#lilyhargrave

[copperbadge]

Answers About Stretching Docs

prairie-grass

I'll be interested to hear if this trick works. I would have thought the leather being also in a frozen environment wouldn't be a good combo. I've alternately heard of putting wet newspaper in shoes and then letting it dry, a similar method. Can't say i've ever tried it myself though. I always go for buying the bigger size and putting a inner-sole in. Also, if this doesn't work for you, a lot of shoe-repair places will have special tools for stretching shoes!

The problem in this case is that buying the bigger size, because they don’t have half-sizes, means buying a massively bigger size. Like, an inch of clearance between toe and end of toe-box in my right foot bigger. I bought about four pairs in three different sizes, to make sure, but yeah these are a ten and the eleven is just comically massive on me.

Usually I buy a half size because the half-size isn’t so small that my left foot hurts, while being small enough that my right foot more or less fits. I also can’t use most insoles because I have flat arches and wide feet, but putting an insole into the right boot wouldn’t help anyway with the fact that no part of the shoe except the sole touches my right foot at the larger size :D 

It’s perplexing to me that Docs don’t offer half sizes; there seems to be no benefit and quite a few downsides. IDK why the last pair fit so perfectly, given I got them from a secondhand store decades ago, but depending on how these docs perform I probably won’t buy another pair unless I can buy one that fits from the jump. 

lilyhargrave

Oh, I have a pair of leather cowboy boots that are a little tight, did this really work? No damage to the leather?

None that I can see, but you have to bear in mind this leather is a lot thinner and more flexible than cowboy boot leather. Someone did the actual calculations on the website and water expands roughly 9% when frozen, but as they pointed out, realistically that’s only 2% in any given direction, so you don’t get a ton of expansion, just enough to stretch the leather. When I checked the boot with the frozen water in bags inside it, there were many places where the water hadn’t expanded into the area at all (the toe box, for example). I’d google to see if other people have tried it before trying it yourself. 

It seems to have worked to an extent -- the problem area for me was the seam where the tongue was sewn into the boot at the end of the laces, and that loosened somewhat after two days in the freezer. Enough that I could shove a soda can into the foot to continue stretching it, anyway, which I couldn’t before. 

onemuseleft

I was fully prepared to accept they were olives and that you knew what you were about

Maybe you can freeze olives! I have no idea. :D But I didn’t want people to be like “Sam, olives, why.” :D 

[nonbinary-octopus]

precisely!

honestly yeah, fiber arts is magic. you cast spell of warm gloves, spell of nice hat, spell of stuffed animal.

material component: yarn

wand: single hooked wand or double pointed wands, depending on caster's preference

mechanical component: specific motions repeated in a particular pattern

time component: a while

look seriously the first step in a knitting recipe is "cast on", and then it's a bunch of letters and numbers incomprehensible to anyone not versed in the arcane art. that's a spellbook. yes it's a book of knitting patterns but also. it's a spell book.

[jezebelgoldstone]

So since you have such acute good book refs, you know of any gothic horror with focus on gay men romance (trans or not) that feature adult themes, violence (possibly gore), and sexual themes (including dark/ taboo)? I find these hard to find out of original online fiction/videogames, or find it but it's not quite what I was looking for (or badly written) and it's a shame because it's my favourite kinds of stories.

:DDDD

The Magpie Lord by KJ Charles.

First in a series of several short books and short stories. Set in Victorian England, first book features a violent curse and a huge scary old Gothic manor. Main character is a very rich handsome classically demanding romance hero type, who is a gay guy who has been living in queer-friendly China for the last couple of decades and has to come back to homophobic England when his father and older brother die. It is violent, there is some gore, there is some creepy stuff, there is a murder mystery, there is magic, there is some light BDSM and some pretty explicit gay sex. The whole series is great fun.

I haven't yet read anything else by this author, but @lilyhargrave says that their other stuff is good too, and I certainly trust her word.

Honorable Mentions:

Not quite as perfect a match is Prince of the Sorrows by Kellen Graves.

