#nearly 4000.

[intotheelliwoods]

Hey uhh uhhm if yall dont hear from me in a while/I dont post many updates, no im not dead, I just may or may not have taken on a very large project ✌️

[atlas-of-galaxies]

whatever i get into next i need to make sure it's an all-female cast cuz goddd i am so sick of how bad of a male favoritism problem the project sekai fandom has

[celestial--sapphic]

5th January, 1892

"I think that would be cheating, Pops. If I am honest.” Evelyn has to admit, giving a sideways look to her girlfriend who is half-stooping next to her in front of Professor Ronen's elaborate collection of butterflies. 

The Hufflepuff's gaze is focused specifically on one of the winged insects in the tallest glass chamber which sports a mix of vivid colours; rusted red hues on the main part of its delicate, paperthin wings, with black, soft daffodil yellow and an iridescent blue tingeing the edges with spots like blurred ink on wet parchment. Evelyn was never quite sure if the butterflies in question were still alive and enchanted to live inside the glass chambers indefinitely or if they are taxidermy charmed to flutter their wings at regular intervals through some exceptional reanimation spell. The Slytherin is equally never sure which version she prefers. 

"Cheating?" Poppy asks curiously, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear and tilting her head up slightly to look up at Evelyn from underneath those thick, long lashes that Evelyn never fails to find impossibly attractive. 

"Yes, well doesn't the book expect you to find them out and about in the real world?" Evelyn replies, gesturing absently in the direction of the butterflies and beyond.  

The book, in question, is a one of a set of three spotter guides she bought from Tomes and Scrolls for Poppy as a Christmas present; The Observer’s Guide to British Butterflies, The Observer’s Guide to British Flowers and Observer’s Guide to British Birds. The Hufflepuff absolutely loved them (nearly knocking Evelyn’s glass of mulled cider out of her hand when she pulled her into a hug after unwrapping them) and immediately got to work excitedly filling them in. It was less than three weeks since Christmas and she had already cheerfully ticked off a number of native Scottish birds and hardy flora that can survive the weather, like snowdrops and hellebores. However, given the unforgiving, biting winter weather in the Highlands Poppy had made limited (see: non-existent) progress on the butterflies edition, to her disappointment.   

Poppy hums. “I suppose you are right, it wouldn’t be completely honest. Truly, I would prefer to see the peacock butterfly in real life anyway. They must look so beautiful when they fly freely, imagine the colours…” She trails off, her gaze drifting back to the glass chambers and the regular beating of coloured wings. 

“I would hazard there are a fair few people who get frustrated with the rare ones and just end up going to the Natural History Museum to tick them off,” Evelyn muses, stepping closer into Poppy’s bubble of space, to look closer herself at the butterfly which had Poppy so enraptured. 

"The what?" 

“Natural History Museum.” Evelyn repeats, assuming Poppy hadn’t heard her. 

“The what, sorry?” Poppy asks again.  

“The Natural History Museum, in Kensington, in London?” 

Poppy turns her attention back to the taller girl and gives Evelyn a completely blank look and a small shake of her head.

“Is that… muggle?” The Hufflepuff asks curiously. Poppy having grown up completely in the wizarding world and Evelyn in the muggle world they had found plenty of things in the course of their relationship that one or the other didn’t know about. Poppy telling Evelyn she had never used the London Underground being one example that always springs to mind.    

“You've... you've never been to the Natural History Museum?" Evelyn couldn’t believe it. How had Poppy Sweeting not been to the Natural History Museum? Regardless if it was a muggle institution, she would have bet a Galleon the Hufflepuff's gran would have taken the her at some point, given their joint love of the natural world, magical and otherwise. 

Evelyn knew, at that moment, exactly what they were doing for Poppy’s 17th birthday next month.

[sanders-sides-uncorrect-quotes]

TSS compilations need to stop popping up in my reccomended I don't want to be back in the fandom 3 years after I left in the year of our lord 2024 I think my brain would explode

[professional-writher]

Just read The Epic of Gilgamesh. I can't believe the oldest written piece of literature of ever was tragic yaoi.

[miku-spotted]

working on my queue right now!! i'm sorry to anyone who tagged me in miku posts while i was gone, most of them were lost to tumblr's 100-day notes limit :(

on the bright side, that means you can send them to me again!!

i'm going to try to take it slow and not stress myself out over this blog, so don't worry if my queue runs dry every so often! but i'm glad to be back!!!

[noellevanious]

[ghostpantomime]

was wondering why my liked songs shuffle was playing so many depeche mode songs and then realised i was shuffling depeche mode liked songs Not my full liked songs.

