seems more special when you write it. Anyways. I would die for you. But the point of this ask is cause I'm curious as to why you don't like Urban Legends? I'm sorry if you already talked about it here or on twitter and I missed it. I was just wondering because I really enjoy your take on things and would love to hear why you dislike it. I've been enjoying it so far personally, but I am always open to DC comics criticism.

Aw thank you so much! I'm so flattered by everything you just said. You're so sweet ❤❤❤❤❤

I haven't talked about Urban Legends here or twitter (I haven't been very active in either place lately. Just a lot going on and no energy 😔) but I'm happy to do it here.

Before I start though, I just want to add a standard disclaimer and make it clear that if you like it, there's nothing wrong with that and you don't have to let me ruin it for you lol. Like what you like.

That said, since you asked...

I said this when I was talking about it on discord, that there is a difference between hope and expectation. I always hope that a new story centered on Jason (or anyone really, but things have been especially egregious for Jay for 15 years) will be good or at least treat the character with a minimal level of respect (to be honest, the bar is super fucking low). But my expectations always temper my hope, to keep it from getting unrealistic. Because my expectations are based on experience.

The long history of Jason Todd, since even before his resurrection, has been one of retroactively trying to make him "a bad seed" in order to absolve Bruce of any responsibility in his death.

I don't even expect DC or their writers to start honoring the fact that Jason was not an angry, reckless Robin (and less of the later than Dick or Tim and definitely Damian). There plenty of ways that retcon can be folded into his history and be compelling and sympathetic. And if they're going to stick with that retcon, I'm only asking that they do it in one of those compelling and sympathetic ways because Jason was 15 when he died, heroically, in one of the most selfless acts in comics, to save a woman who literally handed him over to be brutally murdered. He was 12 when Bruce plucked him off the streets, he'd been homeless and fending for himself for at least two years. I personally think that Jason's story hits harder for him and Bruce if their original, canon relationship, of Jason as starry-eyed and eager to learn and absolutely devoted to Bruce and Bruce to Jason, is preserved. But Jason's origins does leave room for a meaningful interpretation of him as angry and frustrated at the lack of meaningful results of Bruce's methods.

And that's really where my irritation at stories like Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer and Batman The Adventure Continues has it's roots.

Every time one of these stories comes out, I think (or hope, rather) that this will be the one that remembers and respects the origins of the Jason and the Red Hood, that takes into account the changed sensibilities of comics readers in the 30 years since Jason's death and the subtle, 20 year, retroactive campaign to make him the "bad Robin". The "born bad" trope is played out and literally no one likes the message it implies. That some kids are just bad eggs and there's nothing parents or the adults around them can do. Especially when it's played as the kid's fault. If Jason's time as Robin is going to be characterized by anger, then it should be rooted in anger at the social injustices he witnessed as he grew up in an impoverished, crime-ridden, area and the horrors he faced raising himself when every day was a battle for survival. There are topical, meaningful, stories to tell with that backdrop.

But those are never the stories we get.

⚠⚠ Spoilers for Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer ⚠⚠

I'm particularly disappointed in Urban Legends because for the first issue, it looked like that was the kind of story we were going to get. I was put off by the first flashback of Jason being mesmerized by Bruce's guns, and I got that feeling in my gut that it was a bad sign. Jason depicted as impatient and overconfident and the scene with the guns is heavy-handed foreshadowing that got my spidey-sense tingling. I had a inkling then (in the first three pages) of how this story was going to play out, but it was early and I could still see many narrative paths that could lead to a satisfying story. My concerns were soothed somewhat and the little flame of my hope fanned, with the flashback of Alfred scolding Bruce, with Barbara's concern for Jason. A bit of worry returned with the way Jason ruthlessly pursued an addict who didn't appear to be a dealer and with the ending of the issue. The stuff with the addict sat wrong with me but the ending was tempered some by how despicable Tyler's dad was written. The scene was clearly set so that the reader could sympathize with Jason's decision and the scene with the addict could be brushed aside as a side-effect of comics over-the-top need for constant action, so I still held hope.

Issue 2 made me uncomfortable and it's where my hope starts to take a backseat to my expectations. I can dismiss Jason's self-deprecating internal monologue as unreliable narration, except that the flashback reinforces his thought process to explicitly show that it's not unreliable narration, and should be taken at face value. Jason faces physical abuse at the hands of his mother's drug dealer and when the flashback continues later, Jason kills the drug dealer. To be clear, this is a pre-Bruce Jason. His mom is still alive. He's like... 10. He kills this guy for shoving his head into a wall and implying Jason's mother paid for her drugs with sex. This is a scene that serves a single purpose. To show that Jason has always been prone to violence.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is the small chance the drug dealer might not be dead. But the story obviously wants the reader to think he is, and it hasn't done anything to change that yet.

Starlin already did this story with The Diplomat’s Son in 1988 and he did it infinitely better. AND that’s still technically canon. So now I’m supposed to believe that Jason lost his cool bad enough to kill two douche bags before his sweet 16? Like it’s totally normal for abused kids raised in poverty, who’ve led hard and heartbreaking lives to just... haul off and kill people? That’s bullshit, and when taken with the Jason in the third issue, who is little more than an idiot thug, this story is really doubling down on some fucked up stereotypes.

Which brings us to the most recent issue. I went into this installment with very low expectations. I thought this story was going to be about Jason, through this experience with Tyler, a young boy with a similar background to Jason's, coming to the realization that Bruce's way is the best way and that Bruce did his best by Jason.

That would be annoying (in no small part because it takes increasingly absurd levels of plot armor to keep Bruce's no kill rule relevant, let alone irrefutably right). But I can probably live with that, if only because maybe if Jason officially falls back into line with the Bats crusade, maybe I'll get stories that treat him with respect, stories that don't relegate him to comic relief, dumb brute, or a background body with no lines in a story about the Joker burning Gotham (like Jason would just fucking stand there quietly for that).

And that may still be where the story is going, Jason realizing Bruce is right.

But holy shit do I not have the right words to describe how fucking insulting and gross issue three is.

From start to finish--including the flashback--Jason is written as cruel and fucking stupid. Like straight up dumb.

The entire issue is Bruce explaining the fucking basics to Jason like it's his first day. And Jason flies off the fucking handle and terrorizes a doctor he knows isn't a part of making the Cheerdrops, beats the shit out of some random addicts, and finally, when he can't accomplish anything on his own because he's a dumb brute he calls Barbara for help and rushes in with no information where he's promptly incapacitated and must now wait to be rescued by Batman.

This panel is the least of the issues sins but I can’t screenshot the entire story but it’s representative of the tone for the whole issue (and retroactively tainted the prior two issues).

This is beyond insulting. The only conclusions Jason comes to in this issue are the ones Bruce leads him to by talking to him like he can’t make the simplest connections. And like... in this story Jason can’t make the simplest connections.

This (and the Jason throughout the entirety of this issue) is a far cry from the Jason we fell in love with in Under the Red Hood, who was competent and strategic and intelligent enough to seize control of Gotham’s underworld from Black Mask (who’s no fucking slouch, he’s the first and only person to unify organized crime in Gotham) AND elude and manipulate Bruce until the time and place of his choosing.

This is a far cry from even the Red Hood and the Outlaws Jason who is competent enough to fight the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul (among very dangerous and skilled others) and smart enough to create antidotes for mind control nanotech viruses.

As he should be, by the way. Jason Todd is one of the best, most comprehensively trained fighters in DC’s stable of non powered vigilantes. He’s not irrational or hot headed. He’s pragmatic, tactically minded, and patient. He’s a detective. Right now. Has been since he was 12. Bruce doesn’t have to make him one because he already is. 

Jason is not a stupid thug who uses his fists because his brain doesn’t work. And I can’t tell you how so very exhausted I am by this narrative. 

This is actually the most egregious example of Jason’s skills and intelligence being not just undermined but dismissed entirely. Even Morrison’s Jason had some degree of competency. 

The one, single redeeming factor of this story is the art. It’s beautiful. And Marcus To is a godsend he seems to be one of only a couple of artists who remember that Jason was a child when he was Robin and I’m literally only buying this book because of him. 

Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to come out so... um... passionately lol. I’m just very very tired. My intention with this isn’t to ruin it for you, if you like it, that’s fine. 

But this issue shot this story to the top of my "Vehemently Despise” list. 1) Batman: Urban Legends (Cheer), 2) Battle for the Cowl/Morrison’s Batman and Robin, 3) Batman The Adventure Continues.

I hope the next issues somehow salvage this dumpster fire. But I’m not expecting it.

(Damnit. That sounded harsh again. To reiterate, I’m not trying to judge anyone who enjoys it, I just personally hate it and you asked me why lol 😅)

[berrymeter]

idk anything about the grace period for deltarune u can just keep this ask in the attic until that’s over.. anyway.. i really liked chap 2 i played it in one sitting 😭 the rpg combat is enjoyable enough and just the right amount more complex than the undertale combat is, although not very difficult. very touching power of friendship moments minus that fucking bird man. some of the dialogue felt quite fandom tropey and surface-level, and queen’s lines (love her tho) were hit or miss for me. i think the biggest frustration i have with it is all the useless random encounter characters clogging up your world 😞😞 there’s only so many wacky one-liners toby can give them and i am not invested enough to care! also some of those designs are uglie!! there are better ways to make a world feel real and lived in. same thing happened with undertale.

BUT it was a great time! i liked the juxtaposition between the ultimately harmless antics and charming banter with the gang and queen, and the more sinister plot going on in the background. most obviously in the ending. toriel and susie making a pie while kris RIPS OUT THEIR SOUL….spoiler warning.. did u see the theory that the soul aka red heart is you the player operating kris the vessel? i’m definitely not a theorist but i like seeing all the loose plot ends i’m having a good time. i love noelleeeeee 💞💞💞💞and i liked susie a lot more this chapter. when ralsei taught her a healing spell 😖😖 i still don’t really care about ralsei though 😓

special shoutout to the spinning teacups ☕️☕️☕️ and special NOT-shoutout to the mice games with the rotating blocks i never understood how to do that.

it was a very feel-good game. it made me feel good. standards for video game passed. what did u think tho!! i mean i assume u liked it but for the same reasons? different ones? feel free to respond with an excruciatingly long essay of ur own <3 we are back to the tt anon blocks of text i restrained myself for a bit but we are back -tt

hiii tt anon <3 back at it again with the asks that i am looking forward to answering. if i post this a little before the 48 hours i will be forgiven bc i will use the deltarune spoilers tag and also the long post tag LMAOO anyway anyway oh btw never refrain urself from sending blocks of text if my followers are mad even though i tag them long post that's ON THEM. everything u say is worth listening to & same for everything i say so that's my final stance on this 😌

i also played it in one sitting it was so GOOD. i don't care that it was 2 am here when it was released i wasss ecstatic and the game was so fucking GOOD tonby the fox delivered!! it was so so worth the wait! the music was so much better than in chapter 1 imo, like... my castle town? the cyber fields theme? the queen's fight? spamton g spamton??? rouxls' "fight"?? BANGERS. i only see bangers. the new gameplay mechanics were also very fun!! i for one kinda struggled with the mice puzzles but not nearly as much as that one section with the traffic jams where you have to go down and back up or whatever. what the hell was that? i'm surprised i actually got past it. i loved the parts in cyber field though where you had to move on beat with the music that was sooo fun!! more of that! i prefer the fighting system in undertale ngl but it's mostly bc the undertale bosses are... just so good. the one boss who rivalises for now to me is queen, although rouxls is also very fun.

as for the story itself... i liked it :) susie & noelle are fucking ADORABLE. i think they deserve to be happy forever like not even together just individually as characters they're the fucking best. susie's grown so much that's my girl... wough... ralsei i do like but... i don't trust him :D i don't think he's evil but he knows too much and tells us too little until he can't keep it for himself and i don't like that. like bro you're gonna get us in trouble stop. but ALSO some ppl speculate that himself is being misled and that the fountains wouldn't bring the roaring, which is an interesting theory. (also i miss lancer being more relevant)

uhh kris is... well... kris... :)... yeah i did hear about that theory i'm in a discord server where ppl have been going on and on about theories since the game dropped LMAOO we're all insane. um. my personal theory is that there's another knight, or that kris is at least also influenced by an "evil force" or whatever, and we're the good force influencing them bc otherwise they're just a normal albeit mischievous kid. and the stretch part is that uhhh there's two knight pieces on a chessboard, ik this isn't about chess at all but king of spades does tell you at the end of chapter 2 that you'll meet a more powerful foe = the queen, coincidentally in chess the queen is stronger than the king. hmmmmmmmmmmm. lmao i don't think my parallel here is right but it's fun to think about anyway

did you see the superboss? i didn't fight him myself but he's so fun. also @ everyone who said he's gonna be a tumblr sexyman i hate that you're right shut that shit down HJKSNFKJSDHG. also did you see the secret fucked up pipis route? it's horrible. genuinely... i watched a streamer play it and 😳 uh. well i didn't even hate berdly before anyway yeah he's annoying but like he's a snot-beaked kid i'm not gonna wish him... whatever happens in this route. legit scarring. and poor noelle... pffbbgtbg. hate this so much. but i think it was done so bad and horrible on purpose, with how specific your gameplay has to be for you to be able to complete it tonby really was like "you wanna be an asshole? undertale wasn't enough? fine. work for it. and also suffer" nskjshf. i'm never doing it <3

lastly FUCKING QUEEN!!!!!!! QUEEN MY LOVE!!!!! BEST CHARACTER. i love her sosososo much it's unreal. and i didn't mind any character designs much, i'm not too complicated in that regard shfkjsdfh i love the tasques and tasque manager though :) also the... idk their names... the butler dudes? they're so cute. swatch's design is neat

so those are my thoughts <3 can't wait to hear more from u!!!

[dangerously-human]

Tagged by both @starspray and @astridcontramundum for pretty similar AO3 questions, so I’ll combine them. Thank you both so much! :D 

Name: visionsofmangos, although I am in the process of changing it to human_dreamer_etcetera (starting with AO3, but that’ll probably become my default username for the internet at large)

Fandoms: Currently just Endeavour, with no particular plans to write for anything else anytime soon. I’ve also written several for Continuum and Supernatural, a couple for Covert Affairs, and a handful for a mishmash of other fandoms: Doctor Who, Kingdom Hearts, Sherlock, Fringe, Harry Potter, and the Avengers.

