#so i think now my brain is sort of

[tchotchkez]

🌧️

[tawnysoup]

Transitional phase

[canisalbus]

I've had Ludovicas girlfriend on the brain for months and finally sketched her out. I see her as the opposite to machete in that she has dark colours and softer shapes. Her ears and facefur kinda blend together and she gets big soft browneyes..

.

[sluckythewizard]

FIIIINALLY almost nailed my designs for lizzie and caspian can i get a HEEEELLL YEAAH???? i think these two make a vvery cute duo and i cannt wait to see them again. i also hope they both get hurt reaaaallly really badly. togeter

[lost-in-fandoms]

An ugly Betty Maxiel au would hit so badly

hello anon!!!! I have to say, I never was a big ugly betty fan so I only have vague memories of it from the few episodes i watched with my sister, but I had a good think about this while in the shower and this is what my brain came up with.

Daniel inherits his father's company, even if he was never meant to. maybe he had been traveling around the world, or being a musician or an influencer idk whatever he felt like doing, but he's called back for some reason and he has to take over. and his family is scared he's gonna run it into the ground because he only thinks about what's fun and not what's best so they give him max (who had already been working in the company and is like...an accountant or something) as an assistant.

and they do NOT click at all, max is sooo boring and straight laced and wants daniel to do things like go to meetings or worse, listen to meetings?? and he's always talking about "researching sustainable resources" and "looking into more profitable markets" and daniel just does not care okay?

and then my brain stuttered a little because how do i fix them from here? because i do not remember the show enough to let it do it for me. and i thought maybe daniel drags max to some sort of party during working hours and max is uncomfortable and keeps trying to make him leave, but daniel forces a couple of drinks in him and somehow they end up at daniel's house, both a little buzzed, talking about their dreams. daniel talks about wanting to see the world, be his own person instead of his father's son. max talks about bettering the world, wanting to transform the way things work, even if it is one company choice at a time. and they understand each other better after that and start to work together.

and then they start falling in love.

BUT THEN!!! (and here is the plot twist dear anon) my brain said: why not reverse ugly betty AU? (i bet there is like...a movie/tv show i could reference for this but it's 2:30 am give me a break)

max who has been raised to take over his father's company. it's all he wants and knows how to do. when he does take over, he throws himself completely in it, runs it like a military camp, profits go up but so does the rate in which they have to hire new people because everyone keeps running away. and his mother and sister are worried about him, because he's so young and all he does is work work work, no more hanging out with friends, no more playing video games, zero drinking, zero fun.

and so they trick him into hiring daniel as his personal assistant. maybe victoria knows daniel through someone else, or she gets lando to give her the name of his most extravagant acquaintance. and daniel is. quite different from max. he likes to party, to live his life. he's older and never held the same job from more than a year. he's lived on people's couches multiple times before. he's moved several times in his life just because he got bored of the place.

max hates him. daniel is a terrible assistant, keeps trying to schedule breaks in his days???? cuts meetings shorts when they run over working hours? forces him to go have drinks after work????? and is always chatting and touching him and forcing him to "take the scenic route" instead of the most direct one.

he doesn't realise daniel had seen a sad kid and decided to help him. he doesn't realise it's working until he starts softening up, both at work and in his personal life.

and then they fall in love!

bestie this was very fun to think about thank you for sending this ask! and i am sorry if this isn't exactly what you were thinking about but as i said i am not an ugly betty connoisseur.

[moonkhao]

hi.

[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

[floorpancakes]

ok but im rly into the idea of till having a new era that brings the light back to his eyes and drives him forward if he gets to escape the arena. idk where he'd go from there but i want to see ivans sacrifice both haunt him and drive him to actually live his damn life after being the captured bird refusing freedom cause of mizi. once he knows she's alive with the resistance he might be able to actually experience other things and widen his world and if that happens and he puts his personal sense of rebellion towards the human cause OR settles into finding some other way to feel fulfilment that isn't a single person that could be deeply fascinating to me i think

[sciderman]

I swear I have read your big post regarding Peter Parker's neurodivergence and why it is best to avoid labelling him, but he definitely has a weird brain

Can't find it and feel kinda sad about it cuz I deeply related to it

i know exactly which post you're talking about and i can't find it either! i've raked through my archive, and it's just - nowhere to be seen. i think tumblr eated it (it happens.)

really, tumblr's search functionality is so so useless, i don't know what to tell you. there are plenty of keywords i can search to find it that post, but the search functionality actually just does not work!

