#so why not just teach me how to write one myself anyway? and then i'd have that skill for the future once i do have some experience!

[katebihshop]

why did i talk to a career coach just for her to tell me to use chatgpt i hate it here

[oldiesstationlover11607]

Hello. It’s me, anonymous (yes. I am the person who submitted the torchbearer request. That was amazing by the way! You’re an amazing writer!).

I feel bad asking for another TØP one shot (another Josh one on top of that), but I was wondering if you could do a fluffy one where Josh teaches the reader to play the drums a little bit everyday after soundcheck for the Clancy tour, but they don’t tell Tyler (no reason. They just want to mess with him). You can end it however you want, but I think it would be cute Tyler accidentally interrupts a cute moment Josh and the reader are having.

You don’t have to follow this exactly (or at all), I just think it’s cute. Only if you want to of course.

Drum lessons - Josh Dun x Reader

Pairing: Josh Dun x Reader

Warnings: None! Super fluffy <3

A/N: Dude I love tøp and have been waiting for someone to just throw requests my way so NEVER feel bad for requesting tøp. They’re my main fandom anyways and no one has been requesting them so ily 🤟 I'd love to assign you an anon emoji so I know who my anons are so let me know which one you want next time you request. And keep requesting! I write for both Josh and Tyler (and I love Josh a lot so keep them coming!)

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d watched Josh play drums and wondered how on earth he managed to get each of his limbs to move at different speeds. I’d played guitar before, and I understood how piano worked, but drums just left me clueless. The boys had been practising for the Clancy tour for a few days, and it was the last day before we travelled to Denver. Tyler had gone to get changed and shower before driving home, but Josh and I stayed behind to talk to Mark and film some stuff. The red drum kit sat alone on the stage. I stared at it before sitting behind it and holding the sticks.

“Look at you!” Josh laughed. I smiled brightly at him. “Well if you’re gonna be behind the kit at least play me something.” I hit the snare, kick, and cymbals making a loud (and awful) sound. I burst out laughing, knowing it sounded terrible yet I was thoroughly enjoying myself. 

“I should replace you as the drummer shouldn’t I?” I grinned. He walked up behind me, holding me in a backwards hug. Pressing his lips to my cheek, he whispered “Not quite.” I looked around to see the crew were all gone. “I could teach you though.” He had to be joking. Yeah, I could play guitar and was interested in what Josh did, but he was crazy to think I had the coordination even to play something basic. 

“Haha funny,” I smirked, putting the sticks down and getting up. 

“No, seriously,” he followed quickly behind me as I grabbed my stuff and headed to our car. “It would be something cool for us to do together on tour. Tyler normally leaves after soundcheck to hang with Jenna and the kids. We’d have time.” He was right. I really did want to learn to play drums; they’d always fascinated me. “Come on… it would be fun,” Josh enticed, getting into the car. 

“Yeah, okay,” I nodded, “let’s do it.” 

The first ‘session’ was a disaster. He’d attempted to get me to do a ‘basic’ drum beat he called some complicated name I’d forgotten the name of by the time I sat down. 

“No, no, like this.” He hit one of the drums before stopping to let me try. I’d just stayed to get it before we were told to get off stage. “You’ll get it next time y/n, trust me,” Josh reached for my hand and led me down the halls of the venue. 

“Why don’t we just choose a pilots’ song and you teach me that? Surely there’s an easy one?” I asked. He perked up in excitement. 

“Yeah, that’s a great idea. Routines isn’t too hard, we could even get out up on stage once you get it down,” he smiled. There was no way on earth that would ever happen. 

“Sure Josh, sure,” I rolled my eyes. 

A few sessions later I was starting to get the handle of it. Josh would play the track on his phone and tell me which drums to hit and when until I remembered what to do. 

“Kick, snare, kick, kick, kick, snare. Oh, and remember to keep hitting the high hat the whole time.” I continued to play the song while Josh air drummed and Tyler’s voice played in the background. “Yes! There you go!” I flashed him a smile as I hit the last drumbeat in the song. Josh snuck up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing his lips to mine. I kissed him back, cupping his jaw and smiling into the kiss. Josh’s baseball cap brushed against my forehead as we pulled away. I pull it off him and put it on backwards, just like him. 

