#more of my shitty diagrams

[frownyalfred]

writers: worried you’ll forget where someone is standing? just draw a crappy diagram! it helps I swear!!

[baejax-the-great]

[First, I was rereading "Agua Caliente" and I remembered a song that played a lot in my childhood (and I had kind of forgotten) bc the lyrics somehow matched the Patrochilles dynamic in this fic. This is kind of funny bc I would never in my life associate sertanejo (it's a type of country music, I think? Idk I've never heard country, but the aesthetic is kind of similar. Anyway, it's pretty popular here) with shipping an ancient Greek couple in modern AU, but ok. And I went to listen to this song again and now I'm listening to it on a loop, so thanks for that.]

Now the real question! It's perhaps a strange question, but do you plan what you write? Like, before you write, do you have the whole structured idea in mind? I could have sworn it was like that reading the fics, but then some notes on Ao3 and certain things you say on Tumblr started to make me reflect that maybe you don't plan as much as I thought… in that case, how do you manage to connect everything so well without looking like something was left out/without prior planning??? It's magic, technique, luck or actually do you plan?

Sorry if the question is a bit "???" but I'm REALLY thinking about this! I used to write fics years ago and I was in the "won't plan" group and as expected the fics came out obviously unplanned (but that was ok with me bc it was just to pass the time and I didn't expect it to be an engaging story or anything), and here's why this ask exists: it's precisely bc I was in the “won't plan” group that I'm really intrigued by the possibility of you NOT planning bc it just doesn't seem that way reading your fics...

The short answer is that I do plan what I write, but probably not enough.

I rarely start writing a fic with an entire idea. Often it's just a vibe. But I won't start posting a fic until I know exactly what the conflict is and how it will be resolved.

This was easy in ATG, for example, because I'd already written the resolution before I even decided to write the fic. Structuring it by Patroclus's age also helped, because I could make an outline with the stuff that needed to happen and then jam stuff I wanted to happen around it. That "Stuff" could be really specific--obviously Pat had to graduate school and Achilles had to go to the Olympics on specific years, and it was also like, this section should have them fighting. This section should have them getting along, but Achilles is hiding this big lie so there should be a weird tension.

In Sunset, it took me longer to figure out the conflict/resolution. Sure, I knew that Achilles was going to cry on a Chicago street corner and get naked in Pat's kitchen, but why was he there? How did he get there? I had already written Achilles settling in to Pat's place and the scene where he gets into the lake before I decided on Aphrodite being the key to explain this whole thing. Then I knew Pat had to die. But a lot of the stuff that happened in the middle was sort of on a whim (particularly Achilles getting on the wrong L train-that was definitely just an impulse I had while finishing that chapter). Tecmessa's chapter was also a later addition, and a deeply self-indulgent one, hah.

Agua was the least planned of these three, and in some ways it was because the idea was a lot simpler. After three years, Achilles runs into Patroclus again and they reconcile in some way. I knew exactly how Patroclus would feel about the whole thing (relieved, guilty, upset, wounded, hopeful, upset about feeling hopeful). My original plan was just to set up Achilles in his shop and his new life doing his best and have him run into Patroclus at the beach, and eventually they'd go to the desert. I wrote parts of their meeting first, and then I started writing the beginning and ended up scrapping most of that. I realized I was going to have to do a lot more writing for poor Achilles. My lack of planning here did cause some difficulties--I had like three versions of that date he went on with Pat with different endings. One involved Pat in the hospital, lmao. Zag and Meg coming to stay with Achilles were kind of whims, and I had meant to have Hypnos show up for "his turn" and have Achilles send him home because no, these were not team-building exercises, but then I forgot 😩.

The reason that I need to know the conflict/resolution at the start is because I do think all the scenes in a fic should relate to it in some way, either by building up the conflict or setting the groundwork for a resolution. Even for the impulsive scenes I add just for fun, I think about how they can do this. For example, Achilles getting lost on the L allowed me to build up Pat's unreasonable anxiety, show that Ajax was also feeling it to some extent, and end in Pat saying "fuck it" and just giving in to making out with his hot, ancient boyfriend. It was also something that happened to a friend who was visiting me from out of the country and didn't have a working cell phone. That moment of watching him through the window of the L as it slowly pulled away is just etched in my memory.

