#not tagging because it will find its audience
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Posting this everywhere til im not obsessed with it anymore
#not tagging because it will find its audience#also choleric sullen boy could lay seige give him a chance#anyway if i had to pick fictional characters id make this isabela and anders
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a non-comprehensive guide to my favourite characters in claymore, the best manga you've never read (more under the cut)
don't know what I'm talking about? here's a crashcourse.
#disclaimer: 60% of the added detail is under the cut is my own personal headcanon but im also just correct#anyway#blatantly copying my best friend's template for when they did it for their favourite niche media#its so fun to make art for stuff not that many people know about. im free from the shackles of expecting an audience#this is just for me#also. one of these things is not like the other. hi dauf#“why didnt you draw rigardo too” because i just dont find him that interesting :/ sorry dude#killer performance at pieta! still the most underwhelming member of the first generation#hm....what else#im surprised at how claymore never experienced a resurgence in popularity. in a perfect world this shit does numbers on sapphic tumblr#but oh well#its been 10 years but im still here#i will singlehandedly bring about the claymore renaissance if i have to#okay time for general tags >#claymore#norihiro yagi#manga#teresa of the faint smile#clare claymore#irene claymore#quicksword irene#miria claymore#phantom miria#helen claymore#deneve claymore#ophelia claymore#rippling ophelia#jean claymore#drillsword jean#god eye galatea
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i don’t know if i’m ever gonna write the fic but i’ve been thinking abt like. the eternal stockade. the implications. lup, a lich who was trapped in a dark featureless cell for a decade completely isolated with nothing to keep her sanity but her own mind. she has to put people in the eternal stockade. how many liches does she see herself in. how many liches started out just like her. how many liches are truly too far gone. and the only liches we ever see other than her and barry are edward and lydia. they’re certainly evil, but mad? they seem pretty sane. they’re not, like, tattered echoes of souls, they’re definitely still people. even as much of a grudge as lup surely has against them, wouldn’t they remind her incredibly strongly of herself? do they deserve to be trapped just like she was? for eternity? isn’t eternity what turned john to existential despair in the first place?
#mine#taz balance#taz lup#lup#like idk i think lup’s down to kick necromancer ass but when it comes to being like. WARDENS of a PRISON. would that not be uncomfortable??#but like taking the job is the only way to avoid HER being thrown in prison??#idk the raven queen being a cool & chill goddess boss is definitely fun but when you actually think abt it#i don’t think i’d agree with her. i think if i lived in that world i’d think she were sort of evil#which like also to get into the hunger vs authority its not very explored because its not at all the point#the hunger is meant to be nihilism and despair and dissatisfaction its at its core an emotional story about joy & love#but like john starts out rebelling against laws. laws of the universe; except that it turns out a being wrote those laws (jeffandrew)#so the hunger is also sort of a force of rebelling against unjust constraints in the pursuit of freedom?#and the heroes end up preserving the status quo and saying you just have to find joy within those unjust limitations#which again. like. the point is that life is unfair and you can find joy and meaning despite it. which is true to real life.#i’m not saying the hunger was right or that despair is the only way or w/e like#yk like taz balance is not a story about society its more about. philosophy i guess#the point is that life’s really hard and you find meaning anyway and that’s preferable to despair and death#thematically for the audience we understand these are standins for ways of viewing reality#and in the real world reality is what it is. its just the world. there’s no authority that writes the laws of nature#like its not a ‘man vs authority’ story its a ‘man vs nature’ story#but IN UNIVERSE nature IS an authority. jeffandrew and the gods. regardless of how much joy you can find in an unjust world#if i lived in it i’d want to make it more just! but anyway like yeah barry & lup working for the raven queen#is kinda an extension on that idea of preserving the status quo#although i guess you could say gods are just forces of nature. theyre not PEOPLE theyre just personifications of existent natural laws#and it ties in w istus and fate as well#although fate is like a comforting guiding force rather than restricting & horrifying#^ pay no attention to any of this i don’t think it really means anything i’m just like. writing thoughts as i have them#not like a hard stance i’m taking just exploring some ideas#any ways#THERES A TAG LIMIT??
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hermitcraft february 3rd 2024
Joel Smallishbeans version
#hermitcraft#hermitcraft season 10#hermitblr#skizzleman#impulsesv#im not tagging the rest of the hermits because y'know#don't wanna clog any tags#besides i feel like this meme will find its target audience soon enough#dose of skizz#dose of impulse#dose of hermitcraft
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Is this what Happiness is?
- hey so I haven't seen an interpretation of the bar scenes in Half that I fully agree with, so I wanted to throw my own two cents out there into the void and pray that it makes sense !!!
so, in the bar scenes in Half we see what I interpret as a hangout with old friends (or, hangout with old friend + his wife.) These scenes used to be the biggest piece of evidence for the cheater theory, but now that that's been debunked by the man himself, I have a new way of looking at them
~ before I go any further, I just wanted to say that I'll be calling the brown-haired woman whiskey for simplicity's sake
In this scene, Kazui turns to look at Whiskey, saying the lyrics:
"laughing together, side by side, this distance in our relationship is misleading me, is this what happiness is?"
