#im open to feedback on this also

[quarterqueens]

most of the nantes extended universe is also like. incorrectly tagged as bulimia even though L actually has OSFED there but ao3 doesn’t have a tag for that and i made the call that bulimia was realistically the tag people would want in terms of finding or filtering out fic. maybe this was evil of me but it seemed practical. anyway. thank you for coming to my tedx talk. i’m going to go watch star wars now. i probably should have made this one single post but i did not.

there is also a disordered eating tag on stay bc it seemed prudent but it’s not really a focus there, either — like it’s more about L having mental repercussions from the specific kind of ambient levels of fatphobia he & many other people grew up with. i didn’t really want to make a call on whether his behaviour crosses over into a clinical ed or of it’s more non-clinical disordered eating but regardless it did end up being significant enough in the drafting stage that i felt it warranted a heads up.

[writingfreezer]

”would you still love me if i was a worm?” ratiorine/aventio

the air outside was filled with fog as the pair walked home from their respective jobs. to be fair, they did work for the same organization, just under different titles.

the younger of the two strutted along, hands in his front pockets as he looked around nonchalantly. every so often he’d fix the posture of his expensive watch or throw his overhanging bangs to the side. it looked almost intentional, how long his hair was.

the other man, who appeared to have a generally larger build than the other, walked beside him. his eyes were half-lidded as he looked forward, not in a tired way, but a pretty tense way. he wore clothing much different to the younger, loose-fitting blue pants and a very tight black top with some sort of blanket thrown around his shoulder, making him look like a greek philosopher. the younger wore a white suit with some green and black details, so you could tell their different taste in fashion.

the younger was whistling to a familiar tune as they walked, looking at the apartment complexes passing them by. suddenly, he turned to look at the taller one. he roamed his expression, searching for something that only he knew how to find. it went on for so long (not long at all) that the taller sighed and turned to look down at the man beside him with an irritated look.

”you’re staring,” he noted. his golden eyes shone in the afternoon sun, and it was hard to say that he didn’t suit the yellow glow of the evening as lighting.

”you are now as well, you know,” the younger remarked. he smirked with a boyish grin as he waited for the other to respond, which he did with only one look. the same look he’d been sporting since the shorter decided to strike up a conversation.

”alright, my bad.” the younger laughed and held his hands up in mock-surrender. now that he was tilting his head down, you could see the slight brown outgrowth in the roots of his hair. ”look, i was wondering something. it’s-”

as he looked up to continue explaining, he was met with the look from the older that he’d learnt meant ”please shut the fuck up.”

immediately, he did shut the fuck up and cleared his throat awkwardly to look forward.

the older furrowed his brows slightly, but only slightly, and blinked a few times. did he do something wrong? why did the younger stop talking?

he tried clearing his throat as well to show him that he was still present, but what he didn’t understand was that it added immensely to the already very tense and awkward situation. the younger, being fed up with this useless atmosphere, spoke up out of nowhere;

”would you still love me if i was a worm?” he asked, tone clear. he didn’t look up from the road, and he had somewhat buried his hands deeper in his pockets.

the older, taken slightly aback, tilted his head slightly as he walked.

”that depends,” he began, and he could immediately feel the younger’s mood dampening a little. he ignored the uncomfortable sting in his heart and continued. ”in this hypothetical scenario, am i still a human, or have i also been turned into a worm? or were we worms from birth? asexual freshwater planarians do not have a libido because they…”

the younger, who had regretted asking the question as soon as the words left his mouth, held back from sighing and instead zoned out somewhere far, far away as they walked back home. it was stupid, really, to ask the dr. veritas ratio, harborer of many phd’s including one in philosophy, a simple question about fucking worms. of course he had to turn it into a monologue that not even prometheus could top.

”…venturine. look at me.”

aventurine blinked away the fogginess of his sight and looked up to the man next to him. a small wave of shame crept up on him as he realized he’d probably missed the answer he had asked for. he nodded slowly with round eyes to show that he was listening.

