#its basically just a link list but its all there

[lemurballing]

this needs an update lol. i’ll write out more when ive actually settled info but i’ve made up a bunch more aus to add to the list:

‘danny phantom’ au - tangle, unlike the others, doesn’t fully restabilize after the eggperial city was destroyed. fortunately, she can turn intangible basically at will! (technically works more like togata mirio’s Permeation quirk, but ‘danny phantom au’ rolls off the tongue better). she doesnt like randomly being ‘useless’ and intangible :)

apocalypse bleed au - i had a weirdfun dream and now i’m trying to capture it as an au. future au where the world splits in two halves, sonic and tails (and eggman) are MIA, and the boundaries between worlds have been damaged so much, things and even people from other worlds are falling in. also tangle is a tinkerer (this is a big part of the au)

weretangle au - branches off from canon at an undecided point: sonic and tangle are hanging out and wind up getting asked to investigate some weird seismic activity. they do, and… a giant pit in the ground opens before them, flooding them with dark gaia energy and dropping them both into a deep cave system far underneath the surface. sonic has to help tangle acclimate to her wereform as they both escape and reach daylight, but even after that, they’ll still transform every night until dark gaia - who is beginning to awaken in a fitful sleep nearing its fated awakening year - is sealed and put asleep again.

tloz au - tangle as the resident link :) (she is not named link) - tloz elements woven into the idwverse as history become present, with tangle holding triforce of courage, jewel with wisdom, and clutch with power. their own powers only awaken once all three of them have grown into their aspect of the triforce, and thus begins a power struggle where clutch is trying to amass followers and take out his competition, while tangle and jewel work together with far less knowledge on what’s happening and the nature of these weird triangle symbols that glow for them and give jewel powers. i also really want to design sonic versions of a bunch of links (not all of them!! unless i have a lot of ideas)

zombot!tangle au is already listed, but i’ve been tweaking it xd

omnitrix au - a couple years before idw begins, tangle’s out a bit late when she sees a shooting star… which isn’t a shooting star when it crashes to the planet in front of her holding a weird watch, which then leaps onto her arm/tail (havent decided) and won’t come off! with it, tangle can become 10 different aliens, each with their own advantages and sometimes disadvantages compared to her own normal self. she goes through a lot of ben 10 OS plot stuff & faces off against vilgax still before idw begins, so by the time she joins sonic’s friendgroup she’s got way more experience with weirdness and crazy, and is less of a rookie.

digimon frontier au - hashing out a sort-of interpretation of digimon frontier with some digimon 02 elements, but the human kids all replaced with sonic characters, and spirit evolutions with armor evolutions, and the plot adjusted to follow the different personalities at play. not v developed

lego monkie kid au - mostly just playing with visual design (lets see if i remember to add the sketches before i post this), might figure out a mostly lore-compliant way to make tangle another sorta mystical monkey. or potentially making her ‘a demon with the powers of sun wukong’s staff’, also pending a lore-compliance check unless i stop caring about lmk/jttw compliance. i think she and mei and mk would be great friends :)

dryad!au - i’ve drawn her before, an au tangle that’s essentially a nature spirit; the only of her kind to walk the forest she lives in, with leaves and vines sprouting from her body as hair. she communicates with plants and has a generally friendly/neutral relation with animals, and that’s all she worries about, until this weird thing that is not plant nor animal but very close to tangle herself appears - an android, a ‘whisper’. she is built for destruction, she says, but cannot return to her superiors. instead, tangle lets her stay and shows her how her world works, how to live without worrying about orders. i think the forest eventually gets bombed by military or whatever, either trying to recover whisper & getting attacked, or intentionally trying to destroy her to avoid the enemy getting ahold of her. they accidentally draw a target on their backs for the rage of the forest spirit whose home they unduly destroyed, and whisper herself’s ire.

bastion au - tangle inserted as the Kid/protagonist, whisper as Zia, dunno who to put as Rucks or Zulf ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ this is mostly because i want to put Bastion in front of people’s noses in the hopes they will play this wonderful awesome game if they see blorbos with it. this worked for me when i bought ffxv in order to understand a kh fic better and it became a game i loved besides.

^ i’m still working on building these AUs up, but if anyone’s interested in a certain one, asks make me very excited and want to write more and share :)

tloz au, zombot au rework, apocalypse bleed au, and omnitrix au (in that order) are the ones with the most development/ideas to pursue

Full Tangle AU List (aka the Tangleverse)

Finally it’s compiled!!! I have here for you a list of 22 different Tangles for you to browse and rotate in your brain :3 A bunch of these come with content for other characters, though, so if you’re not as Tangle-focused as I am you could probably find something neat to look at.

Each listing is entered under its designated AU name, if there is a relevant link to the AU’s original source it’ll be linked within the title, and I’ll add a short summary or blurb about the Tangle or AU as a whole. I’ll also make distinctions for if an AU has art.

None of these AUs are my own creations, unless they’ve got a ~Leori signature after them - follow the link to their individual creators! In the case of my own AUs, I usually don’t have much content for them because I don’t know what to say, so feel free to send in asks. Or for the ones with very little content, do whatever you’d like with them, they’re basically open prompts.

The numbers don’t matter, they’re just for tallying up how many there are. I’m not ranking these.

This is long, so I’m putting everything after the table of contents under a ‘read more’. ○ Swap AUs ○ Future AUs ○ General AUs ○ Crossover AUs ○ Jokesy AUs

Keep reading

[plumbus-central]

thinking abt rick getting comfortable w/ curious minnie b4 he realizes hes becoming comfortable and freaks out

(curiosity au)

[toytulini]

trying to update my byf and feeling so profoundly like. dont wanna

[nomaishuttle]

my worst trait in my life is that if there is any task i hsve to do st all either for seriousness or for funsies i will legit slways say Wellll i have to make s spreadsheet abt this. sighing looking st my apartment purchases spreadsheet and at the blank spreadsheet that will become my apartment hunting spreadsheet and ar my spreadsheet for every single game ive ever played

[waywardsalt]

finally got around to putting together elden ring builds for the post-ph crew, and tested them out briefly, so here are the builds i came up with and all that! (absolutely a very long post, i had fun explaining a lot of my reasoning)

i'm not going to give them exact stats, just some vague idea of what they'd likely lean towards, and i can't say much to what equip load they have. when i tested these builds out i had 72 endurance. this uses exclusively base-game equipment since i don’t have the dlc and wanted to test these out for myself.

i also don’t use many spells or any incantations so the spell and incantation choices are mostly based on wiki descriptions and whether or not i felt it would fit the character.

some context is that this is with the idea that somehow these four get zapped into the lands between as tarnished, and this is the equipment i think they’d use, disregarding what is needed to access most of this stuff.

i also didn't change my tarnished's appearance for these, not that i think i could accurately replicate these four in elden ring's character creator, anyways, so you get to see my tarnished's face with all of these :)

Link:

His armor is: the highwayman hood, the blue cloth vest, exile gauntlets, and Carian knight greaves.

