#like this is very informative because 99% of what i have read is all advice i would hope to see

[yuri-is-online]

I'm tired and stressed so I did, in fact, start reading about gunplay because of the comments under my joke post about Taiga and... if one of the listed risks of a kink is "legal repercussions" then maybe that should be my cue to go to bed

[monsterkin-culture-is]

How do you know for sure if you have MD? I'm like, 99% sure I have it as I'm constantly daydreaming to the point it disrupts my life occasionally. But I'm just hesitant on that label as I don't know too much about it and don't know where to begin researching it.

Hiya Anon! I'm so sorry for the delay replying, unfortunately I only saw this whilst I was heading to college. This might end up a bit of a ramble but I'm going to at least attempt to organise it.

Diagnosis Talk:

MD is difficult in the fact that it's not a fully recognised disorder yet so there's no DSM-5 etc to use as a diagnostic guide.

Personally, I would consider it maladaptive once it's becoming a negative experience. This could look like: struggling to complete schoolwork/homework or chores because you can't stop daydreaming, losing time in your day-to-day life, losing information in class/meetings and becoming disconnected from/losing interest in your social life & family. In addition, it can also be the content of the daydreams becoming disturbing or causing you emotional distress when something negative happens in the plotline. That part isn't discussed as much but it's something I personally experience; e.g if a character dies in-story/scenario, I actually cry & genuinely grieve them for a while (sometimes a day, sometimes a fortnight for me). This isn't an exhaustive list nor is it a criteria where you need every single one, it's just what 'maladaptive' can look like.

The difference with immersive daydreaming is that it only happens when the person wants and it's purely for enjoyment.

There is an evaluative tool known as the MDS-16 (MDS meaning maladaptive daydreaming scale). I'll link this for you lower down in the research section!

When it comes to questioning, my #1 piece of advice would be don't stress. That's much easier said than done, but it's important to remember nothing will happen if you're wrong. If you mislabel it, no one is going to be upset. With maladaptive daydreaming, because it's unrecognised, there's even less pressure with self-diagnosis and there's no criteria you have to match. It's a label used to describe an experience. It's also important to remember that imposter syndrome is very common in all disorders & disabilities, physical and psychological, even after diagnosis.

Research Resources:

Eli Somer is the main researcher for Maladaptive Daydreaming and is the original creator of the term back in 2002. You can find some of his papers linked at the bottom of the Maladaptive Daydreaming Wikipedia Page as references (which I also recommend flicking through).

The MDS-16 is a self-assessment tool made by Somer & his associates. You can take it here on traumadissociation.com but other PDF versions are available on the internet. It has 16 questions and the result is the mean of your answers.

This is the official website for The International Consortium For Maladaptive Daydreaming Research. The ICMDR are an informal group of scientists conducting group research on MD. Their site hosts a lot of their research and resources to help you with MD.

The Parallel Lives Podcast is a great way to hear other people's experiences with MD (link leads to spotify).

Honestly I haven't read any papers on MD (I probably should) so don't worry about not doing enough research. I do recommend the MDS-16 especially though as it will help you reflect on the traits of MD you possess.

I hope some of this was helpful anon!! Feel free to send anymore questions you have through, hopefully I'll be able to respond a little quicker this time!! You're also welcome to talk about your experiences more. My DMs are open if you ever need to talk more privately. /gen /nf

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

So, I was going to ask if you and vinelle are ever planning on writing a more fluffy Aro/Carlisle fic, but then I realized the answer is probably “write the fic”, so uh… how?

Like more specifically, how do I write characters “in character” so to speak, like just study their character and try to copy?

I ask because I feel like you really nail the characterizations, despite them being heretical, especially the way Edward acts/speaks. Feels very “Edward” :p

Thank you!

(Also I must confess. I’ve sent some asks before. The fact you answer all of your asks is really nice)

Mmm yeah, you're going to have to write the fic on this one. Neither @therealvinelle and I are fluff authors, in fact, anything resembling fluff is the worst/hardest part for us to write in our stories and is usually a sign something very bad is about to happen so everyone can be unhappy again.

Fluff is the part where nothing is happening in the story, the characters are simply happy which begs the question “Is the story over, then?”

And if it is, why am I still here writing?

The closest I get is romantic comedies, which are more lighthearted, but they still have a required conflict that usually gets in the way of fluff.

But rock on, anon, you have my blessing.

As for advice...

I would say the key is to be consistent and to understand the character well enough that you know what they'd do in given situations, especially if it's situations we haven't seen before. You don't have to be right, per se, as I'm sure 99% of people don't agree with my or @therealvinelle interpretations.

However, you should be able to answer questions like: if Edward believes Bella cheated on him with Jacob what would he do?

This requires having a good understanding of what Edward wants, how he sees the world, what his strengths and weaknesses are, and everything that makes up his persona.

The same goes for any character in a story.

What do they want? What do they know? What do they do when faced with setbacks?

Then, of course, there's "how do they talk" and in that just look at dialogue/internal narration they have in the books and write in a similar manner.

Do they sound young, old, formal, informal, are they curt, blunt, witty, rambly, do they use slang, metaphors, or anecdotes, and so on.

With Edward, we view him as a perpetual teenager who views himself as an old soul and an intellectual, he has read a lot, he wants to come across a certain way, and people generally view him as polite and well-mannered. He’s going to sound very sophisticated, very elegant, and the immaturity will come out when he’s under pressure or put on the spot, at which point he’ll double down and try to convince those around him with the same arguments, only rephrased because he is firmly convinced that he’s right, so surely if he can find the right words then the person he’s talking to will understand and come around.

At least, that is how things tend to go for him in mine and @therealvinelle's writing.

(gif credit @franzias-cave)

[dmsden]

Communication - Why is it so important?

Hullo, Gentle Readers! This week's Question from a Denizen comes to us from another shy, Anonymous reader. They say, "I enjoyed the write up on fizzle, it really captures your experience with my favourite trick: talking to each other. Do you have more stories about a time when you and others have different POV on the same session?"

I have to be honest...I can't think of many times where I felt the need to check in or apologize after a session and then found that my players and I were in disagreement. I think this recent fizzle was a situation of me being tired and not feeling great about the game. I reached out to apologize and got reassured that other folks had enjoyed themselves.

I thought instead I would talk a little bit about one of my favorite pieces of advice, why I think it's important, and when I think you should follow it. Everyone who reads this blog for more than a couple of articles will have seen my mantra of "Talk to your players." I say it all the time, because I really feel it resolves 99% of problems in a game. So with that said, why do I think it's so important?

So here's the thing...yes, D&D and other TTRPGs are games, but, at their core, they're relationships. Joining a game is essentially a social contract: I will meet with you, abide by the rules of the game, respect the GM, and we'll tell amazing stories together. This is a relationship, and one that hopefully connects socially in other ways as well. I'm friends with all my players, and, even when I invite new players into a game whom I haven't met before, I often become good friends with them over time. TTRPGs are an intensely social activity. And in any kind of social activity or relationship, communication is absolutely essential.

Now I'm not just talking about the communication around the table, although that's obviously important, too. It's not like the game would work if people wouldn't talk or couldn't understand each other. I'm talking about clear and honest communication where people talk outside the game, discuss how things are going, offer feedback, and the like.

Now, I'm not advocating for having a sit down discussion with your players for every session (although for a starting DM, that could be quite useful). I'm just talking about an occasional casual check-in. Ask your players how they're enjoying the game. Do they like where the story is going? Are there any NPCs they'd like to see more of? Is there anything from their backstory they're wanting to play up more or less? Are there any plot threads they want to make sure don't disappear or that they would like to go away?

A key time to talk to your players, of course, is during a Session Zero, but all the things you discuss at a Session Zero can come up down the road. Maybe someone would like to introduce new safety tools at the table that they were unaware of when the campaign started. Maybe there's some plot element that they hadn't considered for their character that they'd like to add, which requires a tweak to their backstory. Maybe they've realized they've never fought a beholder in D&D, and they want to ask you to add one to your campaign.

Another use of communication is to give feedback to a player on behavior you want to encourage or discourage. You might give someone Inspiration after a session, because after thinking about it, you realized just how great something they did was. Alternately, you might want to ask a player to change behavior in some way, such as not challenging your decisions during game play, not bullying another player, or looking up information they shouldn't have access to during the session.

You may also want to discuss plot with a player. Maybe you have an upcoming plot that they would tie into very naturally, but it would require a minor tweak to their backstory. Maybe you want to make sure they get a cool magic-item soon, and you'd like to know what the player might want. Maybe you want to do a story involving the PC's family, but you don't have a lot of details, so you might need to pick their brains.

If you notice a player seems uncomfortable with something, but they don't comment or invoke a safety tool, you could approach them outside the game and just check in and make sure they're okay. It could be that they're just roleplaying, or that they didn't feel comfortable interrupting the game to voice a concern. If you don't want to call them out specifically, you can send an email to everyone inviting them to reach out to you privately if they have anything they want to talk about.

I hope every DM makes it a habit to talk to their players. Until we chat again, keep those dice a-rolling.

[audarcy]

The fundamental miscommunication in this post is about dialogue tags and, to some extent, the overuse of these verbs as dialogue tags.