Where you post: Just AO3 now (and snippets here, sometimes). I used to post on FFN back in the day, but I don’t especially like the platform, so I’ve switched over entirely.

Most popular multi-chapter fic: Far and away, by every stat AO3 measures, it’s Those Binary Stars (Endeavour, Joan/Morse).

Favourite story you’ve written so far: Probably Permutations About an Axis.

Fic you were nervous to post: You Know You Can’t Chase the Stars Underwater. The first chapter wasn’t especially fluffy (the unplanned second was, and the third, if I ever get around to it, will probably be somewhere in between), and it felt like a pretty significant deviation from the tone I’d settled into for the Those Binary Stars series by then. It fit more with the mood of the early TBS chapters, and I worried people wouldn’t like that. I also worried because it was kind of a weird... how do I put this? It was in large part about Morse’s relationship with Max, but in the context of a larger story that’s about Morse and Joan, and I didn’t want it to feel like I was propping up one relationship at the expense of another. Especially because I actually do low-key ship Morse and Max (obviously not within this AU), and, idk, I was nervous it would come across like I’m only interested in how that friendship benefits this other ship I’m addressing in this fic. Or something like that. I still think I have some work to do on blending Morse’s relationships with Max and Joan in that story, which is what I’m hoping to do with the eventual third chapter. Anyway, that was a really long answer to a question that probably didn’t warrant it...

How you choose your titles: Oof. I cannot believe I used to love titles more than anything as a kid - they’re the absolute worst now! I spend a lot of time picking out key themes and then scouring Related Words for, well, related words, and then trying to spin something pretty out of that. Sometimes I get lucky and the title naturally comes out of whatever inspiration I’ve been drawing from for the fic (Those Binary Stars from a Russell Lewis interview, You Can’t Chase the Stars Underwater from an Andrew McMahon song, A Little Would be Enough from the relevant show dialogue), and sometimes there’s a pretty way to sum up the content of the fic that fits (Just Once, Still Here, Blurring the Lines). Usually, though, it’s days or weeks of aggravated brainstorming, especially when I’m trying to fall asleep!

Do you outline? Kind of? Now that I use Scrivener, I usually have index cards for each scene I have planned so far, and scribble a bunch of notes in those (often copied from my notes app on my phone, which is where all the random unsorted thoughts go). Then I can reorder and organize those. I usually have a vague idea where I’m going next, but it’s always a lot of exploration and guesswork as I go...

Complete fics: Depending how you count, I think 23 on AO3

In progress: Can I plead the fifth to avoid self-incrimination? ^.^’ I think... maybe 4ish? There’s the spy AU, the characterization poem thing, Three Men and a Baby... Okay, actually, as long as I don’t sprout too many new ones, that’s probably manageable.

Posted WIPs that I have active plans to continue at this time: A Shifting Cadence and You Know You Can’t Chase the Stars Underwater.

Posted WIPs that I have given up on: I had some Supernatural stuff that I originally intended to write more for, many many years ago, but I left them off at an okay spot and I think I’ve marked them complete by this point anyway.

Exchange fics due soon/unrevealed: I’ve never written for an exchange, although I think I’d like to!

WIPs that live in my fanfic folder and are incomplete and who knows when they’ll be finished: I’m gonna say the Endeavour spy AU probably falls in this category. I’m still actively brainstorming, and I’ll write snippets as they come to me, but it’s probably going to be a long time until that’s ready for posting.

Coming soon/not yet started: I don’t usually count things I haven’t started yet in the WIP category, for fear of an unmanageably teetering pile! I will say I’ve considered writing a Broadchurch oneshot, and I have a couple extra Endeavour bits ‘n’ bobs (some TBS “behind the scenes” and some more canon compliant) rattling about.

Do you accept prompts: Sure! I’ve never really gotten one, but I’m open to it, as long as the bestower of the prompt is understanding about my very fickle muse (so I can’t necessarily commit to an idea, however much I may love it). Any fandom I’m currently active in would work, although probably Endeavour would be most likely to get written right now.

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: It’s probably a tie between Three Men and a Baby (Endeavour roommate shenanigans, which is almost done, actually) and A Shifting Cadence (more Morse/Joan, which should have a new chapter posted soon).

[she-toadmask]

I’m kind of in a mood suddenly so below the cut there will be me just talking about fanfics I have read or am reading and why I like fanfic and stuff because I need to just

Fanfiction fucking rocks the basic part before all the stuff about it as the story just...it’s so easy to access and there’s so much and it’s just all there on the internet I don’t have to find a physical book

And on AO3 (where 90% of good currently-updating fic is afaik) there is TAGGING where you will know what you’re getting into (unless the author suddenly adds a sex scene and only then updates the tags but at least they give a warning at the start of the chapter but it doesn’t bother me as much as it did a couple years ago as long as I know it’s coming I know it’s a tool and it has its uses) with character drama and deaths and all that jazz not to mention how Ash being a badass has a specific tag and just other random things having tags that are important parts of the story

Like there are multiple fics I have found (not all of them are living fics sadly) of writing Ash’s journey in the beginning differently, like there was one I saw once that I kind of forgot to keep reading where he went to Sinnoh (and was still rivals with Paul and I think their ship tag was there?) and it said it was following game plot and then there’s one that I definitely don’t have open anymore because it didn’t update for some amount of time where he had a Joltik and then a Ferroseed and it’s really cool and a different one that’s still living and it’s called Pity of the World and Jesse + James (who is genderfluid in this fic) + Meowth are good people and stuff and just steal abused Pokemon and they run into Ash and they all end up being travel buddies and Ash understands Pokemon (not literally of course that’s not this fic) and also just knows what James’ gender is before they say anything and also in one chapter Zapdos is in Gringy City and says something about friendship being for mortals or something??? idk we’ll see and then there’s a different fic that I was reading and lost when switching devices and Ash was raised by Pokemon and literally can speak Pokemon and it was really neat but I haven’t tried to find where I left off because I’m too lazy for that tbh but it is still updating it’s Symbiosis or Symbiotic or something like that

Most things involving Ash that aren’t shippy or weird like that (ok there are some I’m not interested in but whapdfajaldjakjdf) end up being really cool because he’s a fucking legendary magnet which can either be played for laughs or deadly serious or just not be part of the fic if it isn’t relevant and so many fics use Aura it’s really cool (including Pity of the World I think he mega evolves Pidgeot (who evolves before leaving) when he fights Sabrina who does not have a doll in this fic) and there are different ways they do it and the thing I was mentioning about his connection with Pokemon like maybe it’s just a bit more than normal or it’s just yes he is everything and I kinda skipped out on gens 6 and 7 of the anime but I get enough to understand what they mean in chat fics and when referring to it in other fics it’s really cool

I think I mentioned Creepypasta and how there were two Harry Potter Creepypasta fics, one that was one and was slow to update if it wasn’t dead and one that was on the fourth one actually I was wrong about what number it was I think and updates every two weeks the first one is more lighthearted/written by a younger person like Slendy is a character and Harry x a lot of the ‘pastas I guess and it takes place starting before 4th year and the beginning is kinda meh with some weird dialogue and absurd levels of Dumbledore Ron and Hermione bashing but it does call out some of the other legitimate problems like how the lake trial in the tournament just kidnaps people which is very big because it was Ben who was kidnapped so big yikes there and honestly it’s not what you want to read if you want something really high-quality and serious like not that it doesn’t take itself seriously but it feels closer to something I would have read when I was in middle school than most of the Sanders Sides fics I read (just using that as comparison because the vast majority of that is well-written stuff). Then the other one!!!! For one it has a much more realistic/developed take on the Creepypastas’ existence like how the stories are how they exist with Slenderman being a cosmic horror being thing more than a character with character which is always really cool and Jeff kidnaps Harry as a baby (he is Boy when he is with the Creepypasta and Harry when at Hogwarts and there’s some really cool stuff about how they’re different) and, having lived with murderers, Harry gives zero fucks about things and kills Fluffy in the first book long before other stuff happens, Quirrel tries to use him to get the stone but gets annihilated at the mirror because family and then Voldemort is just a giant white snake for the rest of the series so far and also because he sucks Lockhart tries to exorcise Harry because Harry is fucking nuts and it’s great and also Harry is a Hufflepuff and there is probably more Gryffindor bashing than is necessary and pretty much all the adults get bashed for sucking (like in book 3 the boggart stuff is called out for being hella dangerous for them also Harry can’t cast the Patronus charm make of that what you will idk what) though Harry does make for quite the conversation topic among the teachers, Harry x Neville is the main ship and Neville eventually gets resorted into Hufflepuff because the Gryffindors are being massive dicks to him, also Harry flirts with Draco because Harry gives no fucks and it’s great (also both books give Luna lots of love, like the young one she’s a Seer like from Madame Macabre’s old webcomic that’s dead as it gets and the long one she’s just a good character and shit) and Harry makes these books to spread Slenderman’s legend throughout Britain/the Wizarding World and Draco may have gotten one and survived???? but now Neville has one during the summer months (and also through feeding Fanged Geraniums or whatever live stuff and blood instead of bonemeal he is creating Audrey II and straight-up says something about having to call it Harry Jr. but that’s probably just a little joke and isn’t going to stay beyond this but it’s just fun because Little Shop of Horrors slaps) and I have big fear about him doing the stuff and getting hurt and Harry/Boy conflict will be scary

There’s this other fic I found when trying to find good fics involving Ash and it’s kinda weird and seems to be written by a younger author but we’ll see where things go, like Harry got transported by Celebi to the world of Pokemon and Giovanni is Silver and Ash’s dad and they live with him and also Harry does too and he’s in a wheelchair and also is really smart and I wish we had gotten to spend a bit longer seeing their dynamics before when Harry is 14 the Goblet of Fire somehow spits his name out and Celebi helps with getting Harry (and also the other three because of course) safely there without dying because dimensional travel is hard and Celebi is friend and Luna gets to be important here too I think she’s shown up as a named student and guided them to a room and seems to know things about the castle and that’s kinda all there is so far there’s a bit more but it’s not got a lot yet I hope the author keeps going it’s a weird idea but I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes

Oh I forgot to talk about it but there’s this whump Ash fic that was being written under one title but it got dropped and now it’s being rewritten with the same concept but under a new title and going about a lot of things a different way it’s just the same starting premise and the fic is Helpless and Ash almost dies multiple times and there’s this theme of adults failing him and also Gary fucks a thing up and Ash needs support and therapy (a good number of fics have Ash needing therapy but given the shit he’s been through that is not surprising especially from my limited knowledge of Kalos holy shit Lysandre was doing some mad shit) and it’s just good but it is a lot of hospital and Ash being hurt and almost dying so be warned if that isn’t a safe read for you

The reason I don’t just outright block explicit anymore despite the horrors of trying to find safe Pokemon fic on AO3 amidst the consensual porn, incest porn, pokephilia porn, etc., is I randomly decided to try and find some Sonic fanfic on AO3 because a couple people on YouTube have been doing Sonic story stuff (Sonic What If has some good stuff that’s just... what-if scenarios and then there’s Sonic Rewritten which takes a game’s plot and then redoes it but good like the Deadly Six having personalities or Sonic 06 not having maybe bestiality or Generations being more than ‘oh past and present stages now have nostalgia’ and Robotnik and Eggman are significantly different people in that one and it’s really cool) and I thought maybe I would find some good stuff on AO3 (which I have but nothing that I want to ramble about specifically though there was one fic where Eggman does Tails clone and then his original body dies so he’s stuck looking like Tails and it’s kinda wild) and I found a fic that was marked explicit because torture and violence (honestly it wasn’t that bad) and I like it and don’t want to miss something that I might like by accidentally blocking it and now when I try to find Pokemon fic I have to see Leon x Hop and Pokemon x human smut.

There’s one Sanders Sides fic that I was reading and I don’t remember the name nor do I know if it’s updating I think I lost it but it started from the beginning of the series with the Dark Sides being a platonic poly family and when they weren’t in the episode they were talking about it/the Light Sides and it’s honestly really really good and the author just decided to have Deceit’s name be Janus and it was amazing when it turned out that was his real name it was just great but IDK if the fic has been abandoned, I think I lost it in the shift, but it was really good (but sympathetic dark sides and unsympathetic patton and roman and logan for a bit so do be warned if those aren’t comfortable for you)

Oh yeah I remembered another fic I can talk about there was this one Creepypasta fic and it’s completed and it is a Jeff x Reader but it kind of just stops being about the romance after a certain point and just goes way off the rails. It starts like ‘oh this will be a normal x reader with mansion and Slendy is dad and Zalgo is probably evil’ and then NOPE SLENDERMAN HAS BEEN RAISING FAMILIES THAT LOVE HIM TO TURN THEM INTO CRYSTALS TO MAKE HIM MORE POWERFUL AND ZALGO IS AGAINST THAT and it just is great like I never see Zalgo being good, like Slenderman being evil or whatever is plenty common (especially in the innumerable ARG fics I don’t read because I don’t have the attention span to learn what the fuck the source is) but never in tandem with Zalgo being anything but chaotic evil n shit it’s wild and it’s great and also Slenderman’s parents have faces I guess idk that was weird also there is one smut chapter but like the author said you can skip the smut and I did and didn’t feel like I missed any plot stuff so if that’s a no for you just keep an eye out for the author’s warning. It is by a younger writer, as demonstrated by its daily updates while it was being written, tiny chapters, and some general writing style stuff common to younger writers, but honestly I just love it for being something so wildly different, under the guise of a typical x Reader fic.