There's practically no green armor in this game, and what is there isn't really armor and isn’t exactly good protection. I wanted a bit of a balance between just cloth, but also some armor, as well as a headpiece somewhat like the usual hero's cap. The highwayman's hood works well enough, honestly, and I think it fits in well with the blue cloth vest; plus, I can see it being helpful in keeping dust and whatnot out of his eyes. Blue works well enough with Link nowadays, and I do think the blue cloth vest actually fits Link well enough- I doubt he'd want to wear something like a plate breastplate, so a vest like this is good.

The exile gauntlets I feel work well, they're simple and slim with some decent coverage, and the Carian knight graves not only look great with the blue cloth vest, but are also something that I believe fits Link, and the tall boots are likely decently practical in the same vein as the hood.

His weapons I chose are: The Carian knight's sword, with the pulley bow as a secondary weapon, and the Carian knight's shield in his offhand, with the academy glintstone staff as a secondary.

He obviously had to be the good standard sword-and-shield combo fighter, but I went ahead and gave him with Carian sword and shield partially because they look decently similar to what weapons he normally uses, but also because I enjoy the idea of him dabbling in magic along with typical damage types. The Carian sword does a good bit of magic damage along with standard, and the shield guards again both of those types, and the sword's unique ash of war (Carian Grandeur) is a good mix between swordfighting and magic, and actually really good to use in-game. I feel like they suit him well.

For his secondaries, I had to give him a bow, and I feel like the pulley bow is just right, especially with it's special feature of having increased range. I could see him being the one tasked with deactivating faraway traps and hunting the animals of the Lands Between for materials, and even just luring enemies with some normal arrows.

The academy glintstone staff is a solid staff (and the one I personally use), and him using magic is a good way to translate his usual versatility, though I only limited him to five spells, those being:

Loretta's greatbow, giving him what is technically now a second bow, and a pretty good spell for luring and doing some decent magic damage,

Magma shot, a good, simple fire damage spell,

Glintstone Icecrag, a good ice spell, especially for causing frostbite buildup,

Great glintstone shard, a very basic but reliable spell, and is good when cast a few times in succession,

and Thops' barrier, for deflecting magic attacks, and though I've heard it's a mediocre spell, I could see Link getting the timing down and getting some good usage out of it. I tried giving him a decent range of spells, which is a little bit easier said then done considering the actual spell variety and wanting to pick spell that I think suit Link, but I think this is a good lineup.

For talismans, assuming that all four of them have all four talisman slots open, Link gets the silver scarab, the graven-mass talisman, the erdtree's favor +2, and the companion jar.

The silver scarab, raising item discovery is... perfect for Link. It only feels right that he gets a talisman that makes him more likely to get items off enemies. It definitely works, too, while testing, I got way more items out of the gatefront ruins group than I'd ever seen before.

The graven-mass talisman boosts sorcery power, which is certainly perfect for boosting Link's versatility and magic power, simple and useful.

The erdtree’s favor +2 is just an all-around great talisman to use for the hp, mp, and stamina boost, and it feels perfect as something for Link to use, especially to increase his effectiveness and endurance in battle.

And then the companion jar, which goes hand-in-hand with him also being a pot user to further his versatility, and it’s very easy to see him doing the Jar-Bairn side quest. My choices here disregard how the items are obtained, but I could absolutely see Link going out of his way to interact with Jarburg.

Link’s standard fighter, with a balance between offense and defense and physical and magical damage with a slight leaning towards magical, and the main archer who aims to do more damage with archery, and uses pots when needed. He’s probably the one ‘leading the charge’ in that he’s suited for most situations, but isn’t necessarily the most effective in all-out combat- he is the most defensively oriented, however. He’s likely in the mid-to-light equip range, and likely mostly levels Strength and Intelligence to keep his damage up, and focuses a lot on keeping his Vigor up for a good chunk of health.

Linebeck:

His armor is: the black knife armor, the gauntlets, and bandit boots.

The black knife armor is the most important part of the set, not just for it being a nice blue, but because it has the unique effect of completely silencing your movement sounds- perfect for steal and getting in a good number of sneak attacks. It’s light, too, and so are the generally standard gauntlets and bandit boots, all put together for a general… blue rogue kind of look? It’s practicality and some looks and all put around the idea that he’s going to be sneaking around and panic-rolling out of the enemy’s way- so his defenses are a bit lacking in favor of mobility. I do think it’s a good look overall.

His weapons are: A bloody antspur rapier with the poison mist ash of war, the redbranch shortbow as a secondary weapon, and the frozen needle in the offhand.

For Linebeck's build, it was either daggers or rapiers, and the extra damage, range, and great designs for the rapier won out- and I think rapiers suit him well. This specific pair of rapiers are oriented around inflicting ailments, with the frozen needle inflicting frostbite, and the antspur rapier- specifically with the poison mist ash of war and blood upgrade- can inflict scarlet rot, bloodloss, and poison with poison mist active. With the blood upgrade, the scarlet rot buildup suffers, but with the speed of rapiers and just how effective scarlet rot can be, it's a decent trade-off for the ability to do four ailments at once. His role in the Radahn fight is to inflict scarlet rot and then run off to snipe him with the redbranch shortbow, which is a simple ranged option, and helps with further ailment inflicting with ailment arrows.

His damage would probably be pretty decent, especially considering inflicting frostbite and his equipped talismans, but he's mostly going to be heading in with everyone and sticking around until proccing an ailment, and then backing off, especially if poison, rot, or frostbite are inflicted. Plus I think dual rapiers look great and it's very easy to see Linebeck using rapiers.

For talismans, he gets the gold scarab, the assassin's crimson dagger, the dagger talisman, and the blessed dew talisman.

The gold scarab boost rune acquisition by 20%. It's perfect. It's one of my favorite talismans. I can't make an Elden Ring build for Linebeck and NOT give him the money-boosting talisman.

The assassin's crimson dagger restores hp upon successful critical hits, and paired with the silencing effect of the black knife armor, is perfect for someone who's more used to sneaking around and taking down enemies from behind- and it's good for topping off your hp.

The dagger talisman boosts critical damage- so then making sneak attacks all the more effective, and even making any critical hits he manages in fights do much more damage.

And then the blessed dew talisman gives you a very minuscule constant hp regen, about 2 hp per second iirc. It’s incredibly slow, but it's hp regen all the same, good for saving flask uses and good for some health regeneration if you back out of the main fight.

Linebeck's got a big focus on stealth and ailments, with just a bit of health regen tossed in with the talismans to help with survivability. his weapons and offhand options are mainly based around ailments, and besides the bow, he tends to use darts and other throwable items, and is often the one to pick off enemies at the edge of a group while the others go in to the handle the main group. With bosses, he's in the front lines until an ailment is inflicted, and will jump back in either if he's really needed, or if ailments are needed again. For longer bosses, or bosses immune to a few ailments, he would probably find moments to jump in and get a bunch of quick hits in, then back out and wait for another opening. Rapiers are pretty good for quick hits considering that I believe you actually get three attacks from a dual-rapier sprint attack. He’d likely have a focus on Dexterity and Arcane, with some Endurance mixed in for that good running and rolling stamina.

Damien:

His armor is; the sacred crown helm, exile armor, crucible gauntlets, and drake knight greaves.

Picking armor for Damien was a bit of a challenge since he’s still a bit of a work in progress and I usually picture him in generally casual clothes, but I knew I wanted to stick with some red clothing and put together a bit more of a practical sort of outfit. Plus this end result kind of helps me further figure out Damien’s actual design and outfit variations.