With my guess (cuz that's really what it is there's no evidence for it) that Whiskey is the Bartender's wife i think this scene is Kazui being conflicted with what he's been told is true, that marrying Hinako is "true love", versus what he feels is true, that marrying Hinako has brought distance into their relationship.
He looks at Whiskey, a woman happily married, and wonders why his relationship with Hinako isn't like that.
~ shout out to @prisoner-000 for the following screenshot
in this post he points out that Hinako and Kazui's rings are silver in Cat, not gold like they were in Half, yet Bartender's ring colour stays the same.
For the sake of this writing I'm going to go with the first meaning they put out, that Bartender's ring is gold because his marriage is genuine.
But wait!! I hear you ask. This is Half and Kazui's ring is still gold in Half!! EXACTLY MY FRIEND!!
Kazui's ring IS still gold in Half because at the time of these scenes he's still fooling himself that this relationship is good, that he will eventually garner real romantic feelings for Hianko.
"laughing together, side by side, this distance in our relationship is misleading me, is this what happiness is?"
Remember this lyric that plays during the Whiskey -> Hinako scene. You know what other scene in Half this lyric reminds me of?
laughing together, side by side,
this distance in our relationship is misleading me,
is this what happiness is?
He's beginning to doubt if what he believes is true, he's beginning to believe the feelings telling him something's wrong (and remember, the scene right after this one is when he confesses (?) his secret to Hinako) ARE infact true, and that maybe the logic he's been following for so long has a couple holes in it.
I think these scenes are meant to show Kazui gradually realising that his relationship with Hinako will not work out. It just won't, no matter how hard he tries.
He's able to laugh together and talk with Whiskey because she's his friend, yet he can't do the same with his own wife? Even though, according to his gold ring, their relationship is supposed to be real and true and genuine?
#thats not even getting into the gay theory implications btw#bar kazui staring at audience kazui with the lyrics “all these memories and you / only if i could erase them”#because his crush on his friend literally haunts him and his relationship with hinako (the green apple)#confessing his love to his friend “just so its out in the open” because he so desperately needs to get it off his chest#most likely having his feelings not reciprocated as his friend his married and staring at his wife#who then transitions into hinako / wondering why he does not feel the same happiness with her than he does at the bar#because he's lying to himself and he's lying to her#he *knows* that their relationship is not happiness and yet he hides in denial#because it's not like he will be able to find his happiness anyway as his friend is already taken#sorry#this doesnt rlly make sense and i'm aware of that i wish i could beam what im trying to get at into ur head#unfortunately its nearly 11pm and when i was brainstorming this idea i had a nap and NEVER WROTE MY THOUGHTS DOWN (biggest mistake ever)#someone with a bigger vocabulary pls come and pick this up and explain it better thank youuuy#anyway just hope you get what im trying to say#thats all#sorry for the ramble in tha tags but also this is my house so#milgram#kazui mukuhara#hinako mukuhara#milgram theory#ig i never know what to title these
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That is, huh. A lot more of a thought out response then what I was going for lol. I was like “what little rat does that remind you of” “the dude spying in the castle just now” when I rhetorically said “what shadowpeach does that remind you of” and you debunked it 😭 but since we’re talking about this now
Wiki calls em “an interconnected, self-perpetuating cycle. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary and at the same time opposing forces that interact to form a dynamic system. Yin and yang transform each other: like an undertow in the ocean, every advance is complemented by a retreat, and every rise transforms into a fall.” Idk about you but with Mac getting chaos powers, I figured the show might take inspo from this, what with the cycles and all too. There might be an opposite “order” power in contrast to Nines. If Pandora’s box is literal, MK is “hope” there’s a lot of other symbolism fandom likes the stereotypically portray into their ShadowPeach lol. But they have day/night too. Nobody has to think too hard to take inspo, and most shows don’t in my experience. Shout out to Ninjago and ATLA just mixing culture and language in a way that annoys people and placing it under one umbrella.
well i mean, lmk is already playing with the themes of order and chaos. except there Order was on the side of the antagonists while MK was Chaos (being the harbinger and all). we saw it with LBD and Azure and now with Nines
also, lmk’s order can be seen when it talks about Fate and Destiny and even the “story”, but in a way where they are shown as being too fixed and bureaucratic compared to the lessons being taught to MK and by MK which are “your fate (order) is your own and can only be determined by you.”
we had it with MK telling LBD “do you really think the universe cares about any of us?”