Speaking of ship stuff and Creepypasta the trilogy of Sans x Creepypasta fics are amazing. The writer definitely improves over time, the beginning of the first book kind of has the weird ‘then I knew I was in love’ stuff from a couple of the pastas (then again I’m ace and demiro so starting romance is just generally weird) but it is just a really good series. Sans ends up with seven kids in the third book and, while everyone else in the Undertale cast is bashed in the first two, Papyrus does seem to get some redemption in the third, so there is that. Also Murderer Sans is a fantastic tag, Gaster made a deal with Zalgo to create the skelebros and Sans is more demon than Papyrus by a lot and Zalgo is trying to kidnap Sans and Sans’ children so he has his family together to destroy the world and wander free and it’s wild and also Chara and Flowey show up and also LJ being an angel is mentioned and relevant to the plot for a bit so that’s neat and I don’t know all the details of how it ends because I lost it when I shifted and didn’t want to find where I was but it’s a great fic (albeit with a few things I can argue on) and the author has also been writing other Sans x Creepypasta stuff but I haven’t read it because idk

I really wish I had a good Minecraft fanfic to gush about but I really don’t it’s hard to find Minecraft fic that isn’t tuber-based, either Dream and friends (which occasionally I find a good one but so much is either Dream SMP which I have no interest in getting into, involves people I don’t know from Dream SMP, or just is shippy or straight-up doesn’t have a premise I’m interested in) or Hermitcraft (I fell behind so I have no idea what’s happening anymore) (but also like Mianite and Aphmau stuff but not as much as used to, but now Dream rules all so), and it just sucks. Like if some of it was Team Crafted fic I would be on board like hell yeah give me that nostalgia juice but it’s so much shit I just don’t know. I love the idea of Minecraft fanfic because there are so many options for the world and you can either make your own characters and you probably have to but then there’s just if you use Steve Alex Herobrine or Notch how they are written depends on the author and I live for that shit it’s a big part of why I read Creepypasta fic it’s because I like when there are different ways characters can be done (not unsympathetic or sympathetic like Patton so much like straight-up different characters) like Herobrine and Notch are the big ones like good vs evil, involved vs not, serious vs comedic, there are so many different ways to play them and I’m so disappointed AO3 doesn’t have much of it and so much of it is just Dream stuff and it usually just isn’t what I’m after in a fic.

The only other fics coming to mind right now are two wildly different fics involving Springtrap x Reader, one of them is being transferred from Wattpad for copy reasons, complete with tiny-ass chapters and that language that’s just so middle-school in the best way possible (like William and Springtrap are different consciousnesses and they way the author describes their struggle at one point is just so similar to a stupid thing I did and I have so much affection for it) and the other is legitimately really really good and the reader-insert has recently found out that Springtrap is William Afton and has murdered many children and they are currently dying multiple times to help his victims pass on because they can see ghosts and it’s actually really good and I have no idea where things are going, reader has currently met up with Michael Afton, currently all purple and dead and stuff, and has learned about remnant (weird-ass shit from modern FNAF lore) and it’s getting wild. I feel like there are two types of FNAF fic, ones in the style of FNAF 3/4 and earlier and ones from maybe 4 onward. Like ones where the lore was basically ‘bad man committed murder against children and they’re possessing the animatronics and that’s why they’re trying to kill you’ and then 4 starts having some more expansive lore ish and then after that it just goes everywhere with remnant and scooping and even more locations and also the books matter probably??? There is this one fic involving Glitchtrap that hasn’t updated in a bit and it’s fun, I like the idea of Glitchtrap and really wish I could read more fic just centered around FNAF VR. Then again, BEN was always one of my favorites and after I stopped being absolutely terrified of Herobrine I really liked his possibilities, maybe I just like the story utility and possible execution of characters with wide-ranging powers over technology and affecting the real world outside of it, IDK.

Ok I’m out of ramble energy, and also topics unless I go more in-depth about specific character options, but my energy is gone so I think that’s the end of it. I typed 3,000 words about fanfictions I’m reading and probably could have talked more about some of them if I wanted. This is my new hyperfixation. I guess. At least I know I have one, it’s reassuring to know for some reason, like for a while I missed how much Pokemon was my life in elementary school and Minecraft was in sixth grade, like it was nice just having something to focus on, though maybe that’s just the college and depression talking.

That was good, I’m glad I did that. Y’all are loved.

If you seriously read this entire thing... Wow. I really appreciate you digitally listening to me talking about random fanfic shit that I like. You’re really really cool.

[dxfiedfxte-a]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Meme.

Mun & Muse

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

tagged by:  Stolen from: @niflheimqueen​​ tagging:  @pinkheartedfool​, @divinesilverlove​ @delusorydetective​ @rock-you-like-a-hurricxne​ @foolishwinds​ @chibitantei​ @apocalypsxmaidxn​ @mcmcntomorii​​ and everyone else who hasn’t yet! You have been tagged! 

MY MUSE IS:   canon / oc / au / slightly canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated.

IS YOUR CHARACTER POPULAR IN THE FANDOM?   YES? / NO.

IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED HOT™ IN THE FANDOM?   YES / NO / IDK. (Have you seen his charm!! PLUS HE’S A RANDOM FOODAHOLIC DORK X3 and be weirdly cute in his own way :3  If you don’t believe me. wait until he Reveals His Right Eye)

IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED STRONG IN THE FANDOM?   YES / NO / IDK.  (Here’s the thing with that. It really depends if someone likes him as an MC. I’m sure their are probably others out there who may prefer Yu Narukami as a better Protag, or Akira the new P5 protag. So it depends on the person. But for the most part, I’d like to think he’s pretty well widely enough known in the fandom as the P3 Blue-Emo-Jesus who saved the world x3)

ARE THEY UNDERRATED?   YES / NO / IDK. (In terms of having his own personality, maybe a little bit? Since he’s only been able to express his own personality in the few spin off games we got for P3. Yu has been able too more, but for a while he wasn’t able to until Persona Q(P4 Side) and until the movie and now Dancing In Moonlight as well as Persona Q 2. But his personality in the P3 Manga if definitely underrated in my opinion, not too many people talk about the Manga)

WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN STORY?   YES / NO

WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN CHARACTER?   YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG./

ARE THEY WIDELY KNOWN IN THEIR WORLD?   YES / NO. (In my AU Main verse, he’s a famous Paranormal Investigator with his own show, so yes in my AU verse. Tho popularity level depends on verse, Main verse its his first season and he only just blew up. In my P5 Verse its 5 years after P4AU so he would be in his 4th season by then and only then be widely known)

HOW’S THEIR REPUTATION?   GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. (As a Paranormal Investigator, all his successful cases have gave him a very good rep within the Ghost Hunting community, it was thanks to his credibility how he was able ro get a 

tv contract deal. In P3 he has a great rep with his friends as their reliable leader and friend, but a not so good rep at school too many dates.. xD nice one Minato  )

HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON?   —  (Because I started to RP Minato when there’s wasn’t much games where he didn’t have his personality shown yet(2015)   I based him off more from the Manga’s interpretation of him, But now canon wise in terms of Personality, I still tend to use mostly his Manga personality, but now I’ve added a few small tidd-bits of how he is in the movie and how he is depicted in both PQ’s as well as Dancing In Moonlight.)

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting 

in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.  —    (Oh boy here we go. Minato is a food loving and very random dork who tends to be quiet and stoic 88% of the time, but he’s very kind, he always puts his friends before himself, he tries his very best to be the best leader he can possibly be and he is an all around easy person to get along with, just expect him to zone out here and there, to sometimes be very weird, VERY random. And expect him to randomly start snacking a lot x3 )

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).                      (He can sometimes have a tendency to overthink things waaayyyy too much and if it’s really eating at him a lot, it will permanently plague the back of his mind. He can sometimes be lazy, but its a habit he’s trying to break. If he’s really super hungry, he will gorge and when he gorges, his tables manners are absolutely terrible XD )

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE?   —  (I guess it was how I saw him when   I read the Manga. I played P3 FES first, then after beating it, I wanted to read the manga as soon as I found out about it. I also think it was the fact he dies and seeing how his friends grew up without him, it made me really want to see what it would be like if he survived, I guess I felt his death at the end of the game was just a real shame, I suppose I thought he would have been a great character to bring back in future Persona games, I understand the reason for his death and I have nothing against it. It was just that thought I had of “Man Minato could have been so much more if he survived” that drove me to pick him up )

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING?   —  (Well, I’ve been in the Persona fandom for 5 years now. Before when I came back, I wasn’t getting many rp’s. But ever since I came back and found an active Fuuka(MinaFuu is a ship I rarely got to rp) so that started it back up, and then it was seeing all these familiar faces(Or blogs in this case xD) come back, my motivation has been through the roof. So I guess the revival of the fandom and the wonderful people of the Persona community has fueled my fire and it keeps on burning for more!)

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

DO YOU THINK YOU GIVE YOUR CHARACTER JUSTICE?   YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? (I think so, I’ve Rp’d him for 5 years now, I’d like to think I know him inside and out?)

DO YOU FREQUENTLY WRITE HEADCANONS?   YES / NO / SORT OF? (When the motivation or idea’s are there then yeah I totally do)

DO YOU SOMETIMES WRITE DRABBLES?   YES / NO (I definitely do, not as many as I’d like to tho, but when the idea comes to mind that you just can’t express in an rp with someone else, then its best in drabble form.)

DO YOU THINK A LOT ABOUT YOUR MUSE DURING THE DAY?   YES / NO           (I’m a very musical person myself just like Minato so every time I jam I do and I’m always jammin ;3)

ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR PORTRAYAL?   YES / NO / SORT OF?

ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR WRITING?   YES / NO / A LITTLE BIT. (In the beginning I wasn’t, but I kept at it and eventually I built up enough confidence to really make him soar. The thing with Minato is since Persona protags are silent and the game lets you make up his personality. But since I incorporate him more from the Manga I try to really channel that version of him. I’ve had a few people tell me they like my portrayal. So I must be doing something right?)

ARE YOU A SENSITIVE PERSON?   YES / NO. / SORTA. (tbh I’m more sensitive when it comes to my friends or family. Most times I’m pretty level headed when it comes to myself, nowadyas anyway.)

DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL?   —  (For the most part yes and I don’t usually let any negativity get to me.  But if someone doesn’t like my portrayal for some reason then you’re welcome to unfollow me. Maybe I’m not the Minato for you then?)

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS, WHICH HELP YOU TO EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER?   — (DEF I love any questions I get so please def ask me stuff if you are curious.)

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY? — (Yes, just so I can get a better idea of the flaws it may have, then I can better construct it if I see it as a valid reason for possibly not working. If I don’t see any problem with it then it’s still staying )

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL, HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT?   —  (If my portrayal doesn’t fit your idea of Minato then perhaps I’m not the Minato for you and the unfollow button is always there. No harm done really. )

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER, HOW DO YOU TAKE IT? — (Hey man, just don’t try and kill my vibe by cutting down my muse right in front of me and we’re good. Of course there is always the unfollow button. ) 

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS?   —  (Totally, I make quite a few sometimes, if it ever bothers you, please let me know kindly and I’ll have no problem fixing it, But if it doesn’t bug ya the we good. )

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN? — (I like to think so, I used to be pretty shy on here, but after 5 years on here I’m chill with pretty much everything. ) 

[notreallythegreatestperson]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; MUN & MUSE - MEME.

FILL OUT & REPOST ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

TAGGED BY: @the-judge-of-bones (sort of)

TAGGING: Do it

MY MUSE IS:  canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. 

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK (only a few weirdos)

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK

Are they underrated?  YES / NO / IDK (they get a lot of attention for being evil but imo there's more potential depth to them that doesn't get explored enough)

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO (while you can hc any number of things, you could remove all direct references to them and still have most of the narrative be the same, apart from the very end or the geno route)

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG (especially since I believe in NarraChara)

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. (varies depending on setting, but generally not great)

HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON?  — I tend to stick pretty close to what little is properly established for Chara, and I enjoy finding little details in the game that I can link into their story (e.g. Asriel asking Frisk to let him win in the final fight, or the fire tools in New Home being filed down.) There’s definitely some of my own headcanons in there though, and I’ll often switch up canon a little bit to make a RP setup work.

SELL YOUR MUSE! AKA TRY TO LIST EVERYTHING, WHICH MAKES YOUR MUSE INTERESTING IN YOUR OPINION TO MAKE THEM SPICY FOR YOUR MUTUALS.  —  You know the trope of “the villain has to think they’re doing the right thing”? Chara’s the opposite of that. They’re a kid deliberately playing the villain, who’s just happened to gain the power needed to be actually dangerous. They’ll do almost anything to get to where they want to be. They’ve got the RP potential for anything from soft wholesome interactions with family and friends, to intense fights to the death. They’re very reactive, and will change the way they talk and act to get a particular response out of someone. They’re the kid who thought they were the Chosen One, and died for that mistake.

NOW THE OPPOSITE, LIST EVERYTHING WHY YOUR MUSE COULD NOT BE SO INTERESTING (EVEN IF YOU MAY NOT AGREE, WHAT DOES THE FANDOM PERHAPS THINK?).  —  They’re straight up not a good person. They can be very antagonistic, no matter how friendly your character is. I don’t ship with them at all, romantically or sexually. They’re a bit overplayed as a RP character, and I don’t exactly do much new with them. It’s very hard to get them to open up, or to do any kind of character development - not impossible, but hard. 

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE?  —  I’ve always found villain characters interesting, often more than the protagonists themselves. When I first heard of Undertale, I only knew of Chara as the “hehe creepy murder kid villain” character, and played about with RPing them a bit. As I got more into the fandom, I started learning more about them, and how much depth they could have, and it inspired me to keep developing and writing them. 

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING?  —  I tend to be very on and off with blogs like this, I’ll have a period where I’ll have loads of inspiration and then it’ll drop off over time. This time around, I’ve managed to join a really cool discord and made some great friends, so I’m hoping they’ll inspire me to stick around a bit longer :D

SOME MORE PERSONAL QUESTIONS FOR THE MUN.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? 

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO / SORT OF? (I have a bunch, I just rarely make a headcanon-specific post. Please ask me about headcanons for anything though.) 

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO 

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO (That’s a special interest baby!)

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / SORT OF? 

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO. (I know it’s not the best, but I think it works well enough)

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO. / SORTA.  (Not really, I’m generally pretty thick-skinned, though it’s still always reassuring when someone lets me know they enjoy interacting with me 💛)

DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL?  —  I try my best to, I want to make this an enjoyable experience for my partner too, and as long as it’s constructive criticism and not just “haha you suck”, I’m happy to listen.  

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS, WHICH HELP YOU EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER?  — YES. ABSOLUTELY. SEND ME RANDOM QUESTIONS FOREVER AND ALWAYS.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY?  — If they want to discuss it, sure! Chara’s very based on headcanons and how you personally interpret canon, and it’s honestly really interesting how many different views there are on it. 

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL, HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT?  — it’s not for everyone, and that’s chill! I’m not expecting everyone to like my take on the character. If there’s something specific I’m doing wrong (eg a serious issue I’m misinterpreting), feel free to let me know. 