I knew I wanted to give him one of the simple footsoldier helmets, and the sacred crown helm won out with the additional detail of the little vine-looking wreath, plus the minor faith boost. It’s a nice little helmet and I think it suits him. The exile armor was considered due to the red cloth around the shoulders, and was properly decided on when I found that the helmet got rid of the cloth covering the bottom half of the face. So it’s a good solid chest piece.

The crucible gauntlets and drake knight greaves work both with color and giving him some more armored extremities, the crucible gauntlets are pretty good heavy armor gauntlets, if the crucible knights themselves are anything to go by, and the drake knight graves seem to have a good bit of practicality with the high boots and armor. It’s all meant to end up somewhere in the medium equip load area, for a balance between defense and speed, and the lighter helmet and chest piece were primarily to even out with the heavier weapons.

The weapons he gets are: the axe of Godrick, the highland axe as a secondary, and the clawmark seal.

The axe of Godrick is a pretty good greataxe with what selection there is, some good damage and a really good ash of war skill with a really good area of effect. It’s fantastic for crowd control when two-handed, and worked pretty well for me when I tested it out without having upgraded it. It’s all in all a great standard axe. The highland axe as a secondary is used partially as a faster one-hand option, and partially for the boost given by its war cry ash of war. The axe of Godrick is almost always what he’d use, but the highland axe is probably better for some specific situations. Damien was always going to end up using axes, and I think these two are pretty good and fitting.

In his other hand is the clawmark seal- scaling with faith and strength and so working well with him relying on strength, and boosting bestial incantations, of which he has one- and he mostly uses support incantations with some minor attack incantations- but he is primarily support, usually backing out of the fight to switch to casting due to usually two-handing the axe of Godrick. He gets six incantations, those being:

Heal, as a very standard heal, mostly just for himself,

Erdtree heal, a heal more intended for group healing,

Golden vow, a group offense and defense buff for a time,

Protection of the erdtree, for increased non-physical defense, which is likely useful for many bosses,

Bestial sling, which is a pretty basic but effective attack incantation, and boosted by the seal he uses, and is probably great in tandem with his axes to break an enemy's poise,

and then Dragonclaw as his final spell, a stronger and closer-up attack spell, likely for individual bosses that are lower on hp.

His offenses are standard and meant to be pretty decent for crowd control and poise-breaking, so his attack spells follow suite, while his support options are based around healing and some basic buffs. I personally do not use buffs or incantations when I play, so I do not know the nuances of a lot of this stuff, but Damien's got a good set of incantations to use.

Damien's set of talismans are the green turtle talisman, the mottled necklace +1, the axe talisman, and the bull-goat's talisman.

The green turtle talisman is a great talisman, simply increasing the speed of stamina regeneration, and it's a fantastic talisman. Very useful with the stamina drained by axe attacks and backing off to cast spells.

The mottled necklace boosts immunity, robustness, and focus, an across-the-board status boost, and I imagine it's useful for being up close with enemies and then staying alive to help with support- even if he doesn't have much in the way of ailment-based support.

The axe talisman is a damage booster, and considering his decent poise, charged attacks are pretty viable for him to be using.

The bull-goat's talisman is standard but very effective in practice (or maybe that's me being used to low poise), as it raises poise, therefore making it harder for you to flinch or be knocked out of an attack. Very helpful with a slower main weapon like the axe of Godrick.

Damien's standard all around, with pretty good damage and likely very helpful with crowd control, usually two-handing the axe for maximum damage and will back off when using incantations. He primarily uses incantations for support, and the offensive incantations are usually saved for bosses or rougher encounters- or sometimes just if he wants to switch things up for fun. He's likely going to focus on Strength and Faith, with some Mind thrown in for most casts.

Bellum:

His armor is: the altered tree sentinel armor, and the malformed dragon gauntlets and greaves.

Chosen partially for the color and because they're all heavy plate armor; meant to emulate a lot of the phantom designs, and for that yellow color, and I wasn't even aware that the malformed dragon gauntlets had a darker color until I was initially putting this together. Heavy armor fits with a desire to survive in battle, plus I think decent mobility in heavy armor suits Bellum; when I tested this out, I was firmly in medium equip load territory, plus it made for a good bit of poise to go with slower weapons. It wasn't too hard to pick out armor for him.

The weapons I felt suit him are: the blasphemous blade, the Marais executioner's sword, with the gravel stone seal as a secondary.

The blasphemous blade was practically necessary, a greatsword with the bonus effect of hp restoration on enemy death, plus the Taker's Flames skill, which also heals hp when it hits an enemy. This is was made me decide on greatswords over colossal weapons, trying to stick a bit with some ideas from the phantoms, plus the hp-leeching effects, plus it’s a pretty good weapon and I think it originally belonging to Rykard also fits pretty well; it’s Bellum’s main weapon unless he switches to the Marais Executioner’s sword for it’s specific skill. That sword is mostly chosen for it’s skill, as well as it’s origins- those bell-bearing hunters are absolute nightmares to deal with- so the two swords are kind of also picked for a sort of intimidation effect. At least the wriggling flesh on the blasphemous blade does the job well enough if someone doesn’t know the origins (which don’t practically matter). He would likely switch to the executioner’s sword for some boss fights, and its skill can be highly damaging to lone enemies- the focus with these two is on heavy damage and hp regen.

The secondary left hand weapon he has is the gravel stone seal, which boost dragon incantations, and so he only uses offense incantations, with a lot of incantations that cover a wide area and some that inflict ailment buildup. Bellum gets five incantations, all attacks (and all maybe emulating the idea that he’s a monster forced to be human in the lands between lol);

Beast claw, a pretty standard but pretty effective ground-level attack,

Unendurable frenzy, a wide range, fiery madness-inflicting incantation that, while only inflicting madness on a select few enemies (and himself) is likely more than useful for crowds and large enemies,

Rotten breath, a dragon communion incantation that is about what it says on the tin, a dragon’s breath attack that inflicts scarlet rot,

Fortissax’s lightning spear, another dragon incantation that summons a pair of lightning spears, with the damage at it’s best up close,

and Aspects of the crucible: tail, a wide-range crucible incantation, and the most fitting of the crucible incantations, I feel.

He has no issue getting up close to bosses, since he can fall back on the honestly insane hp regen he’s afforded by both his main weapon and some of his talismans.

The talismans Bellum gets are; the taker’s cameo, the dragoncrest greatshield talisman, the pearldrake talisman +2, and the godskin swaddling cloth.

The taker’s token has the same passive effect as the blasphemous blade; hp restoration upon enemy death. The fun part is that the taker’s token and the blasphemous blade’s hp regen effects stack with each other.

The dragoncrest greatshield talisman reduces physical damage by 20%, and the pearldrake talisman +2 reduces non-physical damage by about 11%. Covering just about all defenses with these two talismans.

The godskin swaddling cloth allows for additional minor hp restoration upon landing a certain number of melee hits within a short timeframe. This could be harder with greatswords, but with dual greatswords and jumping right into the action, I don’t imagine it’s at all impossible for the talisman’s effect to never trigger. As always, it’s extra effective with a larger number of enemies.