It's gothic, it's gay, but I wouldn't call it horror. There is some relatively explicit gay sex in this and the next book, but though it is a Forbidden Love Story nothing about the sex is particularly taboo. I will also admit that though the first book is a murder mystery, the mystery itself is pretty obvious. That said, there is some violence, some pretty gross murders, some torture, some mental agonizing Etc, and I think the romance is really really great.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Moxiang Tongxiu more widely known on tumblr as MDZS by MXTX

Okay so this one is a Chinese story in a Chinese setting by a Chinese author written for a Chinese audience. It is not Gothic in the Anne Radcliffe sort of way. Further, the writing is very very different from what most native English speakers are used to. All that said, it is a very very very good horror story, it is gross, it is gory, there is so much torture and murder, it is one of the most breathtaking tragedies ever written, it is ridiculous, it is funny, it is a war story, it is a ghost story... it's basically everything. The gay romance is epic and beyond my skill to describe. It is also an extremely LONG story (the official English translation runs at I believe eight volumes?) and I will warn you that the on-page gay sex is confined to the end; HOWEVER, that gay sex is nice and explicit, and features BDSM and CNC and all kinds of nice stuff. Also if you're into fanfic there are like 40k-ish English-language stories on AO3 alone, and quite a few of them are, ahem, veeeeeery nice. There is a fan translation online for free, and the official English language translation is available via Seven Seas publishing.

Another near-match is Captive Prince by CS Pacat.

It is once again not horror, and it is gothic in the romance if not necessarily in the setting. Recommending this one though because there is quite a bit of sex and it is pretty taboo. Bdsm, sexual slavery, Etc is baked into the worldbuilding. The gay romance is also really really good. This one is also violent, also includes torture and a bit of gore, and features a main character who was once a prince and is trafficked as a bedslave and given as a gift to the prince of the neighboring country.

Now. Now. Now we come to what I'm tempted to call both a total miss and a dead ringer: The Last Sun by K D Edwards.

I feel like this one would technically be a horror story if the narrating character actually admitted how horrifying everything is, and wasn't so damn funny. It's got a gothic vibe in a modern-day setting. The main character is an assault survivor, a magic practitioner, and takes jobs for everything from protection details to hired muscle to private investigator. There is quite a bit of violence, some of the magic is rank, the gay romance is great, and there is a mildly spicy though extremely vanilla gay sex scene. All three books feature at least one gorgeous haunted manor. There is once again quite a bit of taboo sexual stuff baked into the worldbuilding, but in this case other than the assault (which happened 20 years ago) none of the taboo sexual stuff happens on-page or involves the main character. I feel like I'm not doing a very good job explaining this book, but this whole series genuinely is one of my absolute favorites and though it's not as good a match as The Magpie Lord, I still strongly recommend it.

Hope these are good for you, have fun and happy reading, and come talk to me if you read any of them!

[asher-writes]

Last Line Tag

Tagged by @imaginationxlost (thank you!)

The glass of whiskey shakes in his hands, desperate to have his peace and quiet back within his own grasp.

"Wonderful to talk to you too," a dry, sarcastic tone comes back to him. Ari brings his glass to his lips and drains the contents with a face like a thunderstorm.

"Eli, it's late."

"You tend to get home late."

Ari does not respond a moment, his eyes glancing back to his desk, where the rest of his whiskey remained. "I see, what can I do for you?" His tone is thinly veiled with his annoyance - but Eli is as used to that from him, as he is from Eli. As brothers tend to.

From Neon Glow!

Tagging: @athena-anna-rose @ink-fireplace-coffee @dustylovelyrun (hi! welcome!) @lilyhargrave @arbys-haunted-turnover as usual no pressure!

[yvesdot]

I'm still working on the end to my Dracula Daily annotations, but for anyone else who's looking for "what's next" to read, and to celebrate all the people who read the darn thing and made the community, I thought we could do a little thread of writers on Tumblr with published vampire things! So reblog with links to your vampire writing, and I'll keep this original post updated to include everyone.

I'll go first: I have the published book Something's Not Right, which includes multiple vampires; the free short story Something Weird I Heard About Rebecca for the LGBT vampire BLOOD&BREATH zine, about vampires and gender and sexuality; and two pieces of flash fiction on Patreon.

Please add on so we can all read more vampires! Marginalized authors especially welcome.

First addition is @thebibliosphere's Hunger Pangs, which is eternally on my list: a polyamorous vampire romance with both an explicit and fade-to-black edition available to read!

Yah Yah Scholfield @fluoresensitive has a free short story available online titled Lavenders. It looks gay as all get-out and, I'll be honest, I'm saving it for a rainy day because 1) I know I will adore it, and 2) when I finish reading it there won't be any more Yah Yah vampwriting left! Just LOOK at those influences & opening lines.