undiagnosed audhd-addled peter parker, my darling, my light, my life, my everything.

i think peter parker's such an interesting creature to write, because a lot of people will point to a certain behaviour about him and say "this is an autistic thing, right?" but a lot of those behaviours are actually, in my head, tied to certain traumas in peter's life too.

people say "oh, the food thing, peter's a picky eater because he's autistic" and yes, absolutely. but also it's tied to his trauma with his parents.

peter gets overstimulated, and yes, it's an autism thing, but also he was bitten by a radioactive spider and his senses are dialled to 11.

it's a similar case i've found for myself, too – where a lot of friends i have kind of diagnose me because i have autistic traits, but actually - i'm hesitant to claim the label or pursue diagnosis because, actually, i know where these certain behaviours come from, and they come from certain traumas. there are events i can pinpoint in my life and say "yep. that's where this behaviour comes from."

so - i think there's a lot of overlap between trauma and autistic traits. the brain is very complex! i think the reason for that overlap is maybe as simple as the fact that people with autism and people with trauma are both doing the same thing - developing behaviours to protect themselves or soothe themselves. so - i think it's nice to be able to see a character like peter parker, who may or may not be autistic, but recognise behaviours in him and see yourself in him.

people who go undiagnosed for whatever reason - people who are really good at masking - so good, in fact, that they have no idea they might be on the spectrum - everyone and anyone at all can look at peter parker and recognise themselves. because i think we discredit the thought that every single brain does the same thing! develops certain behaviours in order to survive. every brain has that same software - we've just all been faced with different hardships that we need to overcome, and that's were all the differences come in.

autism is a spectrum, i guess - everyone falls into it to some degree. and i think events in your life probably push you along on it. but i don't know, i didn't study brain science. probably what i'm saying is very stupid and uninformed. of course there's brain chemistry involved. but i know people in my life living with autism and certain events in their life have exacerbated certain behaviours or made coping with it a lot more difficult. so maybe trauma is a catalyst.

[fluffypotatey]

fingers slipped, wrote something, bone apple teeth :3

-

For the first year, Odysseus did his best to stay away from Calypso. The goddess did not make it easy, always eager to find him like they were playing some game (and maybe they truly were because where else could Odysseus go that her power could not touch). She would giggle and playfully lecture him on his etiquette in avoiding his lover.

“I’m married.”

“You mortals and your silly fixed brains.” She would pat him on the head before hugging him. “It’s only you and me on this island. What does a flimsy marriage from out there mean here?”

He wondered if Zeus had the same mindset.

At year three, Odysseus had scoured the whole island and traversed the beaches plenty. Calypso continued to find his evasiveness endearing, but there will be a time when his need to leave her comfy, perfect paradise will displease her. Or offend her. Odysseus would rather be on the other side of the sea than know what she’d do if her delusion finally broke.

She still believed that Odysseus will warm up to her. And were Odysseus not in this situation, maybe he would find her patience admirable. Or maybe not. Maybe it would still fill him up with dread and exhaustion.

Year five, Calypso no longer allows Odysseus to venture off towards the beaches. Her paranoia finally catching up with her. She then has Odysseus braid her hair to spend the time instead.

“Is this not a beautiful place? Paradise packed in a little island for two?” She hums and stretches her legs in front of her. His hands working slow and carefully for each braid. She drinks this moment in for all it’s worth.

“Paradise is not supposed to be limited.”

Calypso huffs. “Must you always be a downer? Take in the island’s beauty!” Take in mine! “See the perfection in it all that is missing from the rest of the world.”

“Perfection is not a missing flaw out there.” His hands move to another braid. “We all have something different to share and explore. We are imperfect because we are not yet done learning and changing.”

“But does it not exhaust you? Always needing to learn? To change? To catch up with what is new? You get to finally rest from it all here. Your exhaustion can leave and you can seek refuge here.”

“Do you not miss it?”

Calypso looks away from her hands. “Miss what?”

“Do you not miss what it was like to travel? To see new sights? Not be trapped here and alone?”

“I am not alone. You are here with me.”

“Are you not also trapped here. Forever on this island?”

Calypso did not like the direction this conversation was going. Odysseus had no idea what he was talking about! Nobody here was trapped! This is paradise. This will be paradise. It has become a safe haven ever since he—

“I like this island,” she says instead. “And now you are here and I like it more.”