In Agua Caliente, almost anything could relate to the resolution, because the resolution was "Achilles having a life," thus it didn't require as much planning. Zagreus's apartment getting flooded (something that happened to me in grad school) showed Achilles attempting to be flexible with some success while allowing himself to become closer to Zagreus, which led to a point of connection with his kids. It also made it easier to explain why Achilles was doing Zag's delivery that day when he ran into Pat. There were only a couple things that truly needed to happen in AC for the fic to make sense, and that was a resolution with Achilles' kids and then with Patroclus, of course.

I do get loose threads sometimes, side conflicts or things that didn't end up going anywhere, and those things tend to annoy me until I figure out a way to resolve them or make them otherwise relevant. Or I don't. Or sometimes I realize I need to add something/someone into the fic, and it would have been smoother if I'd added it in an earlier chapter so it didn't seem like a convenient thing I'd just thought of to solve a problem. That's always annoying to me. But whatever. It's fanfic. That's the risk of posting while you write.

[punmster]

having an existential crisis because I finally cracked and searched up a summary for Manacled and found out one of the DMSMG alternate endings (which I've changed before this) is like. kinda similar to it??

[neverendingford]

Therapists have two genders:

Professional Asshole and

Well-meaning Incompetent

[dawn-the-rithmatist]

*pokes you* narrative structure book rant?

Hi Lou, thank you for the poke, ily!!

Okay this can all be roughly summed up by saying that when you've got a book series, the end of a novel should really give you the feeling of, this story has ended, but the saga continues. And I read a few books recently that really left me with the feeling of, haha, gotcha! you thought you were getting a conclusion, didn't you, you dumbass! And I gotta be honest, that,, makes me very frustrated.

(To be clear, this isn't a "I hate cliffhangers" rant, because those can be really fun and effective... when they're used to continue a bigger story in tandem with the resolution of a smaller story. Hopefully that makes sense with the rest of the rant.)

I'm putting the rest of this under a read more so people can scroll past if they want to. There's what will probably become a very long rant below the cut :)

Okay, so with a book series, generally you either have an overarching story that stretches between novels, or you have many different stories that are somewhat unrelated, but based around a common theme/setting/cast/etc. In the second case, it should be pretty self explanatory that you want your individual novels to have resolution- you're not continuing those plot threads into another novel, so obviously you want them tied up.

But the other case... that's the one where I get frustrated.

Suppose you've got a story with an arc that looks something like this:

(I know this isn't how most plot diagrams look but i'm keeping it simply because this is me making powerpoint diagrams at one in the morning, please be patient with me)

Suppose you're writing a three book series that covers that bigger story arc. In that case, I would expect your books to structure out something like this:

Each book has its own exposition, conflict, and resolution, while simultaneously contributing to the bigger arc around it- the overarching plot of the series. The first book might be a bit expositon heavy, and the last might have some heavy lifting to do when it comes to resolving things, but overall, every book is telling a story within a story. Substories, if you will.

What I've been seeing instead that frustrated me so much is something like this:

In this one, I made each book a line segment, although it's not usually that extreme. Usually.

This is where you read book one, and they keep introducing things, and you can see the threads of a really interesting conflict, and then right at the end of the book, you get a whole torrent of events that leaves you feeling a bit overwhelmed and a bit lied to. The first book has no resolution- just a lot of exposition and a lot of introducing conflict.

Book two, by comparison, has a lot of the action of the series. It's where characters start solving the problems, confronting things, having their big "aha" moments. It probably leads up to some major confrontation, or a big cliffhanger- you're right on the verge of a resolution, and most of the heavy lifting has been done, but you're not. quite. there. Despite a lot happening in this book, it might feel a bit flat overall (see diagram), or it might not. It's probably the best book in the series.

Book three gets all of the resolution. I'm not putting a lot here about book three, because tbh I'm surprised if I make it through book two once I've been angry enough about book one.

Some GOOD examples of series structure:

Pretty much every cosmere series. Each one clearly has its own structure to it, even as it plays a bigger role in the plot of the series. Look at the Stormlight Archive! The Way of Kings is exposition heavy, but NO ONE can say that there isn't payoff for all that work by the end of book one. And The Well of Ascension could definitely be considered a cliffhanger with the things that go down at the end, but it's nonetheless a story that resolves, even if the series is clearly amping up.