we had it when Macky told MK “if you tread the paths already carved for you, then you doom yourself into a self-fulfilling prophecy”
we have it even more explicitly in s5 from Wukong: “sometimes you need to carve your own path and fuck all the rest”
lmk is all about finding that balance between the chaos of your mind and the forced order of the world around you. our own daily ying and yang that we must balance, and that is why i don't place those themes with shadowpeach just because it takes away from the crux of the show where it’s original focus is on MK and how he changes and grow throughout the seasons
tbh i think their day/night themes with ying/yang are significantly minor. the major focus with them is the themes of betrayal and reconciliation and past haunts
#btw the quotes are me paraphrasing. unfortunately swk did not say fuck#also sorry for talking your joke ask seriously it will probably happen again#also i know i prob say this a lot but jttw (the text that inspired the show) is a Buddhist allegory on how to balance your life [journey]#in order to reach Nirvana/the next life. in the story Tripitaka (aka Tang) does achieve his goal in delivering the scrolls & reaches godhoo#meanwhile Pigsy (Zhu Baije) does not because the pig demon held onto his vices throughout the journey (rip)#overall jttw has to do with tempering your mind will heart and desires in a way that balances you to some order in a chaotic world#lmk on the otherhand flips the script#the outside world is too orderly while our minds are too chaotic to the point that the world tries to force us to fit into its perfection#which (as the show shares) isn’t healthy#i’m getting a little too technical and showing the author’s hand rn because these are themes the writers make to their audience#who are supposed to be 10-13#and they are ppl who are quickly finding their own agency and new discoveries and it might not fit in with the world they’re used to#but yeah#sorry i think i derailed in the tags#lmk#lmk s5 spoilers#lmk s5#lmk spoilers#lmk analysis#asks
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Hi! Long time no yap but I've been really bothered by this thing and I know you're just the person I can go to with this (even if we don't always end up agreeing at times).
I got into a tiff with someone in a comments section of a post that was about Amy (Which character do you think deserved to become a villain? or something similar). They brought up Amy's abuse of her boyfriend. I may have tried to defend Amy (key word is tried. I am officially rubbish at debating) but then I may have said something? Because they said that I (and apparently a lot of other fans) was excusing Amy's abuse because of her trauma. It got me stumped because isn't young Amy's treatment of Rory rooted in her trauma? Did I miss the memo where we separate trauma and abuse? Am I missing something?
That statement bothered me a lot because if there's one thing I never want to do it's defend an abuser. So here I am, humbly asking and hoping to clear the muddy waters.
Your really confused and disturbed moot, Tia 💌
TIA!!!!! Thanks for the ask 💌 , and I send you all the hugs.
Discussion of abuse, trauma, ableism, infidelity, and unhealthy relationship dynamics beneath the cut.
(First off… while I really appreciate your faith in my explaining skills <3 <3 <3 my passion for traumatized characters and mentally ill+neurodivergent rights doesn't make me especially qualified to fully clear muddy waters especially not knowing the full context, but I feel you, and what follows is my informed perspective!)
Speaking generally first, harm done in media is best examined by the impact on the audience, with a different lens than harm done to real people. While relatable experiences in media can be useful and validating and incredibly important, you can’t be “defending an abuser” when the abuse is fictional. It's actually normal for traumatized/ND/mentally ill people to project onto mentally ill villains, when villains are the only significant representation for those stigmatized symptoms in a media landscape that excludes and demonizes us simply for existing. RTD can't stop people who hallucinate from reclaiming the Master's Drums and projecting onto the Master, for example — 90% of the best Doctor Who psychosis fic by psychotic authors is about the Master, whether RTD likes it or not. It's not true crime.
(This is speaking generally. Amy Pond is very much not the Master.)
Abuse is a behavior, and there can be many reasons for it, but reasons based in trauma don’t make it not abuse (some forms of generational trauma can propagate abusive parenting styles, when the parent thinks abusive parenting is normal, or lives entirely vicariously through their child). This absolutely should not be taken to mean trauma correlates with abusive behavior; rather that abusive behaviors from traumatized people are more likely to present in specific ways.
Abuse is also a targeted behavior, based in control — not consistently displayed C-PTSD symptoms as seen in Season 5 Amy Pond through many aspects of her life. Mental health symptoms don't become abuse just because they hinder one partner from meeting the other partner's needs. Any life event can do that.
Without knowing the context of the arguments, this is the aspect of their relationship I've seen you talk about before (which I also feel strongly about), and what I assume is what you were debating? So, here I will talk specifically in regard to Season 5.
We all know Amy — she's never attached to Leadworth because she never wanted to leave Scotland, no steady therapist because none of them stick up for her, can't stick with one job yet her first choice is a job that simulates intimacy because her avoidant behavior (a known trauma response) isn't sustainable to her wellbeing. Rory knows her fears of commitment stem from her repeated abandonments, it’s why he’ll always wait for her, and it's why he blames the Doctor “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”, who apart from having caused a lot of her trauma, has actively taken advantage of her being the “Scottish girl in the English village” who's “still got that accent,” because he wants to feel important, so yeah, I think interpreting Amy's issues (and how Amy and Rory transverse them) as Amy abusing Rory indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their relationship, as well as a misunderstanding of the (raggedy) Doctor’s role in Amy’s formative self-image (which of course she works through in Season 6, but I am sticking to Season 5).
