#it means so much to me that you like what I'm publishing especially enough to ask for more

[softquietsteadylove]

I know it’s probably so annoying of me to keep asking for more every time you fulfill one of my prompts, but once again you hit it out of the park with the memory loss au!!! Gil is so sweet and kind and such a good husband who loves his wife no matter what 🥹 i don’t have a specific prompt, but just would love to read more about that journey. Thank you as always for keeping this ship alive, you have a reader in many of us still!

Gil paused in front of the door to the apartment. He leaned his forehead against the door, letting the cool of the air temper his mediocre (at best) day.

He loved his job, he loved the bakery. But the questions about Thena were getting to him. They came from a good place, he knew, and of course they would have their curiosities. But it was hard to deny that he was annoyed with the questions about if it was weird for them.

No, it wasn't.

Of course it was.

He had to come home and gauge if his wife was feeling particularly nervous around him that day. He had to ask how she was feeling because she went out of her way to hide that from him. She was recovering well, but no memories had emerged as of yet.

In his worst moments he really had to wonder if they would at all.

But he couldn't stand outside and dwell forever on that grim thought. He pulled out his keys to unlock the door. Thena herself had said she would leave it unlocked but he told her he would feel a little better if she didn't.

"Hi."

Gil blinked. It wasn't necessarily a welcome home kiss or anything, but Thena was standing by the door, smiling at him as he dropped his backpack where he stood. "Hey."

Her smile wavered faintly, but it certainly wasn't fake. She was nervous. "H-How was work?"

"Uh," Gil tried not to flounder. She was trying something, and he didn't want to discourage her. He also smiled, kicking off his shoes and starting to take off his coat. "It was okay. Kind of long, but at least it's friday, right?"

Thena just nodded, stepping back to let him in. "Come and tell me about it."

Gil tilted his head, squinting at her so long as she wasn't looking at him. It wasn't that she never asked to hear about his day before. But even just last week she was still trying to figure out how to start a casual conversation with him, or ask where they kept the coffee filters (again).

Thena seated herself on the couch, waiting for him expectantly. He chuckled, ruffling the stress out of his hair. When he rounded the corner of the couch he looked at the coffee table. The beer can was visibly cold, on a coaster and everything. "I thought I was out of these."

Thena shifted her knees, tugging at her skirt. "I decided to go to the store, today."

Gil tried not to look freaked out about that. He was just being overprotective, and there was no reason Thena couldn't want to get out of the house for a little. She remembered where the store was...apparently.

"I noticed there weren't any in the fridge, but I picked some up while I was out," she added, tilting her head as he cracked it open. "It smells familiar."

He smiled at that. Smells could be very good for her memory, he had already discovered by way of their laundry detergent, and his cologne. "You want a sip?"

She shook her head, and that made him smile too. "Yeah, I guess you never really had a taste for beer. You don't mind a glass of wine with Kari, though."

"Hm," she sighed as she leaned against the back of the couch. Her eyes were still intent on him. "So?--work?"

He cleared his throat, setting the beer down on its coaster again. "Right, uh...it was okay. Things ran normally, it was kind of quiet, but I guess it's just that time of year. And the weekend guys will be fine."

He had worked the very early mornings for the weekend before, actually. But since Thena's episode he did what he could to be at home whenever she was up and around.

"What do you bake specifically?"

"Oh," he blinked. It was light enough conversation, but Thena asked it like she was going to be quizzed on it later. But then again, he could remember their first date having a similar intensity to it. That was just what Thena was like. "I guess I mostly do the croissants, some of the desserts-"

"I looked up the bakery online today."

"Really?" he tried to ask casually, but she was going somewhere with all this.

Thena looked down at the small but comfortable space between them on the couch, picking at one of the cushion seams. "I considered walking by, but... "

She usually wasn't one to trail off during a sentence, but obviously she had really thought about whether to go through with it or not. Gil scooted just a little closer to her (not enough to spook her). "Hey, that's okay. I probably wouldn't have been able to come out and see you for long, anyway. It's sweet, though."

She looked embarrassed, but didn't shy away from him, at least. "I was worried someone would recognise me and...and I would leave them wanting."

Gil nodded; Thena was quietly terrified of having to meet everyone in their lives all over again. He couldn't blame her. Meeting people was never her specialty, and the pressure on her was now worse than ever. "It's okay, hon. We can face that later."

She sighed faintly, but she allowed him to just sort of wiggle his finger in her direction. She mustered the courage to hook her finger with his. It was small, but it didn't escape him that it was big for her.

"Hey, on sunday we can go by together if you want. Pick up some stuff for brunch here at home?" he suggested it gently, testing the waters. If she truly never wanted to speak to anyone they knew ever again, he didn't really have any argument to stand on.

He was willing to do anything to keep her from considering leaving all together.

"That sounds lovely." She smiled to match his smile, although softer and gently. Her hand did move, from just their fingers linking to more of a tentative hand holding. Affection wasn't her specialty either.

"It's a date," he grinned, unable to contain himself. Thena blinked and he nearly flinched, "I-I mean, not-! It doesn't have to-"

She laughed, though. He had missed that sound like the air he breathed. "My second chance at our first date."

He knew she meant it as a light joke, or maybe even in a self-deprecating way. But he melted. He couldn't help it! His wife was going to go on a date with him!

Thena watched passively as he brought her hand up to his lips. He gave her the chance to pull away, but she didn't. He kissed her knuckle gently. holding on just so he could admire the wedding ring still on her finger.

She had once asked if he had taken his off, and it had horrified him. But he asked if she wanted to take hers off. She had every right, even if the thought made him want to shrivel up and sink into the sea. But Thena had looked at the foreign object on her finger and answered very plainly but honestly: no.

Thena tilted her head at him again, "Gil?"

He gave her hand another kiss before looking at her again. Her hand in his, a beer to his left, it felt a little more like old times. But it was also new, in an endearing way. "So, you looked up the bakery?"

"Yes," she smiled, indulging his much improved mood, even letting him run his finger against her wedding ring. "It's a lovely site, the products are photographed well."

They had an instagram that Sprite mostly ran herself, but Thena didn't actually know that a lot of the product photography on the website had been done by herself back when Gil first got the job.

He had bragged all about how his wife was an amazing artist with a great eye for beauty! Thena had come in and done the photos for the website and then scolded him for embarrassing her.

"They are," he agreed quietly. "And we have some seasonal stuff, too. We'll still have the usual--the croissants, the pain au chocolat, the mont blancs. But we also still have the petit fours right now, since we get so much extra in for valentine's day."

Thena's face betrayed a split second of horror.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he reassured her, and also used it as a great excuse to kiss her again (this time her open palm). "You were still in the hospital then. And we were never really valentine's people anyway."

There was some clear doubt in her eyes at that statement, but she didn't choke out a positively miserable apology (again).

"Besides," Gil put on his most charming smile, which she always said made him look suspicious, "I think valentine's is a little much for our first date, isn't it?"

Thena laughed again, and god he could listen to that for hours. He would make it his ringtone if she would let him. "I suppose that is a little forward of me."

"I mean Thena, I don't know what you heard about me, but I like to take it slow," he continued to joke, relishing in her laughter. It was so light and cute for how stern she always tried to look. "I'll pick you up and everything."

"You'll 'pick me up'?" she repeated back to him with her sandy blonde eyebrows raised. She had plucked them recently; she really was bored sitting at home all day.

"Sure," he shrugged and nodded in the direction of the guest room--her room. "I'll pick you up at 10."

[demonking-propaganda]

13 spoiler-free reasons why you should read Mairimashita! Iruma-kun

...if you haven't done so already 👀 (With "spoiler-free" I mean I'm not describing plot points or characters, but under the cut I'll discuss the overarching themes, so be warned if that's too much for you. The first 7 reasons may be enough lol)

It's both funny AND wholesome. I literally can't read it without laughing out loud, and there are a bunch of chapters that make me cry every time I read them.

It's clever! The Japanese version contains several puns based on the kanji "魔" (read "ma", = devil, demon), starting from the title, but it's a recurring pun. The English translation adapts them pretty well. Plus, there are some of the best plot twists in recorded history (IMO). And the names and characteristics of most characters are based on real-life demonology.

It's queer AF. Like, really gay. There are explicitly homoromantic relationships and several nonbinary and gender non-conforming characters. One of these is the best unashamedly nonbinary character ever written. Plus, the manga premise can be seen as an allegory of hiding in the closet. The only thing that made me uncomfortable because of cisnormativity (boys in drag as a joke) is completely fixed in later chapters, and very well so.

It's feminist, without being preachy or paternalistic. Simply put, the women/girls are three-dimensional, complex characters, as the norm should be. And there are lots of them, without it being a harem (...the harem trope is actually used as a joke).

It's spooky and adorable, imagine Halloween vibes all year round. Both main and background characters are super diverse, and if you like monsters there is stuff for you.

Most characters are neurodivergent-coded. It's basically the autistic/ADHD manga.

The art is phenomenal. It's especially good to see the improvement of the art style over the years (the first chapter was published in 2017 and the manga is ongoing). Some panels are really breathtaking.