Bellum’s the main damage-dealer with a focus on staying power and lots of hp regen, using the blasphemous blade for regular battles while switching to the executioner’s sword for bosses due to the more aggressive ash of war. His incantations are more often used for crowd control, but are absolutely effect for boss battles, especially when given time to charge them up. He’s all about staying power and straightforward damage-dealing, with some decent poise to back things up despite his checking piece being altered and his lack of a helmet, and all of his incantations are a bit more bestially-inclined. He'd probably focus on Vigor and Strength, with some Faith or Dexterity thrown in for damage-dealing.

Overall, the idea is that the four of them are in the lands between like this, working and running around together, probably fighting over what bosses to go after next and whether or not to head into the catacombs that one of them just spotted. I could see them taking the time to scour the lands between for every little trinket and discussing whether or not to bother with some character's quest. Not too different from actual post-ph stuff, but it's fun to put them in Elden Ring and think on what kinds of equipment to give them and what would suit them.

[bogleech]

Going to put all this in its own post too by popular request: here's how you make your own website with no understanding of HTML code at all, no software, no backend, absolutely nothing but a text file and image files! First get website server space of your own, like at NEOCITIES. The free version has enough room to host a whole fan page, your art, a simple comic series, whatever! The link I've provided goes to a silly comic that will tell you how to save the page as an html file and make it into a page for your own site. The bare minimum of all you need to do with it is JUST THIS:

Change the titles, text, and image url's to whatever you want them to be, upload your image files and the html file together to your free website (or the same subfolder in that website), and now you have a webpage with those pictures on it. That's it!!!!! .....But if you want to change some more super basic things about it, here's additional tips from the same terrible little guy:

That last code by itself is: <meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=001.html"> Change "001.html" to wherever you want that link to take people. THIS IS THE REASON WHY when you go to bogleech.com/pokemon/ you are taken instantly to the newest Pokemon review, because the /pokemon/ directory of my website has an "index.html" page with this single line of code. Every pokemon review has its own permanent link, but I change that single line in the index file so it points to the newest page whenever I need it to! While I catered these instructions to updating a webcomic, you can use the same template to make blog type posts, articles or just image galleries. Anything you want! You can delete the navigational links entirely, you can make your site's index.html into a simple list of text links OR fun little image links to your different content, whatever! Your website can be nothing but a big ugly deep fried JPEG of goku with a recipe for potato salad on it, no other content ever, who cares! We did that kind of nonsense all the time in the 1990's and thought it was the pinnacle of comedy!! Maybe it still can be?!?! Or maybe you just want a place to put some artwork and thoughts of yours that doesn't come with the same baggage as big social media? Make a webpage this way and it will look the same in any browser, any operating system for years and years to come, because it's the same kind of basic raw code most of the internet depends upon!

[screentones-webcomicresources]

Webcomic platforms can help get your comic published when you want something quick and easy to start out! They generally share a few qualities:

They format everything in a basic way so you don't have to do much set up your own space to look nice on web/mobile

They have no fee to publish your comics there, because you are using their web hosting

They may get your comic in front of other readers with mobile apps or online catalogs

If you meet their criteria, you may also be able to find hosting with digital comic stores, publishers, and collectives, and this may get you a bit more in the way of money, promotional opportunities, or editor assistance.

Even if you choose to host your website on its own webhost with a comic CMS, you might also consider finding a platform that aligns with your comic goals and "mirroring" your pages there.

In this post, we look at all the webcomic platforms out there we could find in our research!

This post may be updated as time goes on as new platforms enter the hosting arena, or other important updates come to light.

Questions:

💻 Everyone uses social media, could I just use that as a platform for my comic? - One-shot or strip comics without a continuous story that can be read in any order can do okay on social media, and people have adapted Tumblr to display a series of pages. But for continuous long-form stories, social media platforms are better for keeping your readers updated and general promotion.

📚 Wait, what if I want to build my own website and drive people there? - We have another masterlist of website hosts for that!

🕵️‍♀️What kinds of restrictions can I expect? - Many comic platforms have restrictions on NSFW content, links to other sites, or could be invite/application-only. We've tried to note those on the cards, as well as a list of comic platforms that have predatory business practices at the very end that we recommend avoiding. Always do your research!

Webcomic Platforms

Webtoon Canvas

Tapas

Webtoon Originals

SpiderForest Webcomic Collective

Hiveworks

ComicFury

The Duck

Saturday AM

GlobalComix

NamiComi

DillyHub

Shrine Comics

[valiumvenus]

In the name of my friends, I am asking for help:

"Please SIGN and SHARE this petition against censorship at the University of Vienna! Give us back our lectures on Palestine!" 🇵🇸🕊️

TLDR: The University of Vienna is canceling lectures about Palestine, and disinviting scholars who have a pro-Palestinian stance; please sign & share the petition to show people everywhere care. The students' demands are listed in the petition. Anyone can sign.

Censorship surrounding topics of Palestine is nothing new - but in the last few months there has been an alarming increase in censorship, where artists have their exhibitions shut down, universities are setting up barriers to knowledge about Palestine, highly unserious articles with very serious accusations about academics are popping up, ... Now two lectures on Palestine were canceled, and another scholar was just uninvited for what he posted on his social media (pro-Palestinian content). A previous protest letter from the academic community was ignored by the University, and a recent sit-in there was met with an unnecessarily high number of police who intimidated the small group of protesters. That is the only reaction anti-Zionist protests yield. -> more info in the petition link

Why/How does the University of Vienna do this? Basically, any public criticism of the Israeli government is misconstrued as antisemitism. Then, the University disinvites the academics in question and cancels lectures, or forces lecturers to "adjust" their content. Scholars are being muzzled. The University doesn't want its students to learn about various perspectives on Palestine. Mind you, this is a public institution we're talking about.

The petition is intended to show the University that people disapprove of these practices. The argument of "safety" is brought up all the time, but at the same time, the University gladly erects barriers between their students and the valuable knowledge that would foster critical thinking and understanding. Palestinians are directly affected by this deadly apathy, and Muslim and Jewish people everywhere suffer from heightened antisemitism and islamophobia fueled by misinformation and myths. And at the end of the day, censorship is nothing but bad academic practice. It is an attempt to shape the minds of students by making information harder to access and to exclude scholars who talk about/are from Palestine. It's discrimination against Palestinians and it's shameless instrumentalization of Jewish trauma.

Anybody who is concerned can sign. Please share widely with any and all communities! The petition should go international! Every signature counts.

Say NO to all barriers to knowledge. 🇵🇸🕊️

[ryin-silverfish]

So You Want to Read More about Chinese Mythos: a rough list of primary sources

"How/Where can I learn more about Chinese mythology?" is a question I saw a lot on other sites, back when I was venturing outside of Shenmo novel booksphere and into IRL folk religions + general mythos, but had rarely found satisfying answers.

As such, this is my attempt at writing something past me will find useful.

(Built into it is the assumption that you can read Chinese, which I only realized after writing the post. I try to amend for it by adding links to existing translations, as well as links to digitalized Chinese versions when there doesn't seem to be one.)

The thing about all mythologies and legends is that they are 1) complicated, and 2) are products of their times. As such, it is very important to specify the "when" and "wheres" and "what are you looking for" when answering a question as broad as this.