“Drums are actually kinda fun.”

“Of course they are. I told you, you could do it,” he still held me close in his arms, “I love you.” 

“I love you too,” I brushed one of his loose curls out of his face, wondering how lucky I was to have him. He turned his head into my hand, pressing his lips to my palm. “You’re my favourite person.” The curtains backstage ruffled as Tyler stepped out onto the stage. 

“Josh you’re still practicing? I thought we finished soundcheck,” he shouted, running across the venue to the B-stage drum island. “We already did Routines.” Tyler was dressed in his first tour outfit, holding the Clancy mask in his hand. Josh rested his head in the crook of my neck as he looked at Tyler. “Oh shoot, sorry,” Tyler smiled awkwardly, realizing the position we were in, “I didn’t realise you were uh… what was it you were doing?” I waited for Josh to say something, but he stayed quiet. Tyler waited patiently for either of us to answer the question. “Wait, was y/n playing?” A more confident smile spread across his face. Josh sat up and nodded eagerly at Tyler.

“Yep, I taught her the song, she’s amazing isn’t she?” 

“Yeah, I genuinely thought you were Josh with that hat and the drumming over the speakers,” Tyler said, sitting down on the b-stage just next to the drum kit. “You know, it would be cool to have you on stage together playing.” I knew this was coming. I could practically feel the smirk grow on Josh’s face. “And I’m guessing he’s already tried to convince you. I’m sure we can set that up, the fans would go crazy,” he rested his head on his hands, staring up at the roof of the venue. I placed the drumsticks back into their storage cup before getting up from the kit and sitting in front of Josh on the floor. He nudged me, trying to bring my attention to the idea of playing on stage. 

“I-uh… I don’t think it’s for me, you know. You guys perform in front of massive crowds and given that it took me 3 weeks to talk to Josh after we properly met, my anxiety could never,” I pulled at the sleeves of my sweater nervously. 

Tyler smiled at me, knowingly, “I get it, it takes a lot to perform in front of people every night.” I nodded, glad he understood my situation. 

“Just know that I can make it happen if you want it to,” Josh smiled. 

“Of course you can.”

//

Please submit any requests y'all have! I love to write so let me know if you've got any!

[cdelphiki]

I submitted my final project yesterday, and took my final exam today, and now I'm officially done with this stupid class and this stupid certificate forever. Lmao. Stay tuned for my rant about how frustrating this experience has been for me, if you want:

I'm so annoyed with this class, because the professor was so frustrating. She didn't grade a single thing I did all semester until FINALS WEEK. She also didn't open up the instructions for the final project until she told me I was done with it (we had teams meetings so she was just verbally telling me what to do). She told me that the instructions for writing the abstract are in the project module, and I was like... what project module? When she finally opened the module and I was able to actually read it, I found that my final project she had just approved as being ready to submit didn't meet the minimum requirements? And when I asked about it she said "yes those are the minimums." LADY? DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF? YOU JUST SAID MY PROJECT WAS DONE??? It was 5pm on Friday, the last day of finals week when she did this, BY THE WAY. I had been working on the project all week, I'd put, like, 30 hours into this damn project already. And she couldn't have been early on like "hey there's a project module" so I could have even KNOWN there was supposed to be a module I couldn't see? This is after all semester long I was emailing her asking 'where is this reading, where is this lab' etc etc because she just simply didn't upload stuff or release it as the syllabus stated she would. I had to ask her for things weekly that should have just been there in the course material. Oh yeah, and those instructions for an abstract? Not in the project module. I just wrote an abstract how I think it should be. Then her exams she writes are just.... she really needs to use grammarly. Some of her exam questions made ZERO sense, because it just wasn't proper English. English is her second language, so I understand why it happened and do not judge that, but I do not find it acceptable when this is a graduate level class, in English, and you mark me wrong if I don't answer the question correctly? Just run the question through grammarly. The final exam had instructions that were like 'for essay questions write a response between 75 and 100 words, this is open book, you can talk to your classmates but your answer must be your own," and that was the instructions. Then 20 of 26 questions just had a single word as the question? Like, what do you want me to do with this? Define it? Explain it? Give an example of it? All of the above? None of the above? And she had one question that I SWEAR said "give three (4) examples of...." like?????????? and another question said "name the three types of...." but there are FIVE types of that thing?