Abuse is always based in control. That just doesn’t fit here. While Amy's detachment from her real life includes things like calling Rory her “kind of boyfriend” (which she is upfront about to his face; differing commitment levels isn't abuse, though it can be a relationship red flag for both parties IRL) — her Season 5 disregard of Rory’s feelings occurs only in response to the fairytale embodiment of her trauma. It's never a response to Rory; it's a response to the Doctor, who stole her childhood and led her by the hand to her death. She cheats on Rory with the Doctor in her bedroom full of Doctor toys, drawings, models, she made from childhood to early adulthood.
(And yes, like many repeatedly-traumatized people, Amy is prone to being sensitive and reactive. Take her “Well, shut up then!” line in The Big Bang; but given Rory responds to this by hugging her, clearly he doesn’t take it as her actually dismissing him. He knows her better than that.)
And by no means do I meant to imply this is fair to young Rory, poor Rory, who's left struggling with the feeling that his role in her life is in competition with the role of her trauma (aka the Doctor). But not every unhealthy relationship dynamic is unhealthy because of abuse. Labelling Amy's treatment of Rory in Season 5 more accurately isn't the same as excusing her harmful choices — but making mistakes is part of being human, Amy's mistakes are certainly understandable, and she works through them out of love for Rory.
If there's one thing to say about Moffat women, it's that Moffat allows his female characters the same grace that the male characters *coughTENcough* have always had, to hurt and struggle and make realistic mistakes and overcome those mistakes and to heal without being demonized.
Amy isn't perfect, but she is a fully realized character, and her story gives us a resonant depiction of childhood trauma.
#abuse#rtd critical#anti rtd#im NOT really anti rtd but im tagging it that because some people block that tag and uhhhh this post strays into rtd critique#maybe he does regret how he wrote the master! we'll never know because rtd is very anti-admitting-his-own-mistakes#words by seaweed#anyways tia i am. SO relieved you’re not upset with me about our last disagreement?#i high key jumped to conclusions after the lack of reply to the last DM? so thank you for this ask it's great to hear from you#sorry you were in a debate about this! that sounds extremely awful.#anyway i'm gonna WAIT at least a week to tag Amy and Rory to avoid this showing up in the character tags right away haha#because I am KINDA scared the anti-media-literacy ppl will find this (I had to include the first part tho its important)#(lack of distinction between harm to audience *in fiction* and irl harm *to actual ppl* leads to problematic public apologies where-#-public figures apologize to fans they let down *instead* of the people they actually hurt. no it doesn't work like that)#(parasocial relationships are not more important than real victims agency or privacy)#and I am planning to make a post at some point about the nd aspects of Amy+the Doctor's connection which this stuff IS relevant to soooooo#am I going hard on specifying Season 5 Amy to under the assumption that the uncharacteristic Rory-slapping isnt whats bein talked abt?#maybe. its not in character.#editing to say..... yanno what? ive come to terms with not all the posts with the following tag been about the doctor#(eleventh) doctor is neurodivergent tag#editing again to add character tags:#Amy pond#Rory williams
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psa for my fellow stoners, especially regular ones: please be aware that long term use or accidental overdose (greening out) can lead to gastrointestinal upset, including something called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. it can cause pretty severe stomach pain, nausea, and even vomiting or dehydration, which can be very serious and lead to hospitalization needing fluids. long term and frequent use increases your risk, and the only treatment outside of symptom management is cessation of cannabis. it does go away eventually, but it can be long term and chronic, as far as i know*. i don't post this to fearmonger -- i have a medical card and am an advocate for cannabis use if it helps you. i only post this because it happened to me, and i had no idea that it could happen, and it really scared me, so i thought i'd share my experience in case someone else out there is going through the same thing. stay safe out there y'all enjoy responsibly *i am not a medical professional by any means so if i am incorrect on this, i do apologize and would love to read some other sources!
#my post#i dont know how to tag this#i dont know stoner tags on tumblr because i dont really use tumblr to look at stoner content#so i hope this finds its audience#not religious
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Woe, chapter one of fucked up wizards curtainfic be upon ye
#by which i mean be upon ye in a reblog#because tumblr still does not like links in the tags*#*except when it does#a ship small enough that the chance of this sucker finding its target audience organically...low#shadowdrei#astrid beck#eadwulf grieve#caleb widogast#essek thelyss#fic#cr2
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So I was googling old tv shows I used to watch, procrastinating on my homework, and guess what show popped into my head, after not seeing it for a very, very, very long time?
The haunting hour.
I only remember that show because it used to be on YTV, at like, 10-11 o'clock at night, and I would watch it. I was really obsessed with the show, even though I barely understood what was going on.
And the nightmares. I used to get really, really bad nightmares after I watched the show, and after like 3 months of me watching it, and getting nightmares of it, my mom enforced a screen-time limit, mainly for shows after 9:00.