The Scholomance! Every book has its own story going on, and the main conflict of the novel is resolved by the time the novel ends. There are still problems to solve, and they'll definitely be addressed- but the immediate problem has been dealt with.

Some BAD examples of series structure:

Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: End Game. I'm putting this here even though it isn't a book series because it just captures the point so. perfectly. You think you're walking into a superhero movie. They spend a lot of time building up this conflict, and more time building up fanservice and massive action sequences, and have this big moment of emotional payoff where you think they were able to stop Thanos, then- GOTCHA! They lose! Everyone dies! The end! Oh but don't worry, there's another movie coming out :)) NO. If you were going to do this, call it "Infinity War Part 1". Don't give us an incomplete narrative and call it a complete movie. AGH.

The Atlas Six. Gotta be honest, I didn't enjoy this one for a couple of reasons, but a BIG one was the way that it all felt like a setup when you got to the end. Without spoiling anything for folks who haven't read it, I felt like I had just read a prequel for a book that hadn't been released. A lot of exposition, a lot of time spent building up these characters and their interactions sometimes not very well, but that's a different rant only for it to be one big GOTCHA! at the end. It was like reading a comic expecting a superhero story, only for it to be the hero's tragic backstory, up to and no further than the point that they decide to do something with the cards they've been dealt.

Unless you're labeling something with "Part 1," people are going to expect a story to resolve, and when you don't deliver on that, they're going to be disappointed. It's the same way that you would be upset if you turned on a romcom, and got to the end without the two main characters ever meeting- although at the very end, you see them both walking towards the same coffee shop, so maybe something will happen. Eventually.

Whenever I see something like this, I often end up thinking to myself, "This isn't meant to be a first novel in a series. This is meant to be the first part in a several-part epic. This is a prologue that got turned into a novel so that people wouldn't be intimidated by the size of the book, or because trilogies are selling well right now, or whatever explanation you want to pick."

Let it resolve. Leave a few threads to connect to the next novel in the series, but let it resolve. The characters win the battle, but perhaps they're losing the war. The characters lost the battle, but they've discovered something that promises to turn the tide. The characters have solved the mystery, but there are a few things that don't add up and they're sure there's more beneath the surface. All great resolutions! All lead into the next story! But there's a whole lot of stories that will go for shock value and lack of resolution so they can get you to buy the next volume. And nothing makes me angrier at a book than when an author tries to pull one over on the reader instead of actually doing the work to structure a story.

[cizzle-freezy]

sometimes i think about how warrior cats is more or less harry potter for animal kiddos

[the-fuck-was-i-thinking-when-i]

my dad, seeing my unshaven and very hairy legs: wow

me (started process of trying to get prescribed testosterone):

[anxietycheesecake]

The lack of media literacy in this fandom is wild.

They basically said 'in your wildest dreams, here's a scenario that could have been the ending. And to highlight just how much this couldn't or didn't happen, here are two other endings that couldn't possibly happen' and people somehow came to the conclusion that this scene was remotely canon when it was the exact opposite.

It was imperative to somebody that the show fully clarifies that Nandor and Guillermo do not and will not fuck. They need the audience to know that and The Guide was once again used as a wedge to drive home that Nandor and Guillermo are platonic and only platonic. Nandor finds The Guide physically attractive and is romantically attracted. Whether his motivations are selfish and would fizzle upon realization is irrelevant because it's canon that he is into her and if you drew a venn diagram with his feelings for The Guide and Guillermo, there would be little overlap. That was the entire purpose of Guidmor this season and nearly the only purpose The Guide served. Friends, best friends, partners, in love with The Guide - they are circling this shit with a bright red marker.

And yeah, much of the direction they've taken on Nandor and Guillermo's relationship and taking jabs at shippers is because the fanart, fanfic, and general shipping made Simms uncomfortable and I'll die on that hill. The 'ick' is palpable in every one of those interviews where he says it wouldn't be profound enough, 'do people really want to see that? Really?' or that it would be problematic. They literally pivoted in the aftermath of season 3 and 4 because of the reception.