While OP worded it poorly (and some of their examples aren't viable), I think a lot of amateur writers do latch onto that list of verbs and misuse them as dialogue tags. It's different than just using these verbs on their own. Let's look at how I often see these words used in amateur writing.

1) Choked: many amateur writers use this as the go-to to express shock or surprise. "We're having a baby!" she shrieked*. "What?!" he choked. It's fine in isolation, but this a sort of "stock reaction" that can, if misused, make characters feel cartoonish. It's like one step below a comedy spit-take.

2) Hiss: this one is probably their weakest example. A hiss is in fact widely understood to be a tone of voice. It's a tone of voice people use. My only word of advice is to be mindful of when and why someone would use that tone of voice. To me, a "hiss" is either for Very Intimate (one on one and emotionally charged) scenes and/or in sitiations where the speaker doesn't want to be overheard. Don't escalate a "said" to a "hissed" unless you really mean it.

3) Snarl: gonna be honest I dislike this word but I'll give it a fair shake. Snarl evokes that upper-lip-quirked-up angry face and growly voice people like to see on Bad Boys, so this verb gets its mileage in a, uh, certain kind of writing. This is another case of "write it like you mean it." Using this just because it takes the place of a "said" in the middle of any ole conversation won't do. Yknow, a whole "'You're mine, and I'll never let you forget that,' he snarled" works in the werewolf sex scene, but maybe if the conversation goes, like, "Where did you grow up?" "Kansas," he snarled, that's maybe a sign you're getting a little too preoccupied with the movement of his lips.

4) Shriek: as OP put it, 99% of the time, this is not the word you want. I can only assume this is because their reading catalogue is 99% amateur writing. But as in my example above, maaaaany writers think "shriek" can be substituted for "yell" or "scream" with no consequences. Even phrex's weirdly gendered explanation also acknowledges that shriek's use cases are quite limited. Just because a character is raising their voice, that does not a shriek make. Shrieks are Deeply Unpleasant--as op said, they evoke a banshee and/or screaming baby. A poorly-used shriek can literally make me wince. And if you find yourself using "shriek" a lot for one particular character, maybe check yourself that you aren't turning that character into a screaming hysterical caricature. Especially keeping in mind how this word is effeminately gendered.

5) Sneer: a sneer is a facial expression. "'Do it now,' he sneered" is bad writing. If I was your editor, I would rewrite the dialogue as "He sneered. 'Do it now.'" Listen, I get that language can be used figuratively, but reading the former, all I picture is him saying the dialogue and making that face at the same time. Did he sneer the words? No. If a character is speaking while also performing an action, that action can be a separate sentence paired with the dialogue, NOT a dialogue tag. Dialogue does not always need a tag. Dialogue certainly does not always need a shiny glossy fancy verb tag.

The biggest rookie mistake in writing dialogue, period, is putting a tag on every. Single. Line. Of dialogue. And OP's gripes stem from that problem, though they could only articulate it through the talking point of the "said vs the thesaurus of dialogue tags" discourse. But listen, action and dialogue are separate. Dialogue tags only serve to inform the reader 1) who said the dialogue 2) MAYBE how it was delivered. Dialogue tags do not have to be load-bearing! Sure, you can squeeze your figurative and descriptive language in there, but you have to cut it down so badly for it to fit! Facial expressions can be described outside of dialogue tags. High-intensity moments where you're most justified amplifying tone and action are the moments you want to lavish with the most attention, not squeeze all of it into a dialogue tag! Tags are supposed to be a little landing pad for dialogue, not your hotbeds of creative figurative language use. Amateur writers pull from a common pool of the same familiar verbs (a tendency thats reinforced in spaces like fanfic where a lot of amateur writers are reading other ameteur writing and learning from it), and those verbs can turn into the Wilhelm screams of writing. Exaggerated stock reactions that feel cartoonish. Use your verbs carefully--just because they CAN be used well, that doesn't mean they have the green light for you to use them whenever.

And the piece of advice I give every writer for dialogue tags is this: rewrite the sentence into its basic subject-verb construction to check that it works. Dialogue is, after all, just the subject of the sentence when written with tags.

"[The words]," he said.

He said [the words.] Sounds good!

"[The words]," he grinned.

He grinned [the words]. What?

5 things your character can't do while speaking

Choke. Just think about it, seriously. Think about what choking is and imagine speaking while it’s happening. That would fuckin’ hurt, man.

Hiss. Look, it’s just not possible, okay? No matter how “evil” you want your character to seem.

Snarl. Animals snarls. The Beast from Beauty and the Beast snarls. The Hulk snarls. You know who doesn’t snarl? PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE SPEAKING.

Shriek. Come on, 99% of the time, “shriek” is not the word you want.Let’s face it: if you put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, your reader gets the picture. Don’t bring to mind banshees and screaming toddlers.

Sneer. I’m not even going to bother explaining this one. “SNEER” ISN’T EVEN A SOUND.

[breelandwalker]

So even tho I practice, and have deities, I'm still super nervous about witchcraft...

A. Being because Im very logic an science based and I worry that it messes with my craft

And b

Being on witchblr and trying to take advice has left me scared of doing spells or anything much further because I'm scared of doing it wrong and something bad happening, or saying something and upsetting someone so I've blocked myself into a part of my craft and can't dig myself out... Any advice?

LOTS.

Witchcraft has a lot of moving parts and it's easy to become overwhelmed or anxious about how to proceed, the more so when social media presents you with conflicting or confusing information, or when you have trouble getting past that skepticism and imposter syndrome we've all struggled with at one point or another.

The good news is that science, skepticism, and critical thinking have a place in witchcraft. It's good that you're keeping your feet on the ground as you explore and there is a whole community of skeptical, science-minded witches out there treading that same path. I have a strong inclination toward science myself and it's never affected my ability to cast spells or believe in what I'm doing. Science and magic are no more opposed to each other than science and religion - each illuminates the other.

The better news is that spells fail every bit as often as they succeed and 99 times out of 100, the result is...nothing. It just doesn't work. Nothing explodes, nothing backfires, the sky doesn't fall on your head. There's just a lack of a result and a cosmic Better Luck Next Time. And it's not only acceptable, it's EXPECTED. You should expect that some spells will fail or not work the way you thought they would as you hone your craft. It's all part of the learning process, and failure is just as important a lesson as success.

You don't have to share all the finer points of your craft or your workings with the wider community, so don't worry that your every move is being judged because it's not. If you're not sure that your online friends would understand or condone a particular working, don't share it with them. If you don't feel like having to explain yourself, then don't. And if you do say something in conversation that turns out to be incorrect or a poor take and someone corrects you, learn from that and change what you're doing if necessary. (Also, the block button is the best banishing spell there is if somebody decides to be nasty for no reason.)

Start with what you know, then look for the next fork in the path. If there's something you've been meaning to try, begin by learning about it. If it resonates, try it. If it doesn't, choose something else. You're allowed to be curious and to research. In fact, it's encouraged. You don't have to try every single thing you read about; sometimes it's enough to just go, "Huh, that's interesting," and move on to the next thing.

Hope this helps!

[isabeljkim]

Short Story Submissions Guide for Idiots

The short fiction submissions game is confusing as hell when you first get into it…or at least, it was super confusing to me circa 2.5 years ago. I realized pretty quickly that the question wasn’t even “How do I get published?” but “Where do you go to get published?” and “How does anyone get published when the acceptance % rates are so low?” and “Where is everyone getting their information about how to do this?”

The answer is through googling. And twitter. And asking established writer friends. And guides that writers put together, like this one. There are others out there, and they’re probably better - do some searching, find out what works for you. But maybe this is a good starting point.

That’s a lot of opening to say this post is a fairly broad, hopefully comprehensive, slightly messy overview to “How to submit short stories (idiot edition),” which is hopefully helpful for people who want to break into the pro sff short story market. Skip to the end if you want tips, read from the beginning if you want a process guide.

This is not for: anyone who knows what they’re doing. This is for idiots only, guys . This is also not for people who want to submit to exclusively literary magazines, this is for genre [science fiction, fantasy, horror, speculative fiction broadly] only. Literary fiction submissions (and poetry, of any genre) aren’t something I’m well versed in.

My credentials: I girlbossed hard enough at submissions to get some pro sales (Check out my website for my three published things at Clarkesworld, Khoreo, and Sub-Q, gotta self plug, my other stuff is coming out hopefully soon at Lightspeed, Fantasy, Cast of Wonders, BCS, not to humblebrag). I started submitting seriously and actually selling stuff about in 2019ish, so I’m fairly new to the game so my process is very up to date. Also I’m a lawyer. That is irrelevant to today’s conversation but it’s new and exciting information for me and I’m very proud of myself so you get to know about that.

Disclaimers: This guide just has my submission process, and there are probably more efficient ones out there (and if you have suggestions dm me on twitter about it!). The style of this guide is going to be colloquial as fuck because if you want my good words you have to pay my billable hours (did I mention the lawyer thing). I can’t say that this is “wow! one true method for getting published!” because at the end of the day getting published is really only about the strength of your story and how much it resonates with a particular editor and market and whether Mercury is in retrograde.