And I remember that show so damn much, mainly because of the body horror stuff, and how freaked out I was over it.
Anyways, one of my most vivid memories of the show was this one about this kid who was obsessed with ancient egypt stuff gets frickin. sucked back into time to be essentially another person's body or something??
And I googled it I googled rl stine show ancient egypt and I finally found the name of it. I'm gonna watch that episode, and get me a bit of nostogia
#exisnt's rambles#also something funny imo is that out of curiosity I googled where tfp was being streamed because my thought-pipeline went from:#scary show that I didn't understand -> shows i didn't really understand -> shows I definietly did not remember or understand properly as a-#-kid -> hey look when the haunting hour was made that roughly around the time when tfp was made -> ytv took american shows and showed them-#-to canadian audiences -> hey WHAT THE HAUNTING HOUR USED TO BE ON THE HUB (where tfp used to be released)-#-hmmm i wonder if they ripped shows from the hub to show on ytv -> googles where was tfp streamed -> results include ytv.#Conclusion? I might have been the target demographic for tfp when it first aired (although a little too young - animated would fit better)#but i probably changed the channel because I wasn't interested in the show#just a nagging feeling but i bet they probably showed it after tmnt and spongebob when everything looks boring and then boom. tfp.#there is the possiblitity they might have not shown it during its original runtime at all ofc and we didn't have cable after 2014-2015 ish#i think it probably streamed when we got rid of cable and such and probably at like. 1 am or some other ungodly hour#this is very interesting to me and i cannot explain why.#also yeah now i just want to watch the show and compare some old memories of episodes to how they actually went bc i know i did not-#-remember things properly.#not gonna tag this as the haunting hour yet cause i haven't watched the show yet lol#too bad i can't find really old tumblr post on this idk but i feel like this show would have been milked for all its worth on tumblr#and aggressively hated for all its worth as well.
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.
#honestly IDGAF about the toilet show the kids are fine watching it have you seen what goes on in Ren & Stimpy etc.#What I *do* have a problem with is the fact that fucking spongebob seems to be getting popular again with MY age group#I found that show annoying when I was its target audience. I find it annoying now. I think there are shows of that era and target audience#that are better nostalgia bait which cast a bigger net for who would reasonably find them interesting.#and while I don't judge kids for liking annoying juvenile shows#I specifically expect people my age to be *long* over something that's loud and obnoxious for the sake of being loud and obnoxious#And I'm going to be really pissed if I have to do another Dragon-Age-Tier re-curiating of the blogs I'm fucking following#over the Skibidi Toilet for fucking Millennials.#Which is probably being grossly unfair to Skibidi Toilet because (reportedly) that has an actual plot - unlike the sponge!#what I'm saying is if you are going to give children shit over children things but still reblog spongebob memes#you should know how massive a hypocrite you are.#And that should absolutely eat you up inside until you start having a shred of respect for children#Like what are you your dad? Are you your shitty dad and mom? Huh?#Morg Rants#dot post#I don't mind one follower getting a new fixation but when something irritating becomes inescapable (and ofc people never tag it)#THAT'S where the problem is. The sheer hypocrisy in this case just makes it worse.
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shiny luminous zakuro save me. save me shiny luminous zakuro
#weve never watched max heart 4 context... but we Wanna#we just chose hikari because she's allies with cure black and cure white!#smth smth two numas saving the future#anyway this is shameless yuri bait so im not tagging this one if it finds its intended audience it will
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god, humanity is such a tragic state of being. i stand before you and i know we are human, and i know we are made for this. for being loved, for loving each other, for loving everything around us. we are made for love. how cruel is it that beings designed for love are destined to die in loneliness? i will watch you die, and when all is said and done, you won’t be there to watch me wilt. my death will be witnessed only by nature without the comfort of your loving arms wrapped around me. even so, i can’t wait for the day my petals fall and i reconcile with the earth, surrendering my body to the elements as my soul escapes to find you. because my body is a vessel, and however cruel it may be that i can only hold you in this form, i care not so long as my soul can sit with yours in the next stages of our lives.