8. The story is about personal growth - like most shounen manga, fair enough. But the protagonist, Iruma, is so far from toxic masculinity I dare say he's the antidote to it.

9. It's also about found family, the discovery of unconditional love, and trust, and healing from familial trauma.

10. It's about finding a group of friends you belong to, and transforming your weirdness into a strength, identifying and cultivating what you're good at instead of fitting into a mold.

11. It's about the beauty of learning in your own way, and the importance of education and the shaping of future generations.

12. And the reason why I opened this blog: it's about fascism and fighting against it. I mean real fascism, as in "a powerful individual/group wants society to be hierarchical and oppress certain minorities, elevating a specific subset of the population based on intrinsic characteristics which are being misleadingly treated as merits". Ethno-nationalistic stuff. More specifically, it's about being a somewhat politically illiterate person, who learns about systems of oppression beyond personal injustices. It's about questioning what is the best way to arrange society.

13. Most importantly, this manga gives you hope about the future, something I find harder and harder to have. Hopelessness is dangerous - as people without hope stop fighting. This manga makes me actively feel better. Since it's ongoing I can't ensure it will always remain that way, but I've come to trust the author enough that I expect it to.

[elodieunderglass]

I'm not as familiar with LOTR as you are, so I wondered if you could tell me if my wild theory is completely off-base.

No one knows where the Hobbits came from, except that at some point they diverged from the line of men. No one knows much about the Entwives' appearance, but we do know that they fucked off a long time ago.

Could the Entwives have been dryad-ish and hooked up with the hobbits' ancestors and so be the foremothers of the hobbits?

Ah I think I saw that post! The concept has a lot of charm, and when the Tolkien estate loses its corpse-grip on the property in 2050 or so, I think you should write it and sell it 😤 I’ve definitely read some good takes on entwives in fanfiction that both leaned into canon and moved away, and I think that sounds like good fun to explore. A common theme in the fandom is playing with Yavanna, the Green Lady, being the mother or patron of hobbits. This isn’t canonical, but she’s a “green goddess” archetype and is married to Mahal/Aulë, the father of dwarves, which shippers often leverage to their advantage. You could do something quite charming there with Yavanna if you wanted to. We also know that Entwives loved gardens and orchards rather than forests.

Some things I would explore with this include:

what is going on with all these consistent ideas of people, races, women disappearing. We know that a lot of it is how Tolkien processed an almost OCD-like Catholic framing of “the fallen world is getting worse and can never be repaired”, war experiences, romanticism and other stuff stewing in his old man head. What are some ways you could show what’s stewing in your head? What does “people disappearing” mean to you? and why is it especially healing that they disappeared in order to make new families?

I think “they disappeared from their old kin and made new kin” is an interesting and weird thing worth wondering about!

- this would possibly make hobbits a more recent race than is implied. What does that mean to you?

- why are hobbits teeny tiny?

A very good starting point, that Terry Pratchett used a lot, is taking some grand statement in fantasy fiction, and making it reflect a different political reality. “Most dwarves are girls actually.” “Wizards parody academia, but, like, FOR REAL.”

I personally have a different take because of my own political feelings and framings! I have a lot of complex feelings about Tolkien chickening out of hobbits. For various political reasons I personally have to take the stance that they are fully human, fully indigenous, and have their own native language. and that their disappearance is less “teehee we lost them” or “O, the Catholic guilt of the Fallen World, how far we have fallen from the light of the two trees God’s sinless light” and a lot more “oh yeah I’ve seen THAT pattern before.”

If you have a political sort of lens on, someone telling you “yeah… hobbits came from nowhere 🤭 and then disappeared 🤷‍♀️ sad!” is a story that can also invite the response of “OHhhhh you wanted their LAND real bad, huh.” Like, we know what that means, right.

It’s a political stance for me. Hobbits have to be close enough to us to touch, and we have to be able to face that, and the fact that 5,000 media properties will chew on tolkienelves and sell them to you before even admitting to the 🤭 just makes it even more of a 🤨. To me.

…But I have literally just been elbow deep in my own demented fanfic thing that involves inventing a language just to swear in, to enable my standing on a box shouting HOBBITS OUGHT TO RESIST GOING EXTINCT ACTUALLY, based entirely on, I think, spite. Why do multiple authors publish orc football games (Terry Pratchett) and orc coffeeshops (Legends and Lattes guy) and do every damned thing with every bit of Tolkien’s corpse but refuse to look directly at hobbits. I am feral over this and wrote 59k words so far to damage and harm my friends

In conclusion I see a great story shape there about kindred and I think you should explore it and it should be about evolutionary biology and women and divorce and nobody being wrong.

And if anyone argues you with some podcast boy “well actually”, just bite them and do more character work and sit on their heads

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The Star Beast - Part Eight

Excerpts from Benjamin Cook's Star Beast Set Visit - discussing the Camden night shoots:

Is nobody here having a bad time?? WHAT'S WRONG WITH THEM? "I had a little lull earlier," admits David, "at 2AM when we were waiting to turn over- I definitely yawned, maybe twice - but then the blood starts pumping again." Wrap isn't till 3AM. David lives across town. Isn't he worried he'll wake up his family when he gets in? "Listen, the kids are at Davison's," he says (this is Fifth Doctor actor Peter Davison, who happens to be David's father-in-law), "so I'm full of beans. Oh, and sugar. Do you want some?" He's bought a churro from a market stall that's stayed open because it's very much in shot. "You can have more than that." He breaks me off a bigger piece. "The sugar rush will do you good." He offers the director [ Rachel Talalay ] some too: "Go on, Rachel, you deserve it." "Are you doing OK?" she asks him. "Yeah! Sugar! I'll move on to the Yorkie bars next. I give not a fudge at this time in the morning." He claps his hands, dusting off the sugar from his churro. "But are you OK?" "I am at this moment," she says, waving to some fans. "Tomorrow at 4:30AM I might not be. Ask me again then." "You do get a lot of love from the fans, don't you?" says David. "In a tiny way, which is just lovely. I mean, I'm not you," she says, with a laugh. "I love hearing them scream for you. But I'm not used to any of this. And… I think it's stopped raining." "OK, here we go," says Scott. "Let's go for one. Stand by then, folks…" They go for another take. And another. When I catch up with Rachel later – much later, it’s October 2023, and she’s chatting over Zoom from her home in Vancouver – we’re five weeks away from The Star Beast airing on TV. “I didn’t know quite how well the episode was working,” she says, “till my family watched an almost-finished cut. I came downstairs, and my two girls were crying. It was like, oh, OK, this does work! And on a much, much deeper level too. To have them go, ‘We knew it would be full of joy’ – which I think it is – ‘but we didn’t expect it to be so emotional,’ that was very satisfying. It was an emotional time all round.” It was. In more ways than one. Which is something that Rachel wants to talk about – here in DWM – for the first time publicly. “I think I can now,” she says, “because I’m close to two years in remission. I will be this month. Two years in remission. And Doctor Who really helped heal me. Directing Doctor Who while I was only a couple of months post-chemo.” A deep breath. “I had lymphoma,” she explains. “I’d been in chemo for seven or eight months. I wasn’t sure if I was going to survive. Then I was offered The Star Beast. I thought, I’ve got to do this. I didn’t tell anybody I was sick. I hadn’t told anybody except very close family. And I didn’t tell anyone on Doctor Who till I was there long enough to say, ‘Look, I’m well enough, so I don’t want you worried about me.’ Because, frankly, I don’t know that they’d have wanted to hire someone who might not have made it through the shoot. I totally get that. That’s fair enough. [...] “I could not have been surrounded by a more supportive crew,” says Rachel. “The best crew in the world. When I realised, it’s all night shoots, I thought, oh god, and I’m two months post-chemo. But that crew – David especially – made those night shoots so fun. It’s weird now, because I look back at the pictures – like that lovely one of me and David you published last issue – and that was my chemo hair. I was just getting my hair back. But I got healthier and healthier, stronger and stronger, as the shoot went on. When I got back to Canada, the doctor said, ‘You’re a poster child for how well someone can do after chemo. This is what people are capable of.’ “But it’s just what you do,” she reflects, “isn’t it? – when you love Doctor Who in your heart so much. There was no better place for me than Doctor Who.”

Additional parts of this set are in the #whoBtsBeast tag. The full episode list is [ here ]

[grison-in-space]

Hi fellow neuroscientist and animal behavior observer! What's up? It's a weird ass time to be a scientist in the US right now. Like there's the doom and despair taking up most of my brain but also I have a lab presentation in 1.5 weeks and my committee meeting two weeks after that. How do you make yourself focus on lab/science stuff?

I'm so sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you; I've been rotating this ask in my mind for over a week now. I hope your lab presentation went well, and I hope your committee meeting does, too. Bear in mind that I am reeling as much as anyone else, but... well, I have had a lot of things happen during my academic career, and I have had some practice with this by now. I was displaced from my home three or four times during grad school, and all but once that was because of climate change related flooding. (I actually cannot remember offhand. That kind of thing fucks with your ability to reckon in chronological time, which is why no one has been able to work out how years work since 2020 at latest.) I did my PhD in Texas, too, which gave me some exciting experiences around campus violence and guns.