But! There’s still a bunch of practical technical shit that’s helpful to know. So here’s the comprehensive, quick and dirty overview from the top:

1. Write a story

In some ways this first step is the hardest part, but not the focus of our exercise today. Good luck have fun don’t die write that funky music. Also edit that funky music. Pro tip: a “short story” is generally considered somewhere between 1k and 6k words, with anything lower than 1k generally being considered “flash fiction” and anything in the 10k and above being a novelette, novella, etc. Different markets will have different word limit restrictions - some only accept flash, some only accept short stories, some accept all of the above AND novellettes, etc. If you want to tailor your submission to a market, skip ahead to steps 3 and 6 and check out the guidelines before writing. My advice is that about 3-4k is a good, marketable length, but also, fuck marketability.

2. Format the story

Now we start caring about marketability. 99% of markets will want Shunn Manuscript Format (Modern). Format your story accordingly. This is the first pass at formatting you want to do - later you’ll want to format to the specific market you’re sending it to (Some markets want anonymity, etc.)

3. Pick the markets that you’re interested in

Maybe you have markets in mind, because you read a lot of short fiction. Maybe you have no fucking idea where to start. Well if you’re in the latter camp, you might want to join the former camp, but I’ll give you the cheat codes first: the first two places you probably want to look are a) The Submission Grinder and b) Ralan. Both websites list the currently open markets, and the Submission Grinder has a lot of really great submission tracking features. Ralan looks like it’s from the 90s but it’s regularly updated. If you have five dollars to toss every month, Duotrope has similar features to the Submission Grinder and lists literary markets and interviews with some editors as well. (Disclaimer: I pay for Duotrope, but I find the Submission Grinder far better).

Now that you have a list of all the places, you’re going to want to narrow that down.

Four considerations to make:

Prestige of the market: There are multiple tiers of market. Pro markets are those paying at least the SFWA rate, (8c a word currently) and who doesn’t like to get paid more? Furthermore, pro markets generally have larger readerships, and more eyes on your thing = better. And, a lot of the pro markets have Big Fancy Award winners in their pages, and it’d be pretty fun and sexy to share a TOC with one of them, right? In my opinion, there’s no point submitting to token or semipro markets first (unless theres a really specific market you want to get published in! follow your dreams!) - aim high bitches. (NOTE: I did this and it worked out pretty alright for me, but it took me longer to get published because of that, I think). The downside to the really prestigious markets is that they receive a lot of submissions - check on submission grinder and peep those sub 1% acceptance rates. Furthermore, there’s not a ton of pro markets. Get ready for rejections, and lots of them!

Submission opening windows If a market is open for a month once a year, you might want to prioritize it over a market that is open year round. This is the sort of thing you need to check individual markets websites for. For example - Lightspeed opens like once a year. Clarkesworld is open basically all the time.

Whether your story is a good fit for a particular market This is probably the most important point. At the highest level, don’t send horror to markets that say they don’t take horror, etc. On a lower level, you should read the magazines you’re submitting to and try and get a sense of what sort of stuff they publish, and evaluate how close your story is to what they’ve got. That being said - take a reasonable amount of stock in this, but you should send everything everywhere (within reason)…this will just help you decide order of operations. Furthermore, read the magazine’s submission guidelines, because they’ll usually list their likes, dislikes, and specific considerations.

Submission turnarounds. Some places take three months to get back to you with a rejection. Some places take two days. My best advice is to check the Submission Grinder for this, because that sure is a time difference, and that’ll change your timeline substantially.

4.Order of operations

Rank your now narrowed list of markets, based on the prior considerations or any other considerations you have. This is the point at which I recommend creating a spreadsheet to keep track of markets, submission dates, and responses. My spreadsheet is called “REJECTIONQUEST 2K20” despite it being the end of 2021 and also not made in 2020.

(If anyone wants a longer entry about my submission tetris approach, I’d be happy to write a post, but this is hella long already). Note: Let’s say you get rejected from everywhere you wanted to send it to. Just expand your list - my recommendation of curtailing the list comes from the fact that you have to start somewhere, and you might as well start at the combination of prestige and likelihood of publication - but different writers have different approaches.

5. Write a cover letter.

A cover letter is usually copy and pasted into the text entry part of the online submissions portal. Keep it short and simple, no need to get fancy. Your cover letter is the least important part of your submission. A lot of places won’t even look at it before reading your submission. It should look something like below:

[Greeting],

Body paragraph that lists a) story name, genre, and word count, b) relevant life experience (If you’re writing hard science fiction about physics and you’re a physicist… probably say that); c) relevant publications (three most relevant is a good number, if you don’t have any don’t worry, it’s not going to hurt your submission - it doesn’t matter that much.)

Thank you,

Your Name Here.

6. Submit!

BUT WAIT. First read the guidelines of the market you’re sending to, AGAIN. Then modify your formatted story to fit their guidelines. Anonymize, do specific formatting, save as a .doc rather than a .docx, then go ahead and shoot your shot.  

Nearly all markets have online submissions portals now and require digital submission. There will be a fairly obvious link on the market’s “submission” page on their website. A lot of places use Moksha, or sometimes Submittable. 

Note: Make sure the market got your submission - most places will send you an automatic notification of receipt.

Note: Let’s talk about simultaneous submissions for a bit. So, a simultaneous submission is when you send a story to multiple markets at the same time. Some markets are okay with this. Most of them aren’t. (This differs from literary markets, which are pretty much mostly simsubs). Is it worth simultaneously submitting despite the guidelines? Will doing so blacklist you? I’m going to give the controversial opinion of “It’s situational.” I think if it’s your first time submitting anything, you can probably get away with it. So if you want to roll the dice, that’s a you decision. But the minute you get anything other than a form rejection, abort mission. The real risk in simulsubs is that you damage relationships with editors by being uncool about their guidelines, and for that to be a risk, you have to be on their radar. Use your best judgement. I personally find simsubs that aren’t explicitly allowed by a market to be too stressful to do.

7. Receive feedback! Rejections, acceptances, rewrites, etc.

The feedback is going to range from form rejections to acceptances. Unless you’re fantastically talented and lucky, you’re going to be getting more of the former than the latter. Rejectomancy, or the scrutinization of rejections for signs and portents of how much an editor liked it, is a whole slightly suspect art practiced by short story writers. Jokes aside, it’s a good idea to keep track of whether you’re getting mostly form rejections, higher tier form rejections, or personal rejections. 

A “form rejection” is one that is copy and pasted to the majority of the slush pile, and usually just indicates something along the lines of “nope! not for us!” politely. A “higher tier form rejection” is one that comes from a managing/associate/etc editor or editor-in-chief and indicates that the story got closer to publication or they liked it in some way, and therefore is more in line with the work that the magazine wants to publish. A “personal rejection” is a personalized rejection that details specifically what worked and what didn’t, most of the time. Each magazine has norms for how many of each they send, or what their stock phrasing is. Rejection Wiki is somewhat out of date, but has a large database of examples. 

Some magazines only give out personals to a small fraction of the slush pile, and it’s always a lovely silver lining to receive some useful feedback or learn what worked in a story. Furthermore, keeping track of rejections can track progress, and it’s cool to see over time that youe’ve gone from all forms, to mostly higher tier forms and personals. Don’t get discouraged (yeah, easier said than done, I know. I could write a whole other post on that topic.).

Other things you might receive are “hold notices” and “rewrite requests.” Many magazines send out hold notices when the story passes the first tier of slush readers and is pushed up to the editor. This indicates that your story is a tonal fit for the magazine, and also, it’s getting closer to hypothetical publication. This also indicates usually that it will take fucking forever to get back to you if it’s a rejection or an acceptance, but that’s the price you pay. A “rewrite request” is an interesting, fairly idiosyncratic response - high level, the editor wants you to rewrite a portion and resubmit it, or they’re accepting with the caveat that you need to change something. These are varied enough from market to market that I don’t have useful info for them as a whole. 

Note: A healthy way to think about submissions is as not the definite chance to be published, but the sure outcome of receiving feedback. Treat rejections with advice in them as your own personal writer’s workshop. What I learned from my early rejections was that my endings needed a lot of work and I had a tendency to trail off, and incorporating the advice into my work led to later acceptances.

Note: DO NOT respond to a rejection letter. JUST DON’T. The ONLY exception is if you get a rewrite request.

If you do receive an acceptance, CONGRATULATIONS !! I have no advice for you now because most editors have different acceptance/contract signing/payment protocols, from here on out it gets pretty idiosyncratic.

And that’s all I’ve got, drop me a line on twitter if you want me to elaborate on any of this. And...

Good luck ! 

Grab bag advice

1. Have multiple stories out at different markets. Like. A lot of stories. Have 5+ stories out on submission at once, all at different markets. Yes that’s a lot. No not all of them will probably get published. But writing more will make you a better writer, and it effectively multiplies your chances at publication. This is why having a spreadsheet is useful, because it’ll help you track what is where, and for how long. (Or you can use the Submission Grinder for this, but I personally don’t because I’m attached to my horrible gdrive spreadsheet)

Note: I don’t always follow my own advice, I usually have 3 stories or less on submission at once, because I sure do have a day job)

2. Follow markets on twitter. Why is everyone in the writing world on twitter? I have no idea. But markets will often announce upcoming submission windows, guest editors, and similar things on twitter. Following a bunch of markets on twitter is often easier than manually checking each site.