”we must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. we must learn to sail in high winds.” the doctor said, and the gambler knew very well that those were not his words, but someone far, far back who probably wore clothing similar to the man next to him. what does that mean again?

”it means that you should stop expecting me to not take your questions literally. i’m just exploring every answer that is available to me.” ah.

”well,” aventurine began, looking down again. ”if you could choose one answer, which would it be?”

”i cannot do that.”

”doctor, please-”

the doctor sighed and rubbed his nose the way he always did to show his irritation, as if everything else wasn’t enough. ”am i also a worm?”

aventurine thought long and hard about it. realistically, for most people, they’d say no, only the person asking is a worm. but, if he knew his partner well, he’d say the wrong answer if those were the circumstances, so he didn’t say that.

”yes, and we have been worms from the start,” he said, not really caring to sound very cheerful. ”and we are not asexual. we’re still gay.”

”actually, i’m bisex-”

”you get it.”

”…yes,” was all the doctor said. he continued walking and staring straight ahead as he did before.

the gambler blinked. ”what? yes to what?”

”… to the question. if you were a worm,” ratio sounded kind of awkward now, which was unusual for him. it was kind of nice to hear, actually.

”oh. so… yes, you’d love me if i was- if we were worms.” he slowly looked up to the taller man, holding his breath waiting for the answer, even though he probably knew what it was already.

”yes, that’s what i answered to,” ratio said bluntly.

”oh. that’s… nice to hear. thank you for your input.”

the shorter smiled and resumed to look around them as they walked, whistling on that same tune as before.

[fakehusbandgarbagedump]

[ganondoodle]

some random ideas for the totk rewritten project

krog (korok) seeds

i think i found a way to include krog seeds even if i reintroduced bags for expanding your inventory- what if the krog seeds are redeemed for the amiibo sets and maybe a few new things? that way you are not forced to engage with krog puzzles if you are tired of them and its not essential either, you can choose what armor set you want instead of being "surpised" by the same link hat three times in a row for fighting your way through the depths (like i was lol)

considering im rewriting the krog forest to be like a minidungeon with a unique miniboss and boss AND you start the quest for restoring the master sword there i think that this is acceptable

what if one of the expensive rewards was a krog armor set that includes the mask from the botw DLC but adds two more pieces, its effect could be to turn invisible as the krogs are to most people; considering how they are not invisible to everyone it could still work with important NPCs still seeing you AND you could run through monster camps without them chasing you if you just want to get through without you attacking them- since its expensive you gotta gather alot of krog seeds to buy it meaning it wouldnt make encounters much easier bc you have to fight alot of monsters before being able to afford it anyway and the effect is removed once you attack an enemy .... or maybe once you are spotted you can stand still and the effect restores itself nhfkjdnkjfdk

food + storage

to raise the difficulty a little i thought about bringing bottles back, they are physical items this time with a limited number and are able to store medicine and soup that has no expiration date; personally i like cooking tho so i want to keep it, maybe with the effect of being a bit more limited in number and, while not spoiling completely, it loses some of its effectiveness over time

how you use them im not yet sure, either the same way in inventory (which i think i will go for since i dont want to change it that drastically and with the added balance of limitation i think that is still fine) or on some kind of item wheel you can set yourself like in skyward sword

there are bags you can find as bigger items that will expand your weapon, shield or bow inventory slots, perhaps a small bag gives you one and a big one two slots- it would be a bigger and different reward for exploring or quests and fills the spot for inventory expansion

theres a chest in links house (i thought maybe links house is still links but they built onto it so zelda has a place to stay as well, like a bigger/double house) that can hold armor sets if you dont want to keep carrying all of them around but dont want to sell them either

