#my esteemed my beloved

[pokedash55]

Anytime my friends try to talk to me about something other than my hyperfixation

Rushed blank version :

[hatchetfieldbrainrot]

I've had even more heartbreaking Ted thoughts that I need to share with you all. So, as we know, in Time Bastard, Ted was trying to get up the courage to confess his feelings to Jenny before he "passed out". The next morning, he wakes up to a letter from her, confessing her own feelings but thinking they're unreciprocated. Well, that's an easy fix. They're college students in 2004! They have cell phones. He just needs to call her. There's two possibilities for how that goes.

1. Jenny had her phone on her when she died so it got disintegrated along with her. Ted calls her and he gets that automated message about the number he's calling being out of service. God, was he that unimportant and disposable to her that she changed her phone number already? Did she actually love him or had she guessed his feelings and this was her idea of letting him down easy? She didn't give him another way to contact her so she obviously just wanted him out of her life.

2. Jenny didn't have her phone on her when she died so it survived somewhere. Ted calls her and it goes to voicemail. So, he leaves her a message telling her that he loves her too and she doesn't need to move to Clivesdale with Andy and please call him back, he loves her so much. Except she doesn't call him back that day. Or the day after that. Or the day after that. Days turn into weeks that turn into months and she still doesn't call him back. He confessed his feelings, told her he loves her and wants to be with her, and it didn't matter. His feelings weren't enough, he wasn't enough. She still moved to Clivesdale with Andy. So, why bother telling anyone that he loves them? It won't change anything.

[fellamarsh]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[galaxostars]

ok but remus and regulus are both introverted, depressed, gay, emo, nerdy, self deprecating, hot intellectual creatures™️ who are so done with prongsfoot’s bullshit 24/7… how can people not want to make them smooch honestly

[ladyantiheroine]

I just think they would be friends.

[dadbodbensisko-moved]

fics where spock watches kirk fall in love with all sorts of species and genders and concludes that "no one ever wants me, it is logical to assume jim would be any different. there must be something in me that others see. i am no good. it is illogical to conclude otherwise" are my roman empire

[fruixtii]

im crying because in this moment silver was probably asking himself that same thing.

[redr0sewrites]

i need to write more for switch eris this is not a drill

as usual im yapping in the tags 💀

[xviicprc]

dark knight doodles and a fray appearance hc

[mathlann]

Marazhai being Trueborn is worth it if nothing else for the fucked-up sibling drama he has with Yremeryss. She decided to take him being born extremely personally, but also, he's her only Dracon so she's not super incentivized to kill him. So they've just been stuck in a cycle of sabotaging each other for who knows how long, and at least until you come along it seems like she'd been winning.

He fucked up a raid? She has her haemonculus torture Low Gothic into his brain to teach the other Kabalites a lesson. He tries to have her usurped as Archon in front of their liege's Kabal? She lets the Wyches take his skin and make him fight in the arena to earn it back. And even though last one was bad enough he wants her soul trapped over it, he's more mad about the status loss than the "making him earn his skin back" part.

And then later you can ask him about why haven't they killed each other sooner and beyond just being too scared cautious to do it himself, he's also like, "its a bonding thing, and trying to torment other people would be boring so :/" which is probably true but also he doesn't seem to have many stories of getting one up on her so...?

[dutybcrne]

One day, I wanna do a coherent ramble abt how Diluc and Kaeya are embodiments of what each other’s fathers believed in/wanted them to be.

[ohbeffinitely]

Feeling like hot garbage this weekend, so might as well do some doodles to get back into the swing of things!

[frick6101719]

um i was on my twice annual reread of it might kill me and i made this. it’s caerwyn in the first interview dress (or at least the version in my head) i don’t really know what else to say i’m sorry i hope it’s ok

UM WHAT THE FUCK

I AM IN LOVE

HI

WOW

I am so floored right now Rae spiritually I am kissing you on the mouth I LOVE HER

today has been a shit day and this has very much cheered me up I don't have the words. WOW.

I love everything about this. I love that I knew immediately that you have seen the Pinterest board but that you have really made this look your own. I am not a person who is good at creating a mental image of things based on words or images and I am blown away by how you have done it here. You have combined the pictures and descriptions and made something BEAUTIFUL and I am obsessed. I love the colour. I love her pose--it's prim in a way that seems so deliberate? This absolute scheming bitch I can practically see her eyelashes batting from the way you've posed her and that is so real of you.

Also the titties. 11/10 A+ no notes.

The space buns, the glow, the FRECKLES. I love it all.

Thank you so much. I can't tell you what it does to me to think of all the time and love you've put into this piece of art, and how it was my wee fic that prompted such an act. I'm touched. It's so special.

WOW.

[tovaicas]

Yet there can be no answer but this, can there? So let us wait for a time, you and I. In the cold and in the snow. In the dark…

[partyinthemysterymachine]

me, whilst lovingly re-reading GOOMT: oh man oh man who WROTE this thing, cuz this shit’s just fucking GREAT!!!!