Tell me that in a world without social media, in a world where they didn't see how fans reacted, Nandor and Guillermo's relationship would have played out as it did. Tell me that it was in good faith and not damage control. Tell me they didn't want to kill that narrative while not losing viewership.

Tell me that this isn't the very manifestation of queer content being fun until it's more than a joke.

It's actually okay to be hurt if you create fan content and it makes a homophobic person uncomfortable, instead of telling yourself that couldn't possibly be how a showrunner, writer, or company really feels about something you care about and have invested in. It's a hard, shitty thing, especially when they dangled that ship to the point of using 'Nandermo' in promotional material. It's okay for others to be upset by this and have a myriad of personal or impersonal reasons for being offended, sad, angry. Our reaction isn't an attack on fans who are satisfied, and you don't have to rationalize an ugly truth when somebody is in the wrong and hurting real people. Simms is the one in a position of power here, not fans on Tumblr. He can absolutely steamroll the writers and actors on this if he wants to, and it can be seen in interviews, such as the one with Stefani. As I said in my previous ask, Harvey is a real gay person who has to smile and nod while his boss repeatedly uses these talking points to delegitimize gay relationships right in front of him like we're in the early 2000s.

Fuck that shit. This conduct is appalling and you have every right to be disgusted.

Thank you so much, bestie, the gaslighting got me thinking I was insane. Like good for people who are satisfied, but I think you should be able to see the whole picture beyond your own feelings. If nandermo had gone canon and everything else was the exact same, I'd complain about the lack of proper development and closure for everyone else, while being ecstatic for my beloved blorbos. Because you can aknowledge when shitty things happen even if you personally find them gratifying.

[thirteenthdoor]

So if you know me from @dragoncityinteriordesign, you know that one of my great pleasures is making shitty, not-to-scale MS Paint diagrams of interior locations. Therefore, enjoy a quick-and-dirty layout of how the Obsidian house is supposed to work.

A few notes beneath the cut:

When I say "supposed" to work, I mean that sometimes the layout doesn't match the physical reality of the building. Ignore reality for a moment, though -- this is the layout, as presented by the show.

The house is only ever shot from the side that's on the left of the diagram. This has left me guessing about a lot of things re: how the right side of the house works, including the space I have tentatively marked as Nanzhu's office. Expect a different post about that someday.

There are four doors on the bottom floor. Two only ever open when they're being used to enter door worlds.

Ling Jiushi has an interior window in his room where he can look out and see through a hole in the second floor (helpfully marked "hole") that overlooks the little sitting area. I assume sometimes the other Obsidian members sit around down there in the hopes that he'll forget to close the blinds before he takes off his shirt.

I took a long time squinting at the exterior building to see if it was really the same as the interior. I think my answer is: yes, but not necessarily at the same time. Despite a couple incongruities and the annoying part where no one ever travels between the two in a single shot, the interior and exterior are just too similar not to be the same thing. However, there are some exterior shots that imply baffling things about the second-floor interior in particular. I'm assuming what really happened was that that the production had to build out the interior to their specifications, and many of the exterior shots were done before/after this happened.

The purple question marks at the end of the second-floor hallway are to indicate that we see Qianli slip back there like there's supposed to be more to the house that way. We never get to go back there, though, so there's no telling what it's meant to be.

Maybe it's the bathroom? I'm definitely disturbed by the lack of a bathroom. Fanfic writers, where are we putting the bathrooms?

...And obviously I am a trainwreck with keeping straight the book names and drama names. Look, you know who I mean.

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam. A potentially stupid question. Image descriptions for screen readers. Do they work the same way for audio and video? As in are they needed or helpful? I'm finding conflicting answers when I search for this.

Not at all a stupid question! I think sometimes it can vary by community, to be honest.

Screen-reader users, visually impaired folk, and others for whom IDs are particularly relevant, feel free to chime in; I'm going to ramble and you likely have more useful stuff to say. Remember to do it in reblogs or notes, as I don't post asks sent in response to other asks.

