#second hand cycles

[culxiaa-fn]

I need them to stop doing this btw 😃😃😃😃

[aveil-moved]

good morning today i found out that my washing machine has like 10 hidden settings where you press and hold different buttons together because it’s got one of those stupid minimalist touch screens

[foodforworm]

okay because of a tweet I saw earlier talking about tropes where one half of a ship is possessed and the other half wont fight back because it'd harm their partner,,,,I am thinking about this:

and then. the subsequent.

and I probably should stop there, but while taking these screenshots I saw this, and I've never been immune to adam parrish angst or character analysis

all adam cared about was his autonomy; all ronan cared about was adam.

[heart-2-get]

here we go again

[randomnameless]

I think the "Billy should ditch the boar" takes comes from AM being the one route that breaks their self-insert fantasy. Flamey and Emile doing their stuff and the Jerry thing etc do not matter bcs its not being directly mean to YOU, the player, in YOUR story. Edel-chan is a very sad and traumatized girl that will ALWAYS love YOU no matter what you do and she will doodle YOU and squeak about rats n stuff, but you don't have to actually deal with any of her supposed trauma in a realistic way (+)

(cont) She will always be fine and ready to gush after you, the trauma is only a plot device to make her wary of other people that aren't you, and be attached to only you. What she does to randoms doesn't matter as long as she's nice to you. But the evil european barbarian boar dares to actually show his trauma and negative emotions around you, and make you uncomfy, and bring any sort of realism to your fantasy! how dare he! Not only that, but he admits he didn't like you at the beginning!!!(+) (cont) you, the player, isn't above other characters when it comes to him being rude because of his trauma and mental illness, and the story dares to show your avatar feeling sad and powerless instead of badass and cool. He won't listen to you until another character opens his eyes first, and even if you marry him he's still hearing voices and struggling with his issues, your love won't cure him!! Not only that, but AM is his story, not yours! (+) (cont) It relegates your self-insert to a supportive deuteragonist instead of the main hero the plot centers around. He will become The King and you will be just a religious leader, following the footsteps of the Evil Lizard Lady!! Obviously you don't want that!! this is your story, where you can dump all your anti-church IRL arguments into, and be a super cool baddass mercenary who never has to deal with negative emotions!! And that's why AM is the only FE16 route where I actually like Billy.

Sorry anon for the tardiness of the reply!

Yep, I feel like for both Dee and the evil lizard lady, at one point, they are unhappy/upset/angry and more or less negative at Billy - who is, in this situation, taken as the player.

I remember during the heights of 2020-2021 discourse people sending asks to other asking how can they like Rhea bcs she was meant to "u" and whatnot, and it's just... Self-insert at its finest?

But Billy - the character we see in Nopes, FEH and FE17, wouldn't feel like the player in those instances (because Billy the character would never pick the "uwu" option in the Holy Tomb, and Billy the character would understand and/or at least get how Dimitri doesn't want to talk right now) - so again, it's the same old question, who is Billy? An empty self insert who feels a lot of sad uwus when Rhea threatens to rip their heart out as they assist and support who swore to kill her because her ears are pointy and cries whenever Dimitri doesn't want to talk to them, or is Billy the character we see in other games, who shows more empathy and tries to understand people, and thus, wouldn't have been able to pick a certain route in FE16?

Lol I just remember now how some people didn't like Cyril or even Seteth because they didn't slobber over Billy - as the self-insert - in their first 5 lines unlike the rest of the cast ^^

Granted, this "YOU must be the most important person EVER" comes back in full force with the S-supports (tfw seteth doesn't mention his family to billy when they hold hands) and it reiterates something I always knew : Avatars were a mistake.

Parasocial maybe saved the franchise from turning into another F-Zero like saga, but damn if it nuked a lot in the process (and by, a lot, i mean coherence and characters networks).

[gailynovelry]

Personal pet peeve; when a book or a series gets a re-release with a new cover, but its just a surface-level reskin and the interior design or typography has not been adjusted to match.

Half-assery has its uses, but books deserve better than such half-assery.

[oseike]

In celebration of the Dark Castle arc in the webtoon I'd like to comment dreamily that the fate Kim Dokja suffers is not just in the Dark Castle, it is his fate as a whole. He dies due to the story (and the person) he loves the most both literally, with his sword in his chest, and sacrificially, as he slowly fragments himself as the Oldest Dream and loses himself to both doom and save that one he loves. Oh and also at the end of that road, Yoo Joonghyuk cut apart those last fragments, staining his sword with a black smudge, so it's also a literal death again at the last, though one could argue it would have happened even without that.

As Mass Producer says, true fate is not so shallow a thing that a temporary death like what he suffers in the Dark Castle could be enough to resolve it

[flickerintwilights]

retribution

(+ one more under the cut)

I’ve seen this before!

the only time Recall is used onscreen, in Ganondorf’s sight, is when his first attempt to kill Sonia was stopped or reversed by Recall. but he killed her anyway. we know that.

it’s unlikely that he never saw any other usage of Recall, especially not during the fight when Zelda would have been using it as her main power. but why wouldn’t he have thought of that one moment then, when he was aiming to kill Rauru just like he killed Sonia? he would have thought it was going to go the same way here — they would try and fail, and he would come out on top. but he was overconfident, he was powerful. he was arrogant. and it didn’t.

[dam-mar]

why are they getting intoxicated together. i don’t like this.

[microfeelings]

Saphira during Eragon and Murtagh's little fight: hey, kids, kids. PATRICIA!