#the immortality of love#i love you#so much#writing#think piece? maybe?#idk haha#idk how to tag lol#this will find its audience#im certain of it#because you and i will find eachother#in this life#and the next
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Reasons I'll like but not reblog an artist's art:
1. I am, it's just in a queue
2. It's art I really like, I just don't want it on my blog (which is just an archive for posts I want to go back and look at later)
3. It's something I like but don't really understand the context of like a fandom I'm unfamiliar with or OCs and don't want to reblog because it makes tagging difficult which messes up my organization
4. It would go on a blog (either main or side) where I have no followers and don't have the blog TO gain followers or communicate with and it literally would not spread to anyone for that reason
5. I've been on this site for 8 years and even then have memory issues and use likes as a way to mark what posts I have and haven't already seen/reblogged
6. And the one you want to hear the least: yeah. Sometimes art is nice enough for a like but not a reblog. It's called preferences. It's not a matter of technical skill or effort put into the piece or fandom they're not in or whatever. Sometimes you just don't vibe with something that much. That is NORMAL. A like and no reblog there shows, at least for me, "hey I can appreciate the concept behind it/technical skill/etc" but I won't reblog because for some other reason I just don't like it enough to have it on my blog. If the idea that not everyone will like your art enough to show it around to your friends is that big of a blow to your ego then you need to stop posting it because that is EXTREMELY unhealthy. It does you no good and only serves to ruin your relationship with your art. Stop
I have had it with this likescolding. “Tumblr doesn’t have an algorithm so likes don’t actually do anything” motherfucker I am not clicking that heart to give some post better ~algorithmic visibility~ I am clicking that heart to help my internet friend microdose on serotonin as god fucking intended
#saying this on a blog where i specifically have tried to let go on tagging things and dont comment on stuff#but this is how ive operated for the past 8 years#if an artist says reblogs > likes even if it's something i really like i wont actually click like#if you want to beg for less engagement thats on you. i wont engage then lol#some of the above reasons other than 'i just don't like it that much' i will leave replies on the art complimenting it like#i support artists#but this mindset you've all got is deeply unhealthy lmaooo#and the whole argument of 'but spreading my art gets people to commission me etc etc' is a big ol conversation about capitalism#and forced monetization of everything to determine it's value#but to cut all that short: if you're trying to survive off of commissions only and you're struggling to get an audience#the solution is to cater to an audience. that's it. yeah you'll probably lose a lot of passion and shit in the process which sucks but if#your complaint is a lack of engagement because you absolutely desperately need commission money#find a group of people and give them what they want. if its about surviving then SURVIVE#just posting your ocs or landscapes often wont do that on tumblr#not unless you're really lucky#all this is assuming you've got a style people find interesting etc etc#basically the reality is you're better off changing yourself than unreasonably asking other people to change in that situation#if you want customers you have to work to get them#(all that is directed specifically at people who dont just want attention and use the argument they need commission money)#not even covering a past reason i would like and not reblog: being raised in a cult and having queer art on my blog being a fight to not get#sent to conversion therapy
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The Three Commandments
The thing about writing is this: you gotta start in medias res, to hook your readers with action immediately. But readers aren’t invested in people they know nothing about, so start with a framing scene that instead describes the characters and the stakes. But those scenes are boring, so cut straight to the action, after opening with a clever quip, but open in the style of the story, and try not to be too clever in the opener, it looks tacky. One shouldn’t use too many dialogue tags, it’s distracting; but you can use ‘said’ a lot, because ‘said’ is invisible, but don’t use ‘said’ too much because it’s boring and uninformative – make sure to vary your dialogue tags to be as descriptive as possible, except don’t do that because it’s distracting, and instead rely mostly on ‘said’ and only use others when you need them. But don’t use ‘said’ too often; you should avoid dialogue tags as much as you possibly can and indicate speakers through describing their reactions. But don’t do that, it’s distracting.
Having a viewpoint character describe themselves is amateurish, so avoid that. But also be sure to describe your viewpoint character so that the reader can picture them. And include a lot of introspection, so we can see their mindset, but don’t include too much introspection, because it’s boring and takes away from the action and really bogs down the story, but also remember to include plenty of introspection so your character doesn’t feel like a robot. And adverbs are great action descriptors; you should have a lot of them, but don’t use a lot of adverbs; they’re amateurish and bog down the story. And
The reason new writers are bombarded with so much outright contradictory writing advice is that these tips are conditional. It depends on your style, your genre, your audience, your level of skill, and what problems in your writing you’re trying to fix. Which is why, when I’m writing, I tend to focus on what I call my Three Commandments of Writing. These are the overall rules; before accepting any writing advice, I check whether it reinforces one of these rules or not. If not, I ditch it.
1: Thou Shalt Have Something To Say
What’s your book about?
I don’t mean, describe to me the plot. I mean, why should anybody read this? What’s its thesis? What’s its reason for existence, from the reader’s perspective? People write stories for all kinds of reasons, but things like ‘I just wanted to get it out of my head’ are meaningless from a reader perspective. The greatest piece of writing advice I ever received was you putting words on a page does not obligate anybody to read them. So why are the words there? What point are you trying to make?