At year seven, Odysseus tries to jump off one of the cliffs of the island. At year seven, Calypso notices the now obvious flinches he makes when she touches him. At year seven, Calypso does not stop Odysseus from leaving her vicinity to venture back to the beaches.

At year seven, Calypso is greeted by Hermes. At year seven, Calypso is told to let him go.

now posted on ao3

[dont-offend-the-bees]

Anyone else just not feeling like a real person much lately?

[envyenvys]

Stobin Mandalorian AU part 1

(aka s3 stobin accidentally acquire a magic baby)

[You Are Here] [2] [3] [4]

It’s Robin that first hears the baby crying. She insists it’s coming from the vents on her right side — Steve’s left — but the concussion’s left everything kind of soupy so it takes him a few minutes to pick it out from the ever-present hum of the gate-laser and the rush of blood through his own ears. Once he notices it though, it’s hard to stop.

It’s a sad, lonely sort of crying that makes his heart ache. Robin makes a dubious sort of noise when he mentions this and insists that it’s probably just hungry — which Steve has to admit is likely, none of the Russians they’ve met so far can really be described as ‘nurturing’ — but something in his gut tells him that’s not it.

He doesn’t get the chance to say anything before the Russians come back with the doctor, and then they have a whole new set of problems to worry about.

The mysterious blue goop makes everything a million times soupier and having pliers around his fingernail is not great, but then Dustin and Erica are there and everything’s great again. Super great, even.

“Can you two hurry up?” Dustin hisses, pulling Steve upright when he starts to list to the side.

It’s a little difficult to navigate when your head is soup and your bones are blue and goopy and you’re bleeding from at least three places you weren’t bleeding from this morning, and Steve makes a valiant attempt to tell Dustin this because it’s important information he needs to know. He starts, then stops because he can barely hear himself over the siren and honestly this is just like earlier when he was trying to hear the— oh right.

“Baby,” Steve says, and Robin whips her head around in slow motion to stare at the vent.

“Did you just call me a baby?” Dustin demands, shoving them into the hallway.

“Nooo, no, no,” Steve insists. He takes two steps in the direction Dustin is going, then checks to see where the vent leads. It’s going in the other direction. He turns around. “Baby. The baby. Gotta get the baby.”

“It’s hungry,” Robin says decisively, even though Steve’s almost positive that’s not the problem.

“I don’t know why these two idiots are so focused on it but I did hear a baby,” Erica says, and Dustin groans.

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“I didn’t think I was the only one around here with working ears,” she says scathingly. “Clearly I was wrong.”

Steve and Robin are already halfway down the hall. Robin stops, cocking her head like a bird, and gasps.

“I hear it! This way!”

She books it around a corner, and she might be only going half as fast as she usually does but she’s still a lot faster than Steve. He stumbles after her, clutching at the weird tubes on the wall for support.

“Get back here!” Dustin hisses, tugging at Steve’s arm. “We have to go!”

“Steve!” Robin shouts at the top of her lungs. “I found the baby!”

Steve manages to drag both himself and Dustin around the corner and into a small room with a metal door. Clearly he needs to start making Dustin exercise because he should not be weaker than Steve is when his bones are soup. Dustin should have solid bones — he drinks a lot of milk, and it’s like, scientifically proven that milk makes your bones stronger. It’s that vitamin — or is it a mineral? Ca— Cancer? No, wrong one. Ca-something. Robin would know.

Anyway Dustin has strong bones so obviously it’s a muscle thing that’s the reason why his arms are really weak and Steve should make him play basketball about it.

Robin’s holding a baby.

“Put that down,” Dustin insists, letting go of Steve to gesture at Robin. She pouts and cuddles the baby closer.

It’s such a cute, perfect baby too. Steve stumbles closer so he can look at the perfect baby. It has soft wisps of brown hair and squishy pink cheeks, and when Robin smooths a thumb over those squishy baby cheeks it stops crying and opens its big brown eyes.

“Steve,” Robin says, staring at him with her own wide eyes, “it’s a girl baby.”

“She’s perfect,” Steve whispers, and he wants to hold her so so bad but he can’t even hold himself up right now and the only thing worse than not holding her is dropping her so he has to leave her with Robin even though it kind of makes him want to cry.

He’s always wanted a baby.

“Okay,” he turns back to Dustin, who’s looking very stressed. “Now we can go.”

“What do you mean ‘now we can go’?”

“We have the baby, let’s go!”

“We can’t just steal a baby!”

“Yes we can,” Robin says, and starts walking out the door. “See? We’re stealing her. Easy peasy.”