Anyway I went to eviscerate her in the course eval and learned it closed yesterday but I wasn't done with the class yesterday so I was waiting. Oh well. My complaints will be kept to myself. She has strong suits. She's very nice, and when she actually responds to my messages (oh yeah she ghosted me the first half of this last week, when I was working on the project. I was submitting drafts to her via email like she asked me to do and she just simply didn't respond until Wednesday.) she's pretty helpful. I also DID learn a lot in her courses, and in this program overall.

The entire certificate program is sorely lacking, tbh. The first professor I had was also my advisor, and he would just flat up not respond to my emails. I don't think I'm too needy, I tend to get my work done on my own. I asked him the answer to a final question after the final was due and grades were posted, and he didn't reply to me. Like, okay dude. That's kind of rude. It's your job to teach me and I think I'm doing well by actually trying to learn what the correct answer is after the fact? Whatever. The second two classes were this same lady twice, and all my complaints about this semester can be applied to last semester, too.

Overall, I'm very glad my work paid for me to attend these classes and it was not coming out of my pocket, because if I was paying as much as work paid for this, I would have been in the dean's inbox every single semester with my issues lmao. I WILL be a Karen if it's warranted. Not grading *any* of my work until after the semester is over is unacceptable, not providing material on time is unacceptable, having exams that are indecipherable is unacceptable, etc etc. The list goes on. I didn't get my midterm grade until the final exam was open to take, also. If I as a student am expected to keep up with deadlines, my professor, as the professor, should also be expected to keep up with deadlines. (all within reason and with allowances for true problems, ofc)

[panharmonium]

you and i have both found precious friends, haven't we?

every so often, i get the urge to journal out insignificant fandom annoyances. i rarely have the time and generally manage to resist because, again: insignificant. extremely so. none of this is remotely important.

however, stumbling into bad fandom "takes" on the scene i'm about to discuss has prompted me to gnash my teeth so often ("how many times am i going to have to see people refusing to actually read the text?" i repeat to myself over and over) that i'm finally going to just get it out of my system. (i'm making it non-rebloggable, though. me happily typing up my own thoughts on my own blog does not equate to an invitation for internet strangers to debate inconsequential fandom opinions with me. i just like writing things down.)

anyway. i find it deeply frustrating when people complain about kakashi saying "the ones most precious to me have already been killed" as if they think it means he doesn't recognize or value the new bonds he's made, when two panels later he finishes his speech by doing just that.

it's literally the ENTIRE point kakashi is making. we've lost so much - but that's not all there is.

i don't understand how this scene became such a magnet for willful misreads. people either fixate on kakashi saying "the ones most precious to me have already been killed" and don't read beyond that panel, or they fixate on him sharing a relevant piece of his life experience with sasuke and then accuse him of "projecting," or they claim that this is a failed teaching moment when it demonstrably, textually is not! hours later, after the sun has gone down and the moon has risen, sasuke is voluntarily still sitting there, thinking about naruto and sakura, questioning the hold his quest for vengeance against itachi has had on him all his life.

this entire sequence was one of my favorite scenes when i watched/read part 1, and it was so bizarre when i broke my fandom isolation after finishing the story and saw some of the blatantly non-textual takes people had on it. there are people who talk about this scene as if kakashi waltzes in here and tells sasuke that their situations are exactly the same and orders him to "get over it." there are also people who talk about this scene as if sasuke's role in it ends with and is defined solely by his reflexive "what do you know about it?" rejection of kakashi's earlier advice. neither of these takes are remotely accurate descriptions of what happens on the page.

at no point does kakashi say "i know exactly how you feel." there is no point in this conversation where he tries to equate their situations. what he does say is "the ones most precious to me have already been killed...i know the pain of losing somebody more than i'd like to." both of these are true statements, and both of them are offered only after sasuke's highly charged, furious threat to kill the people kakashi cares about, which kakashi (CORRECTLY) interprets as sasuke's way of accusing him of not being able to understand his feelings until he's experienced the pain of loss.