The purpose of your story can vary wildly. Usually, you’ll be exploring some kind of thesis, especially if you write genre fiction. Curse Words, for example, is an exploration of self-perpetuating power structures and how aiming for short-term stability and safety can cause long-term problems, as well as the responsibilities of an agitator when seeking to do the necessary work of dismantling those power structures. Most of the things in Curse Words eventually fold back into exploring this question. Alternately, you might just have a really cool idea for a society or alien species or something and want to show it off (note: it can be VERY VERY HARD to carry a story on a ‘cool original concept’ by itself. You think your sky society where they fly above the clouds and have no rainfall and have to harvest water from the clouds below is a cool enough idea to carry a story: You’re almost certainly wrong. These cool concept stories work best when they are either very short, or working in conjunction with exploring a theme). You might be writing a mystery series where each story is a standalone mystery and the point is to present a puzzle and solve a fun mystery each book. Maybe you’re just here to make the reader laugh, and will throw in anything you can find that’ll act as framing for better jokes. In some genres, readers know exactly what they want and have gotten it a hundred times before and want that story again but with different character names – maybe you’re writing one of those. (These stories are popular in romance, pulp fantasy, some action genres, and rather a lot of types of fanfiction).
Whatever the main point of your story is, you should know it by the time you finish the first draft, because you simply cannot write the second draft if you don’t know what the point of the story is. (If you write web serials and are publishing the first draft, you’ll need to figure it out a lot faster.)
Once you know what the point of your story is, you can assess all writing decisions through this lens – does this help or hurt the point of my story?
2: Thou Shalt Respect Thy Reader’s Investment
Readers invest a lot in a story. Sometimes it’s money, if they bought your book, but even if your story is free, they invest time, attention, and emotional investment. The vast majority of your job is making that investment worth it. There are two factors to this – lowering the investment, and increasing the payoff. If you can lower your audience’s suspension of disbelief through consistent characterisation, realistic (for your genre – this may deviate from real realism) worldbuilding, and appropriately foreshadowing and forewarning any unexpected rules of your world. You can lower the amount of effort or attention your audience need to put into getting into your story by writing in a clear manner, using an entertaining tone, and relying on cultural touchpoints they understand already instead of pushing them in the deep end into a completely unfamiliar situation. The lower their initial investment, the easier it is to make the payoff worth it.
Two important notes here: one, not all audiences view investment in the same way. Your average reader views time as a major investment, but readers of long fiction (epic fantasies, web serials, et cetera) often view length as part of the payoff. Brandon Sanderson fans don’t grab his latest book and think “Uuuugh, why does it have to be so looong!” Similarly, some people like being thrown in the deep end and having to put a lot of work into figuring out what the fuck is going on with no onboarding. This is one of science fiction’s main tactics for forcibly immersing you in a future world. So the valuation of what counts as too much investment varies drastically between readers.
Two, it’s not always the best idea to minimise the necessary investment at all costs. Generally, engagement with art asks something of us, and that’s part of the appeal. Minimum-effort books do have their appeal and their place, in the same way that idle games or repetitive sitcoms have their appeal and their place, but the memorable stories, the ones that have staying power and provide real value, are the ones that ask something of the reader. If they’re not investing anything, they have no incentive to engage, and you’re just filling in time. This commandment does not exist to tell you to try to ask nothing of your audience – you should be asking something of your audience. It exists to tell you to respect that investment. Know what you’re asking of your audience, and make sure that the ask is less than the payoff.
The other way to respect the investment is of course to focus on a great payoff. Make those characters socially fascinating, make that sacrifice emotionally rending, make the answer to that mystery intellectually fulfilling. If you can make the investment worth it, they’ll enjoy your story. And if you consistently make their investment worth it, you build trust, and they’ll be willing to invest more next time, which means you can ask more of them and give them an even better payoff. Audience trust is a very precious currency and this is how you build it – be worth their time.
But how do you know what your audience does and doesn’t consider an onerous investment? And how do you know what kinds of payoff they’ll find rewarding? Easy – they self-sort. Part of your job is telling your audience what to expect from you as soon as you can, so that if it’s not for them, they’ll leave, and if it is, they’ll invest and appreciate the return. (“Oh but I want as many people reading my story as possible!” No, you don’t. If you want that, you can write paint-by-numbers common denominator mass appeal fic. What you want is the audience who will enjoy your story; everyone else is a waste of time, and is in fact, detrimental to your success, because if they don’t like your story then they’re likely to be bad marketing. You want these people to bounce off and leave before you disappoint them. Don’t try to trick them into staying around.) Your audience should know, very early on, what kind of an experience they’re in for, what the tone will be, the genre and character(s) they’re going to follow, that sort of thing. The first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown, for example, are a micro-example of the sorts of mysteries that Aspen will be dealing with for most of the book, as well as a sample of their character voice, the way they approach problems, and enough of their background, world and behaviour for the reader to decide if this sort of story is for them. We also start the story with some mildly graphic medical stuff, enough physics for the reader to determine the ‘hardness’ of the scifi, and about the level of physical risk that Aspen will be putting themselves at for most of the book. This is all important information for a reader to have.
If you are mindful of the investment your readers are making, mindful of the value of the payoff, and honest with them about both from the start so that they can decide whether the story is for them, you can respect their investment and make sure they have a good time.
3: Thou Shalt Not Make Thy World Less Interesting
This one’s really about payoff, but it’s important enough to be its own commandment. It relates primarily to twists, reveals, worldbuilding, and killing off storylines or characters. One mistake that I see new writers make all the time is that they tank the engagement of their story by introducing a cool fun twist that seems so awesome in the moment and then… is a major letdown, because the implications make the world less interesting.