repairable weapons through zelda

weapons still break but are full weapons again, i found the excuse of them all being useless now through the cataclysm ... somehow for some reason a pretty blatant way for forcing you to fuse stuff bc its literally the only viable thing to do, but i like the idea of inventing new weapons with materials; to balance it out and give you an incentive to help out your friends i figured that at first weapons still break, but in each region is a smith that can teach zelda (who is your companion in this rewrite) how to repair weapons of a certain type (zora, spear, goron, two handed, rito, bows, gerudo, one handed-- perhaps it is a longer quest of idk .. bringing certain weapons to those smith or similar) which she can do anywhere outside combat;

how broken the weapon is determines how much extra material she may need to do it- im still working on it but i got the idea of the status of the weapon being symbolized in three stages, fine, damaged and broken; damaged is the one that needs less material to fix up, broken costs more- a broken one might still occupy an inventory slot but is unusable or very very bad damage wise, you can throw it away either manually or when you try to pick up a new one you can choose if you want to swap it out (just like they did with stuff from chests in totk .. idk why they didnt add that to in game weapons lying on the ground too) or choose to keep it and repair it once you are out of combat

arrow types

i dont like the menuing in totk for the arrows ... it was one of the most frustrating things to deal with (especialyl bc it sorted your inventory too??? when you used the sorting in the quick menu???) so i wanted to change that a little, havign to go into the quick menu everytime for each arrow i find tedious too, so;

there are more arrow types but they are craftable with arrows and materials, you can craft them in bulk out of combat (the typical types from botw -fire,eletric,ice,bombs- but then add those confusion ones, wind, the cloudy shroom thingy, poison .. perhaps a few more if i can think of more but not too mayn to not clutter it again)

enigma stones function

i wanted to change how enigma stones function somewhat, they dont "enhance" the ability of the champion/sage (i still wanna call them chmapions bc thats what they areeeee) it allows them to link an ability of theirs to link without the orginal champion having to be present or dead, the stones come in set of two each and function somewhat like a magic communication between the player and the champion, once you obtain the second piece its embedded into links shiekah arm prosthetic (also something of my rewrite) and allow him to call upon their ability at will through a second selection wheel

ranch ruins

the ranch ruins i wanted to be rebuild (bc thats cool and i thought restoration was a theme? lol) and maybe you help rebuild it proper and as thanks you can put your horses there to roam around all at once when not taken out to ride, not a big gameplay thing but a neat quest with a rebuilding thing of a building we havent seen in its prime and a neat addition of letting you see all your horsies at once :)

(totk rewritten project)

[paintbabyface]

my dropout x Rat Grinders fan cast, partially inspired by others i have seen on here

kipperlilly - vic

oisin - ify

ruben - jacob

ivy - anna

mary ann - erika

[homestuckreplay]

Homestuck Is A Game, Who Is The Player?

Week 3 Retrospective

'Video games have long been associated with spectatorship as well as play, from their origins in quarter-fueled arcades, where high score displays implied the presence of admiring or competitive spectators, to their migration to home screens and consoles. Live streaming chat emulates these older models, but its interaction with economies of scale on streaming platforms brings a different kind of intimacy and intensity to the experience. Chat lets spectators feel like they are there with the streamer as well as a part of a crowd, even if they are alone in their room.' [Jeremy Antley - emphasis mine]

From Homestuck’s very first page, the comic has made something clear. We are not allowed to immerse ourselves in John Egbert’s world. There is a layer of separation between us, an interface mediating our access to his life and story, a voiceover narration from the person who’s really in control. Who is this person, and what form does their control over John take?

Homestuck is presented like a video game, yet unlike a video game, we don’t control the character’s movements with arrow keys or have the chance to type our own commands directly into the text box. Instead of being able to explore the game on our own terms, we are confined to a specific and predetermined route, even though others seem theoretically possible. Simply put, we are not the ones playing the game.

Essay continued under the cut - about 2.6k words

I think there are two really important questions to consider when analyzing the meta elements of Homestuck and treating it as a game. The first - what kind of game is it? The second - where exactly do we stand in relation to the player(s)?