But maybe the biggest thing for me is that I started grad school in 2012, right in time for the government sequester of 2013. That was the year Patty Brennan (of corkscrew duck penis fame) published an article in Animal Behaviour laying out helpful tips in case your research is targeted as "wasteful spending" by members of Congress seeking to reduce scientific funding. Brennan's work legitimately is groundbreaking--I started out close enough to her field to be able to say that almost no one was looking at vaginal anatomy when she started and she's really driven the field of reproductive conflict forward by systematically looking at methods by which females exert "cryptic choice" to control their own reproductive futures. But it sounds silly at first blush in a sound bite, so she immediately became a target when her work went viral. And that paper came out a decade ago, and we are no better than when we started.

I've gotten pretty good at working through grief and fear, and I've tangled with burnout more than once. So how do you handle it when everything is overwhelming and frightening?

You sketch out the work you can do, and you do it as best you can. Same as anyone else.

Here's the thing. You're a budding scholar. Whatever your field is, you probably know more about it than anyone who isn't a scholar in your field already, and you care about broader justice or you wouldn't be asking me this. This makes you a precious potential resource for whatever activist cause is nearest and dearest to your heart. You are placed, as a person whose career is focused on the pursuit of knowledge, in a position of great authority. Yes, even as a PhD student, although I do agree that having the PhD makes the things you say even more impactful. But you'd be surprised how far even just "PhD student" can go when you're making a stand.

You are a valuable voice when it comes to the intersection of your expertise and your community--and by that, I don't just mean your discipline and your geographical location; I mean your lived experiences and your identities too. If you burn out, your voice and effort may be completely irreplaceable. So make sure you don't burn out, but don't waste your potential to speak out, either. You can do that by working out what your "beat" is: pick one to two things you care really deeply about working on in the world, that you want to make better, and focus on those. Use your authority to make changes.

Currently, my "beat" is focused on disability justice (especially in terms of neurodivergence) and sex/gender, because those are communities I am part of and that I think deeply about. My work there can take a lot of forms: shoving hard on the pernicious medical thought process that tends to conceptualize disorder and disease as a deviation from a uniform functional population; pointing out the complexity inherent in sex differences and sex itself; building relationships with disabled academics to make networks for one another so that we can better support trainees as well as ourselves building alliances between disability justice scholars and researchers tackling these topics with an eye towards integrating the comments and interests of disabled people into the field of study that theoretically focuses on us. These are topics that tie into my research interests (context dependence, decisionmaking, strategy, developmental plasticity, etc) but also into my sense of justice and the communities in which I spend my life as an autistic queer butch.

Think about the things you care most about making better, and think about how those things intersect with your research interests. Is there a bathroom bill you could write a deposition for explaining how complicated sex actually is? A local news reporter who could use a scientist talking about the long term climate impacts of the new fracking project up the road? A new policy on immigrant familial separation that is going to lead to kids with major attachment issues down the line and increase the odds of terrible outcomes? Creative ways to send promising undergrads from underrepresented backgrounds on for new opportunities if you live in a state where DEI initiatives have been banned? (Man, that was an exhausting conversation to have with the North Carolina folks at my last conference. And the Floridians.) Where will your voice carry the most weight for the amount of energy you allocate to it?

Here's my best stab at practical advice for junior trainees:

Figure out what your limit for practical engagement is and defend it viciously. The thing about being in academia, and about having the PhD for that matter, is that it gives you a lot of leverage for speaking authoritatively about problems in your field and in your community. This, too, can be a form of activism and shaping the world. But if that's the weapon you are making out of your career, you can't also be an effective organizer on the ground for eight different local causes. You can't do everything at once, so pick a limited subset of things to focus on and work on those. Like academia, public impact will suck you dry if you let it, so you have to set boundaries and you have to be clear with yourself about that.

As always with research, your topic should be something you're interested in. Apply your priorities as a human being to your research. Move your project in directions you really care about and which are aligned with your values. Talk with your mentors about how you pitch that to other scientists in your field, of course, but if you're really shaken and scared by the political climate... well, better to apply that to your work than to not be able or interested in focusing on the work at all.

Look for things to celebrate and militantly celebrate them, even if it feels silly. You submitted a manuscript? Make a special dinner. You survived your committee meeting? Meet up with a couple of friends for coffee and cheering. You need things to cheer about, and your job is not going to naturally provide them, so lay out things you can celebrate and celebrate them even if you don't feel like you really achieved anything. (Your PI should help with this, but a lot of them don't. If your PI is absentee, try to find labmates or colleagues to celebrate when you can.) Joy and pride fuel us to keep going; make sure you are feeding them. You do not need money to make this happen, either: there are inexpensive ways to make things feel special, even if your stipend doesn't stretch nearly far enough.

Especially if your lab isn't full of people in your corner, make some friends who feel the same way you do about your "beat". Fellow activists (or just people who care) about your biggest priority are a great choice. Back in the day, I would have exhorted you to join Twitter to build that network; these days, I think most everyone is on Bluesky or Mastodon. You need people who get you and who are in your corner, and you need people who don't have power over your career to help you weather it when the storms rise.

People in the midst of despair don't know the future, either. There will be victories to come moving forward. It will be impossible to imagine them as you are today. The future is murky and uncertain, and you never know what battles you can win until you pitch them. Don't let anyone tell you a battle has been lost until you fight it, and don't make the mistake of thinking that what you do today doesn't matter intensely.

Life is iterative: it always starts from what you do today, and small aggregate decisions have a lot more power over the whole than any individual large one. If you don't like the direction you're going, you can always change direction for a while and see where you go. The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago; the second best time is now.

Find ways to take breaks completely from the political situation. Currently, I have just gotten into Minecraft for the first time, and I am playing a lot of stupid pixelated escapism games. You have to have time to recharge yourself away from all of it. Whatever that looks like to you is good enough. I need, personally, to get back into going for long walks in the woods; that one is one of my old reliable helpful ways to think without getting overwhelmed about it.

So. I don't know if anything has gotten better or worse for you over the last couple of weeks, but I hope for better for you. As for me... well, it's probably time to go back to my grant. We're short on funding going into this mess and who knows if the grant I'm writing for an explicitly DEI-oriented program will survive the coming hammer blows long enough to get it in. Even if it doesn't, I have a couple of book pitches I'll write up and a couple of suggestions for jobs along the way I can take. I can always redirect my effort to a new direction.

Take care of yourselves, friends.

[bluerosesburnblue]

The thing is, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth isn't even the problem. It's going to sell well when they stop kneecapping it. The numbers look bad now, but that's entirely because right now it's a PS5 exclusive. It looks bad in comparison to Remake, but Remake released on PS4, a much easier console to get. I'm sure that Rebirth will start making up the numbers once it has a PC release because that's what people who lack a PS5, including some who owned a PS4 for Remake, are going to be getting it on

And that's ultimately the crux of Square's issues: bad decisions that don't pay attention to the market. FF7 Rebirth and FF16 are both suffering from PS5 exclusivity right now. PC usage for games is extremely popular, partly because it tends to sidestep the console exclusivity issue unless a company does something like this and hard delays the PC release just to keep it fully exclusive longer. Despite the fact that console exclusivity helps no one (except maybe the console sellers) in terms of sales because a lot of people who would otherwise play the game don't have the spare cash lying around to spend on a new console for whatever they're interested in, so they have to wait until it comes out on something they CAN play. Especially true of the PS5, which is expensive as hell and was prone to shortages after release. Which means that for all of their complaining, Square has a ton of unrealized gains on their IPs just because the PC releases that were promised aren't even out yet, and plenty of people are just waiting until they are

But the more they delay, the greater risk of those people who would have bought it on another console have of getting the story spoiled, or losing hype, or getting into something else, or just plain old deciding that they don't care anymore. And that'll be true of any game they release, regardless of whether it has the Final Fantasy brand attached or not, if they keep up this exclusivity stuff

Combine that with a number of just... baffling decisions and flops like:

Forspoken being a massive flop, panned for mediocre gameplay, bad dialogue, a weak story, and unlikable characters despite the massive budget behind it (and I do mean massive, it's probably where most of the financial loss is from)

New IPs that seems to be creatively uninspired and not fun to play, like Foamstars, which literally everyone said looked like Splatoon and is apparently just not a good PVP shooter

That fucking Symbiogenesis NFT nonsense, a game that you can only play by buying an NFT of a generic character, well after the NFT trend was over

And neglected legacy IPs like Kingdom Hearts going years without any real updates, and for KH all we do have is the horribly contradictory concept of a plot-heavy ARG game that you can play at home, which I can't believe was greenlit because it defeats the entire purpose of it being an ARG. And that still has no release date

...and it's no wonder that they lost $140m. And those are just the IPs I'm aware of. Like, let's be honest here, between an actually okay one-console showing for FF7 Rebirth and FF14, Final Fantasy is their money-maker right now. I'd be surprised if they didn't go more in on FF, because literally everything else is completely failing on them right now

It's so sad how fasts things can change in some cases...