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER, HOW DO YOU TAKE IT?  —  Again, that’s honestly chill. They’re a pretty polarizing character, and the fanon for them can be pretty negative sometimes. I don’t personally agree with some of the reasons why people don’t like them (nochoco’s theory of them abusing Asriel, for example), but I know I’m not gonna be able to change everyone’s mind. 

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS?  — I don’t mind jokey mentions if I make a funny typo, or pointing out mistakes in permanent parts of my blog (a friend pointed out yesterday that my description had been saying Indepent instead of Independent for months lmao). I don’t think that nitpicking every reply is gonna do much good, though.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN?   —  I hope so!

[scripttorture]

My MC was kidnapped at 13 and turned into a child soldier. At some point she let two hostages go and as a punishment the soldiers burned her left eye with hot metal. I wondered, would it make sense? Or would they try to burn Idk her cheekbone and ended up burning her eye on accident? The torturer is her friend (same age) who was held at gunpoint and forced to do it. The soldiers are not the smartest torturers so it'd make sense if they fuck up. How would her trauma be like 3 years after this?

In fact, the point is that the torturers fail, cos she ends up running away at 16 and going back to get all the other child soldiers (half of the armed group) and gets them to fight back. Would this make sense? The soldiers use mutilation (cutting off fingers, tongues, ears, etc) to get people to obey. Is this method too efficient? Would it make sense for a bunch of kids to run away/fight back if they out-number their torturers? Also, what kind of difficulties would having only one eye create?

-

I’m not a medic so beyond ‘depth perception’ and the possibility of infection I honestly don’t know what kinds of problems having one eye would result in.

 How much sense these sorts of scarring and disabling torture make depends on the place and time you’ve set your story in. These kinds of abuses were more common historically then they are now.

 They do happen today and I think having an armed rebel group that’s relying on child soldiers- well that is the kind of setting where it can happen today. So based on that, I’m not going to advise that you just switch this kind of mutilation out and replace it with a clean torture.

 I am however going to suggest you take a look at the National Styles masterposts and think about where and when your story is set. Because to me this kind of mutilation in a modern setting would suggest a level of extreme lawlessness and chaos. Is this taking place in a warzone where all sense of law and order has broken down? Because if not- then I’d suggest having a bit of a re-think.

 If the torturers in this group are routinely amputating limbs then I think it’s more likely they’d burn the character’s eye on purpose then accidentally.

 And that- brings me to some of the misconceptions about torture that are evident from the questions you’ve asked.

 Before I go into this I want to stress that this is not your fault and I am not angry with you.

 I understand that finding accurate information on torture is incredibly hard. That’s why I’m here. I also understand that most of the information we learn about torture comes from works of fiction and generally those works of fiction repeat things that are not just wrong but dangerous in the real world.

 The assumptions about torture that a lot of fictional works present are essentially torture apologia. The one’s that you’ve taken in here are the idea that torture makes people obedient, that torture can be ‘smart and that resistance to torture is rare.

 You can read a little about the most common misconceptions over here.

 Torture isn’t ‘smart’. It isn’t skilled. And there isn’t really any way to make it either.

 Causing other people pain isn’t complicated. It doesn’t take intelligence or knowledge.

 Most tortures are something a six year old could think up.

 Please don’t feed into torture apologia by backing up the idea that torturers are clever, inventive and talented. They are not.

 Torture is really not effective at getting people to obey. Everything we know so far suggests it actually increases resistance.

 The statistic I use to illustrate this most of the time is from historical French data. Under certain circumstances French law allowed people to be tortured in order to force them to confess. Now we know that torture can force confessions and analysing the French data gives an idea of the ‘success’ rate for torture alone.

 It varied a little between regions but the average was 10%.

 So under torture 90% of people will not cooperate long enough to sign their name.

 Resistance, escape attempts and uprisings would be common in the setting you’ve described. Because if anything, torture encourages them.

 Central to this is the distinction between short term compliance and agreement/long term obedience.

 A lot of victims will comply over things they regard as less important. Many of them will act as if they agree with the abuser’s group. This is a survival strategy.

 In a similar vein a lot of victims who want to escape won’t necessarily take the first opportunity to do so. Victims are not stupid. They have a realistic idea of their chances of survival and they will often wait for an opportunity that they think increases their chance of success.

 They do resist while they wait, but these acts of resistance aren’t always obvious or successful.

 Some common examples which would fit your setting are:

Sabotage of weapons

Sabotage of other equipment

‘Accidentally’ breaking or losing important equipment

‘Accidentally’ breaking things that are personally important to the abuser

Blaming breakages or sabotage on people who support the abuser

Leaving secret messages for opposing groups (these don’t have to be found or to be successful)

Praying for the abusers to be punished

Poisoning the abusers

Poisoning themselves or other prisoners to deny the abusers a source of labour

Other forms of suicide for the same reason

Assisting other people when they want to escape

Anything the abusers have specifically forbid

Outright refusal to take part even when it means death or mutilation

 My advice here is to weave resistance into your story.

 Don’t make it a story about how your MC is the only one ‘tough’ or ‘good’ or ‘brave’ enough to resist. Instead make it a story about how is smart enough to wait for the best possible chance. How she works to create that chance.

 Don’t make it the only escape attempt, instead make it the most successful one.

 I think that leaves the question about long term effects on the character herself.

 The first thing to do is have a look at my Masterpost on the common symptoms of torture, here. You may also want to look at this post on how torture can effect memory.

 We can’t predict what symptoms any individual survivor will develop. Some symptoms are a little more common in particular circumstances but mostly it seems to be random.

 So I advise writers to pick symptoms based on what they feel will fit their character and story best.

 Think about whether any symptoms on the list will create interesting narrative problems later on the story. Think about whether any of them can be used to show the readers something about the main character. Think about whether any of the symptoms would effect her relationship with other characters in interesting ways.

 In this case, because it’s long term abuse that happens at a young age, I’d strongly suggest showing the character having difficulty interacting with other people. Then pick 3-5 other symptoms from the list to show for the rest of your stories.

 Survivors can improve with time but their symptoms do not vanish. Recovery is about learning to live a happy life despite symptoms. And this is possible.

 I’m going to leave you with some reading.

 First off you might want to look through my tags on compliance and on slavery. Both are relevant here.

 I think you should read this online pamphlet on child soldiers. War Child will also have a lot of sources you’d find useful.

 I also have a post here specifically on useful sources for writing child soldiers.

 I think you should read Black Jacobins by CLR James. The Question by H Alleg and A Darkling Plain by K R Monroe.

 Finally I think you should read up on the Congo and the colonial atrocities committed there, if you haven’t done so already.

 I don’t know a lot about the country or its history. I don’t feel comfortable recommending particular sources. I’d suggest starting by seeking out the work of academics who are from the country. My experience has been that people with a greater tie to the country can put events in context in a way outsiders often fail to. Accounts from people who survived or witnessed the atrocities are also incredibly valuable and will probably help you write this in a way that really reflects a survivor experience.

 I hope that helps, and if you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to ask. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[theartfuldodger26]

For the prompt I'll be predictable: Harry Potter, Bellamort and Bellatrix 😁

Thanks for the prompts, @bellamort1993! Feel free to answer the same :) 

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character:

 Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort.

 Bella is the closest to my heart, but apparently I waste the most         brainmatter on Tom/Voldemort, so *shrugs*

Harry is my favourite light character, he’s an admirable person.

Least Favorite character:

Umbridge, as is universally accepted.

Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):

Bellamort (which is canon, bitches)

Delphi/Harry (it will become canon, you just wait for TCC part3)

Tomarry but not Harrymort (nearly counts as canon judging by how often Harry gushes over handsome Tom’s face)

Drarry (I’m human and susceptible to fandom mainstream, plus there’s some fantastic fics out there)

Delphi/Victoire (cause two pretty, hot-headed ladies are my cup of tea any day)

Character I find most attractive:

Bellatrix, hands down. Then Voldemort can do things to me too, but Bella would be my first choice.it’s so nice being bi, isn’t it.

Character I would marry:

No one, I’m happy by myself.

Delphi can be my angsty fuck buddy with whom we meet every once in a while, bitch, get drunk, cry and fuck.

Character I’d be friends with:

Harry, tho I’m not the best of friends and he does bring an unappealing high mortality rate to any occasion. It’s fiiine. 

a random thought:

The wizarding world makes zero sense in so many places. They haven’t had an Industrial Revolution, meaning they haven’t known first hand the new ideas that came with it, and they seem to be stuck in the Middle Ages in many ways, even if they dont seem extremely Christian as these times actually were. We know little about the political system and their beliefs are so random. It’s really confusing.

An unpopular opinion:

Idk what’s unpopular these days. Aside from Albus’ name, I actually liked the Epilogue.

It showed what we needed to know: that Harry and the rest made it out okay. They found the courage to face their destroyed community and rebuild, even though they had gone through enough during the war. I think JKR said it herself in an interview how important rebuilding is after a catastrophe, how it can daunt even the bravest people. The miracles of Japan and Germany bouncing back and better after WWII are relevant real-life examples here. 

A married Harry, enthusiastic about hugging his kids goodbye on their first day of school, a day that to him symbolises a new beginning, is the greatest gift and it does not erase the pain he might feel every day for going through hell in his early life. In fact, it’s this snipet of normalcy what he craved as a boy and refused to daydream about because its weight would be too much,and now he gets to have it. Along with the nightmares and the PTSD and the new challenges yes, but now, in this moment, as he waves to the new generation that he helped create, he’s safe, loved and happy. He deserves it. 

Second unpopular opinion: I don’t give a damn if McGonagall’s timeline is screwed up by bringing her to life in the 20′s. Didn’t really matter to the story before and she’s a freaking badass and comic relief, which is the best combo ever. Is it fan-bating or whatever it was called? Sure. But if she makes the story better with her presense I give minus two fucks about when JKR originally said she was born (also, newsflash: people have the right to change HC’s, especially people who don’t shit about maths, like our dear creator) 

My Canon OTP:

           BELLAMORT

Seriously, I have screenshoted the details of TCC where it shows they’re canon.

My Non-canon OTP:

            Harry/Delphi

I know, I’m sick, it’s fine. *insert dog sipping coffee in the flaming house meme here*

Most Badass Character:

Bellatrix, handsdown.

McGonagall for good people.

Most Epic Villain:

Voldemort, we’d have no books without him. He can be dumb, but it’s cute. 

Pairing I’m not a fan of:

I’m not huge on non-canon Hermione ships, and anything with Snape is gross.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):

…Snape? Not his character, but the positive light she gave him by naming Harry’s kid after him. It appeared she was clear on him not being an admirable person, but then he’s the bravest bloke ever? No, ma’am.

On a Fantastic Beasts note, I do hope they handle the backstories of all characters well. We’ll surely get back to this after the FB series are over.

 Favourite Friendship:

The Golden Trio, they work as a three-man-group better, I won’t devide them. Also, as a part-time writer I have to admire how the writing and dynamics were handled, it’s so hard to think as more than one person, not to mention three!

Character I most identify with:

PostAzkaban!Bellatrix feels she’s letting her master and herself down, and so do I. I keep looking for my former self. Who wasn’t much after all, but had some qualities I should recultivate.

Character I wish I could be:

… I’d like to have some Bellamort qualities that I lack, but in general I’m fine working on myself.  

002 | Send me a ship and I will tell you:

When I started shipping them:

After I finished the books, so that’s since 2007. 12 cool, angsty years. 

My thoughts:

I love them, they’re my evil babies. In fact, I don’t even have reasons for loving them, as most shippers do, I’d just die for them, end of reasoning.

What makes me happy about them:

That they’re complicately made for each other in their unique goth way. And that in the end they had a kid, which I think helped Voldemort out a lot with his issues with intimacy and emotions.

What makes me sad about them:

That they died *sobs hysterically*.

Also in the books they have like two scenes together. (HE SCREAMED THO)

Things done in fanfic that annoys me:

Seeing Bella’s character butchered down to a snivelling, slavish idiot, though these aren’t Bellamort fics usually.

In Bellamort fics, it feels like a cheat when it says Bellamort but it’s just Bella pining and Voldemort really not caring. I don’t have a problem with the POV, but it needs to be tagged as unrequited. Otherwise I’m open to perspectives.

Things I look for in fanfic:

Good writing, mostly.

I’m also a huge fan of Muggle!AU’s, so if you have that, I’ll read it, no questions asked XD

My wishlist:

On Amazon? :P Fine, I’ll show myself out

I presume this means wishlist on fics/art with these two, but do correct me if I’m wrong. I dont have one, since I write myself, so whatever I want to read, I write. Right now I’m eager to finish the following Bellamort fics:

1. Harry finds out about Bellamort via looking through Voldy’s stuff.

2. BellaDiesButVoldyWins!AU

3. Voldemort discovers his breastfeeding kink

4. A therewasonlyonebed!fic 

5. Tomarry turns Bellamort in Easter setting, Muggle!AU, Harry wets himself in the process

In general I’d say I’d like to see more classic, tropy fanfics with these two, lighter ones, you know. Angst is great, but let us enjoy the coffeeshop!AU too.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

Alone and miserable.

I guess Bella would have been okay with Rodolphus, had Tom/Voldemort never been born.

And Voldemort/Tom would have been fine too with some nameless pretty woman he did not love but had to marry to keep face.

But I think that they would have never been truly happy with anyone else. especially Tom, he’d never be really comfortable with anyone.

My happily ever after for them:

VoldemortWins!AU, they conquer Europe, Bella is Minister for War, Voldemort the Emperor. Maybe they have a kid, maybe a couple more or none at all, who cares, the point is they live and fulfull their dreams of revolutionising the Wizarding Wolrd.

I also have a sappy afterlife!AU where for a while Bella is imprisoned at the family castle for having a halfblood little bastard, goes half-insane as Voldemort seacrhes for her (they had a spat right after they got there), and Delphi kills herself and goes to find her dad in small-child form. They finally get tgether and live deathly ever after in some Norwegian fjord in the frozen tundra. (it’s also my personal happy ending, only it’s cats and snakes)

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

How I feel about this character:

I love Bella. She’s a bitch and a sadist, but I love her.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character:

The one and only, his majesty the Dark Lord himself.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character:

Rodolphus, he’s her only friend.