The most obvious answer to question one is ‘Homestuck is a text based adventure game.’ This guide to text based adventures is a great overview, and we can map the example commands here onto commands we’ve seen in Homestuck. ‘Examine room’ (p.4) is a one-word action, ‘Captchalogue smoke pellets’ (p.9) is an action and direct object, and ‘Nail poster to wall’ (p.19) includes the indirect object. John hasn’t given any orders yet - he’s too nice a guy for that - but ‘Report progress to TG’ (p.39) is definitely communicating with another character. All of these, and most other command lines, feel like reasonable instructions that could be recognized by a game.

However, commands like ‘Fondly regard cremation’ (p.52) and ‘Play haunting piano refrain’ (p.77) honestly feel too characterful to be fully interpreted by a computer, and ‘Squawk like an imbecile and shit on your desk’ (p.16) is… well, I tried typing this into the command prompt for the classic text adventure Zork, and got the following response.

A text adventure is just not set up to interpret wacky, left field ideas, much less respond to them in an entertaining way. And we know there is a real person behind Homestuck doing exactly that.

If my party enters the wizard’s study in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, and I tell the Dungeon Master that I squawk like an imbecile and sit on the wizard’s desk, that statement will be understood. Sure, the DM will probably call me an idiot and put a nasty spike trap on the desk, but what I said will become part of the story in the way that a nonsense command in a text based video game never can. It’s interesting to think of Homestuck as a tabletop roleplaying game, where the narrator is the Game Master, the command prompt is a player, and John is a player character (presumably TT, TG and GG are the rest of his party and they’re just really late to the session).

Homestuck isn’t just text based, though - it has a strong visual element, including interfaces and overlays where the player can click and drag items between John’s inventory and his environment, or around his space. This suggests it could also be a point and click adventure game, a genre that grew out of text based games as graphics improved, and is defined by a strong inventory management component (check), puzzle solving quests (check - we’ve recently solved our first quest of acquiring the Sburb Beta) and dialog trees (????). The sprite based, isometric art style is really good for getting an overview of the space and seeing possible interactable objects, and Homestuck does feature extended dialog sequences - we don’t know if there are other possible inputs from John, but it's interesting to think that there might be.

These three genres - text based adventures, point and click adventures, and tabletop roleplaying games - all developed throughout the 1970s and 80s. It’s reasonable that Andrew Hussie (born 1979) could have grown up with some of these games. But to answer the second question, ‘where do we stand in relation to the player’, we might need to look at media forms still in their infancy - let’s plays, livestreams, and actual play.

[Michael Sawyer, 2004]

In the past few years, ‘Let’s Play [Game]’ has become a relatively popular thread format on the Something Awful forums, as well as personal websites. This began with posters taking screenshots of their playthroughs of a game and adding commentary in the text. The medium has now advanced to video and is typically hosted on YouTube, with commentary overlaid. Either format gives a creator the space to play through as much of the game as they choose, and then edit exactly what content they want to show to the audience, providing commentary after the fact. 

Homestuck, with its per-page illustrations, could be seen as a long thread of forum posts by the player, each including screenshots as they move through the game. The inclusion of short Flash animations shows the edge into video, and makes me wonder if we’ll see longer or more complex videos, perhaps with voiceover narration, as Homestuck expands its focus. The self-referential and aggressive yet helpful commentary in Homestuck is similar in tone to Sawyer's playthrough above, and could easily be the work of a player who knows where the story will go, at least in the short term, and is dropping hints to the audience while purposefully concealing some things.

Livestreaming video games is a similar concept to Let's Plays, but performed in real time. Often hosted on Justin.tv, an open video broadcast website that’s been gaining prominence in the past couple of years, a livestream is an improvised and unedited way to watch someone game. Any commentary from the creator happens without knowledge of how the playthrough will turn out. Homestuck, by Hussie’s own admission, is being written similarly in real life - they don’t know more than the broad strokes of how the story will go, and it’s possible that neither the author nor the narrator knows the long term implications of an action such as John stealing his dad’s PDA. 