Scaevola @scaevolawrites has been featured in the zine WHAT MUSIC THEY MAKE, for pieces inspired by Dracula!

Amatullah Bourdon @butchniqabi wrote Immortals Chat at the End of the World, which is exactly what it sounds like-- immortals in a chatroom at the end of the world. Beautiful and affecting.

@linkedsoul recommends How to Bite your Neighbor and Win a Wager by @brynwrites: "an incredibly fun and endearing mlm romance novel with just the right touches of spicy (literally at some point) and angsty, and a vampire characterisation (vampirism as marginality and especially disability, which is not something i’d ever seen before) which is super interesting to me as an occasional vampire lore nerd :P"

Aimee Cozza has a blog for her vampwritings here: @marked-for-life

@lilyhargrave and their partner have House Draculesti: "a Dracula-media inspired web serial full of drama and all sorts of queerness, free to read! Just finished the second part, many more to come."

[archiveoftheodd]

Tags that remind me that we are also open for Long Fiction queries (It's just a different submissions process)

If you've written the next House of Leaves (please please please) send us an email to archiveoftheodd@gmail.com.

Please send a query letter with the title and length of your piece, as well as a synopsis. For works under 50,000 words, send a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file with the work in its entirety (name removed to remain sight unseen).

For pieces whose formatting is required to understand the story, or with extensive artwork, .pdf is also acceptable.

We will respond with an estimated reply date, which will vary depending on our current workload, but will never be longer than 6 months. Generally, if you submit during our short fiction open period, we will start reading after our story selection for the zine, which occurs approximately a month after closing date. After that, please give us at least another month to respond (two months after closing date total). Expected wait for submissions between open periods varies depending our current workload, but is generally shorter.

Heads up, we've got another submissions period coming your way!

(AOTO Issue 6 opens Sept 15!)

[pathsofoak]

Find the Word tag

I was tagged by @ashen-crest! thanks, it's been a while since I've done tag games!

My words were: spice, air, yell, and strike.

I don't have spice anywhere, or a word relating to it. I planned to replace it with one of your words, but I don't have any of those either... I don't know what the rules are here so I just turned on a random word generator because if I get the chance to share four excerpts I will share four excerpts...

I swear it's not on purpose, but the word I got was uh... pain. Which I do have. As opposed to cake, brush, earth, or laughter. You know. In case anyone wanted to get a feel for my fic...

I tag, no pressure @authortango and @lilyhargrave. Your words are: time, door, hurt, and reason

Pain

Even now, she had a constant frown and grimace on her face. The only sound she could make other than a few attempts at words were groans and quiet cries.

“Have you even given her anything for the pain?” Teresa asked.

“Just outside,” a nurse answered in an exasperated voice. “It should set in in a few minutes. Let us do our job.”

Their job was to take care of her. They were just letting her suffer, clouded under enough drugs it just got harder to see from the outside.

Air

The nurse wheeled Thomas’s chair up to a ramp by the platform, but a door opened to the side of the room.

Thomas shook in his chair as the nurse walked away. He shook his head, but the man who took hold of his chair and moved him toward the couches instead seemed quite alive for a dead man.

Janson smirked and sat down. “I suppose I have some explaining to do.”

Thomas’s fingers trembled against the side of his chair. He remembered the body. The lifeless look in his eyes, the blood. The glass sticking out of his neck. The cars. He tried to speak, but nothing air came out.

“Disappointed?” Janson leaned back. “I wouldn’t blame you, my job isn’t exactly to make myself popular, so we’re letting that slide. You’ve defied, quite the plan we set up.” He filled up a glass with the pitcher and offered it to Thomas.

Yell

He came in fuming, flipped the number on Thomas’s counter up by over a dozen people in spite of it, and sat down in the chair Dijken usually took up. Dijken wasn’t there, he had a meeting about this charity or whatnot that WCKD had to let near if they wanted to continue the research.

“Exit code of the Maze,” Rutter said, “name it.”

“Uh,” Thomas said quietly, “I don’t know.” He hadn’t been the one to type it in, he just told Minho to yell it. He knew he’d used it in the simulator once, and the sequence was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t come up with it.