“It was all a dream” twists often fall into this trap. Contrary to popular opinion, I think these twists can be done extremely well. I’ve seen them done extremely well. The vast majority of the time, they’re very bad. They’re bad because they take an interesting world and make it boring. The same is true of poorly thought out, shocking character deaths – when you kill a character, you kill their potential, and if they’re a character worth killing in a high impact way then this is always a huge sacrifice on your part. Is it worth it? Will it make the story more interesting? Similarly, if your bad guy is going to get up and gloat ‘Aha, your quest was all planned by me, I was working in the shadows to get you to acquire the Mystery Object since I could not! You have fallen into my trap! Now give me the Mystery Object!’, is this a more interesting story than if the protagonist’s journey had actually been their own unmanipulated adventure? It makes your bad guy look clever and can be a cool twist, but does it mean that all those times your protagonist escaped the bad guy’s men by the skin of his teeth, he was being allowed to escape? Are they retroactively less interesting now?
Whether these twists work or not will depend on how you’ve constructed the rest of your story. Do they make your world more or less interesting?
If you have the audience’s trust, it’s permissible to make your world temporarily less interesting. You can kill off the cool guy with the awesome plan, or make it so that the Chosen One wasn’t actually the Chosen One, or even have the main character wake up and find out it was all a dream, and let the reader marinate in disappointment for a little while before you pick it up again and turn things around so that actually, that twist does lead to a more interesting story! But you have to pick it up again. Don’t leave them with the version that’s less interesting than the story you tanked for the twist. The general slop of interest must trend upward, and your sacrifices need to all lead into the more interesting world. Otherwise, your readers will be disappointed, and their experience will be tainted.
Whenever I’m looking at a new piece of writing advice, I view it through these three rules. Is this plot still delivering on the book’s purpose, or have I gone off the rails somewhere and just stared writing random stuff? Does making this character ‘more relateable’ help or hinder that goal? Does this argument with the protagonists’ mother tell the reader anything or lead to any useful payoff; is it respectful of their time? Will starting in medias res give the audience an accurate view of the story and help them decide whether to invest? Does this big twist that challenges all the assumptions we’ve made so far imply a world that is more or less interesting than the world previously implied?
Hopefully these can help you, too.
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jschlatt who whispers to you
twitch dot tv slash jschlatt is online, and you’re well aware due to the loud personality voice schlatt has put on in the other room.
“WHAT THE FUCK!” he yells, the sound echoing throughout the house. you usually check into his streams, but right now your busy figuring out your hours for work and are in no need for distractions.
you look around the living room quickly for a red pen, needing to circle something on the page, but your efforts deem useless. you suddenly remembered schlatt took one into his office with him to do a bit.
you didnt want to find a different red pen because you knew where that one was, so you quietly make your way down the hall before schlatts office.
his fans figured out about you through a lot of bits schlatt would make where he would tag you on twitter or tag any girl he posts on instagram with your username, so you weren’t a private couple, but you still weren’t twitch or youtube public.
you open the door timidly, trying to bring as little attention to yourself as possible. unfortunately for you, the shitty tiktok schlatt was watching just ended, and his spiel afterwards was done.
his head whipped to your direction, and he gave you a grin. you gave him a smile back, and he reached his hand out for you to grab.
you grab ahold of it and make your way behind his chair, head resting on the back of it as your hands snake their ways around his neck.
he speaks briefly to his audience, as he rocks the chair gently from left to right, moving your head along with it. before he looks up at you, eyes full of stars like he’s seen the greatest thing of the entire universe.
“whats wrong?” he whispers, gently. its not a breathy whisper, its just making his voice quieter so the mic can’t pick it up as well (it does still pick it up)
“i know you have a red pen in here and i really need it” you whisper quieter, the mic unable to hear you at all due to you being farther away and also a lot less loud than schlatt.
“oh right yeah,” he reaches to the left of his desk, and grabs the pen. “just be careful its a bit finicky.” he mumbles. his hands reach up to where yours rest around his shoulders, and he gently brings it to his lips, kissing the back of your palm gently.
you smile, take the pen from his grasp, and then peck your head down to kiss the crown of his head, his hair ticking your face. you then break away from him, and thats when you remember he was still live. your face briefly flushes.
schlatt also seemed to have forgotten, as he stares at you grinning as you leave, before he brings his full attention back to the screen. the chat is running like crazy, simply saying your name in all caps and many awws. schlatts cheeks are painted red.
“alright alright chat moment of weakness, lets get a move on.” he continues to stream, but it seems after that encounter; he seemed much happier for the remainder duration of the time live.
#jschlatt x reader#jschlatt x you#jschlatt hcs#jschlatt headcanons#schlatt x reader#schlatt x you#schlatt hcs#schlatt headcanons
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