Also, sad HC: Bella was very close to Andromeda until she got too involved with Voldemort and his cause, and they drifted apart. No one wept harder than Bella after Andy left, and it was her who spent days banging on the Tonks’ door to let them speak to her. Voldy could squeeze tears out of his shirt after she fell asleep on him crying about it.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Again, not sure about what’s unpopular.

I believe she suffers from genuine mental illness that tortures her a lot and makes her life (and her shared life with Voldemort too) very hard. Also I find her more self-doubting and reserved than most authors, hard working and largely indifferent to people who aren’t Voldemort.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

Actual romantic scene would have been nice, but HE SCREAMED after all. Let’s not ask for too much.

Favorite friendship for this character:

Rodolphus and Andromeda. Recently I’ve started Brotp-ing Sirius with Bella too, before they parted ways.

My crossover ship:

I don’t really have any other fandoms, sorry.

Well, that was fun! Thanks again!

[bookenders]

11/11/11 Tag Game: Rounds 24, 25, 26, and 27

Tagged by the wonderful @corsairesque, the lovely @azawrites, the stellar @sunlight-and-starskies, and the incomparable @inexorableblob - thanks!

And @inexorableblob, thank you for letting me rewrite the end of The Great Gatsby. It was very cathartic.

Rules: Answer 11 questions, write 11 questions, tag 11 people!

Bilbo Taggins: @aurumni-writes @quilloftheclouds @aslanwrites @starlitesymphony @writingonesdreams @waterfallwritings @cataclysmic-writer @ren-c-leyn @timefirewrites @minusfractions @ink-flavored - and if you like the questions and aren’t tagged, feel free to answer them! And tag me so I can see! 

My Questions:

How many licks would it take for your OCs to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

What are your favorite smells?

What’s the book you’ve read most recently? What did you think of it? What impressed you? What would you have done differently?

What are your thoughts on mugs?

If your OCs had a comic book series/graphic novel about them, what would it be called? What would be on the cover? What would the art style be?

Can you draw a bear?

Do you do any other kinds of art? Are you ever influenced by other kinds of art? What about other areas like science or mathematics/other disciplines?

Have you read any craft books or writing advice books? If yes, how have the helped or hindered you? Which would you recommend? If no, would you ever consider reading them?

What are your favorite kinds of narratives? What narrative structures do you prefer to write and what do you prefer to read?

What’s your favorite recipe?

What are some signs that make you consider setting a project aside vs continuing with it?

As always, answers under the cut!

@corsairesque‘s Questions:

1. Do you create playlists for your stories or characters?

I do! 

Here’s a detailed post about how I make them.

This is Mel’s from H2H.

This is Gemma’s from H2H.

This is one for the story I recently posted.

And I have one for each WIP on my WIP page! (Mostly, I’m still working on Fish Food’s.)

I actually have folders in Spotify for my characters and stories. Each one gets a playlist.

2. What is your stance on endings that don’t end with some hope?

Sometimes a story needs to have a certain ending to have an emotionally satisfying conclusion. I don’t think hope is absolutely required for an ending. I’ve ended stories without hope because that’s how the story ends. If I wrote it to conclude with an upturn, it would’ve been disloyal to the narrative. Like life, not everything ends happily, or with a positive outlook.

If you want it from a more technical perspective, there are three sorts of endings: positive, negative, and neutral. They can mix and match, but these are the three base ones. I tend toward neutral or positive-neutral endings. The best story I’ve written so far has a negative-leaning neutral ending because it concludes with a loss that does not promise hope. Positive endings are not necessary for a narrative, or for a conclusion. 

Sometimes you need to write a hopeful ending. Sometimes you need to read a hopeful ending. And sometimes you need to read or write something that ends on a down-note. I know I have. 

So, TL;DR, there is no ending hierarchy. It all depends on the reader and the writer, what they need, and what the story demands.

3. What author would you love to hear feedback from on your WIP?

Of literally anyone? Dead or alive? I mean. I’d love to hear what Flannery O’Connor would have to say about my short stories. I try to do a remix-version of her moments of grace in each of them.

4. What is the genre of your WIP(s)?

I mention these on my WIP page!

Most of my short stories are literary and contemporary fiction. My longer projects tend toward low fantasy.

5. How do you come up with new ideas for your WIP(s)?

I don’t have a method or anything for idea generation. My brain works in the background while I’m doing other things, so I’ll be washing dishes, or brushing my teeth, or writing something else, and an idea goes HI HELLO WHAT ABOUT THIS HUH? and I scramble to write it down.

Most of the time, my story ideas come from cool sentences I think of while observing. That sounds super weird and nerdy, but it’s true! When I’m bored or need to occupy my brain or just sorta feel like creating something spontaneous, I’ll look around and figure out how I’d write about a certain thing in the vicinity. 

Some examples of this from my phone notes:

“Laughter echoing through a cave, bouncing off the walls, the gift of hearing it over and over until it fades like gentle waking”

“Cheeks baked pink from the flush of her modesty”

“The last remnants of home, the dirt hidden beneath their fingernails”

“Headlights flicker between the gaps in the barrier like a slipstream of stars”

Ya know, stuff like that.

Sometimes, if I’m stuck while writing and need a thought, I look at the plot and think up complications for my characters to face. That’s how I figured out how to make Lithium 100% more plot relevant. I thought, okay, so she has this role right now, what can I add to make her stand in the way of X plan while also being an asset to Y? And boom, idea generated and problem solved.

6. What do you use to keep all your writing on? (Scrivener, Google Docs, good old pen and paper…)

I use Scrivener for all my main writing. I have a ton of phone memo notes for ideas on the go. I have a notebook full of random stuff for when I’m blocked and need to hand write something.

I also answered this further down!

7. What gave you initial inspiration for your WIP(s)?

H2H: There was a publisher who had a call for shapeshifter stories, and then I missed the deadline so I decided to try for a zine instead, then I got rejected, so I made it into my own thing.

AOPC: I needed to flesh out a piece of my homebrew DnD world, so I started worldbuilding, then it was my turn to turn in a story to be workshopped in my writing class, so I wrote a thing set in the village about the tribe and it all spiraled out from there.

FF: I had an errant thought about the script that hero and villain stories follow and wrote a thing about what would happen if one of them decided to deviate from it and BOOM the plot hit me like a semi truck.

Almost all of my short stories start with a sentence I think sounds really cool, a tone I want to try to capture (ex. the feeling of standing inside an old cathedral), or the ending moment of a character arc (I tend to work backwards).

8. How long have you been working on your WIP(s)?

I’ve been working with Heart to Heart since November 2018. I started thinking about Fish Food like 3 months ago I think? And I got the idea for All Our Painted Colors 3ish years ago, but it started as a short story that I thought about expanding about 8 months ago.

My writing process starts with a long period of thought percolation before I write anything definitive down.

9. What was the first thing you came up with for your WIP(s)?

H2H: The fact that the main character is an apothecary who uses recipes from historical documents to brew things and lives in a small town, and that their love interest changes shapes in some way.

AOPC: That the tribe is a society based around body paint, art, preserving their personal history, and stories. But mostly paint. 

FF: The hero danging over a pit of hungry piranhas and asking the villain a question that throws off the whole “death threat” vibe.

10. Have you considered Hogwarts houses for your characters? If so, what are they?

Answered this for the H2H cast here.

As for the Fish Food cast:

Iron Will - Hufflepuff

Overseer - Ravenclaw

Nightmare - A Hufflepuff who asked to be in Slytherin and the hat said “yeah okay”

Lithium - Gryffindor

Babylon - Slytherin

Sparkplug - Gryffindor

11. What do you find easiest to write? (Description, dialogue, etc.)

Interiority! Free indirect discourse! Unvoiced character brain thoughts! Which I guess means description? 

Writing dialogue sucks old car tires!

@azawrites‘ Questions:

what’s the best part about your writing style? I like how I build up to emotional punches. It’s like walking up a ramp, but in a literary way. And at the top of the ramp you either get a gut punch of feels or an ice cream cone.

do you write on the computer or on paper? I do most of my writing on my laptop because my hands can’t write fast enough to keep up with my brain. My typing is way faster. If I’m having trouble getting an idea down, or the tone of the writing lends itself to being handwritten (idk how to describe this, but sometimes words just gotta be scribbled, ya know?), I’ll hand write it in pen. I don’t use pencils anymore because I wasn’t allowed to in college and it kinda stuck.

what are your favourite books and why? Oh, no, there are too many. So I’ll just say my top book: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien because of how it deals with stories and grief and remembering, the fact that it’s a story cycle (which is very cool), and the way he writes - it’s beautiful and sad and messed up and poignant. I love it.

why did you start writing? I’ve answered this before, but there was never really starting point for me. It’s just something I’ve always done. 

why did you continue writing? Because I had too much fun to stop! I also get creatively constipated, I guess is how I would phrase it, and need to have some sort of narrative outlet or my brain gets really mad at me.

where do you usually write? Pretty much anywhere, but most often at my desk. I think I need a taller chair, though...

can you describe your favourite piece (written by you) in one sentence? Let’s get authory with this one: The teacher hands out the tests, multiple choice this time, but when the stapled packet slides across your desk, there’s something odd about it, something that brings the war to life inside your head, a long-forgotten voice that speaks the souls of the soldiers and tells their stories from the annals of history. Or: A multiple choice test about WWII that tells the story of 4 men from Company B from enlistment to the end of their campaign.

what’s one cliche/trope you overuse, but still like anyway? It’s a trope when it comes to my own writing, actually. Person Sits Alone in the Dark and Contemplates. I love it, I abuse the hell out of it, and I will never stop.

what music do you listen to when working on a WIP? Depends. I have a go-to Writing Flow State song, playlists to help me get in the right head space when writing certain characters, and playlists that help guide the tone of a story. I can never listen to movie or video game scores because the association of song and cinematic moment is too strong for me.

have you ever dreamed of a fictional character? Uh, I have the occasional nightmare about Kokopelli? Does that count? 

what’s one thing that makes you automatically dislike a book? Overly pretentious first person POV prose (and I don’t mean purple. I mean a character who - honestly and without a hint of satire - thinks like a writer from the 1920s who just discovered what “paid by the word” means and believes they’re the wisest human being in the universe and everyone who doesn’t agree with them is the basest of idiots - barf). Gratuitous female violence. The use of the word “loins” outside of an animal context. Everything about The Beginners by Rebecca Wolff. 

@inexorableblob‘s Questions:

Which of your characters could you write as twice their current age? Oh, man, I think writing Iron Will in his forties or fifties would be really cool. It’d certainly give the story a new commentary twist.

Which of your characters could you write as half their current age? (I’m not gonna cheat and say Mel, I promise.) I think writing a 30yo Treena would be very cool. However, writing a 13 or 14yo Lithium who is just learning how to use her super powers would be WILD. 

What big city would your characters do best in?  London?  New York? Tokyo?  Mexico City?  Rio? The Fish Food characters would all do best in New York or London, since they’re very close to Conover. Lithium would prefer Rio, though, and Babylon would lobby for everyone to move to Tokyo.  The H2H characters would do best in Mexico City or London, depending on who decides to take charge and teach everyone the local customs. 

What would your characters do if they were in a small rural community that was attacked by underground worms? This is giving me too many ideas for H2H. Gemma would be a little bit furious, since she hates having to get rid of animals, especially when they’re invasive. If the worms just minded their own gosh dang business then everyone could live in peace.  If we’re talkin’ normal sized worms, like worm-sized worms, then Gemma would develop a pesticide that wouldn’t kill them, but force them to the surface where they would then be stunned by whatever weird solution Mel comes up with. Then the town would have a Worm-Off, where the person who collects the most worms wins free pie for a year, courtesy of Harry’s.  If we’re talkin’ DnD-style Purple Worms, like Beetlejuice worms, then Mel would take over. She’d help organize an evacuation and steal Oz’s gun, just in case. Then she’d do some spoilery things with Gemma assisting.

What is the worst place where you’ve ever wanted to write? Probably while I was taking the math section of the SATs. Kinda inconvenient, brain, thanks for that. Other terrible places: mid job interview, in the middle of an empty street at midnight, anywhere I’m sitting where I have terrible posture, watching a slam poetry event in a very crowded bar, etc.

What’s the most uncomfortable subject you’ve ever written about? I’ve written a little bit about hate crimes and loathed every second. I’ve written a character actively contemplating suicide (he was a WWII soldier) and that was not fun at all. I mean, I also wrote a paper about sexy (somewhat graphic) wlw poetry for my Sexuality class, which a lot of people would be uncomfortable with, but I thought it was a very good collection. Go read Marilyn Hacker’s stuff, it’s good.

If you had to change the ending of any famous novel, which would you pick? The Great Gatsby. We don’t end with the green light, screw the green light.  Gatsby wills all of his possessions and wealth to Nick and Nick becomes the next James Gatz. But this time around, he pines for the man who was killed in the pool just below his balcony while pretending to love Jordan, who finds out and amicably marries him because 1920s. She then uses Nick/Gatsby’s money to purchase an automobile manufacturing company and makes cars in every color but yellow. (Gotta maintain that color symbolism for F. Scott, I guess.) Nick discovers Gatz’ old bootlegging and illegal activities buddies and starts up a criminal empire. He and Jordan become the biggest, queerest, most spiteful and angsty crime bosses in New York. Nick makes it his life’s mission to take down false accusers, vigilante style. The car manufacturing company is what they use to launder money. Daisy divorces Tom because they’re both terrible people. Daisy takes her daughter and moves to California. Jordan sends Daisy’s daughter money secretly, about a hundred dollars a month. The last line is something about how Gatz was always reaching out and chasing green, but because of him, Nick is steeped in dark, bloody red. I would then write a sequel about Nick and Jordan and their crime empire that spans the East Coast. God, I hate this book.

If you had to change your life, what would you change without regret? Start therapy way earlier, 100%. That would have saved me a lot of nonsense.

If the end of the world where scheduled a week from tomorrow, what would you do?  Would you tell anybody? Everybody?  Keep it a secret? Assuming this was legit and the end of the world was actually happening, I’d probably try to tell some big-shot geologist or something, hoping they spread the word. Other than that, since debt won’t be a thing, I’d take the people I love on a killer trip around the world.