[sunshineboy-greer-collins]

music tag game!

tagged by @empydoc thank you sweetheart !!

Rules: put your library on shuffle and make a poll with the first five songs so people can vote on their favorite!

tagging: @prince-damien-of-darkness @plaqying and whoever else wants to do it! (i hope it’s alright that i tagged ya, sorry if you’ve already been tagged)

[vhaerath]

i think if you are a teacher and you assign a project that involves spending more than 0.05 cents to complete a project you should be crucified

[squarebracket-trickster]

okay fine. they meet Lord Malrid in the first line of the next scene (big plot turning point) so time to stop for tonight. I don't have enough juice left in me to start tackling what is basically a new section. Actually, I think I should put a chapter break here. it's been more than 6000 words since the last one. This might be my longest chapter? idk

The majority of this chapter is just fluff, humour, and sexual tension. Adris and Sorin do a bit of plotting while they sit by the fire together but, with the exception of Adris quizzing Sorin on Firnen (her husband who she's never met), then actually getting to Ryeneth, and meeting that one city watchman very little plot happens in the whole 6000 words.

Still, I cannot bring myself to cut it yet. Maybe I won't need to in the end. I don't really think it is bloat: more like giving the plot some room to breathe.

so update for today:

Total word count is 43 450. Page count is 76. Percent is 54%.I have nine chapters written, I begin tomorrow on chapter 10. I have edited 8204 words since my last update earlier today (holy shit), and 8786 total since this morning (which means I apparently wrote just over 500 words last update, not 200).

It seems the muses were kind to me today. I shall have to give them an offering of thanks.

At this point in my first draft I was at 94 pages, 67 655 words in. That is a whopping 25 205 words more than draft 2 which means I cut a further 6000 or so this draft.

Oh my gosh, that means 7000 more words cut I will be exactly where I want to be for my word goal!! Hopefully I end up cutting a few thousand more words than that so I have room to fix the ending (which I was not happy with in draft 1) and have room in later drafts to pretty up the prose.

ahhhh this is very exciting!!!

[charms-of-earth]

ok, so this is a little niche but anyone who has ever modded a game/used mods (on PC) will understand. the go-to site for PC modding is nexus, and each mod creator has the option to allow comments on a file they upload. Mostly it's troubleshooting, or a space to tell the author how much you love their mod, or suggestions for future updates. but sometimes, drama can unfold (and in this case, justice can be served) one of my favorite mod creators for BG3 hasn't been able to update his mods since last year. He's posted a stickied comment on all his mods to let everyone know, so fans of his work don't think he just vanished. it's nice to be kept in the loop.

alright, that sucks but life happens. several patches go by, including the huge (and somewhat infamous) patch 7, which added an official modder's toolkit, official modding support via mod.io, and a native mods loader that you can access in game (and even download and update mods from mod.io without quitting the game) this is great for the BG3 modding community, but also terrible. Before patch 7, people still wanted to mod their game so they went to nexus of course. Tools were developed before patch 7 like the BG3 mod manager because nexus' most popular mod organization software (vortex) doesn't like BG3 (for reasons i won't go into in this post). so back to present day. patch 7 has been out for a while now, long enough that active mod creators have had plenty of time to update their mods to work with patch 7 (it broke almost everything and we all had to pretty much abandon our old saves and manually purge all mods and start modding from scratch) but, some mods continues to be broken with no fix in sight. i like to browse the "new" category on nexus so i can see mods before they appear on the "trending" page. it makes me feel like i'm getting in on future popular mods at the ground floor and it's fun to see what people come up with that never gets popular. today i was doing just that, when i came across an "update" to one of those mods i mentioned that doesn't work with patch 7. from the creator that could no longer load BG3. this person did not have permission and said as much (but would take it down if contacted by the original creator). i wrote out a comment and debated if i should post it because i'm usually a lurker. i sent this message to my partner after posting:

i expected the person who made the update to reply with some justification of why they were in the right, or that i was over-reacting, or at the very least to be ignored. i was so ready for them to push back, or that i'd opened myself up for abuse.

i sent a report to the nexus moderator team and waited. i did not have to wait long. since i am an anxious person, i refreshed the page a few times, keeping an eye out for a reply from anyone. instead i saw this:

i was floored. i stood up to someone who was doing something shady and they backed down? they didn't try to hurt me or make me feel like i was in the wrong? idk if they realized i was right and decided to change their ways, or they didn't want to deal with the impending report, or they didn't want the attention, or what. doing the right thing actually made a difference for once. i know this is on a very small scale and the BG3 community is full of pretty cool people, but in the words of Karlach, the tiefling barbarian companion: it's nice to be in a place where good is still possible. it's the little things like this, the little victories that show me that i can still make a difference. even if it's to one person at a time. i exist and can influence the world i live in, even if i feel powerless sometimes.