-Do you want one or more "books with an overarching story"?

In that case, Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi) serve as good starting points, made more accessible for general readers by the fact that they both had English translations——Anthony C. Yu's JTTW translation is very good, Gu Zhizhong's FSYY one, not so much.

Crucially, they are both Ming vernacular novels. Though they are fictional works that are not on the same level of "seriousness" as actual religious scriptures, these books still took inspiration from the popular religion of their times, at a point where the blending of the Three Teachings (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism) had become truly mainstream.

And for FSYY specifically, the book had a huge influence on subsequent popular worship because of its "pantheon-building" aspect, to the point of some Daoists actually putting characters from the novel into their temples.

(Vernacular novels + operas being a medium for the spread of popular worship and popular fictional characters eventually being worshipped IRL is a thing in Ming-Qing China. Meir Shahar has a paper that goes into detail about the relationship between the two.)

After that, if you want to read other Shenmo novels, works that are much less well-written but may be more reflective of Ming folk religions at the time, check out Journey to the North/South/East (named as such bc of what basically amounted to a Ming print house marketing strategy) too.

-Do you want to know about the priestly Daoist side of things, the "how the deities are organized and worshipped in a somewhat more formal setting" vs "how the stories are told"?

Though I won't recommend diving straight into the entire Daozang or Yunji Qiqian or some other books compiled in the Daoist text collections, I can think of a few "list of gods/immortals" type works, like Liexian Zhuan and Zhenling Weiye Tu.

Also, though it is much closer to the folk religion side than the organized Daoist side, the Yuan-Ming era Grand Compendium of the Three Religions' Deities, aka Sanjiao Soushen Daquan, is invaluable in understanding the origins and evolutions of certain popular deities.

(A quirk of historical Daoist scriptures is that they often come up with giant lists of gods that have never appeared in other prior texts, or enjoy any actual worship in temples.)

(The "organized/folk" divide is itself a dubious one, seeing how both state religion and "priestly" Daoism had channels to incorporate popular deities and practices into their systems. But if you are just looking at written materials, I feel like there is still a noticeable difference.)

Lastly, if you want to know more about Daoist immortal-hood and how to attain it: Ge Hong's Baopuzi (N & S. dynasty) and Zhonglv Chuandao Ji (late Tang/Five Dynasties) are both texts about external and internal alchemy with English translations.

-Do you want something older, more ancient, from Warring States and Qin-Han Era China?

Classics of Mountains and Seas, aka Shanhai Jing, is the way to go. It also reads like a bestiary-slash-fantastical cookbook, full of strange beasts, plants, kingdoms of unusual humanoids, and the occasional half-man, half-beast gods.

A later work, the Han-dynasty Huai Nan Zi, is an even denser read, being a collection of essays, but it's also where a lot of ancient legends like "Nvwa patches the sky" and "Chang'e steals the elixir of immortality" can be first found in bits and pieces.

Shenyi Jing might or might not be a Northern-Southern dynasties work masquerading as a Han one. It was written in a style that emulated the Classics of Mountains and Seas, and had some neat fantastic beasts and additional descriptions of gods/beasts mentioned in the previous 2 works.

-Do you have too much time on your hands, a willingness to get through lot of classical Chinese, and an obsession over yaoguais and ghosts?

Then it's time to flip open the encyclopedic folklore compendiums——Soushen Ji (N/S dynasty), You Yang Za Zu (Tang), Taiping Guangji (early Song), Yijian Zhi (Southern Song)...

Okay, to be honest, you probably can't read all of them from start to finish. I can't either. These aren't purely folklore compendiums, but giant encyclopedias collecting matters ranging from history and biography to medicine and geography, with specific sections on yaoguais, ghosts and "strange things that happened to someone".

As such, I recommend you only check the relevant sections and use the Full Text Search function well.

Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studios, aka Liaozhai Zhiyi, is in a similar vein, but a lot more entertaining and readable. Together with Yuewei Caotang Biji and Zi Buyu, they formed the "Big Three" of Qing dynasty folktale compendiums, all of which featured a lot of stories about fox spirits and ghosts.

Lastly...

The Yuan-Ming Zajus (a sort of folk opera) get an honorable mention. Apart from JTTW Zaju, an early, pre-novel version of the story that has very different characterization of SWK, there are also a few plays centered around Erlang (specifically, Zhao Erlang) and Nezha, such as "Erlang Drunkenly Shot the Demon-locking Mirror". Sadly, none of these had an English translation.

Because of the fragmented nature of Chinese mythos, you can always find some tidbits scattered inside history books like Zuo Zhuan or poetry collections like Qu Yuan's Chuci. Since they aren't really about mythology overall and are too numerous to cite, I do not include them in this post, but if you wanna go down even deeper in this already gigantic rabbit hole, it's a good thing to keep in mind.

[kyra45]

Tips to spotting scams based around Palestine fundraisers

With the latest round of scams being based around Palestine fundraisers, this guide is meant to help you get the idea on what to look out for if you share posts about it often. This post is not to say all fundraising posts for it are scams! It should be understood that there are verified sources to donate to support Palestine and also legitimate methods to giving aid as well that can be found if you search around. It’s just unfortunate there are now accounts here that have chosen to rapidly take advantage of users who don’t know about their scamming.

Here are some basic information about these scams and the accounts themselves:

- The accounts pinned post is usually only a few hours old or a few days old. It starts off with “urgent help needed” and then bullet points of the story. This story is real, but it’s been edited and stolen off a real fundraiser as copying/pasting it into your preferred search engine should show where it’s from.

- They may have a linktree link that says it’s their GoFundMe link but it’s not and it goes directly to a PayPal account that has a name they’ve likely stolen off someone else. It may be one that’s been listed as a known fake name used across multiple accounts

- All the images used are likely from the same fundraiser they’re stealing images from. The story is usually edited to sound very vague because they removed most of its details.

- The ask they send you is usually the same thing as their post and may have a stray pair of quotation marks showing it’s from something they found and wasn’t typed by themselves.

- Often sends asks after you’ve shared a post about Palestine or more. This is a targeted ask and searching it should reveal if it’s been sent by other blogs who used the same pfp as the sender.

- They share a few Palestine posts but never anything else.

- Known to send hateful asks to you if you call them out too much. They’ll also block and hide comments that point out the scam.

- Will comment on mutual aid posts to spread their scam if asks don’t work easily.

I know this isn’t much of a guide, but I hope it helps.

[cripplecharacters]

Disabilities that You Should Consider Representing in Your Writing More… part 1

[large text: Disabilities that You Should Consider Representing in Your Writing More… part 1]

While all disabilities are underrepresented in basically all sorts of media, it’s hard to not notice the trend in what disabilities make up the majority of representation. It’s especially visible when having a blog like this, where we can see what disabilities writers even consider including in their writing, and which ones never come up.

One in four people are disabled. With eight billion people alive it means there’s a lot of disabled people, and a lot of reasons why they are disabled in the first place - but this diversity is rarely represented, even on this blog, and anyone who has been following for a while has probably noticed that fact.