What would you do if a wizard offered to cast one spell for you, but your worst enemy got the same spell? Hmmm. I’d ask them to cast the Self-Realization spell, so they would instantly become aware of the effect their actions have on others and know exactly how terrible they’ve been to other people their whole life. Maybe then they can be a better person. My anxiety makes this spell ineffective on me, since it’s already there! Thanks, brain! 

Which would you choose, never eating in the same place, always eating the same meal, always eating with the same people, or never eating with the same people? I’d choose always eating with the same people. I like frequenting restaurants I like and eating different things. I don’t think I could deal with only eating the same thing/off the same menu forever. And I have bad social anxiety, so constantly eating with new people would probably short-circuit my brain eventually.  A good meal in good company is pretty great, though. 

@sunlight-and-starskies‘ Questions:

What is your favorite genre of music? I’ll always be a rock fan at heart. Right now, I really like folk rock and any kind of music that sounds like it has history behind it.

What are your favorite words? Illustrious, shimmer, soliloquy, incarnate, bound, and many more. Also most Yiddish curses.

Describe your ideal vacation. Somewhere cozy where I can explore and chill at my leisure. A week of artsy events in the city. Exploring landscapes in the country.

If you could have any fictional creature for a pet, what would it be? Why? Pegasus! I can ride and they can fly. We’d make an excellent team, and where we’d go, we wouldn’t need roads.

Which fictional universe would you live in if you had to live there for the rest of your life? Logic dictates the Star Trek universe, since I’d probably be an average civilian. Post-scarcity society? Sign me the hell up. My heart, however, is screaming ROHAN.

Favorite childhood toy? Uh... I honestly can’t remember. 

What is your aesthetic? Good smelling old books with doodles and notes in the margins, a pile of unfolded clean clothes on a chair, a stack of handwritten papers perched on the corner of a desk, the smell of breakfast cooking when you wake up, the immediate “woops” shock the moment you trip over something you should’ve moved earlier.

Tell me a random fact about your current project or you. About me: I have a birthmark that kinda sorta looks like an elephant. About Fish Food: The Coalition knows what happened to Hydrophase. So does Sparkplug.

Are you an early bird or a night owl? Night owl, all the way. I like the idea of being a morning person, though. 

What is your favorite food? Pasta! Or any kind of Asian food. 

What is your happiest memory? Oh, geez. Ummm. When I was little, I would curl up in my grandpa’s armchair and eat Burger King breakfast sandwiches on Saturday mornings. 

[nightelectrifi]

and so, she rebrands

“he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence” - william blake

(uh i’ve been really into devil may cry v lately and i like this quote a lot and it’s kinda relevant with my change??? idk it’s a stretch)

alright, i’ve done enough pussyfooting around on my part. i’ve been putting off writing this for a while now but i think it’s time.

i found cow chop during a very hard portion of my life. it was my sophomore year in high school and i was incredibly depressed. when i went to rtx 2016 that year my friend was obsessed with cow chop. i had vaugely heard about them when they joined rt; i watched their lube video and wasn’t too impressed. but for some reason later that year, during winter break, i was bored enough to start watching their videos. i started with the heavy rain lp.

i fell in love.

i was lucky enough to meet aleks, james, brett, trevor, and joe at rtx 2017. at rtx 2018, i met jakob, alec, asher, lindsey, and matt. meeting them in person was a huge culmination of the love i had for cow chop.

however things now are different.

even before the ip drama i was on the fence with cow chop. trevor leaving was a huge blow for me, as he was my absolute favorite. but i still stayed a fan because i loved the content and members so much.

over the course of then and now, i heard some things that made me lose faith in cow chop and some of its members. i stayed on though cus they were such a huge part of my life, i couldn’t let that go.

but after the issue with ip and the aftermath, i realized i could no longer support cow chop. our morals just don’t align and i can’t overlook some of the things they’ve said and done. some of the fans may be stronger than i and can still stay a fan, all the respect to u. but i just can’t, this incident was the final nail in the coffin for me.

so i’ve been wanting to write this for a while but i’ve been procrastinating because for some reason i feel like i’m letting people down. i know most don’t care either way what i do and my feelings but i think i’m writing this mostly for myself.

when i got the notif that james is leaving, that gave me enough motivation to finally leave the cow chop fandom.

i made this blog after rtx 2018, after spending so much time with the cc community i wanted to keep that same feeling. i’m so grateful for all the friends i made. my content was never really that good on this blog, it was just dumb stream clips, but people liked them and i so appreciate that.

i don’t regret watching cow chop or being a stan, they meant a whole lot to me. everyday when i would come home from school utterly depressed, i would have a new cc video in my sub box to watch. they kept me going. i will never forget that, even though i know longer support them.

but today i am rebranding. i’ll get myself a username (still gonna save cowboialeks for the nostalgia) and i’m turning this blog into a general one. ya know just random shit i like or find funny. i will no longer be posting cc stuff, but i won’t delete any of the old cc posts on here. i will also be unfollowing blogs that only post cc content. if u wish to unfollow me as well i understand, thank u for even following in the first place.

if ur still interested in me for some reason (thank u sksskks) i have some other blogs u can follow:

@soupormegay my supermega and game grumps blog

@firewalkingwithyou my aesthetic blog i’ve had for yeaaarrrssss

@achievehauss my achievement hunter/funhaus/sugar pine 7/rooster teeth blog that’s currently a wip. i don’t really have a tagging system and it’s kinda not where i want it to be. but it’ll be good soon!

and my twitter is @/firewalkwithher

in conclusion, i have to thank cow chop for everything. i made so many great friends in this community and i’m so grateful. cc made life a little bit easier and their videos could make me smile on days i was feeling the worst. i’ll never forget this part of my life.

um here’s the pics of me meeting them cus i don’t know when i’ll ever have the chance to post them again

cowboialeks ➡️ sadboymorgan

thank you cow chop

🐮🖤🔪

[suburbiamac]

Rules - Answer 21 questions and then tag 21 people you want to get to know better.

tagged by @iasipseasonfive love u abby!

nickname: so many people call me macwell/macson........

zodiac sign - scorpio please don’t hate me

height - 5’2

last movie i saw - oh god um. a clockwork orange i think? 

last thing i googled - ‘names of karate moves’ the mac kin jumped out..

favourite musician - cavetown! no ifs ands or buts! extra shoutout to sufjan stevens though

song stuck in my head - THAT FUCKING. IDK WHAT OR WHERE ITS FROM BUT ITS LIKE. ‘the rats! the rats! weeee’re the rats!’

other blogs - @ronnictherat is my rp blog, @midousujii-akira is my yowapeda sideblog i just started uhh most of the others are just saved or inactive. @releves was going to be an aesthetic blog but i kind of forgot it existed and haven’t polished it up

do i get asks - every now and then i’ll get some kind of ask about ap bio, sooometimes sunny ones. but to whoever it was that killed me with so many sad jack griffin asks. i’m telling dr phil on you.

following - 279

followers - 412

amount of sleep - it’s either like 3 hours or 12 hours. all or nothing babey!

lucky number - it’s always been a combo of 15, 16, and 18

what i’m wearing - socks and underwear bro! fuck clothes and fuck australia’s heat

dream job - an actor but. realistically? kindergarten teacher

dream trip - new zealand and new york city (WHICH I’M GOING TO IN APRIL HOPEFULLY!)

favourite food - ramen probably it’s all i eat

play any instruments: i can sorta play ukulele

languages - english cause i’m a stupid bitch. i’ve tried learning swedish before but i can’t stick to anything long enough

favourite songs - it’s forever changing but at the moment i’m loving boys will be bugs by cavetown and goodbye my danish sweetheart by mitski

random facts - i’m left handed and am oddly good at ice skating.

describe yourself as aesthetic things - dogs with sharp teeth and soft fur, leather jackets and shirts with ripped sleeves, religious imagery, clowns/carnivals/circuses, muscly boys in crop tops, bloodied knuckles, driving through city lights really late at night, goofy laughter while holding your friends close, wearing your heart on your sleeve and never learning a lesson, setting things on fire to burn out your anger

idk who’s done this already but @dusterdennis @suburbiadennis @suburbiiacharlie @j0hnmulaney @lgbtrcg

[sassylavellen]

Writer Reflection Meme

I was not tagged. But again I’m bored I wanna do something fun.

Rules: answer the following questions about your own writing, whether fanfic or original. If you can’t/don’t want to answer a question, just put N/A. If you don’t have that many posted works, tell us about your WIPs or individual chapters/drabbles or even your ideas! Then tag as many writers as you like!

AO3 name and link, if applicable:

I don’t have an AO3. Maybe I should look into it sometime? But I am not good at writing consistently enough to really merit one I think.

What’s your most popular fic, by whatever metric is most relevant to you (hits, kudos, comments, reblogs, some other trait)?

“What We Fight For” - which right now has 31 notes. It was the story in which I officially revealed that my Hawke had a daughter. I’m kinda happy this is the one that has the most notes, it’s easily my favorite one so far.

What’s your favourite fic that you’ve written?

Well I kinda just said in the last question lol

But the reason I love What We Fight For is simply because I had been sitting on that reveal for a long time. I decided the reveal shouldn’t be the actual story of how Mari met Lyra’s father but instead when Mari decided to finally share where she was during the period between DA2 and Inquisition and why she was staying away from the chaos. She was just trying to be a good mother and protect her only child from the dangers of being the Champion.

What’s your best fic, and is it different from your favourite fic?

I’m not sure. Retribution might have a chance to be better whenever I finally finish it.

Do you have a fic whose popularity surprised you?

“A Letter” was kinda surprising to me. I wrote it in a hurry before going to work one day and thought it was garbage and didn’t get the point across. In the end, it didn’t get the wrong point across and it was okay. I might not even have gotten dates correct either.

Do you have a fic you wish more people would read?

idk.

Is there a ship or fandom you haven’t written, but really want to?

I’m going to be writing for my Stephen/Moira ship in Retribution but I haven’t gotten there yet. I actually haven’t written much for them yet, the closest thing so far was “Archery”. @a-shakespearean-in-paris wrote a piece about them called “Family” and I really hope that when I get to writing their relationship in Retribution I can live up to the way a truly talented writer brought them alive so perfectly.

Tell us a random fact about your writing process:

It’s been really slow at work recently so I’ve been working on Retribution while and waiting for anything to do and I’m on the clock. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh don’t let them know.

[hideyoshineki]

Writers Reflections: Tag Meme

I was tagged by @oathkeeperoxas my ultimate writing senpai uwu ❤💛❤

Rules: answer the following questions about your own writing, whether fanfic or original. If you can't/don't want to answer a question, just put N/A. If you don't have that many posted works, tell us about your WIPs or individual chapters/drabbles or even your ideas! Then tag as many writers as you like :)

AO3 name and link, if applicable: angeltrumpets

What's your most popular fic, by whatever metric is most relevant to you (hits, kudos, comments, reblogs, some other trait)?:

By Any Other Name is the most popular on AO3, but it's the only fic of mine that isn't a oneshot and it's also a soulmate AU (Hdkn from TG) so that just kinda automatically makes it more popular than my other fics.

On tumblr tho, my most popular fic has easily been A Source of Warmth, which as of now has 87 notes. It's a Hdkn TG oneshot I posted when the fandom was at its peak in 2015, however about a year ago it got a bunch more notes like a sudden attention and idk why but it was unexpected that's for sure.

What's your favourite fic that you've written?

Hmmmmmm Dancing Fireflies is my favourite in terms of the context behind it and how much damn fun it was to write, because it's a crack fic, but treated seriously, which made it more fun to write, and I also like going back and reading it again. It's also the fic with the most entertaining comments.

What's your best fic, and is it different from your favourite fic?

Recurring Illusions. It's the most recent thing I've written. (Hdkn oneshot, angst, an excuse for me to never stop being owned by Chapter 136). It really does FEEL like my best fic, as in I had a really good feeling as I was writing it! I was doing a lot that I hadn't written before, and I worked really hard on it! It came out really good!

Unfortunately because the fic is tagged with Graphic Violence and Implied Character Death, not many people are clicking to read it, but I expected that. The Graphic Violence was actually one of the things that was new to me, because most of my writing is very.... hmm uneventful? Like nothing big happens in most of my oneshots. Whereas here it was like Im writing a scene where he's killing people or eating people here how does that get written. Especilly the eating. I am very proud of the eating part of the oneshot especially because I pushed myself to go further with it and not shy away from details. I also am proud of the choices I made when writing it to display what state of mind Kaneki was in at certain parts.

Do you have a fic whose popularity surprised you?

OMG YES!!??!! Coffee And Thieves!! It's my second most viewed and kudosed fic on AO3 and I'm ????? like I'm still lost!!!!! It was a secret santa fic I wrote of the Amon/Hide/Kaneki poly ship and its popularity confuses me for two reasons: 1) I had no idea this many people would be clicking on it and reading it because honestly it's a super rare ship especially being a poly ship and I wouldn't have even known of its existence if it weren't for who I was gifting the fic to! But apparently more people are looking to read the ship than I thought! And 2) quality of writing wise it's more simplistic than some of my other fics. Like it's just fluff and I know people like reading that but it also means there's less room to like... show-off writing capabilities, you feel? Altho again, it's not like people are looking for that when it comes to fluff.

Do you have a fic you wish more people would read?

THE WITCH'S SERVANT! It's easily the oneshot I spent the most time on like I posted it months after starting it because I spent so long getting it right and soooooooo many hours working it out. But yeah it got comparatively much less attention than my other Hdkn fics. But I am still proud of it because I worked really hard on it and I got to write up what I wanted, which was the play that Hide and Kaneki brought up in the series. I wanted to look more into that and write about it, because I had seen meta and theory writers talk about Hide and Kaneki's roles in that play in relation to their roles in the overall story of TG, so I tried to integrate a little of that meta into the fic. I also included dialogue from the unused draft from the last ep from Root A in the fic. So there was a lot I was putting in, and yeah while it's a shame it didn't get more attention, I'm still happy with it and proud of it.

Is there a ship or fandom you haven't written, but really want to?

I have been wanting to write Reigisa from Free since fckn 2014. Every year I have been like "This is the year I contribute to Reigisa Week" and then I don't. And since Ive been with the ship for a long time and seen a lot of it, I feel like I know the characters and ship dynamic well enough to be comfortable writing it. But yeah Ive never gotten around to completely writing anything. Ive started a few, but they had always ended up abandoned.