Because, before we knew how many millions of dollars Square Enix had recently lost, I kept wanting to make a post about why I thought that a Final Fantasy VIII Remake was a really good/fun idea, even though Square Enix themselves and some fans might be hesitant about one in some regards.

And IDK... I still might end up making that post. But do I honestly think we'll ever see one now? No.

Chances were slim before... But if Final Fantasy VII Remakes can't really sell well (at least this most recent one -sobs-), we can honestly kiss our chances at most other ones goodbye:( Especially ones that would be even harder and more time consuming to make (and more costly).

Though I do think FFIX Remake is still happening. And maybe that rumor about an FFX Remake could be true.

[bookshelfdreams]

ofmd wasn't "profitable" enough but I didn't even get the feeling hbo wanted to make money off of it. They didn't promote it when s1 dropped, and the promo for s2 was erratic at best. They don't sell merch. Or physical copies. There's no bts documentaries other than what actors (shoutout to Samba ilu) make themselves in their spare time.

It took more than a full year for me to be able to watch s1 legally! I still can't access s2 legally anywhere! It's not that ofmd is unprofitable, it's that hbo refuses to profit off of it, because - well, because profiting off of it would mean investing work and money into it.

And like. Of course, when you compare it to the juggernauts hbo holds rights to, like GoT, ofmd is small fishes. But.

How on earth do these clowns think cult classics happen?

A Game of Thrones was first published in 1996 and didn't make it on the NYT beststeller list until 2011. The first edition of the first Harry Potter book was 500 pieces. And yeah, TV shows are different, but if you look at today's media landscape, would things like Star Trek, or Buffy, or Doctor Who stand the slightest chance? These things take time, is my point. A piece of media doesn't become a massively profitable, beloved classic over night. It takes time and effort to build that kind of franchise.

And the thing is! Nobody who makes these decisions even likes stories. I'm convinced that whoever is in charge at hbo, at amazon prime, even at disney, thinks storytelling is dumb and for idiots. They think it's enough to just slap the name of something people love on whatever garbage they spit out, for it to be profitable. They think it's the brand that sells: Look this has "Lord of the Rings" on it! Look, this one has "Game of Thrones", you like Game of Thrones don't you? Watch my show, boy.

But this isn't how this works. It's not the name that sells (unless, I suppose, you're the MCU, and even there one gets the impression the trick is finally stopping to work), especially not when the product is bad. People aren't idiots.

But it's not about making something good. It's not about making a meaningful piece of art, or telling an engaging story. ofmd served its purpose; it drew in all the subscribers it ever would, so there's no point in letting it go on. Even in the s2 that we did get, this is evident: the penny pinching is palpable, it's clear that the studio didn't want to spend any more money than absolutely necessary on it, and then cut the budget by 40%.

It's not about art. It never has been.

And it's not even about profit, because to be profitable eventually, stories have to be allowed to thrive first. You tell a good story first, and success happens later, often much, much later.

And ofmd was incredibly, astonishingly successful. It was the most in-demand series for weeks after the s1 finale. But even that wasn't enough, it's never enough, ofmd could have made record-setting profits and it still would have been cancelled, because -

Well, I don't know. Because we live in a bad time for art. Because Orwell was right, and stories have become commodities, like shoelaces. Because. Well. It's not about telling a story, is it?

What's the point of a story? What's the point of making something for the joy of making it? What's the point of a piece of art, existing, if it cannot be transferred into numbers for the stockholders?

idk how to end this. I hope David Jenkins finishes the story he wanted to tell, even if just for himself. I hope, against all odds, that weird, fun, heartfelt, beautiful little stories like ofmd continue to happen.

But goddammit.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Worried About Traction/Why Write?

Anonymous asked: Okay answer me this, so I've read how trad publishing is going to shit, but self-publishing I doubt I could gain any traction with. Then why fucking write, ya know? People say, "write for yourself," which sounds like a lot of goody bullshit. I want people to love my writing, I need some type of validation. So, how the hell do I get anyone to care about my stories?

Just a quick note that this ask came in off Anon, and I wasn't sure if it was meant to, so I put I'm posting it Anon to be on the safe side.

So, I don't want to get too much into the "is traditional publishing dying" debacle, because it's a conversation that's complex and nuanced and outside of my energy reserves at the moment. What I will say is that the traditional publishers--the Big Five in particular--still dominate the market, especially where print books are concerned. And although self-publishing can respond more quickly to trends and shifting tastes, traditional publishing continues to evolve.

Having said that, even if traditional publishing was stronger than ever before, that wouldn't guarantee you a book deal. Even in the best of times, the odds of being traditionally published are between 1 and 2%. Even if you get a book deal, that doesn't guarantee your book will be a best-seller. Hundreds of thousands of books are traditionally published every year, and far fewer than 1% of those books will become best sellers. Being traditionally published doesn't even guarantee your book will be sold in brick and mortar bookstores. I can point you toward traditionally published books that have been out almost a year and still have fewer than 10 reviews on Amazon. I can point you toward many more with fewer than 30.

And, while we're on the subject, I can show you self-published books with thousands of reviews (positive ones, btw...)

The point is, it doesn't really matter how you publish. What you write, how you write, and how you market is far, far more important. But the reality is, most of us aren't writing the kinds of books that are going to be best-sellers, BookTok sensations, Oprah's Book Club selections, or get optioned for film rights before the ink on the book deal is even dry. So, when you say you need validation, what does that look like for you? Does it mean seeing your name at the top of the NYT best seller list for five weeks straight? Seeing your book on eye-level shelves at an international airport? Hundreds of fans showing up to your book signing? A-hundred thousand followers on Twitter eagerly awaiting news of your next release? Or, does it look like someone... anyone... enjoying your book enough to leave a 5-star review... someone calling you their favorite writer, several fans re-posting your cover reveal because they're so excited for your upcoming book, or someone writing to say your book got them through a difficult time in their lives? Because, while I would never tell you not to dare to dream of achieving the former list of expectations, I will absolutely tell you the latter list of expectations is well within your grasp. So, if that's validation enough for you, write for those people. If it isn't, and it's not enough to write for yourself, then I think all you can do is try. Write the best stories you can write. Get them out there. Promote the hell out of them and see what happens. Maybe you will be one of those lucky few who see their book at the top of the NYT best seller list for five weeks in a row. Or, maybe you won't, but you get a two-page e-mail from a fan who says your story changed their life. And maybe, after all, that's enough. Here are some posts that can help you start building a following ahead of publishing, whatever route you end up choosing. Building a buzz on social media ahead of publishing and consistent promotion afterward can make a big difference. Even if you publish traditionally. Guide: Getting Your Writing Noticed on Tumblr Guide: Author Platforms-What, Why, and How? Guide: How to Promote Yourself as a Writer/Author via Social Media 12 Sites for Sharing Original Fiction

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[jeff-from-marketing]

Hey it's been a hot minute, I'm gonna go off about Helldivers 2 for a bit, because the whole thing fascinates me.

Funnily enough it's not even the actual game itself that truly fascinates me, as great as it is. I do genuinely think that, while not perfect, it's a very solid game that knows what kind of experience it wants to deliver, and does a fantastic job delivering on it. The Starship Troopers-esque satire is hilarious, and I love how much the gameplay reinforces that satire through things like reinforcements canonically being a whole new Helldiver sent into the meat grinder, and that the mission still counts as a celebrated victory even if you never make it back alive. I could even talk about how the objectively clunky system for calling in orbital support is actually a positive for the game, but only this game and the type of experience it's selling.

But none of that is what fascinates me about this game so much. Because y'see, I played the first Helldivers game, and it was also a great bit of fun! It's actually why I was interested in the second one to begin with. But I also know that the first Helldivers was not a very wide reaching game, none of Arrowhead's games have been. They've not done poorly by any means, they're still in business and have been for over a decade now. But they've always been fairly niche affairs. Until now. To really sell the picture, I wanna rattle off player counts for their previous games:

Magicka in 2011, Arrowhead's first big game and published by Paradox, had an all-time max player count of 11,727 players according to SteamDB. I don't believe it was on any other storefronts, but I could be mistaken. A quick wikipedia visit tells me that the game sold roughly a million units over a year which, again, not bad! Especially for a game that is admittedly fairly unusual, but is a lot of fun!

The Showdown Effect in 2013, which I only just found out about right now after double checking my numbers, had a all time high of just 3,284 according to SteamDB, and is now delisted from Steam. Though apparently there's a remake from another company happening? There's a lot less info on this one in general.

Gauntlet in 2014, this one I do know a bit more about since I also played this one. A remake of the original 1985 game, and was a good bit of fun as well! This one is trickier to get an accurate player count reading, because it did have a PS4 release and those are harder to find numbers for. Regardless, it was also on Steam, so therefore I can use those numbers at least, which gives me a max consecutive player count of 12,730. I don't know how much PS4 factored into this.