To be blunt: there are disabilities other than “amputee” and “(otherwise invisibly disabled) mobility aid user”. Does that mean that it’s wrong to write either of those? Of course not, and we don’t want to imply that it is. Does it mean that either of these have a ton of good representation? Hell no. Does it mean that when you are deciding on what to give your character, you should think beyond (or along! people can be multiply disabled!) just those two? Absolutely. Disability is a spectrum with thousands of things in it - don’t limit yourself for no reason and embrace the diversity that’s built into it instead. 

This is, simply, a list of common disabilities. This is just a few of them, as this is part one of presumably many (or, at least three as of right now). By “common” we rather arbitrarily decided on “~1% or more” - so at least 1 in 100 people has the disabilities below, which is a lot. Featuring!: links that you should click, sources of the % that are mostly just medical reports and might be hard to read, and quick, very non-exhaustive explanations to give you a basic idea of what these are. 

Intellectual disability (about 1.5%) Intellectual disability is a condition we have written about at length before. It’s a developmental disability that affects things such as conceptualization, language, problem-solving, or social and self-care skills. ID can exist on its own or be a part of another condition, like Down Syndrome, Congenital Iodine Deficiency, or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. This post covers a lot of basic information that you might need. We have an intellectual disability tag that you can look through!

Cancer survivors (5.4% in the US, about 0.55% worldwide) A cancer survivor is a pretty self-explanatory term. There is a lot of types of cancer and some of them are very common while others are very rare, which makes this a very diverse category. Cancers also have different survival rates. While not every survivor will have disabling symptoms, they definitely happen. Most of the long-term side effects are related to chemotherapy, radiation, and other medication, especially if they happened in children. They can include all sorts of organ damage, osteoporosis, cognitive problems, sensory disabilities, infertility, and increased rate of other cancers. Other effects include removal of the affected area, such as an eye, a spleen, breasts, or the thyroid gland, each of which will have different outcomes. Cancer, and cancer treatments, can also result in PTSD.

Diabetes (about 8.5%, ~95% of that are type 2) Diabetes is a group of endocrine conditions that cause hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) for various reasons depending on the type. The vast majority of people have type 2 diabetes, which can cause fatigue, poor healing, or feeling thirsty or hungry. A diabetic person will use insulin when needed to help manage their blood sugar levels. There are many complications related to diabetes, from neuropathy, to retinopathy, and chronic kidney disease, and there's a lot of disabilities that coexist with diabetes in general! You might want to check out the #how to write type 1 diabetes tag by @type1diabetesinfandom!

Disabling vision loss (about 7.5%) Blindness and low vision are a spectrum, ranging from total blindness (around 10% of legally blind people) to mild visual impairment. Blindness can be caused by countless things, but cataracts, refractive errors, and glaucoma are the most common. While cataracts cause the person to have a clouded pupil (not the whole eye!) blind eyes usually look average, with strabismus or nystagmus being exceptions to that fairly often (but not always). Trauma isn't a common cause of blindness, and accidents are overrepresented in fiction. A blind person can use a white cane, a guide dog or horse, or both. Assistive solutions are important here, such as Braille, screenreaders, or magnifying glasses. We have a blindness tag that you can look through, and you might want to check out @blindbeta and @mimzy-writing-online.

Psoriasis (about 2-4%) Psoriasis is a chronic skin condition with multiple subtypes; it can cause intense itching, pain, and general discomfort, and often carries social stigma. It’s an autoimmune and non-contagious disability that affects the skin cells, resulting in raised patches of flaky skin covered with scales. It often (30%) leads to a related condition, psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, tenderness, and fatigue, among other things.

Stroke survivors (0.5-1%) A stroke survivor is a person who has survived any kind of stroke (ischemic, hemorrhagic, etc.). While the specific symptoms often depend on the exact location on where the stroke happened, signs such as hemiplegia, slurred speech, vision problems, and cognitive changes are common in most survivors to some degree. When someone has a stroke as a baby, or before they are born, it can result in cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and other disabilities. We have a brain injury tag that you can look through!

Noonan Syndrome (about 0.1-1% - mild is 1%, severe 0.1%) Noonan Syndrome is a disability that is almost never mentioned in any context, but certainly not around the topic of writing disabled characters. It’s a congenital condition that can cause cardiomyopathy, chronic joint pain, hypermobility, short stature, facial differences such as ptosis, autism, and various lymphatic problems among other things. Some people with Noonan Syndrome might use mobility aids to help with their joint pain.

Hyperthyroidism (about 1.2%) Hyperthyroidism is a condition of the endocrine system caused by hormone overproduction that affects metabolism. It often results in irritability, weight loss, heat intolerance, tremors, mood swings, or insomnia. Undertreated hyperthyroidism has a rare, but extremely dangerous side effect associated with it called a thyroid storm, which can be fatal if untreated.

Hypothyroidism (>5%) Hypothyroidism is an endocrine condition just as hyperthyroidism is, and it causes somewhat opposite symptoms. Due to not producing enough thyroid hormones, it often causes fatigue, depression, hair loss, weight gain, and a frequent feeling of being cold. It’s often comorbid with other autoimmune disabilities, e.g. vitiligo, chronic autoimmune gastritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Extreme hypothyroidism can also be potentially fatal because of a condition known as Myxedema coma (or “crisis”), which is also rare.

Deafblindness (about 0.2-2%) Being DeafBlind is often considered to be an extremely rare disability, but that’s not really the case. DeafBlindness on its own isn’t a diagnosis - it can be caused by a wide range of things, with CHARGE syndrome (congenital), Usher syndrome (born deaf, becomes blind later in life), congenital rubella, and age-related deafness and blindness being some of the most common reasons. DeafBlindness is a wide spectrum, the vast majority of DeafBlind people aren’t fully blind and deaf, and they can use various ways of communication. Some of these could be sign language (tactile or not), protactile, the deafblind manual, oral speech (aided by hearing aids or not), the Lorm alphabet, and more. You can learn more about assistive devices here! Despite what various media like to tell you, being DeafBlind isn’t a death sentence, and the DeafBlind community and culture are alive and thriving - especially since the start of the protactile movement. We have a DeafBlindness tag that you can look through!

It’s probably worth mentioning that we have received little to no asks in general for almost all the disabilities above, and it’s certainly not due to what mods answer for. Our best guess is that writers don’t realize how many options they have and just end up going for the same things over and over.

Only representing “cool” disabilities that are “not too much while having a particular look/aura/drama associated” isn’t what you should aim for. Disabled people just exist, and all of us deserve to be represented, including those whose disabilities aren’t your typical “cool design” or “character inspo”. Sometimes we are just regular people, with disabilities that are “boring” or “too much”, and don’t make for useful plot points.

mod Sasza (with huge thank yous to mod Sparrow, Rot, and Virus for their contributions with research and data!)