I'm not visually impaired, and I don't use a screen reader and thus am not really able to speak with firsthand authority. In the past, when I've asked, I've heard that in-post text is better than alt-text for images; even if that stops being the case, I prefer to use in-post text because there are people who aren't screen-reader users who also like the IDs. I do too, actually. And generally I've heard that video as well as image should be described. I don't do straight audio generally, but when I do, if it's a song I don't bother because the title is there and lyrics are googleable, if it's speech I like to see/give a transcript.

I like when videos have descriptions especially, because I am almost never in a position to play a video I see on my dash. If the video doesn't autoplay I don't want to hit play because then it will load with audio and I'm usually either a) somewhere I can't have audio or b) already listening to something and unwilling to turn it off. If the video autoplays it's muted, but if it's audio-heavy there's the same issue. So if someone posts a video without a description/transcript, unless it has captions, I can't engage.

There are a lot of guides out there for how to write IDs and I kind of think, based on conversations I've had, most of them are bullshit by people who don't use screen readers. In my experience, which is not universal but is relatively comprehensive, people who can't see an image often do not want a precise objective description as we're instructed to provide.

There's a great essay that touches on this, Against Access, where the writer, who is Deafblind, talks about how he doesn't want a diagram, he wants an emotional evocation.

Why are you telling me, telling me, telling me things? Your job isn’t to deliver this whole room to me on a silver platter. I don’t want the silver platter. I want to attack this room. I want to own it, just like how the sighted people here own it. Or, if the room isn’t worth owning, then I want to grab whatever I find worth stealing.

I've had people get shitty with me about putting "feelings" into my IDs, but the majority of people for whom those IDs are necessary have told me they like it because, for example, saying "She looks like she's about to commit violence" is a subjective opinion but conveys something that "A woman is standing with arms upraised and a frown on her face" does not. And if you're describing an image but there's not a ton of meaning to it, describing it in clinical detail is wasting time. A paragraph describing a fortysomething white guy and all the clothing he's wearing and the room he's in is not as helpful, on occasion, as simply saying "This is a photograph of me in my bedroom." It depends on context, which is your call to make, and the only way to get good at that is to do it.

But again: this is my experience with my readers, and even John Lee Clark, quoted above, doesn't speak for his whole community. So I would suggest that the best way to get an answer for this is just to ask your readers what they'd prefer. If you have friends who use screenreaders, ask them. If you don't, or if you don't get a response from your readers, I would do what you feel is best until someone tells you otherwise, and then be gracious and discuss it with them so you can better understand their needs. In my experience, when someone is genuinely trying to make a more welcoming space for disabilities -- as opposed to making virtue-signal attempts to Be The Perfect Ally -- they get a lot of slack when they don't get it exactly right. It is better to make a welcoming space for people to feel safe telling you that you fucked up than it is to pretend you're never going to fuck up.

So yeah, as someone who is more or less fully sighted, that's my two cents, but if you really want to know what your readers want, you know...I'd ask them. :) Good luck, either way.

[frownyalfred]

sometimes writing a plot is just scribbling nonsense in your phone until it makes sense again (aka, I know how pack bonds work, I definitely know what I’m doing)

[offline-nobody]

yknow when you start overthinking something and you end up feeling like the charlie board image? ye well…

how did the arcane time travel actually start??? so the whole idea is that viktors been going back in time and giving jayce different runes in an attempt to create a universe in which he doesnt go full ‘glorious evolution’ and destroying everything right? but in order for viktor to go back in time and give jayce the rune, hextech already needs to be a thing for him to become part of the hexcore. and in order for the hextech to exist, jayce needs to have already received a rune, because otherwise he wouldve either a. died or b. never come up with hextech at all

ive drawn this very shitty diagram to show what the cycle looks like for some reason, but this is how it works

jayce always needs to receive the rune first, it just doesnt make sense any other way

the way i see it theres two ways in which that time travel could work, and neither of them can account for the first rune

option 1: it is the same viktor everytime. if theres only viktor trying various runes, then that viktor would never bother giving jayce the first rune, because he already know the outcome of that one, why would he bother repeating a rune, unless hes intentionally closing the first time loop, but why would he bother closing it, he knows it doesnt work, and hes essentially about to destroy that timeline by giving a different rune, so what does he care if the loop is open or not?? unless he knows about the multiverse, but then why would he be giving runes if he knows about it, surely hed just travel the multiverse instead of doing all this trial and error. my point is, he wouldnt give the first rune, it just doesnt make sense