“Yes you do, you’ve shouted it off the top of your lungs several times in the past extractions. We don’t pick and choose what you see in those things. We just target the right bit of your brain to recreate a pattern. In the last few, it’s had that number, say the number.” Rutter tapped his fingers on the armrest of the chair as he held a tablet in the other hand, screen from Thomas’s view.

He dug through his mind. He remembered it was the Maze sequence, but he didn’t remember the Maze sequence. Those days were a blur. Some parts he’d blocked out entirely. “Uh… two, four…”

Rutter’s knuckles turned white around the tablet. “Wrong. Again.”

Strike

As long as no one on their side made trouble, WCKD didn’t make trouble. It was Newt’s job to keep it all under control.

“Anything you break in here that’s not crucial, which means roughly anything at all, won’t be replaced,” Janson said without any other introduction or remark. “The bedroom door locks at ten in the evening, on the dot. If you’re out after that, it’s a first strike. Third gets you back in your own room for a month. It opens again at six in the morning, breakfast is served at seven. Lunch at one, dinner at seven.”

He walked up the window. Teresa was the only one who still looked away. The others followed him with their eyes, locked on target. Or rather the threat.

[asher-writes]

Okay, I can’t think of anything else to add to the server so!

This is a server for writers!

Each writer can have their own channel for their WIP, where they can post things to do with their WIP, any updates they might have, or mood boards and such, for other writers to interact with and comment on.

https://discord.gg/zxJk6Dx9Nb

It’s a community discord, so people can tell me what more they want added, I just started with the very basics to get it up and running. If something’s broken, sorry, first time using yagpdb!

Tagging people who replied on/reblogged that post in case you are wanting to join:

@tc-doherty

@ilaurenttis

@ameliahcrowley

@winterandwords

@sergeantnarwhalwrites

@pathsofoak

@lunartyphoon

@lilyhargrave

@shadedrose01

@strawberrieswriting

@italiangothicwriteblr

@did-i-do-this-write

@pailettehazel

@emelkae

[pathsofoak]

I posted 1,824 times in 2022

That's 1,786 more posts than 2021!

586 posts created (32%)

1,238 posts reblogged (68%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@its-tea-time-darling

@pathsofoak

@un-ah

@itsthemxze

@lilyhargrave

I tagged 1,408 of my posts in 2022

Only 23% of my posts had no tags

#wip: the cold half - 69 posts

#not writing - 39 posts

#excerpt wip: the cold half - 29 posts

#wip: the night winds - 25 posts

#wip: tmr fic - 23 posts

#oc: justin - 22 posts

#oc: dijken - 20 posts

#d answers the asks - 19 posts

#wip: the early rise - 18 posts

#writing - 17 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#(i say as im writing a story where the kids very much get saved 😅 but thats because the point of the story is survival more than winning)

My Top Posts in 2022:

I cut some of the posts because they're long bois

#5

The roles in the Safe Haven

(Includes a few OCs, the rest is all headcanons, in alphabetical order, some of this only makes sense in the context of my fic lol)

Aris bakes, he pairs up with Frypan frequently. When he's not baking he hangs out with Rachel and helps her go around the island, or he helps her in her recovery.

Brenda helps out in the infirmary later on, but before that spends most of her time helping out with smaller things around camp and the center. She spends a lot if time in and around the water once she learns to swim.

18 notes - Posted May 22, 2022

#4

WIP intro - The Cold Half

A Maze Runner fic

The Cold Half has five parts, each has their own intro as well (linked below). Oh and it's based on the movies, mostly.

Synopsis |

With his surrender to Ava Paige gone horribly wrong, Thomas finds himself in Janson’s clutches. Janson is prepared to do anything to keep him there. Can he shed his grief, guilt, and doubts about the lies WCKD tries to sell him? His friends try to find and save him, but when too many old wounds go ignored and WCKD’s threat to their own lives still stands, they risk ending up at WCKD themselves. They have to lean on each other and the few people they have left to protect them if they ever want to reach safety at all, but that’s not as simple as it seems.

41 notes - Posted April 25, 2022

#3

is there a blog akin to writingwithcolor but for disabilities?