“But—!”

“Let’s go, nerd!” Erica says, shoving them all out of the room. “Cry about it later, we need to leave!”

Steve stops to grab a few baby things, though there isn’t much. A white blanket, a few cloth diapers, and a thick stack of folders — the last of which aren’t baby things, but he assumes they’ll be important anyway. The stitching on the corner of the blanket reads ‘Два’, the same as the label on her metal crib.

“Aba,” he mutters, following them to the weird red car. “Like the band?”

Well, it’s probably a beautiful name for a baby girl. In Russian.

[Next]

[skogsdotter-draws]

Ok but, regarding TMAGP 27, I can't stop thinking about Jonah writing, after sending Archibald to a certain death, "It is done, and I am surprised to find how little remorse I feel." It reminds me of his statement in MAG 160:

"The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear. (...) It is an awful thing to know about yourself."

I will never get tired of little details about his life being revealed (regardless of the timeline/dimension) because the parallel between his discovery of the supernatural world and the discovery of his own true self and the things he's capable of is so interesting and compelling to me.

Along with the knowledge of the horrors that exist in his world comes the horror of the realization that he might be capable of anything to stop feeling scared and vulnerable, to put himself over everybody else if necessary. Every time curiosity leads him into a new experiment, a new sacrifice in the name of knowledge, he lets go a little bit of himself and his morality. And then, as it happened with Archibald, and as it happened with Barnabas in another world, he feels surprised of how easy it was. Of how he doesn't feel regret or grief, how at most he finds himself thinking that it was all a pity. So it becomes even easier each time, he finds freedom in it, as he also mentions in MAG 160— and one sacrifice after another, it all becomes incredibly simple. There is no fear of losing himself, only the fear of death and pain remains, and only after that process of two hundreds years can one condemn the world for his own sake.

The progressive descent into evil of Jonah Magnus, slowly exposed through statements and letters, will never stop being one of the more interesting parts of this podcast imo.

[onenightbreak]

in stars and time + jhariah // MAYBE LATER DANCE / sunsets (resilience) / FIRE4FUN / are you happy? (questions) / PIN-EYE / SASUKE

[byanyan]

okay. okay. it is done.

lmk if you see anything weird or think something should be written better!! also blanket content warning on the bio bc there's a lot of heavy fuckin stuff in there, though it is all marked (i think. hmu if i missed smth). same goes for the timeline but that's all written more matter-of-fact and less detailed so i just slapped a cw at the very top of the page

[dizzybizz]

AITA if I accidentally left fish at my mayor's house for two weeks straight? And it left his house stinky?

OK- so I (26TM) moved to a small sort of isolated town during spring this year, where I work as a farmer on a farm my grandpa once owned. It's been great and I have really settled in over the course of the year.

Time passed and eventually fall was upon us. Now, during the middle of fall the town holds a small festival, where among other things you could set up a little stall with your finest products for a friendly competition and review. Our mayor (??M) hooked me up with one of those which was really nice- I had been doing a lot of fishing over the months and I had a few good ones to display so I did. I ended up getting second place- okay no, that is not really relevant-

But after the results were out, the mayor specifically reminded me to not forget to empty out my supply and bring it with my back home. He specifically went out of his way to remind me. Thing is... I might have gotten a bit caught up in the other festivities and fun things around (not my fault they were grilling burgers and had gambling). And I completely forgot, I only remembered the moment I stepped foot inside my room again.

Next morning rolls around and I wake up to a letter in my mailbox from the mayor explaining that the fish I had left were placed inside the town's Lost and Found. Which is just a big box inside his house. So I thought "OK, great. I'll head over today and retrieve them." Yeah, that didn't really turn out. I completely forgot, it completely slipped my mind. And that same series of events of - me recalling that I had stuff in the Lost and Found and meaning to go pick them up and forgetting - kept happening for a while. Until two weeks had passed and it was winter. And as I was passing the mayor's house the thought struck again. Except this time I actually REMEMBERED and WENT THROUGH WITH IT. So I knock on his door and I get let in, and the house smells like, well... rotten fish. I go straight to the box while talking about how I'm so sorry it took so long and that I was always getting distracted by this that and the other. And he's being all understanding and nodding along. But there is no way he wasn't at least a bit ticked off, right? And I do feel really bad but I cannot do much for my forgetfulness besides setting reminders maybe... maybe I will try that in the future.

AITA for forgetting to pick up my forgotten fish from my mayor's house?