kakashi answers sasuke's threat with that calm, nonconfrontational disclosure of his personal history because sasuke asked him to do so. sasuke asked "why should i listen to you??? what do you know about how much this hurts?" and kakashi doesn't brush that accusation off or say "you just have to listen to me, period, because i'm in charge"; he answers the question! he says "that's fair. here's what I've experienced. here's what i've found, after living through it." and then he steps back to let sasuke reflect on it and decide what to do next.

just because the characters in this story don't use the kind of therapeutic feelings-speak that people think defines healthy conversations doesn't mean something is missing from this interaction. the text is VERY clear about the fact that kakashi makes a successful connection with sasuke here. kakashi's disclosure snaps sasuke out of his rage. it allows sasuke, who is hurting so badly that he can't see anything outside his own pain, to experience a momentary window of clarity - to catch a glimpse of the world outside the cage his grief has constructed around him. sasuke is so activated at the beginning of this scene, incapable of listening or recognizing anything that isn't his own hurt, but the minute he hears kakashi's calm admission that the people he loves most have already been killed, all that anger dissipates. suddenly, for a brief moment, he can see. suddenly he's listening. suddenly he's genuinely thinking about what kakashi is saying.

i know some people would prefer their version of sasuke to get up and throw kakashi's counsel back in his face and march out of the village with his middle finger raised to everyone he's leaving behind, but that's not what happens. that's not how sasuke feels about this conversation. that's not the effect this interaction has on him. he's not sitting there listening to kakashi's gentle disclosure of personal information and thinking "what an asshole; he's trying to minimize my trauma!!!" he's genuinely affected. his perspective is altered. his teacher does precisely what teachers are supposed to do: give their students something to think about! and sasuke recognizes it as something that's worth considering!

does it keep him in the village? no, but that wasn't the purpose of the conversation. when kakashi and sasuke speak, there's no inkling in anyone's mind that sasuke might leave - not even sasuke is planning to do that. the purpose of this intervention is to address the conflict on top of the hospital, where sasuke let himself get so out of control that he attacked naruto with a lethal-sized chidori, nearly killing sakura in the process. kakashi doesn't have to know that orochimaru is about to make a play for sasuke's allegiance to know that sasuke's current situation is a disaster waiting to happen. he isn't "projecting" by recognizing that sasuke is in danger of hurting somebody (or himself!), and it's completely appropriate for him, as the adult in charge, to start addressing that. nor is he "projecting" by correctly recognizing that sasuke is going through a similar change to one he himself experienced, in that sasuke is being drawn out of his isolation and into genuinely caring about his teammates. those are just the observable facts of the situation. sasuke was the first one to pass kakashi's bell test. he sacrificed himself for naruto in the land of waves. he landed himself in the hospital by trying to protect naruto from itachi. right before that, he almost died trying to save sakura from gaara:

"you and i have both found precious friends, haven't we?"

kakashi can see that sasuke's bonds to his new friends have become strong enough that they might actually be capable of displacing the self-destructive desires that have been controlling him for so long. and yet there are still people who talk about the tree scene as if kakashi is wrong or deluded for choosing to have this conversation with sasuke now - as if the things he tells sasuke are trite or irrelevant or insensitive, as if sasuke isn't in PRECISELY the right place in his growth process to hear "your desire for revenge has started to hurt you and the people you care about. are you sure this is what you want?" in the past, sasuke might not have been ready to consider that question, but now - look at how hard he fights for his friends! look at how he refers to them! "my precious comrades," he says, when he used to consider them so beneath him.

it's time. when he first met team 7, he didn't have anything to counter itachi's pull on him, but now he does. he's at a crossroads. this is the right moment for him to hear what kakashi says to him here, especially when kakashi is able to say it in such a calm, neutral way. it would be negligent for kakashi not to say it, after what just happened. sasuke almost killed one of his teammates that morning. it is not malicious for an adult whose responsibility it is to keep these twelve year-olds from hurting themselves to tell sasuke, "i know it hurts. but what you're doing right now is going to end badly." or: "the power i entrusted you with is not to be used to hurt your friends."