And now we get to the real interesting one: Helldivers 1. Again, this is tricky because not only was it on console, but it was actually on console before it was ever on PC, which heavily skews numbers. SteamDB has the peak at just 6,744, but this doesn't sit right with me. I've seen estimates of 50k people around the place, some say 35k, but never a solid source. It's also very difficult to search atm because of how much Helldivers 2 is blowing up. Speaking of...

So Helldivers 1 is their most popular game, and I'll be generous and say that the 50k count is the accurate one. So surely Helldivers 2 can't be that much more- oh I'm not even going to pretend, you already know what's going on here. The game has reached ~450k concurrent players just on Steam alone! And the game also exists on PS5, and if I recall correctly: there's official statements saying that the player counts are roughly equal with each other. That means a peak of ~900,000 individual players. To illustrate how bonkers batshit insane that is, motherfucking Fortnite has a current consecutive player count of roughly one million.

Let me reiterate: a game that came out of basically nowhere with little marketing, from a small studio with only about 100 employees, is rivaling the juggernaut that is fucking Fortnite. That is insane.

As someone who has played all of Arrowhead's previous games besides The Showdown Effect, this is bonkers. There's a reason the sentiment was "there's no way to have predicted this" when the servers were at their worst, because look at the previous data! How is anyone supposed to predict a sequel to a niche game (from a company very few people have heard about) to get a ~1800% increase in max player count? Their initial server capacity was 250k, which would've been very optimistic if you were just going by Helldivers 1 numbers. But then that wasn't enough. And then 360k wasn't enough. And then 450k wasn't enough. We're now at 700k server capacity and just finally getting things under control. This game just exploded in a way no one could have reasonably predicted. And I have no idea why this is the case either.

I'm not saying it's not deserved; it absolutely is! Like I said, game is great, and there's not even any shitty business practices I can bitch at this time! It's just so sudden and out of nowhere that it baffles me. Such a small percentage of these players would've even heard of the first game, let alone played it. It didn't have a massive marketing campaign, this is pretty much all spread through word of mouth, which is insane in its own right. It's not even like the game is entering an untapped market, it shares its existence with games like Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide, Darktide, the actual Starship Troopers game, probably some others I'm forgetting. And yet, despite all of this, it breached containment something fierce. I don't have a big conclusion to make from all this, I'd love to be able to say "oh people are just getting tired of Triple A- oh I'm sorry, Quadruple A gaming and this is a breath of fresh air" and it is that, as was Baldur's Gate 3, but I'm not naive enough to think that's the main reason. Not when so many other great games continue to go undiscovered, and so many people still end up buying whatever the next big Triple A thing is. It's a great game to play with friends, and there's a lot going for it and a lot of charm, but such is also the case for the other games I already listed in this paragraph and they don't see the same popularity.

Whether it's just dumb fucking luck, or a really oddly specific set of circumstances at play that I can't see, I'm just dumbfounded and flabbergasted. But I'm not exactly gonna complain. It's fun getting sent into the meat grinder to spread Managed Democracy, and I'm glad the game is doing as well as it is, though I do hope that the devs get to have a bit of rest once the dust finally settles a little bit.

[snapscube]

you don't have to publish this or whatever but I wanted to say, I'm right there with u on Projects That I Put On A Schedule And Then Couldn't Stick To That Schedule. it kinda sucks (especially, I imagine, if you have an audience asking about the things; being unknown has its pros and cons) but at the end of the day imo trying is the important thing and doing it infrequently is better than not at all. keep doing you and put out what you can and want, when you can and want, and people will enjoy it regardless of frequency or scheduling or whatever

hey i appreciate this a ton <3 admittedly i was very grumpy over the assumption that just because no shame was intended w/ asking me like that about projects i haven't updated in a while that it would mean no shame was caused LOL. it's actually, in a cruel twist of irony, something i have very specifically been insecure about over the past couple of days and i already wasn't having the best morning in general. whoops!

i think a lot of people assume by default i am a much more put-together person than i actually am just because i have some semblance of success haha. truth be told everything that i am able to put out is a god damn miracle in the sense that i am constantly fighting to do so against rampant fatigue and depression. i always always want to do more, and i have every intention to do so. i always assume i can if i just try hard enough since it seems easy enough for other folks, which is why i sometimes over-promise. but i'm still really trying to make things fit every day, and lately i have admittedly not had a lot of success. i have not given up yet tho! i think 2024 is gonna prove to be a year where i have to call on a bit of a hail mary approach because i KNOW there's a better way than what i've been doing. whether that's through a massive output change in terms of schedule, or whether that's a huge break, or whether it's sunsetting certain parts of my online output in the interest of focusing on things i'd rather be using that limited stamina for. feels like SOMETHING's gonna have to give.

anyway, i hope to never come across like i'm taking peoples patience for granted. it always legitimately sucks when people earnestly want to see something return, and i do too, but i have no better answer to where it is aside from just "i couldn't do it"

[anachilles]

thinking more just now about @middlingmay's football player/journalist AU

there's a fine line that journalists have to tread between what they want to ask, and what they should ask at any given time, in order to both get something interesting to publish, and keeping management teams on-side enough to let them come back and give them access to the players.

gale's ardent "dispassionate impartiality" when it comes to his reporting means he's a notoriously hardball interviewer. one who is incredibly observant has no qualms at all pointing out both the individual mistakes and consistent, long-running in players' performances. not necessarily maliciously, or like he's looking for a "gotcha" moment, but from a place of getting the answers his readers are actually looking for.

making him a journo both players (especially for them being in league one and generally just starting out their careers, with a lack of media experience/training) and their managers + PR teams are trepidatious about setting up interviews with.

not helped by the intense, insanely blue-eyed stare he hits you with when waiting for an answer to one of his questions. does he even know he's doing it???

but at the end of the day, gale's a very well-regarded journalist (to the extent that it's almost a privilege that he chooses to cover league one) and he has a loyal + wide-reaching readership so it's very hard to turn down the opportunity for that kind of press.

so when bucky does finally agree to give his first ever public interview, no one expected it to be to gale cleven. or how much ease he felt answering him back, being tongue-in-cheek with him, and not seemingly taking much of it seriously at all.

or any interview he gives cleven going forward, actually.

or how cleven seemingly puts up with it match after match.

like gale will write these full columns picking apart the team's performance, having no scruples honing in on bucky's errors despite the 'special relationship' they seem to have.

and bucky will still answer (some of) his questions on-camera with a visibly nonchalant shrug, an unbothered smirk. constantly changing the subject though, diverting them off-topic. blatantly flirting with him.

"enough about that, though, i'm wearing new boots this week too. did you notice? new sponsorship. they offered me them in a bunch of different colours and i had to guess your favourite, so i hope you like 'em."

"hey now, hey now. anymore questions about what i do for work and you'll have me thinking we're on a first date."

on a day when it's been raining all morning and into the afternoon, and gale shows up to the interview a little damp/windswept and holding an umbrella he'd been juggling throughout the entire match. "[whistling] only one page of notes today? those tight asses up in business opps not spring for the sheltered stands?"

after the latter incidence, seeing as once an interview is confirmed and then eventually wrapped up the team's management don't really care quite as much about accommodating the press, bucky insists on bringing gale up to the club house to dry off, get a sit down and a drink, chill out for a bit. Maybe just to keep him around a little bit longer. All of the other players/management team that are milling about are a bit wide-eyed/furtive, like putting a cat amongst the pigeons. If Bucky notices the looks (he does) he's blissfully uncaring about them.

Addition: Gale's also the first person, naturally as the only journalist he'll speak to in any official capacity, to pick up on Bucky's growing boredom with midfield defence. Straight up asks him one day, on the record, what position he'd rather be playing and if he'd ever been given a shot at it.

[otdiaftg]

WHAT'S NEXT:

The out pouring of love for this blog has swept me off my feet. I knew the logic behind the follower count, but this weekend proved to me without a shadow of a doubt just how much this fandom cherishes these characters and this story.

I am overwhelmed with adoration towards every. single. one. of you.

I took the weekend to finally recoup after the whirlwind of this past year but wanted to take a moment now to answer some of the questions I've seen pop up and to inform you all of what my plans are for what's next.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

WILL YOU CONTINUE THE ACCOUNT THIS YEAR?

This took me a long time to ponder and I wanted to make sure I was in the correct headspace to answer it. Short answer: No.

Long answer: All For The Game is near and dear to my heart. And the reason I began this account was because the dates for 2023 matched that of the dates they were meant to be in 2006. To continue it in the year 2024 would mean the dates would be completely wrong and a lot more logistics would have to occur beforehand.

But also-- I'm not the best when it comes to technology, especially when it comes to BOTS so every post that was published was typed out, formatted and scheduled by hand by me. I did not have help. I did not have proofreaders, or editors, or managers. I contacted all the artists myself, sorted through every single page of the artists to find matches to the story, read and re-read the books for exact or guesstimation of dates/times, and made a hell of a lot of typos on the way through all that.

There was probably an easier way that I could have done all this. But I didn't/don't know it. So that all boils down to: It’s a long and tiring process.

Don't get me wrong, it was worth all the hours. And all the sleepless nights I had getting everything done and out. I already thanked my support network, but without my wife and my best friend being there to make me another cup of coffee, walk our dog, do the chores and generally make sure I didn't crumble from the pressure -- none of this would have happened.