3. The odds of publication look bad on paper, but in reality, are probably better than you think they are, as long as you can write a coherent narrative. A lot of the stuff in the slush pile is…questionable quality. Best thing you can do is focus on your writing! Sorry, that’s boring advice, I know.

[violetasteracademic]

Early Feysand and Nessian: I can't stay away.

Early E/Lucien:

Most up to date E/lucien:

The man CAN stay away and IS staying away.

For those who say it's a lose lose situation (i.e. if he stays away from her he doesn't want her and if he doesn't stay away he's a possessive entitled asshole) you are exactly right. It IS a lose lose. Because that's exactly how it is written. Elain and Lucien don't like each other, and there is no draw, even with the mating bond, pulling them together.

That's because not all mated pairs are a soul match. Call Feyre unreliable all you want, but the "unreliable narrator" discussions have gotten so out of hand in this fandom. Sometimes the narrator is intentionally misunderstanding situations, yes, but sometimes the narrator is just passing information.

Feyre realizing her and Rhys are so special together after seeing Azriel and Elain together, seeing how much better of a fit they would be and yet were not mated, is passing along of information.

This passage is not about Feyre's reliability as a narrator. This is introducing what happens when the wrong people are paired together (i.e. Elain and L/ucien) and how all of that would work out. From here on out, we see Elain and L/ucien function completely differently from the other mates.

Feyre and Rhys had their plot and proximity literally tied together through a physical bargain before their romance book.

Nessian had kissed and been willing to die together before their romance book.

Elain and L/ucien are written as being apart, and very much wanting it that way for both parties.

The proximity literally was forced between Feysand and Nessian. Elain and L/ucien have freely moved on with their lives.

Elain is not going to go back to the human lands to live in a house gifted to her unwanted mate by her ex fiance's dad to hang out with his two best friends, where she has described all the human women as fake and delighting in their downfall, where she hopes the rules burn in hell, where she has first hand knowledge of the bigotry against Fae and the weapons designed to kill them.

She is not going to move to the Spring Court. L/luciens enchanted gloves already represent that. Elain shocking the groundskeepers of the Archeron manor by getting out in the garden when she wasn't supposed to proves that. She doesn't want to be surrounded by flowers. She wants to labor with her own hands and feel the results of her work. The Spring Court does not require her laboring of the earth. Now another court, one that must be nurtured and attended to (Dusk) does fit with her.

Nesta and Cassian were tied together in ACOWAR. They kissed. They prepared to die together. They agreed to find each other in the next life.

Rhys and Feyre were tied together in ACOTAR. They were physically bound together. Rhys kept her alive. He helped her through each task. He plotted Amarantha's death with her.

And then we have this:

Now, we as the reader already know Nesta doesn't hate Cassian. We already know she kissed him and was willing to die with him. So this wasn't even necessary. But Cassian doesn't know that, so Feyre helps him understand her sister's mind a little better.

Can you imagine Feyre saying to L/ucien, if he goes to Feyre for advice: Believe me, L/ucien. I understand my sister. I understand her behavior. You have never made her uncomfortable. She actually really cares for you, even if she doesn't act that way.

If you answer yes to that question, I fear we are so off course I don't even know what else to say. We have only read of Elain's discomfort around L/ucien. We have only read of her shrinking into herself and disappearing. We have only read of her silently suffering through receiving unwanted gifts. We have only seen everyone around watching how uncomfortable they are around each other.

We have only read of her wanting Azriel.

It's totally cool if you want to ship E/Lucien. Although I'm 99% confident in my ship, of course there's a chance I'm wrong because I'm not the author. But it's wild to compare them to Nessian and Feysand.

Can we all just agree that no matter the outcome, the dynamic between Elain and L/ucien and Azriel is completely unique and not yet tackled by SJM? Can we not agree that Elain's story is completely individual and not comparable at all to her sisters? Can we not agree that she was the only sister who had a mating bond snap with someone she was not already in love with?

This should be EXCITING! It's exciting to me, anyways. I'm so looking forward to Elain's story.

*takes a deep breathe because people are still comparing e/ucien to early Feysand and Nessian even though they have zero passion, zero chemistry, and zero banter*

[anakinskywalkerog]

this isn’t really an ask, more like a “what should i do?”.

so there’s this guy in my class and he looks like hayden, and i have the biggest crush on him. not because he looks like hayden but because he’s smart, funny, and loves star wars too.

after this school year we will probably never see eachother again (we’re graduating) and i really don’t want that, so from someone that hasn’t been in a relationship before and is terrible at flirting, what should i do?

(we’ve talked a lot this year, i’m not sure if it’s flirting or just two friends talking tho)

-🫶

oh boy anon do i have some PASSIONATE advice for you

something i learned way too late in my life is that rejection is WAY overrated. rejection literally does not matter. getting rejected is such a temporary sting—it is not a long lasting feeling and it has no power over you unless you let it. imagine an actor going to a million auditions and getting rejected 99% of the time: this is how you should be living your life. failure or rejection or whatever is just information. it can’t hurt you. rejection is so totally normal and not at all scary. you know what is scary? wondering your whole life if you missed out on an important relationship with someone you truly cared about just because you didn’t say anything.

when i was in high school there was a boy that i had the HUGEST crush on for years. i was terrified every time we even talked lol so i definitely never told him how i felt but then it kind of stayed on my mind for years after that. i wish, now, looking back, that i had said something. because even if he’d rejected me (as he probably would have) at least i would have spoken my truth. it would have made it easier to move on from him.

my advice to you would be to tell him how you feel in a very cool, casual, mature, and adult way. pull a Henry (if you’ve been reading my fic) and keep it simple—the next time you’re alone with him, just say something like “hey, i just want you to know that i really admire you, and i’ve had a crush on you forever. this doesn’t need to change our friendship, but i just wanted you to know, that’s how i feel”. if you absolutely cannot stomach saying this to him in person, say it in a text. idk. just say something. it can be very chill. if you don’t, you might always wonder what would have happened.

awkwardness can’t hurt you. rejection can’t actually hurt you either—his opinion of you doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things. you get to decide who you are and whether or not you like yourself. his judgement of you literally doesn’t matter. what matters here is that you are experiencing one of the best feelings—which is a reflection of how AWESOME you are—and you should share that feeling with the universe. even if he does reject you or let you down easy, he will probably remember that you admired him. everyone likes to know that they are admired

feel free to ask my advice anytime 🥰 i love you. you can do it!!! and even if it goes poorly, later on in life you’ll barely remember ✨✨✨✨ rooting for you

[starfast]

So you want to write an autistic character

So I watched the trailer for Sia’s movie just to see if it really was that bad. Spoiler alert: Yes it is. It made me feel like Sia was making fun of me for two and a half minutes. But it also made me really fucking angry because there’s not autism representation to begin with, and most of what we do have isn’t really that great, which is what drove me to make this post. I don’t have many followers so even if like 3 people see this, then at least that’s 3 people who have seen this.  

What would I like to see less of

Literally incapable of detecting sarcasm: “Wait,” you say, “But Starfast, there are autistic people out there who are like this!” Sure, there might be, but for me personally detecting sarcasm is a lot less difficult than literally every autistic character has made it out to be. Yes, there are times where it goes right over my head but those times are usually when there’s not enough context for me to figure out whether the person is being sarcastic or not. Some of us actually are able to tell when you’re being sarcastic, it usually depends on context.

The “Sheldon Cooper”:  Autism is really diverse and yet I feel like 99% of autistic characters are basically all just carbon copies of Sheldon Cooper from BBT. They’re maybe overly formal, blunt, or have a hard time picking up social cues. And while these are all things that are commonly associated with autism (although this type of character rarely shows any major downsides to having autism, more on that later), like I said earlier, autism is different for everyone. Not all of us are going to feel represented by this type of character. Honestly I don’t even relate to a lot of autistic characters because they just keep reusing the same autistic stock characters and that’s really disheartening to me. It’s almost like they’re not making autistic characters for autistic people.

The Burden: This probably doesn’t need to be explained that much but it was the one thing that really pissed me off about S**’s movie. In the trailer, I really got the very distinct impression that the older sister saw Music as a burden. Her life was just oh so difficult because she had this autistic sister. No one wants to be thought of that way. And idk if you neurotypicals know this but autistic people have feelings and we hear it loud and clear when you say these kinds of things and it hurts. 

Using autism as a punchline: I think it’s fine to have an autistic character to provide comic relief, BUT! if your comic relief involves laughing at an autistic character’s very autistic behaviour then you’re doing it wrong. This kind of goes back to my first point- the reason why I hate seeing the “incapable of detecting sarcasm” character is because it’s almost exclusively played for laughs. Please stop making fun of us. 

What would I like to see more of

Diversity: I feel like this doesn’t really need much explaining. Autism can affect anyone regardless of age, race, gender, sexuality, etc. And yet most autistic characters I’ve encountered are straight white guys. Let’s see more girls, more POCs, more LGBT+ who are autistic. 

Obvious drawbacks/struggles: When I talked about the Sheldon Cooper-type character I mentioned that this type of character doesn’t really seem to face many challenges that are directly related to autism. What I mean by this is that sometimes they’ll maybe just miss the odd social cue and it’s kinda embarrassing but it rarely gets worse than that. An autistic character is going to face challenges that a neurotypical won’t ever have to deal with and if you don’t acknowledge that then you’re not really properly portraying an autistic character. Show more autistic characters struggling to make friends, having meltdowns or experiencing sensory overload, having a hard time articulating themselves. The list goes on, honestly. 