[reikunrei]

i mean this with peace and love. and it’s 100% bc i’m sick and therefore have no patience for bullshit. but why is the stranger things fandom so goddamn annoying. godbless you all need to shut up

[whoreishghost]

have discovered a new way the laptop is evil maybe even multiple new ways i dont know how much more of this i can take

[an-absolute-nightmare]

i do not understand why all of a sudden american and dutch people are engaging in heated helmet discourse on this goddamned hellsite (is that redundant?) but by god is it riveting. keep the roasting coming. none of you are getting anywhere or convincing the other party of anything at all but you sure are coming up with excellent one liners that almost rival you cannot kill me in a way that matters

[snickerdoodlles]

How to be a popular writer

If you're searching purely for numbers, get into a manga with a weekly release and an anime show on its first season. A growing fandom will suit you best, but you can also try your luck in an already huge and established fandom like Marvel or Supernatural.

If you're searching for popularity within just a favorite fandom of yours, you want something that's a weekly release like a show or manga/comic and preferably still in the early stages of its release

Write for the most popular ship. Even if you do an ensemble story, keep the most popular fandom ship as one of its focuses

The best type of story for hits can vary from fandom to fandom, but check for common themes/tropes through the current popular fics or general fandom posts. Broad AU tropes like soulmate/mark, flowershop/coffeeshop, stripper, etc are usually a safe bet, but it's going to vary depending on the fandom

Write an on-going fic anticipated to have a chapter count at least in the double digits

Update daily or near daily. For a while, 1-3k chapters were the goldilocks zone for daily story updates that got the most views. That might have since shifted to 2-5k chapters, but 3k chapters rarely let you down

Spice usually works well to attract eyes, esp for ship fic

Fics get popular for a variety of reasons; hitting AO3 at the right times, popular characters and themes to draw a wide audience, posting for an active fandom (ie one where the audience regularly thinks about the canon material and/or canon material is on-going and attracting new people).

So if you're aiming for numbers, you want a fic for a growing fandom, ideally started when there's not many other fics in the fandom. But the most essential part of a popular fic is frequent updates--you want to keep your story on the first page or two when people enter either the fandom or ship tag. More people are likely to see it, most people drop a kudos regardless of how much they liked vs loved it, and as more kudos come in, the more readers you'll attract, and cycle. Keeping chapters shorter means its a low time investment for readers, so subscribers have a better chance at keeping up with the story

There's still a lot of factors that are just luck (like how big a fandom gets, if you hit the wave at the right time or not, etc) but that will help narrow down what you can control to get more 'fic karma' (aka more views and therefore more comments and kudos to help attract more readers)

How to be a good writer

Practice, practice, practice. It doesn't have to be anything you post, and it doesn't have to be daily, but you get good at writing by writing.

Especially if you also take some time to reflect on what you like about the writing in your favorite stories. Is there a type of tone you want to emulate, a way of writing description that speaks to you, characterizations you really enjoy, etc. You can do this for your own writing too, just take some time to think about what makes stories sing for you

Do Not Compare Yourself To Other Writers. Stay focused on what makes you happy/appeals to you, try not to fall into the trap of "I'm better than this" or "I'll never write like this"

Then try your hand at it. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't click right away or even within a few months, and also don't be discouraged if your perceived skill level jumps and plateaus, honing new skills are almost never a linear progression. Just keep practicing, you'll see your growth soon

Be kind to yourself. What ends up on paper is never the same as what's in your head, and it might not be what you were hoping for--but you made a whole something from nothing, and that's fucking awesome

There's no such thing as universally good writing. Even objectively perfect/highly skilled writing isn't going to automatically appeal to everyone. Good writing, especially in the case of fic, is ultimately what type of writing appeals to you. So focus on what you like in your favorite stories and/or about your own writing, and practice that.

It's not bad to want your fics to be popular, nor is it a bad to enjoy when your fics are popular if that happens. But if you're chasing numbers and statistics to feel good about your writing, you're putting your own personal satisfaction from your hobby into the hands of others. So much of what makes a fic popular is a fluke, or combination of flukes, and lucky timing. You'll never be able to control that, even if you try to chase the luck by writing something with broad appeal and lots of visibility and it's very easy to fall into an unhealthy cycle of chasing a serotonin hit and sabotaging your own satisfaction because your story isn't getting the hits/response you crave.

If you want to feel good about your writing, you need to keep focus on what you can control and what you like about your own work. Find what it is about the writing process that brings you joy, then keep practicing and enjoy what you bring into the world. Again, you made a whole something from nothing, and that's fucking awesome.

In fanfiction there is a difference between being a good writer and a popular writer. 

Just because you can write a well-structured story with dynamic and consistent writing and characters doesn’t mean you will be popular. And sometimes stories that have disorganized plots, mediocre writing, and/or OOC characters will be held up as the greatest things to ever exist. 

Just because your writing isn’t popular doesn’t mean you are a bad writer. Don’t ever compromise who you are, who your characters are, your plot, your writing style, anything for the sake of readership.

There are popular writers everywhere. But there are only so many good writers.

[1wn8ure]

i think biology might be my favorite class. it's like how it's made but for your brain and organs and the world and nature is just so cool

[od-10kira]

This might be a wild notion to consider, but maybe calling animation that clearly has had a TON of effort and care put into it "trash" is not something we should encourage and maybe you should just shut up and not watch the thing if you hate that particular style so much.