Livestreams open the possibility for viewers to influence game events, if the streamer listens to their audience. We know this is true in Homestuck - readers are able to submit commands, and some are chosen for the story. The real time nature of Homestuck, waiting each day for the new update, is equivalent to waiting for a streamer to come online and start playing again so we can find out where their game goes next. This is compounded by us having no access to Homestuck outside of the streamer - we cannot buy and play this game for ourselves, it’s still in some kind of early or limited access, and the streamer controls all our knowledge. 

The livestream is definitely most similar to how Homestuck is made by its author, but it's hard to say whether its narrator is commentating in real time, or after the fact. I can't find any definite clues in our pages so far - I think the narrator wants to seem smart and superior, but I can't say whether they have the knowledge to back it up.

[img source]

Our final media format is known as Actual Play. Almost a year ago, the creators of Penny Arcade (along with Dungeons & Dragons game designer Chris Perkins) began releasing Acquisitions Incorporated, a short-run, officially licensed podcast where the group plays through a D&D adventure to demonstrate gameplay interspersed with jokes. This isn’t the first time a TTRPG publisher has recorded sessions to help people learn the game, but this idea seems to be crossing over into the entertainment genre - and webcomics are part of that movement.

In the first episode, the group have a brief aside. The DM says that ‘some players prefer to refer to their characters in the third person… others prefer to get into the first,’ and one player says they’ve observed the same thing in World of Warcraft. What’s not explicitly said is that the Game Master typically refers to the player characters in second person, describing what happens to ‘you’ and what ‘you’ see - much like streamers talking to their chat. The blocks of narrative text below pictures in Homestuck could easily be a Game Master balancing giving information to an unruly player, and providing entertainment for the audience. John’s lucky or unlucky moments with his sylladex could be the result of particularly good or bad dice rolls from his unseen player.

Actual play is a really great format for deep diving into a small cast of characters, and exploring their emotional state in ways that aren't intrinsic to a lot of video games. As we're already seeing the beginnings of John's emotional arc, we know this will be a focus, but we need two to four more characters with equally large roles in the story to really form a TTRPG party. Actual play also tends to include a lot of combat and its mechanics. We know Homestuck can handle crunchy mechanics due to the sylladex, but I'd expect to see the Strife concept become just as in depth and central to the story if Homestuck ends up fitting into this mold.

All three of these formats can have a mass audience, just like Homestuck does in reality - but Homestuck also feels like a very personal experience. Two people playing the same video game, even a highly linear game such as Portal or one that doesn’t involve much active interaction such as a visual novel, have slightly different gameplay based on the speed they move through the story and their missteps on the way to finding the solution to a puzzle. 

Similarly, my experience of Homestuck is different from yours. I read the new update every day, while I know some people wait for a few days of updates to build up and then read a larger chunk. Maybe I clicked ‘Aggrieve’ and ‘Abjure’ three times each on p.90, alternating the options, while you clicked ‘Aggrieve’ five times in sequence and then ‘Abjure’ only twice. Maybe I didn’t realize p.110 had an interactive element at first, and skipped over it until somebody pointed it out to me (really telling on myself here). These elements of Homestuck that we have direct control over are currently only a small part of the story, but they do exist.

In this way, Homestuck feels a little bit like sitting in the living room as a kid watching your older brother play a game, begging him to let you take over for a minute, occasionally doing so until he gets frustrated with your inability to Strife and takes the controller back. The nostalgia of the simplistic graphics and the 70s and 80s games that are being evoked only adds to this cozy feeling. If Homestuck starts to add more interactive elements, such as branching paths, opportunities for us to take over the cursor, or a chance for us to use John’s sylladex ourselves and choose what he picks up, it might be worth thinking of Homestuck as different iterations of the same game, each of us watching our own, slightly different player, and even co-playing with them.