Actually saying it: Have you ever seen it where there’s a certain character and a bunch of people go “hey, that character seems like they could be [insert literally any minority] and then the creator goes “Oh, yeah that’s totally what I intended!” I personally don’t really like this, because it feels kind of disingenuous. If you’re going to write an autistic character, it would be nice to have that brought up within the story. Autism isn’t a dirty word, you’re allowed to say it. The only exception I can think of would be if you’re writing a historical fiction or some other setting where autism hasn’t been recognized but most examples I can think of don’t fall into that category whoop there it is. 

Literally just anything that isn’t a stereotype. This seems to be setting the bar pretty low, but it still needs to be said. Autism looks different for everyone and just because someone doesn’t fit the mold for a stereotypical autistic person doesn’t mean they’re not autistic. No one wants to be represented by a stereotype. 

“I’m not autistic but I want to write an autistic character. Can I do that?” 

I can’t speak for the entire autistic community when I answer this but my opinion is yes, it’s ok provided that you’re being respectful and doing research beyond reading symptoms off of WebMD. That being said, here’s my final advice: 

Listen and talk to autistic people: If you’re not listening to the group you’re trying to represent then you’re not doing a good job. There are lots of people here out there who would be willing to answer your questions or be a sensitivity reader. There’s a lot of people here on tumblr who are willing to answer your questions (you can even ask me, but I’m just one person and I don’t have all the answers. I’d recommend talking to multiple people). 

Autism Speaks is not your friend: There’s been a lot of talk about why this organization sucks, but it mostly boils down to trying to end autism and not actually helping us. So make sure you’re steering clear of them while you’re doing your research. 

Reddit and Quora are actually great resources: Reason being is that these kinds of sites will give you lots of first hand information about being autistic, and that’s the best kind of information to have, usually. Most sites will just list symptoms, but the right reddit/quora thread will provide more insight about how these symptoms affect their daily life. Additionally, you’ll have multiple people offering their own views and since autism is so different for everyone it’s good to have more than one person’s opinion (psst... this tip works for writing other minority characters too!) 

[thesoundofanicefall]

Hello, I'm Sebastian. Again :))

Ever since I started reading manga and watching OnS anime I had a lot of questions but couldn't find the answers, sometimes I forgot what I was going to ask, but now I found you with your interesting theories. Thank you very much!

The question I want to ask you today is a thought that popped into my head right after I read chapter 107:

_Was what Guren and the others were doing already predicted by the First?

_How does Guren intend to resurrect all of humanity?

My wording is not good, so I may be a bit rambling, hope you still understand. Starting from 8 years ago, to revive 7 human lives (5 friends and 2 strangers as far as I remember) the price Guren had to pay was all human lives on the planet, now he say they want to resurrect all of humanity, so what's the price to pay for that? I wonder if Guren has thought about that. Also, in chapter 99 Guren suddenly appeared and said "I'm going to resurrect all of humanity" without saying how to do it, and everyone there believed and listened according to Guren's vague plan (which can be understood as now Yuu, Kimizuki, Yoichi and the others are all at a dead end and they have no hope but what Guren said). Okay let's say they turn Mika into Yuu's demon and then defeat Shikama Doji, what about after that? Nobody mentioned this... That's the first thing.

Now it's about Shikama Doji (Shika Madu), after reading chapter 107 it makes me wonder if Shika Madu knows the path of Guren and the others? I don't know when it started, but maybe from chapter 92 when Ferid said "every thing today is still dancing on the palm of the First's hand", I had doubts about this. And after chapter 107 when Shika Madu says "it's too soon for you to become Yuu'demon." (???) I mean, did the First intend to turn Mika into Yuu's demon from the start? And is it what Guren, Yuu and the others have been doing (Rigr Stafford betrayal, or letting himself be sealed again in chapters 85 and 86, Mika turning into a demon,...). Honestly after reading chapter 107 I feel like Guren and the others were led by Shika Madu in the first place. But now I don't know how to explain it more clearly so I'll stop here.

Thank you for reading this far. If you think my sentences are weird, it's because I'm not good at expressing myself and I used GG translate. Hope to receive your reply. Wish you have a good day.

Hello again Sebas chan! Sorry for the late response I was super busy yesterday and all so hope you'll understand this.

Ahhh! Glad you enjoyed my little blog dear and thanks for your trust to ask them of me!

So in order to answer your questions let me to start like this first:

1- Well we can say a part of what they were doing (like Mika turning to a demon) was also what Shikama wanted too eventually but not all of them as we saw how on 99 he was really scared of Shinoa and the gang all plus that his plan was about to destroy too

2- The fact is that we still know nothing about how and when exactly the resurrection is going to happen dear and so as for now we have no complete information then I generally advice everyone, like I was doing before, that without any exact information do not judge about it.

We totally don't know if these are other methods to do the resurrection other than the one 8 years ago (and sounds like there is other methods with what we saw on chapter 106 and what Noya said about that corpse resurrection) and so if there is the punishment may be different or even if there would be punishments in general or the fact that if Saito, Guren and Mahiru could find a way to stop the supposed punishment and all so you see now? We totally know nothing of this resurrection part of the plan so we better not to judge it and just patiently wait for more information first dear.

and finally to answer your 3rd question dear, I wrote a special theory about it long ago that I just share its link here again and refer you to that post to read as I really don't feel like to write all those words again hope you'll understand!

Here the link for that referred post which is the answer of your 3rd question fully:

So by all of these hope I could give you proper answers and you are satisfied by them too! And as I said before too don't worry about the languages or whatever English is not my first language too so there's no worries at all dear!

Have a nice day too thanks ^^

[bakurapika]

i used plume. scam or no?

hey because i saw a post about it recently, i’m going to talk about my experiences with plume. good, bad, ugly. 

long post below and i don’t want to risk using the read-mores on tumblr, sorry.

for context, if you don’t know, plume is a medical group that offers hormone therapy in many states across the US. instead of charging for visits or services, plume charges $99 per month as a membership fee. everything is included in that fee except for the medication itself (which you have to buy from a pharmacy as normal). I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice.

i joined in july 2021 and recently cancelled due to not being able to afford the $99/month price tag. here are some of the ups and downs.

plume is app-only, something I didn’t entirely realize when signing up. It uses “spruce” which is a medical-management app. They have an email support team but... basically, don’t bother. they are not very responsive and may ignore emails. however, they do not ignore messages sent in the app. “doesn’t this make it impossible to save and exchange medical documentation?” you might ask. the answer is yes! the app also doesn’t allow normal screenshots. there is a web version of the app (allowing screenshots, screen readers, etc) but I had to talk to a spruce dev to find out about this. i’m an oldie who can’t type on my phone so i found the app relatively inaccessible.  no idea if it works with screen readers

however, even though I cancelled, I do still have full access to the app for timestamps, etc., so I am referencing that for this post

my first appointment was scheduled when I joined. I agreed to pay $99 upfront for a consultation, which would either pay for my first month of membership (if I joined) or pay for the visit itself only (if I didn’t join). I wasn’t sure whether I wanted hormone therapy at this point or not. I had to do normal new-patient paperwork (consent to telehealth, privacy policy, medical history etc). the app has an automated chat system that will say things like “Great, now please tell me if you agree” and you click yes or no. It’s very user friendly. 

Part of what the Plume membership pays for is a blood test that they are (seemingly legally) required to do every 3 months. They work through Quest laboratories although there may be alternatives if you don’t have a Quest nearby. 

For any new message you send on Plume, the chatbot will ask if your urgent is urgent (needs a response within 2 days) or non-urgent. This seemed to work fine with timely results. 

When I signed up, I told them that my legal name was in the process of changing. Unfortunately, all blood work was ordered under my previous name which no longer matches my ID. This caused a problem the first time I went to get a test because they couldn’t find my information. Quest also does not recognize any gender except male/female. My technician was trans-friendly but the blood test system may not be gender affirming. Plume warns you about some of this ahead of time but again, they didn’t recognize that my legal name did actually change to my preferred name.

When starting Plume, I was required to get a blood pressure test done. At the time, COVID restricted my access and I had to get blood pressure taken at a free machine in a grocery store, which wasn’t very accurate.

My provider (a nurse practitioner) got back to me the day after I signed up and we were able to call for more than an hour, which is an unusually fast turnaround. The NP was polite, explained things well, answered my questions, and in general was a good medical provider. 

When I was prescribed testosterone, we went over my options, including the cost of medications and what coupon sites to use to minimize the expense for any prescriptions. (Doctors/providers sometimes will talk about this to me but Plume was more knowledgable and helpful than most.) In my case, I was able to use androgel instead of testosterone injection because Walgreens has a coupon on GoodRx that lowers the price to around $35/month instead of $300+. The pharmacy kept trying to charge my insurance instead, but I have a lot of prescriptions and can tell you that this is not an unusual problem. You need to talk to a pharmacist and explain that you’re using a coupon and not health insurance. The price will change at the register.