So, putting myself through that again, after everything that has happened this year alone-- felt like it would cheapen the experience I had when the dates won't even match.

That being said.... 2034 isn't that far away. >__>

WILL YOU BE DOING AN OTDITSC?

Short answer: No.... sorry.

Long answer: As stated, it is VERY hard to organize what and how I did. HOURS spent researching, organizing, scheduling, etc. Time spent away from my family and other hobbies. NOT time I regret (need to keep prefacing that) but time I want back now. At least for a little bit.

It also doesn't sit right for me to start an OTDITSC when I know some people are still waiting for their copies. There are so many of us out here (as I've come to find out) and I don't want to exclude people's enjoyment and connection that this account gives. I also feel like the more posts about TSC out there, the harder it is for those who are (lets say) waiting for the physical copies to block/mute spoilers. We can say a tag is enough, but this is the internet. And that's not always true.

And lastly, personally, TSC is still SO VERY NEW. It's not even complete yet and we don't 100% know when the next one will be published. I don't want to start something, get to the end of the timeline, and than have a huge gap between posts that will potentially be moments in the second book. It doesn't feel fair to their story, to myself, or to the followers of this account to have incorrect information for something I love so dearly. If I'm doing it. I want to do it right.

SO, WHAT'S NEXT?

Well. A lot. For me personally, as well as this account. I don't want to leave everyone in such a finite way. I love this fandom. I love its art and writings and the abundance of talent and joy that it exudes.

So first, for myself, as well as those artists who agreed to help with this account, I want to post, for the next 40 days Artist Highlights (that means this account will still be active until Friday, June 7th).

Every day, I will post about an Artist and the work that I wanted to post but couldn't fit in. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, these artists are the reason this account thrives. Art, in a multitude of forms, speaks in a way words can not. And these artists prove that.

I'm excited to show them off for a couple more weeks at least. They are all wonderful people.

AND, FINALLY:

To also tie us over, I am opening both my personal account as well as this account to questions.

Questions regarding the process, the story, the best movie out in theaters, whatever. I will be answering your questions (as fast as I can) until that last Artists Highlight day (Friday, June 7th). After this day, I will leave the questions answered up for a week, and then remove/delete them from this account. I want to make this more of an archive of sorts and will be updating the Timeline Page as this progresses as well, so you can move freely within the timeline.

Keep in mind that I am only one person, have a family and a full-time job-- so answers may be sporadic, but I will answer them.

This has truly been such a pleasure. And whether I get questions or not, I see you and I appreciate you. I hope your life is filled with everything you ever want, everything you need, and that you never let it go.

🦊 🧡- Kelysium

[gotouhitori]

Okay, so. I'm in Love with the Villainess. Watashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou. WataOshi. Whichever title you want to refer to it by.

Before reading or watching it, I wondered why the hell people were holding up this random villainess isekai light novel with an over-the-top masochist main character as a landmark yuri title. Okay sure I don't doubt there's yuri going on, but how can it be so special?

Then I watched the anime. "Huh. The series and its main character are clearly and unambiguously lesbian in a way that so many other series can't bring themselves to be. And it has the most frank discussion of queer issues I think I've ever seen in anime or related media. Yeah, I think I see now, it is a cut above." And both because I've heard the novels get into a few things a little more and because the series now has its hooks in me enough for me to want to read the novels anyway, I read the first novel. And yeah, that does add a bit.

And then I read the second novel. The latter bit of the anime does cover the first bit of the second novel, but it's mostly new territory for an anime-only or anime-first such as myself. And holy fucking shit. Spoilers under the cut.

For one thing, the anime/first novel dropped some trans hints about Yu, and that turns out to be a whole transfem allegory - which isn't unheard of by any means, but it's not especially common in a work where that isn't the main focus. And not only that, but there's an actually explicitly textual transmasc in Rae's past life, who forms part of Rae's motivation to make considerable effort and take considerable risk (up to and including treason) to make sure Yu can live as a girl - once Yu states that is what she wants, it is important to note. Random yuri villainess isekai light novel says trans rights, and will absolutely stand by it.

And then all of the stuff about class and inequality comes to a head, and remember how the game that Rae's in the world of is titled "Revolution"? Yeah. One of those happens. Various hints have been dropped about what happens, largely centred on Rae making efforts to save Claire's neck in the most literal way possible when things really go down. But holy shit does that turn out to be more effort and a much more complex endeavour than it appears at first... or for most of the time while it's going on, for that matter. Ultimately she arranges things so that while the revolution still happens (it is basically inevitable), overall loss of life and suffering is minimised, and the general situation is as good as it possibly could be. By the time the proverbial smoke clears, Rae and Claire are openly living as a couple, which is a lot more than you usually see - one of the things Rae comments on is how in per previous life, too much of the yuri she read ended with at least one of the girls either dead or winding up with a man, which annoyed her enough to write fanfic based on series she likes with unsatisfying endings to fix that. And though the game did have a yuri spinoff, the original - the events of which she was living through and manipulating - was het. The character she winds up with was never supposed to be a romanceable character to begin with.

And that's just the first two of the five novels. Living through and changing the course of an actual revolution and settling down with her partner is just 40% of the whole story. (And less if more novels get published.) I've just started the third novel, and it's certainly looking like the rest is going to be at least as much of a ride as the first two were.

This really is an outstanding series. It's Dungeon Meshi levels of "I cannot stop thinking about it" to me, which if you've seen how much I post about that, says a lot. And I haven't read even half of it yet.

[localplaguenurse]

Falling Head over Heels (Pantalone x Male Reader) pt 8

WE ARE FUCKING BACK! (I immediately started hacking my lungs after typing this, I'm sick :P)

To make a long story short, for the past few months I've either been really busy, really depressed, and usually both. Also for some reason chapter 8 was already hard to write and I don't know why.

ALSO before we get into the fic, @your-local-furby drew some absolutely lovely fanart of MC apologizing and seeing the library from the previous two chapters. I think it finally kicked my brain back into gear lmao.

Without further ado, please enjoy!

@thedeimoshimself @eli-chris

It feels like the ground beneath me is sucking me in.

I feel myself sinking,

I wish the ground would swallow me whole.

Embarrassment washes over me and swallows me whole. I feel the air leave my chest I want to break free but I feel like I’m drowning. 

You take the page you’re scribbling your notes on and crumple it into a ball. You’ve reread your rough draft and decided the arranged wedding scene you had planned wasn’t tragic enough. The blind musician is tasked with performing for the prince’s wedding, but his heartbreak causes him to mess up his performance, which causes everyone to notice he’s crying, including the prince. You’re trying to convey the feeling of knowing every single person in the room is watching you during the lowest point in your life, but it’s just not coming together in a way you like. You’ll run it by Alik later.

Technically, Alik is no longer your editor as a result of your deal with the Yae Publishing House. Still, they’re one of your few friends, and their workload has lightened since your previous publisher terminated all of those other book deals. Now they’re acting as your beta reader before you send off the next draft to the editor at the Yae Publishing House. It’s actually making progress go a lot faster, so much so you might only need one final draft of the whole story before it’s finally published, as opposed to multiple drafts. 

I do not need sight to know everyone in the room is looking at me. I feel it in my broken notes that trail into nothingness. I feel it in the resulting silence. I feel it in the quiet murmur spreading through the room.

I feel tears in my eyes as I drop my head down, praying no one sees me crying. If I could, I would sprint out of the room, out of the palace, so no one is witness to my heartbroken embarrassment. I’d run so fast, the prince would have no time to chase after me. It would be for the best anyways. He deserves his perfect and beautiful bride, and I am no bride, I cannot verify if I am beautiful, and in this moment, I could not feel anymore flawed as a person and human. 

A knock on your door breaks your concentration. You’re dreading whatever is on the other side, but know it’s better to get this over with. 

“Yes?”

The door opens, and your mother pokes her head in through the gap. She offers a smile. “We have company. Come say hi, please.”

“I’m… kind of in the middle of something,” you reply, “and I’ve told you that I’m going to see Alik when I’m done writing.”

“How is she, by the way?”

“They’re fine.”

“And Maria? How’s she?”

“She’s alright, I think. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Well, tell them both I say hello. Anyways, if you have a minute, I would like you to come downstairs. There’s someone I’d like you to talk to.”

It takes you a moment to recognize what this is, mostly because it’s been a while since she tried pulling this off. When you realize what’s happening, you just shake your head and look at your mother. “Which family friend is this?”

She gives you a very unconvincing look of confusion. “My dear, what do you mean?”

“Mother, please.”

“... Ana. Anastasia.”

Anastasia is your younger sister Adéla’s friend. Much like your sister, she’s only a year younger than you, but unlike your sister, she actually likes you. Adéla and you have butted heads throughout your lives, as siblings tend to do and especially with such a small age gap, but Adéla has taken it a step further saying that it’s your fault her childhood was so “miserable” as she puts it. She claims that your diagnosis made you the centre of your parents’ attention until your youngest sister was born, and then they focused more on her than Adéla. Conveniently, she’s never had any sisterly drama with her, only you. You feel for her, but there was only so much you could do at the time, seeing as you were eight years old.