option 2: each loop is a different viktor. this one also wouldnt work, because if any one of these viktors were to close the loop and give the first rune, then there could never be a scenario where the loop is broken (aka the main arcane timeline), because once first rune is given, your right back to first viktor, who wouldnt know what runes had been handed out, and so would give the same rune he did last time, thus causing a spiral-loop thing

look, i love time travel, im more than happy with a time loop, or time rewriting, or any of the other time travel tropings that exist. its just that normally theres some level of understanding of how the first timeline came to be before the time travel shenagins, regardless of what rules theyre playing with, and arcane just doesnt provide an explanation for how it all couldve started, and i really wanna know, cause its such a fun time travel concept, but because of how the story plays out i dont think it can work

id love it if someone was able to actually give me an explanation that ive missed for this (and please dont do the whole ‘its just a story your not meant to think about it’ thing cause i like overthinking stuff, this is fun for me)

[bonefall]

This may be a bit of a silly question but I’m trying to research this for a fanclan and I cannot make a fox’s tail out of the non twoleg workings

So how would you/Windclan go about reinforcing the tunnels? Used to think it was just ‘put a thick branch up there and every few fox lengths, it’ll support all that’ and that doesn’t seem quite right anymore. Please and thank you 🐈‍⬛

I'm gonna try and keep this reply simple and not get into the in-depth mechanics of digging holes, that's a post for some other time and I'd have to talk about depth and learn math and shit

So very simply putting it, usually, you would naturally dig square tunnels, and this is where all the tension of digging comes from. See, a square tunnel is really bad for physically holding things up, so beams are there to help.

Think about a tunnel kind of like building a bridge. The tunnel is a structure that needs to hold up the dirt above it. Really, functionally think about how many bridges are truly flat; it's not many! You want Arches.

And, it just so happens, a tunnel ALSO wants to be an arch. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well so I drew a little diagram of a cave-in;

[ID: A drawing of a square tunnel with a dotted line showing the arch of where the dirt will collapse. It progresses into the second drawing of a rock fall, revealing the arch of the first drawing.]

Most cave-ins aren't the ENTIRE tunnel collapsing, it's the part of the tunnel that WANTS to be arch. Arches good. Arches are physically the best way for holding things up. Problem is that you can't dig like that without dropping however many pounds of earth on yourself.

So really, what you want is a beam, not just a stick in the middle of the hole. You want to put a beam from wall to wall, supported by two columns beneath. Like minecraft.

Other various things;

Older tunnels are, actually, usually more structurally sound. There's been more time for them to "stabilize."

The deeper the tunnel, the more stable. This is because the earth above the tunnel is packed in better. You do NOT want to open up a staircase downwards like minecraft, the entrance will COLLAPSE.

However, naturally, a collapse in a deeper tunnel is more deadly and severe for obvious reasons.

Just to state the obvious, sand bad. You do not want to dig in sand. Sand Bad.

Canon vastly overstates the severity of shallow tunnel collapses. Cats will die in less than a foot of dirt :/ There's this part in DOTC where Jagged Peak activates a quicktime event and a burrow collapses on him and it was so profoundly stupid it's been in my head ever since

suffocating in an old animal burrow... girl... do you think rabbits are constantly dying in collapses? genuinely? In soft soil?

Gray Wing is like, "you almost out bro?" and Jaggy-P is like, "ya im coming" and then WHOMP. DIRT. thats not how this works thats not how any of this works

And as a final note... the problems with WC's portrayals of shitty parents aside, it actually makes perfect sense that Tallpaw would think his father Sandgorse is a lunatic for feeling safe with going right back in after a collapse. Tallpaw doesn't know that some kinds of cave-ins actually make the tunnel more safe, but Sandgorse, an experienced digger, would.

(unfortunately the writers don't know this. but i do.)