[jellazticious]

Hey gang, I fucked up, the original was full of misinfo and this is a link that sends you to a version of the thread with all the right information in the reblogs

but in case you don't want to click the link, here's the contents

[image ID: a reblog from @determinate-negation saying "

if you get the same copy pasted message that is NOT NECESSARILY A SCAMMER. please remember that for a lot of palestinians fundraising on here english is not their first language and they might not speak much english. the accounts youre accusing of being fake in your first point were both verified by 90s-ghost, a palestinian on tumblr who was able to evacuate.

i cant say for sure but it seems like people in gaza are telling each other that tumblr is a good place to fundraise and making template messages that are translated well because 1. its easier to send a bunch of people 2. people may only have a basic knowledge of english. a lot of the people fundraising made accounts specifically for this bc theyre not familiar with tumblr so their blogs will be recently created and not have a lot of posts.

its probably better to just go off lists of fundraisers that have been verified by palestinians and arabic speakers on here. you could be hurting an innocent person in need of help by assuming their awkwardly worded message is a scam and telling people that

paypal campaigns are much more likely to be scams, definitely search the name and reverse image search photos if you cant tell if somethings legit.

also, a lot of the language that you my find dramatic or confusing could be someone trying to translate with minimal resources. just keep that in mind"

end ID]

below the reblog is a link I shared about the fundraiser list

Edit: upon knowing the situation regarding the writing prompts account, I'm turning reblogs off

I still see that people are reblogging the outdated version

[parabiont]

I’m a vulture culture geek, so I like Mew because it is reminiscent of an embryo (it’s also nostalgic— it was perhaps my favorite when I was a kid!).

While looking for fanart of retro Mew— the rendition I love most, these days— I found people pointing out more clever details I had never considered! In Pokémon Yellow, its Pokédex entry says, “When viewed through a microscope, this Pokémon's short, fine, delicate hair can be seen,” which may represent lanugo— “the first hair to be produced by the fetal hair follicles… It is normally shed before birth.” Mew’s iconic, protective bubble symbolizes the placenta, which protects the embryo. Looking at its Red/Green sprite, it is easy to see why some think its tail looks like an umbilical cord.

^ Me trying to get back in the womb. I’ve had enough of this place!

I like the thought put into this Pokémon. Its Crystal Pokédex entry says that scientists hypothesize that it is the universal common ancestor of all Pokémon, which is a topic of interest in the real world, too. While the real world universal ancestor is probably unicellular and microscopic, an embryo is similarly rudimentary and ambiguous enough to develop into all sorts of things!

Originally, Mew wasn’t going to appear in the game (COULD YOU IMAGINE?!?!?!). Shigeki Morimoto was instructed not to include Mew but did so secretly because, after all was said and done, there was still room for one more Pokémon in the code. It couldn’t be accessed through normal gameplay, though— only through bugs. "Unless we could think about any good opportunity to do so, the existence of Mew wouldn’t have been revealed to the public. It was left in there in case it was suitable for some post-launch activity,” Morimoto said. Red and Blue initially didn’t do as well as expected. But after players accidentally discovered Mew, Nintendo launched an event for twenty people to have Mew added to their game. Over 78,000 people participated, which helped Red and Green to become best-sellers. Pokémon may not be what it is today without Mew!

Mew is very cute, but it is so much more than its appearance! It has rich history and symbolism which makes it an excellent representative for this era of Pokémon! :^)

Sources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemonconspiracies/comments/502657/mew_is_a_genetically_modified_embryo/ <— Love this! Short read! It talks about Mewtwo perhaps being influenced by Giygas, which makes me like Mewtwo— another one of my favs— even more!

On the Origin of Species: Mew by Xan Hutcheon on Bulbanews

Mew’s Bulbapedia page

The fascinating story of how Mew saved Pokemon Red and Blue by Paul Cot on Dexerto

[all-the-fish]

Oh, you know, just the usual internet browsing experience in the year of 2024

Some links and explanations since I figured it might be useful to some people, and writing down stuff is nice.

First of all, get Firefox. Yes, it has apps for Android/iOS too. It allows more extensions and customization (except the iOS version), it tracks less, the company has a less shitty attitude about things. Currently all the other alternatives are variations of Chromium, which means no matter how degoogled they supposedly are, Google has almost a monopoly on web browsing and that's not great. Basically they can introduce extremely user unfriendly updates and there's nothing forcing them to not do it, and nowhere for people to escape to. Current examples of their suggested updates are disabling/severly limiting adblocks in June 2024, and this great suggestion to force sites to verify "web environment integrity" ("oh you don't run a version of chromium we approve, such as the one that runs working adblocks? no web for you.").

uBlockOrigin - barely needs any explanation but yes, it works. You can whitelist whatever you want to support through displaying ads. You can also easily "adblock" site elements that annoy you. "Please log in" notice that won't go away? Important news tm sidebar that gives you sensory overload? Bye.

Dark Reader - a site you use has no dark mode? Now it has. Fairly customizable, also has some basic options for visually impaired people.

SponsorBlock for YouTube - highlights/skips (you choose) sponsored bits in the videos based on user submissions, and a few other things people often skip ("pls like and subscribe!"). A bit more controversial than normal adblock since the creators get some decent money from this, but also a lot of the big sponsors are kinda scummy and offer inferior product for superior price (or try to sell you a star jpg land ownership in Scotland to become a lord), so hearing an ad for that for the 20th time is kinda annoying. But also some creators make their sponsored segments hilarious.

Privacy Badger (and Ghostery I suppose) - I'm not actually sure how needed these are with uBlock and Firefox set to block any tracking it can, but that's basically what it does. Find someone more educated on this topic than me for more info.

Https Everywhere - I... can't actually find the extension anymore, also Firefox has this as an option in its settings now, so this is probably obsolete, whoops.

Facebook Container - also comes with Firefox by default I think. Keeps FB from snooping around outside of FB. It does that a lot, even if you don't have an account.

WebP / Avif image converter - have you ever saved an image and then discovered you can't view it, because it's WebP/Avif? You can now save it as a jpg.

YouTube Search Fixer - have you noticed that youtube search has been even worse than usual lately, with inserting all those unrelated videos into your search results? This fixes that. Also has an option to force shorts to play in the normal video window.

Consent-O-Matic - automatically rejects cookies/gdpr consent forms. While automated, you might still get a second or two of flashing popups being yeeted.

XKit Rewritten - current most up to date "variation "fork" of XKit I think? Has settings in extension settings instead of an extra tumblr button. As long as you get over the new dash layout current tumblr is kinda fine tbh, so this isn't as important as in the past, but still nice. I mostly use it to hide some visual bloat and mark posts on the dash I've already seen.

YouTube NonStop - do you want to punch youtube every time it pauses a video to check if you're still there? This saves your fists.

uBlacklist - blacklists sites from your search results. Obviously has a lot of different uses, but I use it to hide ai generated stuff from image search results. Here's a site list for that.

Redirect AMP to HTML - redirects links from their amp version to the normal version. Amp link is a version of a site made faster and more accessible for phones by Bing/Google. Good in theory, but lets search engines prefer some pages to others (that don't have an amp version), and afaik takes traffic from the original page too. Here's some more reading about why it's an issue, I don't think I can make a good tl;dr on this.

Also since I used this in the tags, here's some reading about enshittification and why the current mainstream internet/services kinda suck.