“Absolutely not,” you tell your mother.

“But you two got along so well when she would visit,” your mother insists, “and she’s become a fine young lady since the two of you last spoke! Don’t you remember reading together when you two were little?”

“I’m sure she’s beautiful,” you say, “but Adéla will throw a fit if she finds out you set me up with one of her friends.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And I don’t want to find out,” you tell her, “and I told you I don’t like being set up on dates.”

Your mother lets out an exasperated sigh. “I’m just worried about you, okay? I want to make sure my son is happy, healthy, and I want him to find someone he can settle down with. Your brother was already married at your age, and Adéla’s going to be having another baby soon.”

“Yes, but I’m not Pavel or Adéla,” you say, “the dating scene is different for me, and playing matchmaker isn’t going to make me feel any better or help me.”

Your mother just looks at you. That sad, pitiful look you know all too well. It stopped pulling on your heartstrings long ago, but sometimes it’s just easier to indulge her than it is to fight her on it. Besides, she means well, you think, it just can’t be helped that she doesn’t know her son has no interest in women.

You sigh, and stand up, much to your mother’s delight. “I’ll say hi, and that’s it.”

She grins, and she motions for you to follow her.

----

“... and she just happens to be single, too.”

Alik sets their glass down. “Interesting. So when’s the wedding?”

“It’s not happening,” you reply, “thank the Tsaritsa for that.”

“I’m honestly surprised your parents haven’t put you in an arranged marriage yet,” Alik comments.

“How many viable marriage candidates do you think there are that would be thrilled to marry someone who’s not only going blind, but could pass it on to their children as well?”

“Depends on how much the family is getting paid.”

“And it would not be much.”

The tavern is surprisingly quiet tonight. You chalk it up to it being the middle of the work week, not as many patrons willing to get drunk if they have work early in the morning. Currently, you and Alik are sitting at a table in the corner of the room while a few older patrons mill about, chattering on about their own lives at the bar. It’s actually rather nice, you think.

“What would they try to sell your bride to be on?” Alik asks.

“Um…” You look into your half drunk glass, trying to think of something funny. You clear your throat, straighten your posture, and put on your best business smile. “Here’s a fine young man who has no real work skills, and it’s not like they would do him any good since he’s considered legally blind and has between thirteen and fifteen years before he is fully blind. His only profitable skill is writing, though he doesn’t make enough to support a household. His blindness is also genetic!”

“By the Archons, at least say one nice thing about yourself,” Alik teases, though there’s a subtle sincerity to their words.

“I think I’m decent,” you say, “I think I might even make an okay husband, but I don’t think I’d be the kind of husband Pavel or my father are.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Alik replies, “there are plenty of families and couples where the husband isn’t always a provider. Besides, you’re not really a ladies man to begin with.”

You shake your head. “It’s not even that, it’s just… you know I try not to make a big deal of me going blind, but it’d be naïve of me to pretend that it’s not, and especially if I was in a relationship. Whether I like it or not, whoever I marry is going to inevitably become my caretaker. There will come a day where I’m going to need help, and I’ll rarely be able to return that favour.”

“That’s why it’s in sickness and in health,” Alik comments. They reach across the table and take your hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “For what it’s worth, I think you’d make a good house husband, before and after you start seeing the world how Maria does.”

Maria is Alik’s cousin, and one of your few very close friends. She has been a big help to you in writing your book as her blindness is similar to the main character’s. While he was born blind, she actually had vision when she was born. Unfortunately, she suffered a very severe head injury when she was very young. She has little to no memory of her life before she lost her sight as a result, as well as having some developmental problems growing up. These days she’s doing much better, though her eyesight is still gone. At most, she can detect if there’s light, but that’s the extent of it. 

“Do you have permission to make jokes about her being blind?” you ask.

“I not only have permission, but that’s not even the worst joke I’ve gotten away with.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“For the best.”

Your table goes quiet as you and Alik take a moment to drink. You try not to cringe at the taste of whatever the hell Alik recommended you try. It’s a beer, and you can taste that, but it’s a lot more bitter than you like. Still, they bought it for you, it would be rude to spit it out.

“You don’t have to drink that, you know.”

“It’s an acquired taste, I’ll get used to it.”

You see a smile twitch onto Alik’s lips, and even if they try to hide it, you can see a shit eating grin from miles away. 

“Okay,” you say, “out with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You thought of something terrible, I want to hear it.”

Alik glances around the room, assessing how audible their comment would be. You take a sip of your drink, and they grin.

They lean in. “I’m sure Pantalone would be happy to hear that.”

You immediately sputter, spraying Alik in the face. They yell, swiping at their face as if they were sprayed with acid. You cough as what was left in your mouth goes down the wrong pipe. “Fuck, w-why’d I take a drink–”

“Did you have to spit that in my face?” Alik asks.

“Shut up,” you wheeze out. You give one more hearty cough, your throat and chest burning, and you can breathe again. You sit up, rubbing your chest through your shirt while Alik wipes their face and the table with napkins. You look around, and see the few patrons staring at your table. You painfully chuckle, and turn back to your friend. “S-Sorry, I should know better by now.”

Alik shrugs. “I’m not wrong, am I?”

“I told you that in confidence,” you whisper.

“You actually told me before the tea party,” Alik tells you. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s starting to show in your book.”

You feel your face flush, and you narrow your eyes. “I think I would know if I was writing about him, thank you.”

“The prince was a lot more arrogant in your first drafts,” Alik explains, “but in more recent iterations, it’s been toned down a lot. He’s also a lot more understanding of the musician’s blindness.”

You’re confused. “Well, yes. My first drafts are years old, so I’ve had to make some adjustments to better fit my writing style now. Besides, I’ve read too many stories about asshole love interests that don’t really learn anything, they just get tragic backstories that authors think justify their shitty behaviour. I’m not adding my characters to that pile.”

“No, I agree on that,” Alik says, “but even then, he was still a solid character, arrogance aside. He was just a spoiled prince who had to actually think about other people for the first time in his life. Like he’s never had to deal with someone with a disability, and doesn’t know how else to feel other than annoyed. In the more recent drafts, he still doesn’t know how to deal with it, but he’s a lot more willing to make up for the disrespect, where the old version did it, but complained the whole time. It just so happens that this change happened right when you met him for the first time.”

“That’s… hm.” You take a sip and don’t spit it in Alik’s face. “You’re on the right track, but I don’t think I was writing all of that because of a crush.” You feel your face flush warmer again. “He was a bit of an ass at the party, but since then he’s become one of…” You take a moment to count names on your finger. “... six or seven people that aren’t patronizing about me going blind. I’d just been putting up with most of my family either coddling me or being inconvenienced by me, but he’s a rare instance of someone making accommodations, but not making a big show of it. That’s why the book was like that until I met Pantalone.”

You stare into your glass. “And… a-and it’s why I enjoy his company so much…”

Alik doesn’t say anything. You look up, and you see their expression has softened a little bit. They lift their drink up to you, and you smile and lift yours up.

“Cheers.”

You both take a swig, and somehow the disgusting drink tastes sweeter going down. Your face feels warm, and you wonder why you’re still blushing when you see you’re already halfway through your drink. Alik has a similar glow in their cheeks. 

“That’s really sweet and cute,” Alik says, “but I do have to ask you something.”

You feel whatever warm feelings you’re feeling lessen when Alik’s softened expression gains a hint of concern. Their smile looks awkward by comparison, before they sigh and lose it altogether. You’re already dreading what they’re about to say.

They hesitate for a moment, and when they speak, it’s in a whisper. “Do you like him, or do you like what he’s done for you?”

“W-What?”

“I wouldn’t ask that if we were talking about anyone else,” Alik clarifies, “but I have to ask when it’s him. I don’t want to rain on your parade, I’m happy you like someone, but… he’s a harbinger. One of the more likeable ones, but not without flaws.”

“I know…”

Alik sighs. “Look, if it were some other handsome rich man, I’d say go for it. The fact it’s a harbinger specifically makes me a little worried, I won’t lie.”

You sound like my mother. “It’s a crush, not an engagement,” you tell them. “We enjoy each other’s company while he works with my father and sister. I just enjoy it differently than he does.”

“Still, even as friends, I’d be cautious. If not for what he’d have planned, then for what others might have in store for him.”

You take a swig. “You want to know what’s funny? You’re the first person to bring up his enemies as a point for why I shouldn’t get near him.”

“I am not.”

“No, seriously. My mother doesn’t want me near him because he’ll probably, I don’t know, kill me or sell me or steal my ideas, depends on the day. My father thinks I’ll ruin everything those two have built together, which I still don’t know why Pantalone is working with him.”

“Maybe your dad’s indebted to him or something.”

“...”

Alik notices your silence. They say your name in a soft voice, seeming worried by your expression. Your father’s not in debt, is he? The business isn’t as prosperous as it was when you were little, but job markets change all the time, and the economy is ever fluctuating. It’s purely the result of what happens when a business runs for as long as it does. Sometimes an empire doesn’t crumble, but rather dies slowly.