For follow-up billing questions, I tried to email with no luck - as said, they only really respond on the app. Unfortunately, your message will go to whatever random staff is working at the time, so it’s hard to keep a single conversation - you ask A a question, get an answer from B, ask a follow-up question, and now you’re talking to C.

When asking about medical side-effects and medication interaction, I got answers right away and got same-day responses from my provider.

My billing issue, by the way, is that I planned to pay for plume with my fsa account (a medical-only savings account through my employer). I was getting denied. Long story short, my fsa people thought that plume was a subscription service like a gym membership. it’s actually, technically, a form of concierge medicine. When I discovered this and explained it to my fsa company, they asked for screenshots from the app to prove that I had used it for medical services in the last 30 days. not all fsa companies cover concierge medicine and plume did not understand the medical billing jargon. they thought my fsa company was my insurance company and that i’d been denied service despite my explanations to the contrary. they were not able to help except by providing my billing statements (which, side note, most medical providers have easily available, but I couldn’t access them without a staff member directly sending me the file). my fsa reimbursed me for the $99 each month once we figured this out.

otherwise, i had no issues until august, when I again got a same-day response from my provider about my medical questions. I was able to have a 15 minute call with the provider the next day.

when my labs were done in september, i asked a question and got a same-day response with a more in-depth answer from my provider the next day.

In general, things went well. for unrelated reasons, i lost my fsa and i can’t afford plume anymore, and I hadn’t been using my testosterone due to some other unrelated circumstances, so I decided to cancel in december. I noticed that I had put in a refill request in november and it hadn’t ever been filled, meaning that plume dropped the ball. when I requested to cancel plume, I also asked for my december membership fee of $99 to be refunded back to me since I hadn’t gotten any services for more than a month.

I had to explain this situation several times with no answer but was eventually given the refund despite plume saying they had no record of me asking for the refill request. this was not legally required and was a gesture of goodwill. 

after cancelling, I was told that I would be given a one-time extension for two months’ worth of HRT refills. this is obviously a system to prevent people from joining plume for a month, quitting, and joining again when they run out of meds. any other active refills would be cancelled after two months, and if I re-joined and canceled again, they would immediately cancel any remaining refills. this is not standard practice and i consider it unethical. 

to be fair, testosterone is a controlled substance (schedule 3). but for comparison’s sake, I used to live in Illinois and was prescribed ambien, a highly controlled substance (schedule 4, which is much more abusable and regulated than schedule 3). After moving out of state, my psychiatrist kept sending refills for me to my new state until I could afford to find a new provider. Sometimes providers will ask for a visit (phone visit is usually ok depending on circumstances) to meet with me and show that I’m not abusing the medication, but doctors do not usually try to “cut off” your meds to demand more money from you. again, i assume that’s because of plume’s business model, but that doesn’t make it right. 

plume has a program for people who can’t afford it to get free/discounted care, but my understanding is that the program is in high demand and without many sponsors. when I quit for financial reasons, they didn’t even bother telling me to apply for it lol

so, summary. 

good stuff: user friendly app, very responsive, good provider, very quick access to quality medical care, understands resources for prescriptions, gave me a refund as a goodwill gesture, may be paid for 100% by fsa

bad stuff: no support outside of app, app introduces communication and accessibility problems, blood tests aren’t gender-affirming care, staff uneducated on medical billing issues, refill system is bad when you quit

my opinion of plume is that, if you have an in-person provider who can be covered under insurance, avoid plume. but if you don’t and you’re willing to deal with some bumps in the road, or if you have an fsa who will work with you on payment, plume may be a great option. at the end of the day, it all comes down to the $99/month price tag and how you can justify it. 

plume isn’t a scam but it isn’t quite as easy-to-use and professional as it presents itself

[whentheynameyoujoy]

If There Was One Thing That Could Make Me Go ‘Spoilerphobia’ Good…

Although I generally don’t give a damn about spoilers and in fact sometimes seek them out, there’s a point the anti-spoiler crowd makes that I agree with. When you know how things are going to turn out, your viewing experience tends to change from “first-time discovery” to “analytical repeat viewing”. Suddenly, you’re not watching a story unfold, wondering how it turns out, but interpreting it in the view of the ending, assuming that everything that precedes it ties into and sets it up—because it should. Now, this doesn’t matter all that much if the thing you’re watching is internally consistent and actually does set up the conclusion.

If it doesn’t, well…

So anyway, if there’s something my ATLA rewatch highlighted to me, it’s how confusing and trippy it was to watch the show as a thoroughly-spoiled presumed Cataanger-to-be.

Here are my thoughts from eight years ago as I viewed the story for the very first time, knowing that Cataang was endgame and expecting the story to actually conform to the ship.

The Boy in the Iceberg

“If no one told me Cataang was endgame, I’d have guessed from this single shot. A story about a hero saving the world, and when the hero meets the main female character it’s shown like this? Doesn’t exactly spell ‘trope breaker’ to me. I’m glad TPTB are committing to this ship and developing it from the get go.”

“Though I don’t understand the necessity for the age/maturity gap, or for it to be highlighted in this way. It says quite a lot that while Aang views himself as a child and seems to have lots of growing up to do, Katara needs to be reminded she’s still a kid and almost immediately assumes the role of the Gaang’s resident caretaker.”

The Warriors of Kyoshi

“After a few episodes of pretty heavy stuff and Katara interacting with it while fully embracing her motherly role, we’re getting a filler with lots of space for developing the relationship in a romantic way... yet nothing happens. All pursuing is decidedly done by Aang who seems desperate for Katara’s attention which she doesn’t give to him until the end when it’s framed like a mum lovingly watching a nagging son. Neither does Katara recognise Aang’s obsession with fame for what it is—a desire for her to be smitten with him, just a little bit. Not even the opportunity to display some jealousy on her part is seized as she seems more annoyed with his vanity than put out by being sidelined.”

Jet

“Alright, I guess Cataang is going to be the ‘get out of the friendzone’ type of romance because this is getting ridiculous. It’s been ten episodes and so far not a single sign of romantic interest on Katara’s part. Yet there is absolutely no doubt the girl’s crushing on Jet hard and itching to pursue it, war or no war, so it’s not like there’s any ambivalence in terms of her feelings for Aang—they’re not romantic at this point, period. I wonder what Aang will do to become a blip on Katara’s luv radar.”

The Fortuneteller

“So we get a romantic shot of Katara from Aang’s POV, a hilarious romantic shot of Aang from Meng’s POV, no indication that Katara perceives Aang as a romantic possibility at all, and the whole episode is about unrequited crushes, failing to catch your crush’s attention, needing to move on, and destiny being bullshit. Yup, definitely the ‘get out of the friendzone’ type of romance.”

“OK, I’m confused because there is some thematic clashening going on. The point of the episode so far has been about not minding prophecies and that everyone’s the master of their own destiny, yet Katara’s marriage to a powerful bender is apparently bang on the money? So what is the story telling me, that a) Katara learned nothing about her crippling reliance on fate? Or that b) she’ll pursue Aang, of whose existence she needed to be reminded, to fulfil Aunt Wu’s prophecy? I don’t think I like this. On the other hand, the romance is beginning at last. It’s now impossible for Katara not to factor this revelation into her dealings with Aang, and since Cataang’s endgame, there’s no way she won’t see him in a new light. We’re totally getting lots of pining, aborted touches, and blushing, Toph’s-crush-on-Sokka style, baby.”

The rest of Book I—no sign of Katara’s emotional investment in a romantic Cataang whatsoever

The Cave of Two Lovers

“I have no idea why this episode exists. Not only does the legend of lovers from enemy villages not fit Cataang AT ALL, but the whole story is a thinly veiled excuse for getting the two of them to kiss—and they don’t? And Katara’s so weirdly utilitarian about it? You know, for a girl who was validated in her obsession with destiny and informed she could very well end up marrying this guy, she’s acting pretty nonchalant about possibly kissing him for the first time and forgets about it the second the plot stops hinting at it. So what was the point? Christ, I hope the experience at least finally gets Katara to reflect on her relationship to Aang.”

The rest of Book II—no sign of Katara’s emotional investment in a romantic Cataang whatsoever

Return to Omashu

“OK, I really need her to verbalize her feelings once because ffs.”

City of Walls and Secrets

“I could so do with a single moment of Katara reacting to Aang in a similar way and suppressing those feelings. Hell, being infatuated with his power as The Fortuneteller seeded would be enough at this point because I’m being fed nothing.”

The Guru

“My post-catholic brain has no idea what this episode is saying about Aang’s feelings for Katara. Are Avatars as an entity supposed to live like hermits, with no romantic relationships whatsoever, otherwise they won’t ever master the Avatar State and will only go into it at random? Wait, that can’t be correct—Roku is in a loving marriage yet can glow up at will, meaning that romantic love clearly isn’t an obstacle. So what, is Pathik full of crap? Well, no, because everything he teaches Aang works, up to and including his advice to let go of Katara. So what about Aang’s love is such a problem? I’m also pretty confused about Pathik’s likening of the Air Nomads to Katara. Like yeah, the love and belonging Aang had with the Nomads survived and was transformed, but isn’t Cataang supposed to be a romance, albeit one that’s so far failed to manifest? I didn’t get romance from Aang’s relationship to any airbender. I don’t get this.”