So, who IS this narrator? In my mind, I’m trying to draw a clear distinction between the author and the narrator. Hussie is the author in the real world, and the narrator, or player, or GM, exists within the work. Their role is best described on page 82:

‘The game presently eluding you is only the latest sleight of hand in the repertoire of an unseen riddler, one to engender a sense not of mirth, but of lack. His coarse schemes are those less of a prankster than a common pickpocket. His riddle is Absence itself.’

The narrator is this unseen riddler (or perhaps unseenRiddler?), providing a secondary layer of control over what happens and what we are able to see. They’re the person clicking and dragging objects around John’s room, and choosing what actions to take next. The narration is their perspective on the game - whether we see this as a GM describing a scene to their players, or a streamer reading aloud information that the game has given them and providing their own commentary. 

So, we're watching the narrator play Homestuck, in whatever form it takes - but there's another layer to this. On page 22, an equivalence is made between the Sburb Beta, which John was supposed to receive on April 10 (and finally acquired on April 13 in-story, p.100), and the Homestuck Beta, which launched to us on April 10, but was quickly canceled and replaced with Homestuck proper on April 13. The Homestuck beta is linked within the comic, and might be canon within it - the narrator making an initial run at the game before restarting their save (perhaps on a different computer or console?) and trying again. Homestuck the game is currently about a kid who lives in the suburbs - and if the name and logo are anything to go by, Sburb could also be a suburbs-themed game. While we watch the riddler play Homestuck, the riddler will be watching John play the game Sburb. How deep does this go? Are there more layers inwards or outwards?

I’ve been puzzling this over for days, and I’m definitely left with more questions than I can answer. Here are the ones I'm focused on:

Is the unseen riddler playing the game as intended? Now that they’ve passed the tutorial, are they keeping the game on the rails and trying their best to follow a linear story, or are they pushing the boundaries, going for some kind of pacifist or resource-stripped run, trying to interfere with John’s intended story? Have they played the game before, and if so, how does this affect their gameplay?

If the unseen riddler is a character within the story, distinct from the external author, are we the true audience? Will there be an audience within the story, or perhaps other players? If so, how big will it be? What kind of reach does Homestuck the game have, and how many people are playing it or tuning in to watch?

How permeable are the boundaries? Is John simply pixels on a screen for the unseen riddler to play with, with no agency of his own outside of the riddler’s interpretation, like if we were playing The Sims? Or is it possible for the riddler to enter the game, or for John to leave it, and the two of them to communicate directly? Or a middle ground - something like ‘character bleed’ in TTRPGs, where a player embodies a character for so long that despite their not being real, they come to influence each other even outside of gameplay?

What the hell is the Midnight Crew? Is this a different game that exists separately to Homestuck? Will our riddler, or a different one, eventually play it? If we have three games - Homestuck, Midnight Crew, and Sburb - what exactly is the relationship between them, and how interrelated are they?

This is a lot of thoughts for what is, at time of writing, is 125 pages of comedy webcomic. But the story is just beginning, and we’ve been told it’s going to be a long day. Anything could be important, and with the frequent in-text nods to the meta elements - ‘examine third and fourth walls of room’ (p.61), ‘you decide it’s time for less meta, and more beta’ (p.113), the title appearing in the clouds on p.82 that John may or may not be able to see, the integration of the physical captchalogue card into the sylladex interface on p.98 - I don’t want to draw any firm boundaries, or make any assumptions about what is and what isn’t part of the story. Instead, I’ve cataloged the meta elements of Homestuck that might be worth paying attention to as we move through the comic, to develop a more concrete theory in time.