[jellybeanium124]

pathetic vent post lol

so the thursday before last, one of my coworkers told me she's quitting bc she got a job in the field she wants to have a career in. I was happy for her and told her so, but I also felt kind of sad, because she's a woman close in age to me and I've been thinking we could be friends if I wasn't technically her boss for a little while now. so finally near the end of our shifts (we were closing) I buck up and ask if her she'd want to exchange contact info and stay in touch and hang out after she left.

and y'all she looked so happy and excited to be asked that. absolutely 0 hints that her delighted response wasn't genuine. so she puts her number in my phone, and even takes a silly picture for the contact pic, and I send a test text and she responds to confirm it's her correct number.

on monday I text her about hanging out later in the week, with ideas. on tuesday I text her again, with new ideas if she didn't like my first ones. I didn't mean to double text two days in a row.

nothing.

I wait till yesterday and send her one last text, explaining that I really do wanna be friends, I am more chill outside of work and she's only seen Work Nina if that's what she's worried about, but that I don't wanna bother her.

it's been over 24 hours now, and nothing. part of me wonders if she changed her mind and blocked my number.

it's just really disheartening because I've had another person string me along and then not respond/continually cancel on me pretty recently. after my college friend group broke up thanks to the serial sexual predator (which is a whole nother story, dw he didn't do anything to me, in fact he refused to talk to me the first time we met when I introduced myself and tried to make polite small talk, and I realized several months later that he didn't engage with me at all because he didn't wanna fuck me 🙃) things have been kind of dire in the irl friends department and it's sad and pathetic and I thought finally here was a girl I really connected with, and she liked gossiping with me at work, and she seemed really really excited at the possibility of being real friends with me, and then nope... not a single response to any of my texts. zip nada zilch.

it's just hard... I was basically socially rejected by everyone in my film program at my uni, then I finally started to make friends at the jewish club and a serial predator with an apartment full of guns who sells stolen lego sets on ebay and does cocaine ruins that, and then I'm at work and now that I'm a manager I'm the boss of most people there and I wouldn't be close friends with most of them anyways and the one girl who I think I could be really close friends with fucking ghosts me after I was brave enough to ask if she'd wanna be friends. it's been like five straight years of rejection for me. I always had friends in k-12, I wasn't a "popular kid" but I was well liked among the venn diagram of gays, nerds, theater kids, and band kids and I had a lot of friends in high school. I don't fucking know what happened. and now I'm on meds that are finally giving me energy and happy chemicals so I wanna go out, I wanna do stuff, I wanna walk around, and I don't wanna be an apartment slug anymore but I don't have anyone to do anything with and there's only so much fun you can have by yourself. and I'm still too shy to go to a bar alone because I know I'll stand in the corner paralyzed by social anxiety. I'm trying bumble bff rn but I'm so shit at responding to people and I kinda hate myself for it and I'm trying to do better but I keep not responding to people for too long and yeah maybe my ex-coworker is stuck in that cycle too idk.

oh yeah and the whole past year of antisemitism makes everything worse because I'm deeply realistically afraid that any goyim I meet are going to be hateful hamasniks <3 so that's a fun lil bonus.

jesus man... idfk. it's just shitty. it's just fucking shitty.

[missmiseryguts]

slides some ideas under your door like a cat giving you a dead mouse

OH MY GOD YESSS... THIS INSORIED SOME DOODLES... GIGGLING.. AND ALSO A NEW COLOUR SCHEME IDEA

This is funny BC I have an oc who looks like Mu and her whole colour scheme is based off of a moth.. funny coincidence HSHSHS.. ALSO THE SHOOTING STAR ONE IS ADORABLE

Other shitty doodles.. I'm so gonna have to make actual little diagrams for these ones on my official little medallion variant cheatsheat. And actually make some for brewing medallion. LMFAOOO

I'll also think of more colour schemes (this is me procrastinating working on the finale this is me procrastinating working on the finale this is me procrastinating on working on the finale this is)

[boreal-sea]

I studied American & British government and politics at a level, and the first thing we covered was electoral systems because they are so *so* awful.

The way I try and explain it to people who are struggling to understand FPTP is imagine a group of 10 people are deciding on a snack.

Your choices are:

Packet of ready salted crisps.

Packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

Packet of peanuts.

3 people pick ready salted crisps. 3 people pick salt and vinegar.

4 people pick the peanuts.