[angelcatsiel]

I generally listen to specific playlists or albums but sometimes I just put every song I've ever liked on shuffle and it's great because I often hear songs I'd forgotten about or haven't heard in a while. unfortunately though it means I run the risk of getting randomly jumpscared by the James May Cheese song

[nekoisadumbname]

fuck you apple fuck you iphone fuck your stupid shit complicated proprietary file infrastructure i'm gunna fucking kill you

[ms-demeanor]

Kids, we know how interest works, right? A while back I made a post about how credit card interest can screw you, but we know how interest can be good for you too, right?

I suspect we don't know about this because on one of the posts I made about it someone said something about how it is evil that money can make money, but you know that's not just for the ultrawealthy, right? That is legitimately something that you can and should take advantage of in some kind of retirement/savings/investment account.

Let us say that you are twenty years old, have no money to put into a savings account, but have a job that pays you well enough that you've got twenty dollars to spare from each paycheck.

Let us say that you put that into a normal savings account; normal savings accounts have an average interest rate of .56 APY. Let us say you are going to be working until you are sixty, and that you will add forty dollars to that account every month (twenty bucks from each paycheck) for a total of $480 per year.

At the end of 40 years you would have about $21.5k.

That's a pretty good chunk of change! twenty thousand dollars is a lifechanging amount of money. But look at the total interest. In forty years you would have accrued only $2300 in interest.

Now, instead, let us imagine that you are a member of a credit union that offers you a free, high-yield savings account with a decent APY. Everything else being the same, but putting that money in an account with a 4% return does this:

Your total contributions that you put in stay the same, but the amount of money you have at the end of forty years more than doubles.

Let's say you have a thousand dollars to put in the account at the beginning and run it again.

Low interest account: you add $1000 at the start and have an extra $1200 at the end.

High interest account: you add $1000 at the start and have an extra $4000 at the end.

There are many, many very stable opportunities for savings that will grow your money. Fifty thousand dollars isn't a retirement plan, but it's a hell of a lot better than what you would have if you just stuck cash in a savings account or if you didn't save any money at all.

I know how hard it can be to save. I know it feels impossible to put money aside, but even if you start with no money and can tuck away five dollars a week you can get a LOT out of that five dollars a week.

This certainly isn't "you can't buy a house because you get coffee at the cafe," but it something that can HELP.

Now, let's suppose you're not twenty. Let's suppose you're in my boat, and you're (almost) forty and you're going to be saving for twenty years. You still don't have a lot of cash, but you know it has less time to grow interest, so you double your contribution and you put in forty dollars for each paycheck for a total of $960 a year.

That is extremely very much not the same thing as putting in forty bucks a month for twenty years. Instead of your interest being nearly one and a half times the amount of your contributions, it is around half.

If you are a young person (honestly even if you are not a young person) and it is in any way possible for you to start putting money into any kind of an investment account, you should do so as soon as humanly possible. The earlier you do it, the more interest you will have and the more money you will end up with when you are nearing retirement age.

This is how individual retirement plans work. This is what a 401K does, but sometimes it does that with matching contributions from your employer (so your employer matches whatever you put into the account up to a certain percentage of your pay). 401K accounts also often have higher APYs than high yield savings accounts, though they have more limitations on how and when the money can be pulled out.

If you are broke as fuck and never learned anything about investing or interest from your family because your family was broke as fuck too, now is the time to learn. r/PersonalFinance is a reasonable resource (and if you ever happen to have a windfall that's the first place I would point you for figuring out how to make the most of it) for learning about this stuff.

Thinking about money sucks! Being afraid you'll never be able to retire sucks! Having to figure out how to save sucks! But there are tools out there that even very fucking broke people can use to make that suck less.

[a-sad-secret-death]

I don't know if it's because I finish my undergrad in June or I've been going through my tumblr archive for some reason but I'm going all "what am I, the author of this fic trying to say about the things I value or condone?" and while I don't think it's a bad thing and that - intentionally or not - fanfiction can be an outlet for our own biases and values as much as original fiction is even if the source material isn't our own (see: perceived 'Death of the Author and the Harry Potter fandom.) and it's something worth exploring. But like, for my own fic.