[florshedworf]

okay ive been thinking about this for a little bit but what sort of dress would thunder wear.

i was thinking perhaps something fancy? like a sleeveless dress or something with some sort of armor? perhaps not something that drags on the floor though

or maybe something a bit more practical? something that isn’t really a dress but you can move more freely/have more protection in (or just generally looks more square/sharp)

[gomzdrawfr]

I get hella nervous whenever I post Gaz because I've seen other artists(my friends even) being bashed or dog piled when their version of Gaz doesn't align with their vision or straight up saying "its drawn very badly" so im glad to read everyone's nice reblog comments on my latest Gaz doodles <3 thank you, I appreciate it truly

I know I shouldn't really be scared of those kind of comments, but lately I've been struggling a lot lol but im learning and trying my best :] ((despite it taking a whole year to actually dare to draw and post him)) Elliot's very pretty!! handsome man!! so sometimes I feel like im not doing any justice if i dont draw him well enough

BUT

its okay, ive learned to live with it and draw him the way I like without trying to shape it in everyone's idea

because let's be frank, you can't satisfy everyone, no matter how sweet or shiny the apple is someone's bound to hate it

anyways yeah just wanted to say i appreciate yall

[unopenablebox]

every experiment people asked about after my talk is something i'm already working on 😌

[quicktimeeventfull]

thinking about tagging that fic for no particular reason. i keep putting the anorexia content warning on it bc it’s such a major and common trigger & it appears as significantly more than a passing mention but it’s not actually an ed fic per se. like at least as it’s plotted out atm it’s never actually going to be a focus — i was just tbh kind of frustrated at the dearth if professionally published novels where characters have EDs that aren’t the primary point of the novel or a shallow sidenote meant to make a judgy point about beauty standards. anyway.

[wickedlyqueer]

hi hello salut. do you find that having a tumblr account to promote fanfictions is helpful or do readers find your fics regardless? i am publishing first time ever. thank you greatly, big fan

Yeah, I'd say so.

For one you have another platform to let readers know "hey! there's a new fic of the thing you like!" Not every reader sorts fics on 'most recent' and only go off 'most kudos'ed/viewed/bookmarked'. A new fic will have an incredibly hard time to land a high spot with those filters. Hell, some only go off other people's recs... So any additional place you can let readers know of your fics existence helps.

It also makes it much easier for readers to reblog your fic. If I read a fic and like it, I probably wouldn't make my own post like 'oh this fic i read was really nice'. I would, however, reblog someone's tumblr post. This helps your fic (potentially) read a wider audience.

Just make sure to properly tag your fics so that—even when you don't have many followers—people can still find your fic!

[waywardsalt]

general question genuinely interested in replies/responses; is ten chapters in too soon for linebeck (in the bellum x linebeck fic) to be comfortable letting bellum check out his ship (i think in terms of time they've been traveling together for maybe a month)

[olipopsoda]

Dw, you’ve got a chance. Enemies to lovers y’know?

Thank you for the support during this trying time 💜

[reineydraws]

Why didn't you draw Babs with the Batfamily . You stupid bitch . Don't treat Babs that way. She's the queen and far more popular than any of the batfamily members!

wow! your question is valid but your tone is rude and i dont appreciate it. dont tell me how to treat fictional characters when you dont even treat your fan creators nicely.

babs isnt in the photo because she's setting up as oracle; in the caption i mention she sent up a drone to take the photo. babs is great and i love her but there are 11 people in the original photo and i based this in the wfa 'verse where there are also 11 gotham capes (that ive seen so far) on the streets that have babs at the helm, in the clocktower, being oracle. as a result of this train of thought, i unfortunately ended up not picturing her. it isnt bc of any specific babs hate on my part.

[pepprs]

beaver gnawing on wood noises

[anx1oustig3r]

Fictober 2023 Day Two

Prompt number: Two

Fanfiction Fandom: DotA 2 (fan characters but references to canon characters and lore locations)

Rating: T

Warnings: Mentions of alcoholism and ableism.