“Hey, are you okay?”

You snap out of it. “I’m, uh, I’m fine.” You push your seat back and stand. “I’m just, um, I’m going to go to the washroom for a second.”

“... Okay? Just watch yourself.”

“I’ll be fine,” you call out over your shoulder before immediately bumping into someone. Unlike with Pantalone, you actually manage to catch yourself before you fall. You know that Alik is holding their head in their hands, possibly stifling laughter too for a little extra salt in the wound.

“Archons, sorry,” you immediately blurt out, “I didn’t see you there.”

The ginger haired man laughs. “Oh, no worries comrade! Just be more careful next time!”

You stare at the man, eyes widening. His smile grows, almost reaching the dull blue of his eyes.

“Why the surprised face?” he asks jovially.

You sigh and shake your head. “I have got to stop meeting harbingers like this.”

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! I’m writing a story about a lady with Down Syndrome. I was wondering if you knew where I can find any resources about Down Syndrome made by people who actually have it, or any organisations that would be good to follow. Any resources made by people with intellectual disability would be really helpful as well.

I read your post about this and it was really helpful so thank you, I’m going to use it as a starting point for my research.

If you’d like some context about the story she’s literally a lady in the 1920s who’s trying to get control of her family’s estate from her brother. Shes underestimated for her disabilities and for being a women but I’m trying to not focus so much on the discrimination and work more on giving her an interesting mystery to solve with the detective she hired. I’d like it to be a bit lighthearted. Anyway, as she’s a main character I really wanted to make sure I wrote her well. Thanks!

Hi!

There aren't many resources out there unfortunately, but there is a page on the UK Down Syndrome's Association's website where members with DS share their opinions on representation in TV and film! You can read it here. For info on intellectual disability in general the best I can do is link some of my previous posts on it - there's close to nothing that's actually made by us unfortunately, everything that I was able to find is always made by someone who knows a person with ID at best. To be clear, not all of it is bad - I thought this interview (TW for abuse that happens in the movie's plot) about a movie starring actors with DS was pretty good - but it's still a sign that we aren't getting enough #OwnVoices representation. It's slowly changing though!

To learn more about DS I would probably recommend NDSS, it's one of the very few orgs that have people with Down Syndrome as board and team members (should be the bare minimum, but it unfortunately isn't). There's also information on things like preferred language and myths that often show up around Down Syndrome!

I'm not great with history, but in the 1920s she would be a subject to a lot more than just discrimination. Eugenics and institutionalization would definitely be present. Not sure what route you'll take there, but basically all the words around that time that she would be described with are currently considered slurs or pejoratives. The racist term for a person with Down Syndrome was officially used into the 60s, and the ableist one is still used legally in 2024. But if you want to skip past that, I think that's more than fine. You don't always have to aim for 100% historical accuracy, just be aware of the real history.

A detective story sounds very exciting! If you decide to publish it on Tumblr or other online site feel free to send me an ask with a link, I'd love to read it :-) !!

Thank you for the ask!

mod Sasza

I’m just popping in as a history fan for a couple bits of history notes — but again, like Sasza said, you don’t have to be 100% historically accurate if you don’t want to and if you don’t feel it’s necessary.

So, especially in the first half of the 1900s, a large part of disabled children, including children with Down Syndrome, were institutionalized very early in their life. Around this time the push that immorality caused disability was strong, and people were often convinced by doctors and professionals that the children’s needs would always be too much for them. Eugenicism was sort of reaching a peak around this time, as well—I would say it was at its most intense in the period of 1900-1940s.

Not all parents institutionalized their children, though. There was pressure to do so, but that doesn’t mean everyone fell victim to it. There wasn’t really any official support for parents who did this, and there weren’t official organizations for Down Syndrome. From my research, the current large DS organizations seem to have popped up in the 60s.

The term ‘Down Syndrome’ wasn’t in popular use until the 70s, and it wasn’t known that it’s caused by an extra chromosome until 1959.

Life expectancy in 1900-1920 for people born with Down Syndrome was 9 years old. Some of this could absolutely have been due to conditions in institutions, but likely even more relevant is that about 50% of people with DS are born with heart defects (also known as congenital heart disease) that can be fatal if not treated with surgery. Heart surgery wasn’t really feasible until the late 30s and early 40s. Another risk factor is a higher risk for infection, which isn’t easy to manage in a world that doesn’t yet have antibiotics.

I actually wanted to find pictures of adults with Down Syndrome pre-1940ish, though, to see real tangible evidence of adults being part of a community. First I found just one picture of a baby in 1925 on this Minnesota government website. But then I found a collection someone made of photos of both children and young adults, but they are not specifically dated. The first baby picture is from the 30s according to the poster!

Judging by the clothes I see people wearing in these photos, photo #4 (man with Down Syndrome in a suit next to a woman) seems to be from the 20s and photo #13 (young woman with Down Syndrome and very long hair) seems to be from about the 1910s. #18 (large family with a lot of sons, including one boy with Down Syndrome) could be from the 30s. Those three are the oldest people with DS in the photos, and they seem like young adults. A lot of these pictures show a community and aren’t just isolated kids, which I find nice.

It’s hard to find specific historical record of people with Down Syndrome from that period of time, but I wanted to show photos of real people in their communities to show, hey look! They were there, too!

Either way, I love detective stories and historical fiction and I’m glad you’re writing a story and that you care about your character’s portrayal but I totally know the feeling of that tricky balance between historical accuracy and modern acknowledgement that we should have been doing better.

— Mod Sparrow

[fellamarsh]

another thing i've been trying to do recently is read more self-published stuff. "but fell," you say, "you're a self-published author. surely you've been reading self-published stuff all along" and then i laugh for so long in response we both become uncomfortable.

see, the fear (which has for a long time been killing my mind) that i'll read other self-published stuff and find out that it's so much better than mine that i might as well stop writing forever kept me from doing that basically ever. i have a hard time not unfavorably comparing my work to others and had convinced myself i was being smart by withholding an avenue of de-motivation (reader: i was not being smart). it also doesn't help that i'm pretty low income and have a hard time spending money on books i haven't already read, and that self-published stuff isn't always available at the library---but really a lot of it was just me being a coward. which i'm working on. i could talk about how this particular cowardice is Very Silly, but i think enough has been said about it on writeblr and in the Writing Space in general that i don't feel the need to (though i will if anyone wants me to).

instead, i wanna talk about the self-published things i have read in the past few months and ask about the self-published things you love!

so: what happened was i got real sick, and while i was real sick i (naturally) read over 200,000 words of ace attorney fan fiction in the span of a few days. eventually i got bored of it (and also maybe annoyed at how people were characterizing some of my guys), but i still wanted to read something gay and romantic and nice, something i knew was gonna end happily, which isn't my typical fare.

now you may be saying (having gotten over all the uncomfortable laughter from earlier) "fell, you write gay romance. what do you mean that's not your typical fare?" listen. until a couple months ago i hadn't read a cut and dry romance novel since before i finished college. for context: i graduated in 2015. i know it doesn't make sense. i'm a guy who doesn't make sense.

but in this case it worked to my advantage. not the not making sense thing, but the not having read Published Romance in 1000 years thing. I didn't know where to start. I was very skeptical of everything the library had Available Now in the Gay Fantasy Romance category. what if it was all bad and also not good?

and then i scrolled past the familiar cover of our very own @ashen-crest's A Rival Most Vial.

now this was comfortable territory! this was a novel by a very nice writeblr person whose posts i enjoy! i already loosely knew the plot, i was familiar with the characters, i knew the names of things like rosemond street and the griffin's claw and that ambrose had blue hair and that at the end of it all there would definitely be Boyfriends. i didn't have to worry that this would be bad! i only had to worry that it would be really good!

but i wasn't worried about that, because i was officially Not Writing at the time, and because why the hell hadn't i read this book yet Ash literally emailed me some very kind words last year when my cat died??

Y'all, I devoured ARMV. If you haven't read it yet---especially if cozy fantasy is more your thing than it is mine---you should check it out Immediately. It was fun! It was heartwarming! It was sweet and earnest and confident! I was delighted to find it was occasionally hot! Ambrose and Eli snuggled up into my sick exhausted heart and found a permanent little place there. (Especially Ambrose. I have such a thing for Stiff Guys who Kind of Suck for Tragic Backstory Reasons and are So So Lonely They Don't Even Realize It. gawd)

(And a very small part of my brain spent the whole time wondering why I had been so afraid to really engage with the work my community is doing. The community that I'm in. The one I'm a part of. Why?! Maybe more on that later.)

But from there the curse was broken! I immediately devoured @stjohnstarling's What Manner of Man in a similar sort of frenzy (and hooooly shit guys am I excited for the expanded, finalized version to come out at the end of next month!) and started digging into @lurinatftbn's The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere (which I can already tell is going to be an All Time Favorite).

And now I want to ask you what your favorite self-published books are so that I can read them, too, but I think I will in another post that doesn't dedicate so much space to talking about my various and sundry Issues and isn't Terminally Long