The Headband

“FINALLY, a clear sign of Katara’s romantic feelings for Aang. And it took only 41 prior episodes where she either treats him like a baby, or has to be reminded by outside circumstances that he exists as a romantic option, so it’s not like there was much setup. I would also appreciate if Katara didn’t realise she’s attracted to Aang in the very same episode where she literally pretends to be his mum but beggars can’t be choosers. I now feel pretty confident in saying that I’m getting Katara blushing and pining like crazy at last.”

The romance doesn’t come up again for the next seven episodes

The Day of Black Sun

“WAIT, SHE WAS INTERESTED IN THE HEADBAND! She displayed romantic attraction! WTF happened? Why does she look like someone who was just violated by her sonion? OK, I need a resolution, I need them to address this, have a conversation, something!”

The romance doesn’t come up again for the next seven episodes

The Ember Island Players

“So we’re officially pretending The Headband didn’t happen, I guess. The only thing that surprises me at this point is my lack of surprise. Anyway, what’s the nature of Katara’s confusion? Because with four episodes left to go until the ship becomes endgame, I’d like more specificity as to her feelings since this line reads less like ‘I’m confused because war/I have no clue what my feelings are exactly’ and more like ‘I don’t know how to let you down gently/I had no idea you felt this way or what to do with it.’ Address this, please!!”

The romance doesn’t come up again for the 99% of the next four episodes

Avatar Aang

“They turned my girl into a golddigger. Fucking end me.

So what I’m getting from this is either a) Katara wasn’t interested in Aang until he became the best candidate for Aunt Wu’s prophecy, or b) Aang was originally supposed to recognise his one-sided puppy crush for what it was and overcome it.

I feel dirty.

Anyway, I heard people are into Zuko x Katara, maybe there’s some decent brain bleach about that.”

[sammisweets143]

New Friends (Trooper 99 x OC)

Summary: My OC (Sienna) is a Padawan that is being passed from Master to Master, and she has just arrived on Kamino. She is searching for Master Shaak Ti when she meets an unusual clone.

Pairings: Clone Trooper 99 x OC

OC Description: Besides her Padawan braid, Sienna has several other braids that are pulled into a ponytail fit for any Viking warrior (think Lagertha from Vikings). She’s unusual since her robes follow a darker color palette, more grey’s and black unlike most Jedi that have earthy tones.

TW: Just Wholesomeness!

Notes: This is my very first run at sharing any form of writing for fun and not for educational purposes, so please be kind! I absolutely love Star Wars, Writing, and the entire Clone Wars universe that has been created.

Sienna had taken a wrong turn and got lost within the ever stretching halls of Tipoca City. Most of the clones were too busy to help her so she just wandered aimlessly, looking around and taking in the views. It wasn’t everyday she got to explore places like this, especially on her own. After taking yet another mindless turn she bumped into a member of the maintenance crew by mistake causing him to drop a few mechanical pieces.

“Oh I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you. I’m afraid I let my mind wander when I shouldn’t.” She knelt down and helped pick up the pieces. The outer robes she had on pooling around her ankles as she knelt to the ground.

“T-that’s alright mistress, it’s my mistake.” The voice said shakily as he picked up the pieces. She looked up taking in the appearance of the person she had bumped into. He wasn’t like any clone she’d met before, but he sounded like one and had the same eyes. Though his appearance was different Sienna could sense his heart was that of a clone, loyal and strong.

“Mistress? Please, call me Sienna.” She laughed gently, shaking her head. “Mistress is too formal, and I’m not a master yet.” She said. “What’s your name?” If there was one thing about the clones Sienna liked the most, it was how they all had interesting names instead of going by their birth numbers.

“I-I don’t really have one.” He said as they stood up. He tried not to look up at her afraid his deformities might scare her. “I suppose I, well...they call me 99.” He stuttered gently.

“99.” She repeated, letting the words flow right off her tongue. “It’s lovely to meet you, 99.” Sienna said as she handed him the pieces she’d picked up. “I’ve seem to have gotten lost, do you know where I could find the training facility? I’m suppose to be meeting my master there.” She looked at him as he straightened out his blue jumpsuit.

Hearing his name being spoken so carefully made him smile a little. People usually used it demandingly which always made him feel inferior. When Sienna said it, it sounded important. Her voice was caring and sincere, and anyone else wouldve continued on when bumping into him, she took her time helping. If he knew anything, she was special.

When he looked up at her as she mention the training facility he’d looked up into the most mesmerizing eyes he’d ever seen. They weren’t that golden brown all clones had including himself, they were a beautiful deep blue as deep a blue as the ocean with flecks of green within them. “I know the perfect way, follow me, Sienna,” He nodded. When she gave him a smile he couldn’t help but smile back. It was warm, inviting like he had just been hugged by her even though she had just shown a small amount of gratitude. To 99 it was as if she looked right through him, and saw someone not defective.

Sienna nodded as she walked beside him and his maintenance cart. “I didn’t turn this way on my journey.” She commented.

He chuckled. “It’s usually off limits to everyone besides maintenance, so don’t tell anyone.” He smiled.

“I won’t, I promise.” She crossed her her finger over her heart. When he led her down another hall she listened to the taps of her boots and looked over at him. “How long have you been part of the maintenance crew, 99?”

“All of my life.” He said as he limped along beside her. “Because I couldn’t serve in the army I was put on maintenance duty, many of my brothers are down in maintenance with me, but I’m the only defect.” He explained.

“Why do they send clones to maintenance duty?” Her brows furrowed. “I mean it’s just, couldn’t there be other uses for them?” She asked.

99 smiled sadly. He liked how curious she was, it reminded him of the young cadets that sometimes stopped and talked with him. “They send them to me when they don’t perform their primary functions. If they don’t meet expectations then it’s maintenance duty, many of them accept it others not so much.”

Sienna nodded taking in the information. “It’s unfortunate that their “primary functions” are predetermined and they don’t have the chance to show what they’re really made of,” her voice became soft. “What if they have more skill?”

“You are reading too much into, Sienna.” 99 patted her arm gently. “My advice, you handle the clones in the training facilities, I’ll handle the ones in maintenance. It’s a way of life we’ve just become accustomed to.” He smiled kindly.

“I wish it didn’t have to be that way.” Sienna sighed as they came upon the opening to the training facility.

“Well, this it the training facility.” He held his hands open to present the facility to her. “I’m sure I’ll be back to clean up soon.”

“Thank you very much for showing me the way.” She smiled. “I don’t think I would’ve made it here without you 99.” She laughed a little, embarrassed.

“I’m sure you would have, but if you ever need help I’ll be there.” He nodded as he thumbed his chest.

Sienna smiled and nodded. “I believe that. Kamino definitely has one of the best soldiers in their maintenance crew.”

“N-now you’re just flattering me.” He chuckled and got bashful. “They also have one of the best Jedi among them.”

“How kind of you.” She smiled. “I must be going but I do hope we run into each other again. You’re very pleasant to talk to,” She said. “Much different compared to regular clones.”

99 smiled and watched as she entered the facility. This experience not only meeting a Jedi but also meeting someone so interested in clones and their well-being was life changing to him. For days after that initial meeting, he’d think of her and wish her nothing but the best until they met again.

As Sienna looked back at 99 who was turning to go she smiled to herself. She could feel the force change within her and around her. It was so refreshing and peaceful, nothing like she’d ever felt before. It was in that moment she realized she found a friend in the defective clone. He also found a friend in her, no one had ever looked at him with such admiration and kindness.

Now any time she came back to Kamino she would make sure to see 99 and give him updates on herself and what she had done. He deserved to know everything and have normal talks. His presence would no longer be dismissed by those around him, at least not by his Jedi.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Hi! Do you have any writing advice for a complete beginner?

Um.  Probably?  I’m likely the wrong person to ask, because unlike 99% of writers I’m not self-taught.  But off the top of my head...

Writing Advice #1: READ BOOKS.

Read fiction and nonfiction.  Read genres you don’t normally try.  Read books you enjoy, and put down any book you’re not enjoying.  Read outside your age group, because those classifications are largely nonsensical anyway — I’m a former 11-year-old who read Ernest Hemingway and a current 28-year-old who reads Louis Sachar.  Read funny books if you like humor, and sad books if you’re a masochist.  Read.

You want to write books?  Read books.  Read books, though.

At the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at the Cloud, reading books will help you write better.  Watching movies and TV will not.  Listening to podcasts and songs will not.  Even reading online media will not.

I’m not saying this because I hate TV.  I’m saying this because movies and shows are different forms of writing.  Not worse.  Not better.  Not shallower or deeper.  Different.

Movies can show you things that books can only tell you — the color of a shirt, the arrangement of a room, the melody of a song.  Books can show you things that movies can only tell you — a character’s true emotions, smells and textures and tastes, personal biases in perception.  If a book wants to convey that a character is afraid, it can give us the internal trembling of fingers and the heat of unshed tears and the frantic pace of breath inside a constricted set of lungs.  If a movie wants to convey that a character is afraid, it must use an actor’s wide eyes and a thrumming soundtrack of violins.  Books can summarize decades in a single beautifully constructed paragraph; movies must resort to montage sequences and match-cuts between actors of different ages.  Movies can kill a character and break the hearts of everyone they love without using a single word; books must find ways to translate image and pain into prose.  Etcetera.