So 60% DONT pick peanuts, that's less than half. But EVERYONE gets peanuts. (And what if someone who voted crisps is allergic to peanuts? Tough. That's what everyone gets)

The electoral system is fucked. But if we replace the Dems with salt and vinegar, an Independent with ready salted, and Republicans with peanuts. It shows how Easy the Republicans can get a seat if you Don't vote blue.

I hope this helps people who struggle to get why not voting blue is a vote for the Republicans.

In my country (UK) the Conservatives (that's like your Republicans) don't have a majority of votes even though they have the majority of seats in Parliament.

(This doesn't take into account your absolutely fucked electoral college that doesn't make sense, sorry,,, I struggled to wrap my head around that)

Yeeeeaaaaah our electoral system is so, so fucked on LITERALLY every level, which is why it's so god damned important that we vote blue no matter who and that we don't do anything to damage people's willingness to vote blue. Republicans make sure the system is incredibly stacked against marginalized voters, because marginalized voters know that voting blue is the only way we get to cling to rights. We literally cannot afford to lose even a single blue vote.

On the bottom level, on the basis of the voters, Republicans use our system to fuck them over in many ways.

Restrictions against individual voters

Many states having difficult voter ID laws designed to prevent marginalized people from voting. These voting laws are implemented by Republicans. So there's a bunch of Democratic votes that never get cast.

Next, each state and city run by Republicans often do things like removing voting locations, making it harder for marginalized people to vote by making it harder for them to get to polling locations and making the lines in those locations longer. Marginalized people are often lower class, and it's almost impossible to get a whole day off to stand in line to vote, therefore, these people often have no choice: they can't risk their job to go vote. So there's more blue votes that never get cast.

Also, many of those states have restrictions on absentee voting, which could be a solution for folks who can't take time off to vote, but because absentee voting is made purposely difficult and confusing, it again restricts people from voting. More blue votes lost.

Those are just the harms done to individual voters by Republicans. We haven't even gotten to voting districts yet.

Voting Districts

So the way the electoral college works is that everyone's individual votes are first funneled up to voting districts, and then those districts are tallied to decide who won the state. The problem is, human beings draw those districts - and Republicans like to drawn them in very shitty ways that ensure marginalize people's votes don't count as much.

Look at this. That third diagram is what happens in states all across America. Anyone who thinks the USA works on a "one person, one vote" system is wrong. You do not directly vote - your vote is tallied as part of your district, and that total is what determines who wins the state.

And then you have what happens at the state level, because the system continues to fuck over voters.

The Electoral College

You thought it couldn't get worse? It gets worse. Each state has officials called "Electors", and they are the people who actually cast the true vote for president. Now, legally, in many states, these Electors are legally required to cast their vote for the candidate selected by the districts in the state, but in some states they technically could just vote for whoever they want. They don't, because they'd never win reelection, but still.

So, ok. How many Electors does each state get? Is it based off something logical, like population maybe? Kind of. Every state gets 1 for each Senator (so a total of 2) and then 1 for each congressional district - and the number of congressional districts a state gets is based off population.

This system, unfortunately, ends up giving more "weight" to voters from less populated states. Some people claim this is good, because it means those states will still have their opinions expressed in government. Other people note that land doesn't vote, and it's completely unfair a small number of voters get to basically override the choice of a majority of voters.

So, a candidate has to win 270 of these electoral votes to win the election. Notably, the electoral college results do not always match the "popular vote" - that's the 1:1 vote of the people. There have been several situations where the majority of individuals in the USA voted for candidate A, but because of how the electoral college works, candidate B won instead. The last two times this happened, it was Democrats who lost. Most recently, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over three million votes, but lost in the Electoral College, so we ended up with Trump.

Summary

If any of my followers are confused, I get it. But hopefully, you will also see now how incredibly stacked the system is against minority voters specifically because they're more likely to vote Democrat. Maybe now you will see that Republicans basically have to cheat at every stage of an election to win, and that if we actually had fair elections in this country based on 1:1 votes, Republicans couldn't win.

And maybe, hopefully, this will make it clear why it's so fucking dangerous to tell people to not vote for Biden. We are walking a razor thin wire across a chasm of jagged rocks, while Republicans laugh and throw fireballs at us. They don't want the system to change, because it benefits them! Every voter we successfully get to the polls is a win for us and a lose for them.

Please vote. Please vote blue. Please vote for election reform.