Tell us a random fact about your writing process:

Ok so Im slow as shit right, like my multichapter fic from earlier has 2 chapters written and I started the fic in March this year so lol i know slowness and going ages without writing is common with a lot of writers tho

Usually what gets me going is a song putting me in a mood. Often the song won't match the mood of the fic I'm writing, as it'll almost always be a more angsty emotional song that gets me motivated, even if what I'm writing is not emotional at all. It just makes me feel like I can get things out more easily and write more interestingly.

I also save my writing docs in dropbox so I can always add to it either on my laptop or phone whenever I feel like it and it's synced up, but it never really ends up that way because nothing happens when I try to write on my phone I'm rarely able to write without the laptop setup.

Tagging @akaaka04 because Red ur the only mutual who first came to mind when I was thinking of mutuals rn who write, anyone else I can think of I'm either not mutuals with or I don't know for sure if they write or not. Sorry if I'm forgetting someone

[jazzy-art-time]

Sorry if this is a bother but I’m really trying to get into the ask blog community but I don’t really know how to start off or do anything? You have a lot of blogs and seem popular so I was wondering if you could give a newbie some advice if it’s not too much trouble? o^o”

Oh it’s no trouble at all reallyalthough I would HARDLY consider myself as “””popular””” hhhhiknowlike8peopleI did something like this once before on one of my ask blogs but I’m just gonna trim it up and rewrite it.+*~ Below The Cut For Shitty Jazzy Advice ~*+Be warned it is long and wordy.This is my own personal blog process/blog beliefs.Don’t take all of these to heart fully because there are many ways to do/interpret things. I am simply sharing how i personally do things.If anyone feels the need to add more onto this, feel free to.

First lets get The Blog Theme down.Believe it or not this is actually important and can affect you and your blog a lot more than you think.-> THIS ACCOUNT IS WHERE I GET ALL OF MY THEMES -Please note there are other blogs like this one, I just use that one specifically.You can also use the default theme that tumblr gives you, there are ways to edit it but I do not know how to edit it you would have to ask someone else.Simple Theme Color rules that I use:- Do not add bright neon colors with black. I love black n neon as much as the next guy but it makes your theme eye burning.- Blog colors can determine a blogs theme as well. A bright colored theme suggests a happy upbeat blog. But this only applies if you care for that sort of thing.- Make the text easy to read. Please even your links in the sidebar make them a color that is different enough from the other colors on your blog so you can actually read them. Use a easy to read font as well.What I always make sure to add in a theme:- Ask Box. Obvious thing to add, never feel ashamed or hesitant to close your ask box if needed. Whether it be due to plot reasons or you have asks piling up. Feel free to close it for the time you need and open it up again when desired.- Submissions Box. Not REALLY needed, I just always add it for ease of access. You can get to someone’s submit box just by adding /submit to the end of their url but I prefer to have a tab for it.- Character page or reference tag. Seriously add a reference page or a reference tag that is easy to find. It’s kind of a turnoff if you don’t have a easy to access reference. Don’t be upset if you feel your reference isn’t good enough. As long as you have a color palette to it you will be golden. Never shade a reference without a normal color palette we are all begging you. If you draw art traditionally, you can always add a color palette in with MSpaint nobody will judge you for that.- Rules Page. Now this isn’t 100% needed. I just add them to avoid getting spammed with questions or like… nsfw questions or something. If you don’t care about that then don’t worry ‘bout it.These are the main things I add to a blog. I also add these things because I’m extra:- Lore/Plot page. This usually contains links n tags to follow all of my plot posts or specific lore posts.- Ask Hints page. This is a HUGE help to people who are shy like me!! I usually can’t think of good asks to send so Ask Hint pages are such a help. I always try to add them whenever I can! Also they can help people ask more plot relevant questions when needed.Other Important things to add to a theme of a blog:- Add warnings. If your blog isn’t going to be happy go lucky, please consider adding a warning somewhere. Whether it be in the blogs description or your rules page. You don’t HAVE to add a warning, but its best if you do. - Add a tagging system if needed. No again, don’t have to do this. Some don’t tag things at all which is fine! I prefer to have tags and tag everything so I don’t accidentally trigger someone or just have peeps upset at me in general. I always have trigger tags, sensitive content tags and OOC tags. I go overboard with my tagging, I am aware of this, but I would rather be safe than sorry.Lets talk about Blog Playlists:- It is perfectly fine to have a blog playlist. Most complain about blog playlists but that is generally only if AutoPlay is on. I’m neutral on blog playlists just as long as the autoplay is off I am good lol. AutoPlay tends to give me a spook. It’s a highly debated thing in the community, but from what i’ve seen people just don’t like AutoPlay lol-> IF YOU ARE GOING TO USE A STOCK PHOTO FOR YOUR BACKGROUND, TRY USING THIS METHOD FOR FAIR USE I know most don’t honestly care about fair use of stock photos like this, but try to be fair +*~ Onto the character’s themselves ~*+What do you choose as your main pokecharacter?Literally whatever you want. I know some try to challenge themselves by choosing a pokemon they dislike/is hard to draw as their main character, but please note there is a difference between challenging yourself and doing something that you dislike to impress others.Choose whatever you want. Whether it be a popular pokemon or not, as long as you enjoy it, go for it.Need Help designing the character themselves or their personality?Enjoy some links that I’ve used in the past when i was in a bind.- Master Post of Character Design/Story- Character Flaw List- Color Scheme website  - A big thing containing stuff for character design  - Here is a Palette Blog that I follow that I use for color palettes when I come up blank!- Need help portraying better speech bubbles for characters? here is some examples of some fun things you can do with them!- Are you a mainly text based blog or just want to word some of your things better? Enjoy this.I could link you so many more things, I also have a bunch of Art Tutorials saved/tagged!But I’m going to move on to avoid spamming~In the end. Have fun with your character design. If you aren’t enjoying what you are designing/drawing then maybe you should try something different! Again, there is a difference between challenging yourself and just forcing yourself to do something you dislike.+*~ ONTO BLOG THEMES ~*+What kind of plot should your blog have? Should it have a plot? What is better?Literally whatever you want!! Do what you want!! You want a big plot blog?? DO IT!! You want a silly nonsense blog?? DO IT!!  Want a mix of both?? DO IT!!Now. Lets discuss blogs that contain sensitive subjects:- Do research on sensitive subjects. I know you are doing blogs for fun! Why would you want to research something that sounds boring right? Yeah it can be boring. But DON’T TRY TO PORTRAY SOMETHING YOU LITERALLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. Because then that’s just being ignorant or offensive. If you want a blog starring a depressed character? Please at least just do some research on depression so you aren’t just doing one big stereotype splattered everywhere.- I know doing research sounds boring but there is a line that you have to do research on before portraying it unless you just straight up want to be offensive or ignorant. In which case if you would want to be offensive… why? just why? idk shoo bEGONE.- Doing research on the subjects you are portraying can actually teach you things and help you better your characters and plot. Believe it or not… studying something you don’t know that much about will…. help you LEARN??? wow shocking I know. I know I sound sarcastic and rather salty with this, but it happens more than you think.- Portraying a subject you know nothing about just requires some research. It’s honestly not that hard. You don’t always have to portray sensitive subjects 100% by the book. You can add your own twists or portray them differently if you wish! But there is a line between adding a twist and just being ignorant and offensive.+*~ Ask Time ~*+Alright, you got your blog all set up! You are ready to go! Now you need to get out there, get known! Get ASKS.How to go about it?- Get your blog signal boosted. The PokeAsk community loves signal boosting one another! A signal boost can go a long way to someone who is just starting out. If you don’t have a friend already in the community that can signal boost you, try asking a mod for a signal boost! Most mod’s love to signal boost others, go to one of them and ask for one POLITELY.- Make a Ask Call. One of the big ways to get asks is to simply make a ask call. Just make a post saying “Hey I need asks” or something.- Go onto other’s ask calls asking for one. Lots of Mod’s do Ask Calls in which they SEND OUT asks to others, go onto one of those! Ask for a ask! There is absolutely no shame in doing that.- Interact with others in the community. You can’t expect to get asks if literally no one knows who you are. Send asks to others! Get yourself out there! Make yourself known! If you are like me and have social anxiety or have issues sending asks, look for people’s ask hint pages! Send them a ask from the ask hint page!- Make a Ask Hints page of your own. Sometimes people just don’t know what to send you or are too shy to come up with something themselves. A Ask Hint page can help others send you asks.- There is no shame in asking a friend for a ask. There is literally no shame in asking your friends for asks if you really need them. Even if your friends just send them on anon. There is no shame in it.- Make sure your blog is clean. If your blog is filled with randomness that has nothing to do with your blog or is just random content from you, it will be hard for others to figure out what to ask about. If your askblog looks more like a personal blog, you probably wont get that many asks, its a harsh truth. Also again, having a easy to navigate blog can do wonders.- Make your content appealing. This sounds horribly harsh I know but you can’t expect to have others be instantly filling your inbox if you don’t have some sort of appeal. You can’t have around 4 posts of your character doing nothing interesting and expect others to go “oh I wonder this characters backstory is” or something. Spice it up! Make things interesting! You have to have a hook, make others want to question about your characters or your plot. Make them want to know more! Feel like you don’t know how to make things more appealing? Literally just ask others for advice. Even if the advice is criticism, USE THAT to become better. There is no shame in asking others for advice.- Don’t rely. On. Asks. Only. I understand it is a PokeASK community, but don’t rely on asks fully. Not getting any asks? Time to draw some character shenanigans! Do some plot to lure people in! Make us see your characters outside of asks! It can do wonders for character development and will also help lure others into wanting to learn more about the blog!You do not need a constant stream of asks to run a ask blog.If you just sit and do nothing because you have no asks, then guess what? You still aren’t gonna get asks. Sitting around doing nothing will get you nothing.Getting asks can be hard. For literally all of us it can be hard sometimes.Even that blog you think “omg they are so popular they must get so many asks” struggles because I bet you their inbox is full of nonsense that they can’t actually use.Don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t getting any asks, just keep moving forward with your blog and make the community get hooked on your stuff.+*~ Tips on things you should NOT do~*+- Do not force ships onto others. Most of us in the community love shipping characters, but don’t force it. If the other Mod expresses discomfort with the ship or doesn’t want to ship with you, don’t force it.- Don’t god mod others. Don’t waltz into someone elses inbox going “my character totally PUNCHES YOURS IN THE FACE AHAHA YOUR CHARACTER IS WEAK COMPARED TO MINE.”. Unless you and the mod planned that out beforehand, it is mostly unwanted. Don’t try to randomly attack or take over someone else’s plot. Discuss things like that with the mod, if they don’t want to do that sort of thing? Don’t send it. It’s extremely annoying. Also if you aren’t involved in someone’s plot or ask?? Don’t try to reply or force yourself in it. I’ve had people respond to my plot posts that had literally nothing to do with them. Its annoying and disrespectful. Always discuss things of that nature with the mod beforehand-.If you don’t like someone in the community, block them or ignore them. Do not make a huge deal out of it. It takes zero effort to block someone you dislike and move on. I know some go “Oh I don’t block others UwU” but then they go and constantly start crap with others? Just… If you dislike someone move the hell on with your life and leave them be.- Don’t do call out posts unless there is a clear threat to the community. Oh honey I’m so sorry you dislike someone in the community, but please spare me the time of scrolling past your huge call out post for a person who hurt your feelings a bit. Don’t cause the community unnecessary drama with call out posts for things that aren’t really community issues, this includes vague-ing about others publicly on your blog. Call out posts should only be for community threats or something. Is the person you are going to make a call out post on a pedophile/art scammer/submits porn or body horror to blogs/blatenly sends out hate to others openly/sends fetish asks or something of that nature? Then yes that is a community issue that needs to be addressed. Is the person you are going to make a call out post on someone who just hurt your feelings/you had a fight with about something that is only directed at the two of you or your friend group? Then don’t.A community issue is a issue that addresses the entire community, not just you and your issues with someone else. Move on don’t throw a temper tantrum like a child because someone blocked you or something. Nobody cares if you and someone else don’t get along, its private business so let it remain private.CALL OUT POSTS NEED TO REMAIN RARE AND WITHIN GOOD REASON.- Don’t reply to anon hate. Seriously don’t. Even if you have a witty comeback do you think everyone really needs to see anon hate spamming their dash? no. Ignore anon hate and move on. I know sometimes anon hate can hurt you, it can cut you to the core. But please try to ignore it and move on. Always remember that you can turn off anon or block anons. Granted sometimes anon hate can just be a misunderstanding in which case feel free to reply. I’ve had some “anon hate” which was actually just a misunderstanding. There is a difference between clearing up a misunderstanding and fueling anon hate.- Mind your business. If a drama is happening and it has literally nothing to do with you? Mind your business. Too many people try to get involved in drama that doesn’t even involve them and all that does is fuel more crap. Mind. ya. Business. It can save ya from unnecessary drama trust me. You can support others who are victims of drama or something, but don’t just try to insert yourself and make things worse. There is a difference between a supportive friend and a white knight. A white knight attacks without reason, they don’t know the full story nor care to know. Just…. seriously mind ya business.- Did I mention that if you dislike someone you should just block and or ignore them? Seriously. - Criticism is not automatically hate. Too many people take any negative criticism as hate. You can’t honestly expect everyone to only ever have GOOD things to say about your stuff? You aren’t perfect, nobody is perfect. If someone gives you criticism on your art or your writing or character development, listen. Listen to it. Take it in! Become a better artist/writer/blogger. I know sometimes criticism can be hard to take, especially if its something you worked hard on or something you care about deeply. But please know that criticism isn’t always hate. You never even have to accept criticism, granted its better if you try to learn from criticism, but you don’t have to accept all of it. It’s really up to you on whether or not you accept and listen to the criticism or ignore it. Just don’t automatically take any sort of criticism as “hate”. There is a clear difference.Criticism is to help you improve, hate is just to hurt.- Your mistakes do not define you,how you choose to act after the mistakes is what defines you. Have you done any of these things above? Are you worried about accidentally doing these things? I’m sure all of us in the community have accidentally or even purposefully done one of these things once or twice before. But the difference is, we realized what we were doing was wrong. We changed for the better. If you make a mistake, change for the better! Changing for the better can be hard sometimes, especially if you didn’t realize you were doing something wrong. But what it is important that you can get better, you can redeem your mistakes. A apology wont just fix a mistake, the best apology is changed behavior.  You can’t just apologize for sending someone hate and then continue to send hate. That is not how it works.Granted yes, sometimes mod will hold grudges, some mods wont want to forgive you for your mistakes. But don’t let that stop you from getting better.If you make a mistake, choose to become better and redeem the mistake. Do not become your mistake. It can be hard, but you can become a better person, a better mod, even a better storyteller.+*~ The Moral of the Story ~*+Have fun with your blog. Choose a pokemon you enjoy. Design a design that you enjoy. Choose a theme that you enjoy. Have fun and don’t be a dick.Most of us in the community are generally kind and welcoming, we would be happy to have a new person join the ranks of PokeBlogging.Have fun, don’t be afraid to ask for help if needed.This was really rather long, but I hope maybe it helped you.I’m not that great at giving advice or explaining my though process clearly.But I hope maybe you got something from this other than “Damn Jazzy talks too much” lol

[granger--danger]

The 100 ask game

Thanks for tagging me @frecklessbellamy, this was so fun!!