and once again, crucially - the text is clear that sasuke hears him. sasuke absorbs what he's being offered. he is still sitting there, thinking about his friends, questioning his old goals, fighting the powerful pull of his revenge, until orochimaru's minions show up and do something that kakashi never did - manipulate him so someone else can use him for their benefit. orochimaru's minions prey on sasuke's pain in order to push him down a path that benefits orochimaru, but kakashi speaks to sasuke plainly and honestly, without judgment or self-interest. his only concern is sasuke's well-being. (you wouldn't know it, though, to hear some of fandom's hot takes.)

the thing is: everything people claim they want this scene to be is already there. "if only kakashi had used this opportunity to connect with sasuke - " that is exactly what happened. you're lamenting the absence of something that is in fact the text. no, it doesn't look like a scene in a fanfic where kakashi sits sasuke down for tea and helps him unpack all his traumatic experiences and offers lots of verbal reassurance that sasuke's emotions are Valid and he is here to Support Him No Matter What, because that kind of explicit emotional exploration would be wildly inconsistent with the source material. you have to approach stories from the inside to legitimately appreciate what they're trying to say. you have to accept their rules. and in this story's context, in no way is this scene meant to convey "kakashi's so out of touch; he totally missed the mark on this talk." this scene, as written, is a powerful moment between him and sasuke, where sasuke does hear what kakashi is saying and takes it to heart, and chews on it, and fights to believe it. ultimately, thanks to some last-minute interference from people who want sasuke to continue suffering because it advances their interests, it isn't enough to save him.

but that's not a condemnation of either party. it's the narrative, and it rocks.

i love this scene. i love how kakashi lets sasuke snarl and shout at him without ever biting back, without ever escalating, always staying quiet and calm. i love how patient he is, how an angry kid with no clue about kakashi's personal background says cutting things like "if i killed the people most precious to you then you'd understand that you don't know shit," and yet kakashi never bristles - he has no ego, no self-interest; he absorbs the anger without protest and responds by offering a private piece of himself. i love the way sasuke's expression instantly transforms from enraged, to stunned, to softened. i love how kakashi is able to tell sasuke "no" with such compassion, every time he has to say it. i love how he still believes in sasuke and gives him space to reflect and make decisions on his own. i love how even the sealing jutsu kakashi placed around orochimaru's curse mark requires sasuke's consent for it to function ("you have to want it to work"). i love how badly sasuke wants team 7 to be enough for him. i love how desperately he wants to be free. he's trying so hard.

it's so frustrating to see complaints about this scene written by people who aren't actually reading it, or who are dead set on interpreting it in direct contradiction to the text. there are enough ungenerous "takes" out there on various aspects of naruto as it is (sakura, you have my forever sympathy). criticizing this sequence in defiance of what it actually shows us on the page has never struck me as a particularly accurate or useful way of appreciating the story.

[ariaste]

have you always been a writer, or is it something you had to teach yourself to do? i've written some in the past (mostly shorter fanfics, plus one longer one i never finished), i have a lot of ideas, and i like the concept of writing short stories or a book or something, but i rarely get past the phase of having the ideas, jotting down some notes, and maybe writing the first scene. i'm not sure if this means that i haven't found a way to enjoy the process of writing enough to do it consistently, or if everyone kind of feels like that and some people just prioritize the writing anyway. if you have any insights or personal anecdotes on the subject i would love to hear them! thank you for sharing your writing and your time with us :)

re: whether I was always a writer or had to teach myself -- kind of both??? I decided i wanted to be a professional author when I was like 11, but I'd been scribbling little bits of stories before that. Besides learning the craft (technical skills, etc), I think the biggest thing I had to learn was endurance (how to persevere with a project when it starts to frustrate you) and how to listen to my gut instincts when there was something going wrong (that is, to realize that "feeling frustrated" is one of my own red flags for "I have subconsciously noticed that something is wrong; stop and take inventory").

I don't think there is any one right way to be a writer. There are people like me who set a goal very young and have always been slowly walking towards it, and there are people who come to it much later -- in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 80s...

Based on what you've said about having an idea and writing the first scene, it sounds like you might be missing some tension in your stories. Tinker with one of your protagonists and try to figure out what she Wants MORE THAN AIR ITSELF, and then set that thing six inches out of her grasp. If she's got a powerful drive toward something, a frothing-at-the-mouth MOTIVE, that might help get the story's engine revving. :) (Spoilers: 90% of story problems are tension problems; fix your tension and everything else kind of falls into place).