[inevesgf]

“come here, idiot” and oscar? 😇

"come here, idiot"⠀ + ⠀oscar piastri ⠀༉ ‧₊˚. ⠀prompt list here.

oscar comes to realize how wonderful of a chef his girlfriend is and wants to join in on the fun, though he can't bake to save his life.

content + warnings: oscar piastri + female reader, swearing, basically pure fluff. word count 1.1k+.

i fear oscar is so cutie i can't.. still working to plow out more of these blurbs so stay tuned x if you would like to find other works from this special or read my other works, click the link here ⋆·˚ ༘ * notes + reblogs are heavily appreciated and don't forget to tell me your thoughts via comment, reblog or ask.

the kitchen was alive with warmth and light, the morning sun spilling through the window and illuminating the scattered flour that dusted the counter. a cozy hum of hozier’s music played softly in the background, filling the air with a calming tone as you fished in the cabinet for ingredients. a tattered apron was tied snugly upon your waist, and you were certainly in your element as the aroma of vanilla and butter filled the air. 

baking was your santucary, a place where you felt free and at ease. if anything big or small was bothering you, you’d dive head first into some intricate recipe and bake the blues away. usually alone in the kitchen, you found yourself getting lost in the world of flour and sugar, whipping up pastries as if you were a five star chef, but you were quickly pulled out of your fantasy when a voice erupted, the tone laced with confusion.

“is it egg first or flour first?” oscar questioned, turning over to you as he raised a brow, holding the ingredients in his hands. a small laugh escaped your lips at his state, the boy's hair tangled in every which way as flour covered his apron. “it doesn’t matter, you know,” you teased, placing a small tube of vanilla extract on the counter next to him, “it’s all going in the same bowl, osc.”

you knew baking with your boyfriend wasn’t going to be all that easy, yet you didn’t expect him to be entirely clueless. growing up in a household full of girls, you were sure oscar had helped his mother out once or twice, but that clearly wasn’t the case – the boy was practically running around like a chicken with his head cut off.

“i don’t know how you do it,” oscar mumbled, trying to multitask between talking and cracking the egg delicately into the bowl, “you have to be so patient for this shit – what’s the fun in baking if you have to wait for the sweets? it’s no fun.” a joking tone fell from oscars lips as he discarded the empty egg shell into the trash bin, looking over at you with a smug look.

“that’s the fun part, you see, it’s like a little reward at the end of all your hard work,” you chuckled, smiling over at him softly. oscar swore up and down he was a big boy: able to follow the instructions and bake the cookies by himself, but he cleary wasn’t all that as he began to struggle. pouring some flour into the measuring cup, oscar raised a brow in confusion, his gaze looking similar to a baby who just saw its reflection for the first time. 

you playfully rolled your eyes, advancing towards oscar as if to offer help. “it’s not rocket science, osc,” a teasing tone poisioned your words, causing oscar to grumble and step to the side, “let me show you.” you moved gracefully over to oscar, your apron tied securely as you began to measure out flour with careful precision. you poured it into a mixing bowl, the powder puffing gently into the air. oscar huffed out, baffled at how you could do this so effortlessly, his gaze focused intently on the task at hand.

“see?” you hummed, “easy-peasy.” to which oscar found himself grumbling once more, coming back over to the bowl as he picked the spoon up from the flour covered cabinet. “can’t you just work the magic while i stand here and look pretty?” he teased, shoving the spoon into the bowl, “i can be your second-hand – toss the ingredients to you.”

a small laugh fell from your lipsticked lips again as you hummed, shaking your head back and forth. “i mean, you’d be great help, but this is supposed to be bonding time, remember? not myself baking while you sit and watch,” you joked, splashing a tad of vanilla into the bowl oscar began to stir, using his muscles to blend the thick batter. 

“i’m not great help, you know,” oscar laughed, huffing to blow the hair away from his forehead, the strands falling lazily as it clouded his view, “can’t keep myself together enough to bake.” you found yourself chuckling at his words once more, tightening the apron before lazily pushing the strand away from his amber eyes. 

you hummed again, leaning your body against the table, studying him softly as he blended the mixture in the bowl. the morning sunlight peered through the window, the suns rays illuminating the most miniscule of oscar’s features. you couldn’t help but oogle at the way his muscles flexed, the tiny freckles decorating his forearm comparable to the details on a roman statue.

“you may not be great help, but you’re wonderful company,” you teased, your eyes dancing over his face as his eyes looked over to you, a small smile overtaking his visage, “and i’ll pay you handsomely with these cookies for helping out even a little.” as if your words were the best hums of thought he had ever heard, the smile on oscar’s face only grew larger, a satisfied whistle falling past his lips as he mixed the batter.

oscar finished stirring the mixture, bringing the spoon to his lips as he looked you dead in the eye, his eagerness to piss off his ‘master-chef’ girlfriend promiment in his actions. keeping the spoon close to his lips, oscar stuck his tongue out, savoring the rich flavor as he licked the spoon clean. though as oscar relished the moment, a generous dollop of the batter betrayed him, slipping from the spoon as it landed squarely on his cheek.

startled slightly from the cold batter making contact with his skin, oscar froze, his eyes widening in surprise as a chuckle slipped past his lips. he glanced in your direction, your laughter bubbling up like the batter itself – bright and infectious. 

“come here, idiot,” in a moment of playful tenderness, you stepped forward, brushing the batter off his cheek with the soft pad of your thumb. your touch lingered for a heartbeat longer than necessary, causing even the man you loved for years to blush deeply at the affection.

“there,” you spoke, smiling as you wiped your finger on a nearby dish towel, “now you’re ready to keep baking, chef osc.” oscar grinned, the playful banter hanging in the air like the sweet scent of the cookie batter.

the atmosphere was charged with a loving intimacy, a sense of joy enveloping the two of you. the laughter and warmth radiating between both of you felt as sweet as the pastries you were making, binding they two of you together in a dance where you played teacher.  it didn’t matter to you as you grew patient with oscar and his lack of baking skills, helping him step by step. even if he couldn’t use something as simple as a measuring cup, he was still your new baking buddy – one that didn’t fail to make you laugh as he made a mess of your small kitchen.

© inevesgf do not copy, plagiarize, translate, or claim any of my works as your own. notes + reblogs are heavily appreciated! ⋆·˚ ༘ * find my other works here.

[ibrahimshallah2]

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To everyone reading this message

I am Ibrahim from Gaza, 22 years old . I write to you while living in the heart of devastation, having lost everything because of the war that destroyed our lives. I once had a home, a family, and simple dreams of living in peace. But the war took it all from me; it destroyed our home, halted our lives, and left us facing a harsh reality.

I lost my home in an instant—not just the walls and decorations, but the sense of safety I had with my family. One day we were living our lives, and the next, we found ourselves searching for shelter, with no place to go, and nothing to protect us from the cruelty of life in wartime. We lost loved ones, and those moments reminded us that life guarantees us nothing.

We are now in urgent need of your help to rebuild our lives. We are looking for a safe place to live and resources to provide food and the basic necessities for our children. I cannot do this alone, but I believe that there are people in this world who have the power to change our fate.

Baby Mohammed, who was born in the midst of war, has lived through its pain since the very first moment of his life. He spent his days in a tent that holds nothing but painful memories and lost hopes. He is now seven months old.

With your help, we can start again. We can rebuild what the war has destroyed, and give our children a chance to live, as they have known nothing but destruction and fear. We need your support, not just to rebuild our home, but to rebuild our hope for life.

Please, if you are able to offer any assistance, no matter how small, it will make a profound difference in our lives. Every donation, every act of support, will help us return to life and begin a new chapter filled with hope and opportunities.

From the depths of my heart, I thank you for your time and support.

Please donate or share the campaign link.

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