Point is, you could watch a thousand action scenes in a hundred movies and never learn anything about how to convey a fight with sentences and paragraphs.  Same goes for TV shows, same goes for podcasts, same goes for comic strips and puppet shows and ballets and blogs and Broadway.  (I could also go into the fact that books are infinitely better about representation than movies/shows for some very concrete economic reasons, but I’d be digressing.)

Ergo, get a library card.  Even if the library itself is currently closed, it’ll have ebooks and audiobooks galore.  If you have trouble breaking into audiobooks, start by “rereading” books you already know until you train your brain to follow a story being read aloud.  That’s what worked for me, anyway.

Oh, and: read published books.  Online fiction (including AO3, FFN, and all) includes a ton of gems, but they tend to be unpolished gems.  Reading published books to learn how to write is like watching Simone Biles to learn how to be a gymnast.  Even if you never get close to that level, watching her will be a heck of a lot more informative about how to do it well than watching the kid on the next floor mat over.

[didanawisgi]

Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite

I always get vaccinated. I have been fully vaccinated with the Moderna COVID vaccine. My three daughters have all been vaccinated.

I recently learned that these vaccines have likely killed over 25,800 Americans (which I confirmed 3 different ways) and disabled at least 1,000,000 more. And we’re only halfway to the finish line. We need to PAUSE these vaccines NOW before more people are killed.

The CDC, FDA, and NIH aren’t disclosing how many people have been killed or disabled from the COVID vaccines. The mainstream media isn’t asking any questions; they are playing along. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and others are all censoring content that goes against the “perfectly safe” narrative so nobody is the wiser. Tony Fauci, the “father of COVID,” is still in his job even though all of this is his fault. Cliff Lane, who reports to Tony, is still sandbagging early treatments so that people will falsely believe that the vaccine is the only option. The Democrats are still asleep at the wheel by refusing to request Fauci’s unredacted emails from the NIH which will prove he covered up the fact he created the virus in the first place. Biden is clueless urging Americans to vaccinate their kids with a deadly vaccine that has likely killed more than 25,000 Americans so far. Academics in the medical community are nearly all clueless, urging people to get the safe and effective vaccine. When I tried to bring this to the attention of leading academics they told me I was wrong and not to contact them ever again. Sound too hard to believe? I don’t blame you. But there is a reason that this article is the most popular article that has ever been on TrialSiteNews with over 1M views so far. It’s because everything I’ve said is true. And nobody will debate me live about it. They all refuse.

Based on what I now know about the miniscule vaccine benefits (less than a .5% reduction in absolute risk), side effects (including death), current COVID rates, and the success rate of early treatment protocols, the answer I would give today to anyone asking me for advice as to whether to take any of the current vaccines would be, “Just say NO.”Waiting for Novavax (and other traditional vaccines) is a much safer option. If you get COVID in the meantime, treating with early treatment protocols that incorporate fluvoxamine and ivermectin is vastly superior to getting the most dangerous vaccine in the last 30 years.

Vaccines are particularly contraindicated if you have already been infected with COVID or are under age 20. For these people, I would say “NO! NO! NO!”

In this article, I will explain what I have learned since I was vaccinated that totally changed my mind. You will learn how these vaccines work and the shortcuts that led to the mistakes that were made. You will understand why there are so many side effects and why these are so varied and why they usually happen within 30 days of vaccination. You will understand why kids are having heart issues (for which there is no treatment), and temporarily losing their sight, and ability to talk. You will understand why as many as 3% may be severely disabled by the vaccine. You will understand why doctors aren’t reporting these as vaccine-related.

What I find deeply disturbing is the lack of transparency on how dangerous the current COVID vaccines are. Healthy people could end up dead or permanently disabled at a rate that is “off the charts” compared with any other vaccine in our history. Look at the death report in our government’s official Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) summarized in the tweet below. This is the most deadly vaccine we’ve ever made by a long shot. That’s why they have to give you incentives to get vaccinated. They need to vaccinate everyone BEFORE people read this article or watch this video of Dr. Peter McCullough explaining clearly why the current COVID vaccines are unsafe and completely unnecessary for our children.

The stopping condition of a typical vaccine is 25-50 deaths. But there isn’t a stopping condition for this vaccine! It appears we’ve killed over 25,800 people (based on CDC “unexplained deaths”) and nobody is batting an eye. The CDC is focused on how to vaccinate more people. Clinics today report as high as a 10:1 ratio of vaccine-related cases to COVID cases. So now we have a new health emergency: deaths and disability from the vaccines.

But this is just the beginning of our story. We have a lot of ground to cover. I’ll talk about Fauci, NIAID, CDC, Congress, academia, Cliff Lane, and more. I will close with action items you can take and how to treat vaccine victims.

Before we jump into the details, here are some key points:

At least 25,000 deaths from the vaccine. The OpenVAERS team think it is over 20,000 due to under reporting. But we looked at the CMS database and it appears VAERS is under-reporting by 5X. And the CDC excess unexplained deaths are 25,000 as well. It matches up.

NOBODY will debate me. People resort to personal attacks because they can’t attack the facts. But nobody who counts (e.g., over 10K Twitter followers) will debate me. I’ve tried everything. People are too afraid I’ll win. If you have at least 10K Twitter followers and agree to a recorded live Zoom debate, just say so in the comments below.

Biodistribution data shows massive accumulation in ovaries of the LNP (which instructs cells in ovaries to sprout toxic spike protein). Whoops. That was never supposed to be leaked out. We obtained it via FOIA request. The CDC never told you about that one, did they? Of course not!

82% miscarriage rate in first 20 weeks (10% is the normal rate). It is baffling that the CDC says the vaccine is safe for pregnant women when it is so clear that this is not the case. For example, one of our family friends is a victim of this. She miscarried at 25 weeks and is having a D&C on 6/9/21. She had her first shot 7 weeks ago, and her second shot 4 weeks ago. The baby had severe bleeding of the brain and other disfigurements. Her gynecologist had never seen anything like that before in her life. They called in a specialist who said it was probably a genetic defect (because everyone buys into the narrative that the vaccine is safe it is always ruled out as a possible cause). No VAERS report. No CDC report. Yet the doctors I’ve talked to say that it is over 99% certain it was the vaccine. The family doesn’t want an autopsy for fear that their daughter will find out it was the vaccine. This is a perfect example of how these horrible side effects just never get reported anywhere.

25X the possibility of myocarditis for teen boys (can lead to heart failure and death)

Kids already have natural immunity (Science Magazine article), so there is no benefit to vaccination, only risk. Have you ever seen the risk / benefit analysis by the CDC?? Ask for it before you consent.

No point vaccinating those who’ve had COVID-19: Findings of Cleveland Clinic study. No benefit, only risk.

Doctors who attribute adverse events to the vaccine are punished (such as Dr. Hoffe). So under reporting is incentivized.

The CDC refuses to say how many people have died and is “still investigating” heart damage in kids even though it is obvious why (free spike protein causing clotting and inflammation). A 25X increase when the only “new” thing is the vaccine isn’t hard to figure out. Ask the CDC for their current top 5 hypotheses for the cause. It will be more than amusing to see what they say. If it isn’t the vaccine, heads should roll.

The CDC is deliberately misleading the American people. Check out the side effects page. Death, disability, excessive miscarriage rates, heart attacks, stroke, inability to walk, talk, or see, Bell’s Palsy, persistent pain, Parkinson’s like symptoms, re-activation of shingles, blood clots, etc. are all missing.

>500X more deadly than the flu vaccine

COVID vaccines have generated more adverse reports in the last 6 months than all 70 vaccines over the past 30 years combined. They missed that one.

Defective virus design (s1 was never supposed to be free, inclusion of PEG was unnecessary and allows LNP to be widely distributed)

Strong opposition to vaccination by extremely credible voices like Malone, Geert Vanden Bossche, others

NIAID (Cliff Lane) is improperly manipulating the COVID Treatment Guidelines to make it appear these drugs do not work, thus giving the world the false impression that the vaccine, even if imperfect, is the only way out. Ivermectin and fluvoxamine have been confirmed in Phase 3 trials. Ivermectin has a very high quality systematic review, the highest possible level in Evidence Based Medicine. Repurposed drugs are safer and more effective than the current vaccines. In general, early treatment with an effective protocols reduce your risk of dying by more than 100X so instead of 600,000 deaths, we’d have fewer than 6,000 deaths. NOTE: The vaccine has already killed over 6,000 people and that’s from the vaccine alone (and doesn’t count any breakthrough deaths).

Vaccines skipped proper toxicology studies in order to bring to market faster. We don’t know what we don’t know.

The unpredictable and horrifying side effects of this vaccine on heathy kids, such as the 16 year old girl who was unable to speak and see just 48 hours after being vaccinated

Debilitating side effects can happen at any time because vaccine victims are very similar to COVID long haulers (Dr. Bruce Patterson has discovered this) and we all know that long haul can start at any time (even when the disease is asymptomatic) and could be incurable.

Because the vaccine is not perfectly safe, the government is required by law to warn people of the death and disability risks caused by the vaccine and to obtain informed consent. Always be sure to ask for the 50 most serious side effects and how often they happen. And find out whether they will compensate you if you are disabled for life from the vaccine. This is important because the blood clots can form anywhere with this very unsafe vaccine....