If that doesn't help, you might try experimenting with different styles of writing -- writing in a notebook versus on the computer, for example, or writing an outline versus going by the seat of your pants.

If THAT doesn't help, my next recommendation is to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and check in with yourself on the question of, "Am I afraid of the story? Why?" Sometimes a subtle anxiety can really get in the way of creativity, because it's so much easier to protect yourself from the fear by simply NOT WRITING, y'know?

Anyway, it sounds like you DO have some drive towards writing, so you just need to figure out a way past whatever this little obstacle is. :)) Good luck!!

[lunawings]

Okay, so I have a bit of an announcement to make!

I've decided I wanna become a panelist! It's high time I combined my special interests with my teaching skills in order to spread the prism sparkle.

Plus I need something to do an anime cons when my body doesn't let me do idol activities anymore.

My first panel will of course be on Pretty Series! I'm writing it as an introduction for beginners, but I'll be including some deep cuts for people who are already familiar, as well as setting up a little museum on the table of various arcade artifacts!

I'll be touching on every season but honestly it will probably be like 30% Pretty Rhythm and 60% PriPara partially due to my own preferences but also because I think PriPara is the most relevant series since you can play Idol Land from overseas. (Ideally I'll get to present this while Idol Land is still running so I can end with a tutorial on how to play!)

(I won't be touching upon King of Prism aside from a brief mention because that could be its own panel... hmm hmm.)

But yeah. I probably won't get to present this until at least spring 2025 (if not summer), mostly because there aren't any anime cons coming up in the next few months that I'd feel comfortable presenting at. But, hopefully this will all be coming soon to a con near you!! ...I-If you live in the Northeastern United States, that is... I probably won't be going farther than that. Haah ha.

Anyway, I just made myself sad when I realized one of the big reasons why Pretty Series isn't popular in the west. Literally my three favorite seasons (Rainbow Live, Idol Land PriPara, PriChan season 2) have never been officially translated. Is this all correct?

uuughguggh

Speaking of least favorite seasons, this is literally my only slide for AiPri right now hahah...

But I mean, I'm going to have to update it anyway since season 2 will probably be out by then.

I'm also cracking up over the slides I made for PriChan:

(Hahah I'm omitting the next slide where I explain PriChan gradually goes off the rails just like every other series and I like it almost as much as I like PriPara. But yeah, early PriChan era was wild.)

[useyourwordsdarling]

hii, was feeling super shy to write but it's mid of the night, I am half asleep, half horny and I can't help it anymore

first of all thank u for the great posts, you're honestly such a good writer

sooo it's not exactly my area of expertise but I'm thinking of coding an AI that can write just like u.. for funsies (or more) (hope u don't mind)

also u talked about being a calc tutor and enjoying it and I relate sm! I peer tutored stats and calc courses during the beginning of my 2nd year of uni (I still want u to tutor me tho 💕), didn't think I'd enjoy it but it was fun interacting w new people and helping them out but it got stressful so I quit 😞

any tips for juggling work, school, & life? I feel like I have too much I wanna do but not enough time/energy/motivation

anyways this was all over the place so thanks for reading, hope u have a good day/night 🦋

Awh that’s actually so sweet, thank you. And as to the AI part, even if it’s out of my area (I’d love to learn to program on that level tho) it does seem possible. But it’s probably easier to make an AI bot rather than code your own. There’s plenty of those AI bot websites you can check and if you have a sample of text big enough to input into it you might be able to get somewhat similar results. So if you just used my posts for that it should work? But I can’t say for sure

I wouldn’t mind if someone did that especially since it’s out of my control people can do it either way. But I really do wonder just how accurate it would be because I can see it being shit too and that’d be pretty funny. Teaching can be fun but it’s definitely tiring and not for everybody, I wouldn’t say it’s for me either but it was a nice experience to have

I’m probably one of the worst people you could ask how to have a work life balance like that…While working at my final project at my uni my professor who was assisting me with my thesis started to actually be worried and feel bad about how much time I spent on it…I’d sometimes spend the night working on it, and he felt pretty bad so I started working on it in the dark in the lab we got in hopes he wouldn’t notice I was there which isn’t great..