41 notes - Posted April 15, 2022

#2

I mentally pronounce the word WIP as wee-I-pee

69 notes - Posted August 29, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Perfect character trust building exercise:

Have them almost die together

92 notes - Posted January 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[unhingednovelist]

heeeeey @squarebracket-trick thank you so much for the tag!!! you are singlehandedly summoning me back onto writeblr

nine people you want to know better

currently reading: the invisible life of addie larue! i brought it with me on my trip recently but read like 3 pages in 3 months

last song i listened to: okay so i am fairly new to the twenty one pilots hype but i'm listening to bandito right now :) mostly cause its referenced in overcompensate and i need to understand what's happening in the lore

currently watching: uuuh i tried to watch oppenheimer like two weeks ago but i simply could not focus so maybe i'll try some other time

current fic i'm reading: i have to admit i haven't read any fics in so so long but after finishing alan wake 2's final draft story i need to find some stuff about that or else i will go crazy

current hyperfixation: i'm in a little bit of a dry spot right now but the closest thing i've got is twenty one pilots because as a new fan my brain is rotting away by the second

favourite colour: green hehehe but a very specific kind - the hex code is 152215

spicy, sweet, savory, or salty? slightly spicy with a bit of salty and savoury :))

relationship status: single and thriving alone. slay

last thing i googled: the hex code for my favourite colour lol

song stuck in my head: twenty one pilots - overcompensate. help. like i can't stop thinking about this song

favourite food: sushi my beloved

dream trip: i kinda already did my dream trip which i am very grateful for, i worked at kandersteg international scout centre for 3 months as short term staff and it was a dream <3 here are some pics

gently tagging @stesierra, @hallwriteblr, @poethill, @oh-no-another-idea, @werewolfhooligan, @rmgrey-author, @ryns-ramblings, @lilyhargrave, & @sparrow-orion-writes <3

9 People you want to know better

Huge thank you to uhhh *checks drafts* @words-after-midnight - their post here, @bluberimufim - her post here, @touloserlautrec - his/their post here

Currently reading: City of Bones by Cassie Clare. I never read it during it's peak when I was literally the right age demographic and I feel like I missed out. It's not the strongest writing in the world but I am enjoying it so far. It's been interesting to go back and reread a bunch of "older" YA - like pre-2016-ish. There is so much more filler, banter, character moments than in the post-2016 stuff, especially post-2019. Like it was right around that time that publishing shifted to the "everything has to advance the plot and be super fast paced" mentality. And tbh... I like the old stuff better. It spawned larger fandoms with more staying power - I mean, how many post-2019 booktok popular books have more than 100 fanfics on AO3? I think I'm not the only one who misses the slower, more character focused YA.

Last song I listened to: Avril Lavine's Keep Holding On was on the radio while I was driving home from work. 10 year-old me knew all the words. 20-something me still does.

Currently watching: I haven't watched any TV or movies is so long oh my gosh. But! I did go see murder mystery play with my friend last Friday night!

Current fic I'm reading: [do I confess to having a secret whump blog here? My anxiety is pretty bad rn. Which means I have been devouring and regurgitating whump like no tomorrow. I have read and written so much holy]

Current hyperfixation (changed from obsession because I don't use that language. I do, however, have ADHD): yeah... uhhh... whump.

Favourite colour: Green, specifically the shade of the underside of a maple leaf caught in the sun. But I am also very partial to any rich blue or pink.

Spicy, sweet, savory, or salty? A little bit of everything. I like it when dishes are made with really high-quality ingredients that speak for themselves and don't need to be disguised with sugar, spices, or salt.

Relationship status: *cries in single* where meet men in my city????

Last thing I Googled: hypothermia whump... yeah... (also apparently I googled the word lapel to make sure it meant exactly what I thought it meant)

Song stuck in my head: OH I am the QUEEN of getting shit stuck in my head! I once had "In Flanders Fields" the POEM - not even a song - stuck in my head in both English AND FRENCH. It wasn't even November... Currently, it's the "I had a little turtle, his name was tiny tim" song... it's been days help

Favourite food: Kiisseli (a Finnish stewed berry dessert.) I am also partial to a very juicy steak.

Dream trip: I wanna go to Ireland so bad. But I need to know some Irish person willing to teach me harp techniques first.

Gently tagging (you don't have to answer all of these. I just chose to combine three tags in one): @nacricissa *ahem*, @malapertmarquess, @ditzydisko, @dyrewrites, @toribookworm22, @steh-lar-uh-nuhs @blackrosesandwhump, @beloveddawn-blog, @unhingednovelist

[jezebelgoldstone]

stealing @lilyhargrave's tags because she's right and she SHOULD say it