1. What would you get arrested for on the Ark?

Definitely stealing medicine, I’m not much of a trouble maker so I can’t see myself doing anything else that would be illegal

2. Would you take off your wristband when you landed on the ground?

I really want to say no but tbh I’m very easily intimidated so if someone like s1 Murphy or Bellamy told me I had to take it off if I wanted to live I probably would just let them and then go cower in a corner somewhere

3. What would the necklace Finn would make for you look like?

Cat!

4. If you could resurrect any minor character, who would it be?

Wells, 100%. I started a rewatch recently and it’s making me so sad for all of the potential he had  

5. Create a squad of 5 characters to go on missions with. Who are they?

Bellamy, Clarke, Raven, Murphy, Miller

6. Minty or Briller?

I used to be very into Minty bc that was what everyone always talked about but honestly anyone Miller wants to be with I’m down

7. What would your name be in Trigedasleng?

I have no idea - Breona? I’m intrigued by the language but haven’t spent enough time looking into it to really know

8. Thoughts on Finn?

Finn did a lot of awful things (and I’m never going to get over what he did to Clarke and Raven) but so has everyone on this show so idk, I’m not his biggest fan but I don’t hate him I guess

9. Be honest. How willing would you have been to take the chip without knowing all the horrible things it does?

I don’t like drugs that mess with your brain like that so I definitely would have avoided it

10. What character do you relate to most and what character do you like the least, not including the obvious ones like Pike, etc.

This is one of the questions I had to think a lot about and I think maybe Monty? I’m pretty loyal to the people I care about, I’m level headed, and I tend to shy away from the spotlight but am willing to take a stand/fill a leadership role as needed. As far as least favorite character, I’m so over Jaha

11. Describe your delinquent outfit?

I want black jeans, combat boots, some kind of henley/jersey shirt (probably in blue) and one of the awesome looking statement jackets that everyone seemed to have in s1

12. Favourite type of mutant animal?

The two-headed deer is classic but the glowing butterflies are pretty fun too. So many people have said Pauna but I just do not get that storyline it has never made sense in my mind I’m sorry

13. What would your job be on the Ark?

Something in medical. Do they have a pharmacist on the Ark or did Abby just deal with all of that too?

14. Would you have willingly pumped Ontari’s heart if Abby asked?

I would try my best, and I think if I knew I had to do it to save someone else I’d be able to, but blood in medical settings makes me super sick (hence why I’m going into pharmacy instead of becoming a doctor)

15. If L wasn’t Heda, then who would make the best Commander?

Ummm Anya? Lincoln? Maybe Indra from the later seasons? Idk I would need to finish my rewatch to get a better idea of what their leadership styles would be like before I could answer this

16. If you were a grounder, then where would you live and who would be your mentor?

I’ve never thought about this so I don’t really have a good answer, but I guess Trikru so Lincoln (ugh another death I’m sad about) could be my mentor? I don’t know enough about the different clans right now to really say anything else

17. How would you act if you ate the hallucinogenic nuts like Jasper and Monty?

The one time I’ve been super drunk I was very giggly and willing to answer questions I usually wouldn’t, so I’d probably go around telling everyone my biggest fears and secrets while laughing at a squirrel or something stupid

18. How would you have dealt with Charlotte’s crime? A more John Murphy approach or Bellamy Blake?

Probably Bellamy but we all see how that went (rip Wells ugh) so honestly not sure what the right call would have been here

19. Who should be the chancellor, if anyone?

I’m cool with Kane doing it

20. Mount Weather had a lot of commodities. What would you snatch while there?

Shampoo, conditioner, soap <-- keeping Elly’s answer for this bc I do not understand how everyone survives constantly covered in grime (I guess priorities lie elsewhere, but still)

21. Do you think you would have caught the virus spread through camp or would you have been immune like Octavia?

Yeah, I get sick pretty easily unfortunately

22. What would your grounder tattoos look like? Hairstyle? Warpaint?

Man I don’t have a good vision for tattoos or warpaint but I want it and I want it to be badass bc I’m too much of a wimp to get a tattoo irl. For hairstyle I’d probably just stick with a ponytail that maybe had like a braid or two in it, I can’t have my hair down for more than a few hours without getting annoyed by it so idk how any of the women in this show fight wars like that

23. Favourite quote?

“We all have battle scars. Suck it up and build a brace for yours.”

24. Can you forgive Murphy for his actions? How about Bellamy?

Kind of like what I said earlier, everyone in this show has done something they’re not proud of that seemed like it was the best/only choice (ha) at the moment. While the acts they committed seem awful when isolated, I think we have to forgive them in the end (also these people have really fucked up lives, seriously, they’re gonna do some bad stuff every once in a while)

25. If the characters were in The Hunger Games, who would have the best shot at winning?

Octavia. I would say Clarke or Bellamy but when it came down to the final two people I don’t think either of them would be willing to kill the other participant

26. Least favourite ship? Favourite ship? (Not including BC or CL)

Least favorite would be Finn with Clarke or Raven bc they deserved better, favorite at the moment is probably Memori

27. A song that should be included in the next season, like when Radioactive was? If there had to be another guest star like Shawn Mendes on the show, who would you want to make a cameo?

I saw someone else who did this say they needed to bring back Home II by Dotan and I absolutely agree. Not too picky about cameos, it would be fun to see anyone in a random episode but if anyone does guest star it would be interesting to see them in a more... not important role, but a role that actually seemed relevant to the story line? Idk I haven’t rewatched that ep yet but from what I remember wasn’t Shawn just there to play the piano for like 30 seconds? This answer got away from me, I’m moving on

28. What would you do if you were stuck in the bunker with Murphy for all that time?

Drinking games? Some other kind of game? Idk I get bored really easily so I’d need something to keep me busy, otherwise I’d just sleep all day

29. Opinion on Emori? Roan?

Love them both, very excited to see Emori’s storyline in s5 (and very upset about Roan’s death but it’s fine I’m fine)

30. Would you want to be an extra that is killed off in a brutal way?

Um yes please, if it was brutal I’m guessing it would get me significant enough screen time to meet everyone so sign me up

31. A character you’d like to learn more about and get flashbacks of?

I am so hyped to find Madi’s story

32. A character you’d bang?

They’re all seriously so attractive but I gotta stick with my boy Bellamy

Not sure who has/hasn’t done this because I’ve been seeing a lot of it on my dash the past few days, so consider yourself tagged if you see this and haven’t done it yet!

[dsudis]

writing meme

I was tagged by @silentwalrus1 approximately one internet lifetime ago.

+Where do you publish your work?

AO3 and also my own website (dira.ficlaundering.com) though I am beginning to think that... you know. Personal fic author archive-websites are a thing of the past and it’s not like I don’t keep local copies of everything in case the AO3 should up and disappear somehow, and also it looks... reasonably likely that the AO3 will not up and disappear anytime soon, so... maybe I will let the website go? idk. 

+What medium/application/etc. you use? 

Good old Microsoft Word, since I was dragged kicking and screaming to it from WordPerfect ten years ago. I trust The Cloud even less than I trust the AO3 to go on existing and also I do not actually want to share my actual working files in real time with absolutely anyone ever.

+Do you collaborate with others?

Nnnno. I am not good at relinquishing control over the story to anyone else--I mean, I will take someone else’s story and write fanfiction of it all day long, obviously, but sharing the actual story-making with someone else, no.

OTOH I love betas, and I more or less have to workshop an idea in chat--telling out the whole arc and sometimes individual scenes--before I can write it. Like, if you want to know what I’m going to write next the trick is to be in a chat room with me and ask a leading question and then make encouraging noises occasionally because BOY HOWDY DO I WANT TO TELL YOU AND HEAR WHETHER YOU THINK THAT WORKS.

+How much editing do you do before you publish?

It varies, depending on the story, how long it is, how many fucks I give about it by the time I’m done with it, etc. But I definitely like to have it betaed and go over the final story for proofreading type stuff. There have been stories I wrote that in the beta process wound up getting fairly massive rewrites--the middle story in the “Just Stay Alive” trilogy, “Seek Out the Hidden Places” is the one that springs to mind right now; I wrote that story, sent it to beta, and then realized that I had basically left out a huge amount of what the story should really be about, and rewrote a lot to make that work.

+Do you listen to music while you write?

I listen to music almost constantly--silence is slightly unnerving and makes every little other sound much more distracting, plus I have a bit of tinnitus so once I start noticing that I have to drown it out. (Thanks, ADHD, on probably both counts.) So, yes, I listen to music while I write, but it’s very very rare that I have any special playlist or anything relevant to the story itself--sometimes I’ll have some kind of RAR GET THE WORK DONE playlist for generally motivating myself to stay awake and on task, but that’s about it.

+How do you decide what to write about?

See above, re: workshopping ideas. I am a pretty much perpetual-motion idea generator, but I also have been doing this long enough to have some sense of how much of a hassle a story is going to be to write (in terms of how long it will be, how much thinking and planning and research it might require, how much shame I will feel about posting it, etc.) and how much I will love creating and posting it (how much of a target audience it has, how personally enchanting I find the idea) and kind of keep those things in proportion. One of the ways I gauge that is by, as I said above, basically workshopping the idea with friends and in chat--there are lots of ideas that I’ve talked out to the point where I can recognize that if I write it I’m committing to 200k, and back-burnered it until I forgot about it completely. 

(I rarely actually utterly fail to sell an idea to anyone, but there are definitely times when other people’s reactions make me reconsider how a story would need to work to survive outside my head. So that is also a factor.)

...Also once it gets past the idea stage and into the stable of WIPs, random number generators help a lot.

+When do you write?

Well, not damn much for the last week or so, and before that writing was my dayjob so I scheduled periods of fic-writing in between periods of original-romance-writing to break things up and avoid feeling too all-work-and-no-play about writing. Before that, I tended to sneak in writing at work and also write in the evenings, especially while chatting with my alpha/beta readers. So... could be pretty much anytime I’m in front of a computer, which is... most of my waking hours, most of the time.

+How often do you write?

Once again: not damn much lately because things have been a bit. wild. But prior to The Upheaval, pretty much five or six days a week (I would do five-ish days a week Going To Work to write, plus a semi-regular evening meetup one night on the weekend to sit in a coffeeshop and write with other writers). 

I always always wanted to be a professional writer, so I was reading writing-advice books of the variety written by working SF/Fantasy writers when I was 10 or 11 and internalized all their advice, which certainly included the “if you want to write, write every day” chestnut, and so I knew that and could have repeated it with great assurance of its validity anytime since I was in middle school, but it was only maybe five or six years ago that I actually seriously connected that to my own writing practice, particularly in the sense of--whether you feel inspired or not, whether you want to or not, get some words out as regularly as you can.

+Do you take requests?

Only after we reach friendship level 7. Or if I have specifically opened myself up for requests for some very specific reason like a charity auction or something, and even then I will reserve the right to be really wary of your requests.

+Is there a genre or type of story you want to write but are hesitant to?

I avoid writing historically-set stuff because I know Just Enough to know how much research I would want to do to Get Things Right and that is a rabbit hole I don’t need to send myself down when I have so many modern-set ideas where I can just roll with it and put down any goofs to “well it’s like that in the Marvel universe” or “well it’s like that in the universe where werewolves became widely known about fifteen years ago in a lengthy revelation that was traumatic in various ways for basically all werewolves alive at the time, especially the children and teens who had to deal with this happening but had no control over how it affected them.”

For instance.

+Any inspirational quotes, videos, tricks, articles, etc that help you stay motivated?

...Prescription amphetamines mostly? I have the ADHD, so “staying motivated” to do literally anything is a deeply questionable proposition. What works a lot better is to have a pretty reliable schedule where there is a time, or multiple times, in the day when it is Time To Work On The Thing. And if I’m particularly stuck, such that I arrive at Time To Work On The Thing and just go blank, that is usually time to show the most recent bit of the story to someone and talk with them about what I’m doing next, because actually talking about it with another person tends to jump-start my brain into focusing on the thing and working out what’s next and sometimes does in fact stir up enough enthusiasm to get me going without it having to be Time To Make The Donuts.

+Go to page 7 of your WIP, skip to the 7th line, and share 7 sentences:

I have lots of things in progress but only one that is more than 7 pages long where the seventh page isn’t in a chapter already posted, which I have also worked on this month, SO. From the Ace!Bitty epic, slightly more than seven very long and winding sentences:

“I thought he was asking because it was how he felt, and I was trying to be a... good teammate, a friend--I was older, I was trying to look out for him. So I kept saying, oh, that doesn't seem so weird, and I think everyone feels like that sometimes..." 

Bitty laughed, and Jack grinned and pressed on, watching Bitty's face to see if he was properly lightening the mood.  

"He wound up taking me to the ace spectrum group on campus--oh, hey, Bits, there's a group for this, when you get back to campus, I know I still see their flyers around all the time, because it reminds me of that time. They're really friendly, they didn't even get mad at me and Shitty for showing up and being idiots at each other and everyone else."  

Jack paused, considering what would be an added selling point for anyone else, and added cautiously, "I think the cake at the meetings is from the grocery store, though." 

"From the--!" Bitty looked horrified. "But--what if there are little frogs just figuring this out, and they--"  

Jack did not point out that, in this department, Bitty himself was the frog just figuring this out.

Annnnd lazytagging whoever wants to do the meme! Say I tagged you, it’s cool, you’re allowed! :D