Flint loathed Winter. First of all: it was freezing. Second of all: his cane was build for trailing over the ground and being able to clearly tell him what type of road he was walking on, not brushing snow out of the way. Snow is the exact same texture no matter where you are, and when it's not snow it's ice. Bloody ice!

As if the universe was reading his mind, his feet slid out from under him as he missed yet another curb thanks to the lovely snow not giving him any indicator of where his footing was. His voice broke in a yelp and something grabbed his arm and hoisted him up.

“Don't worry, I got you.”

His sister's voice. Admittedly, it was a blessing in disguise that he was stuck keeping an eye on her once again. Her constant staring at the ground meant she knew exactly where they were walking and so she functioned as a nice pair of eyes – albeit fragile eyes. If it were any other season he would have argued up and down and back and forth and to high hells and heavens with their mother to just let him see his friends or really do anything without her.

Mom, of course I love her, but she's a fucking handful and you know it!

Mireska would've agreed with him, but this evening she was passed out drunk as per usual. Hence the siblings' trek to the local butcher. With one mother hard at work to provide bare minimum coin for necessities and the other out for the count since alcohol is cheaper in the afternoons, Flint had to rely on the meagre scraps he earned from running chores for locals and criminals alike to pay for a half decent dinner. He stifled a hiss. His friends got to spend their coin on fun stuff, he had to pay a quarter of their rent.

“Butcher,” Ash's croaky voice broke him out of his internal tantrum.

“What d'you want?” He asked her, hearing the shuffle of her coat in response. Rolling his eyes, he tried to keep his voice steady.

“Is that a shrug or?”

“Usual,” she said.

“Right.”

'Usual' translated to a type of steak imported from Cobalt – one cut from the hide of massive mammoths that make their home in the Frozen Wastes bordering the town. The northern folk must lead far more interesting lives out there versus the poor sods stuck in White Spire of all places. The city was seen as a marvel, the place where you could get rich or lose all your coin in one evening. A city where the alcohol never stops and violence rules the cobbled streets. A criminal's free for all, but also the one city with rather afforable housing. The Underlords could be very generous to anyone who sucked up to them enough.

At least that's what Mireska always told him, although she had a nasty habit of sugar coating everything she said. Typical Faerie.

But for Fint – and by extension his sister – it was just home. A home that got tiring after your first four treks to the shop on your own when you're eight years old because the mother that's supposed to be taking care of you decided getting completely plastered and gambling away half the family's savings was more important. No, to Flint White Spire was just a reflection of frustrations that had been growing since he was old enough to understand what his parents fought about every weekend. While the rest of the world longs to come here to paradise, he longed to leave. No doubt Ash felt the same, what with the way she longingly rambled about the history of different cities and how people lived their lives there.

The meat was heavy in the bag, and the siblings took it in turns dragging it through the dark streets. To his side he could hear his sister beginning to hum – not to a tune, which was a terrible sign.

“What's up with you?” He asked.

“People are looking,” came the response.

Flint grit his teeth, fangs grinding against his lower jaw. Ash had a way of unintentionally drawing attention to herself, which distressed her immensely. It was a vicious cycle, but it wasn't her fault. He understood it in a way, feeling his own skin prickle as he could practically feel people's pitying of him when he'd walk by on his own. The way tutors awkwardly spoke to him in his school. Even his mentor, who refused to allow him to touch any of the carpentry tools until Flint dragged in a chair he had made himself.

“Is there an alleyway we can turn down?” He asked. The response was two taps on his shoulder.

“Okay,” he said. “If you wanna lead the way, just hold onto me.”

Ash turned him down a side street and he could feel the air growing colder from unlit alleys. Knowledge of White Spire warned him to stay alert, but he trusted Ash's unmatched homing instinct. Putting a hand on his sister's shoulder, he allowed himself to attempt a comforting smile.

“Don't worry,” he said. “I got you.”