But I do think this balance it’s an important thing to have, I certainly should work more on it myself. I think it comes to not trying to be as productive as possible too, it’s okay to take breaks. It’s okay to do things that aren’t “productive”. We are still human at the end of the day, if we keep trying to work work and work, we’ll inevitably hit a wall. That’s why burn outs are a thing. This might not feel much of an advice, since I don’t know the solution myself. But I think related to knowing your priories, especially people in your life you want to keep close. And know when to spend time with them, because that’s still much more important than work or studying in the end

[kwassants]

Writers yap May 1, 2025

Thought I'd write about TSS again!

In case some of you are wondering: what creative choices I made about it, etc: Mild Spoilers Ahead (v mild idt there are actual spoilers in here tbh)

"I'm manhwa only and I'm craaaving more of Ludger's hilarious internal monologue and snarky remarks. I also wanted him to do more teaching because his school interactions made me happiest. I also wanted to challenge myself: can I make a romance for a character like him? It never felt right to me for the AUP canon to have romance, and I thought about what kind of enigma she'd have to be to match Ludger equally. What kind of character interactions would they have? What about their character arcs? How do I make it realistic? How do I make it enjoyable for people?

Anyway, I ramble because I got excited over writing this. I plan on writing more chapters."

Tags: ROMANCE, Comedy, Fluff, Smut (very consensual, very healthy)

Okay first of all let me get this out of the way: the plot was non-existent at first it was supposed to be episodic aka a colelction of oneshots that had a slow moving plot.

The first few episodes was for Ludger simping cause I thought, oh, it might make them stick around enough to like my OC LMAO cause I didn't know if people would like her at the time.

And I originally planned this to be like 25 chapters max.

(I am currently writing 60 and I don't think we're halfway yet) THE PLOT HAS EXPANDED.

Like… there is a whole ton of worldbuilding???

Some creative choices:

I decided to make them friends from the start of the fic, and have them start as liking each other already (flirting. Ik, might be weird for some to imagine) and then the backstory comes later (otherwise it'd be boring???) but yeah it'll eventually get revealed.

There is a whole chapter 1 dedicated to why i wrote the work lol that was the initial thesis which is an expanded version of what I said about the fic above.

It was supposed to be slice of life but then my brain really latched on to the idea of "I made this fic because I really want Ludger to heal from trauma but if I just made him go to therapy then I'd have no plot" and Ludger is NOT emotionally intelligent enough to like find his healing via found family imo, so I think there needs to be an external force aka another person who is more emotionally intelligent to make the pairing work.

I deliberately decided to make the FL have trauma too — because I'm really passionate about writing character-centric stories and I wanted to respect the entire healing process like healing isn't linear, and I wanted to focus on really making a healthy relationship BECAUSE HEAVEN KNOWS WE NEED IT what with Ludger's baggage??? so I thought hmm if she had her own trauma you know, her own skeletons she'd understand him more etc.

ik I said I'd have him interact with students more but that's mostly concentrated on the earlier chapters BUT I am moving towards that again. In Season 2 there are more characters involved! and yes i plan on adding more student interactions!

I didn't plan this lmao but lots of side characters get more lore too, like Merylda is pirate-coded my hc is that she was an adventurer and she's the big sis type of character. Selina is the innocent one but Esmeralda is still in her somewhere. Chris Benimore gets a more compelling redemption arc. Even the Chancellor gets a bit more lore.

Going back to Ludger and OC — I wanted the power imbalance to be minimized to reduce the icky — and it was important to me for them to be equals intellectually (cause like how do you even equal Ludger when it comes to magic??? lmao) and it made sense since it's an academy setting so it's actually like kinda dark academia-y?

There is a whole-ass bigger plot than what's currently written BUT there's a LOT of foreshadowing.

About the FL

(this is the updated version but the Chapter 1 also has it)

I made it a very big point to not make her a mary sue like it was very important for me that she isn't a self-insert.

She teaches Botany/Potions!

She's an Imperial Scholar! (think, national scientist kinda title) so it's like their intellect jives well together

eventually, they will do dumb things together that will make people think they share exactly 1 (one) brain cell

She wears a monocle. (my hc is that when she finds out that Ludger is James Moriarty, she will tease him that he got the idea from her)

She banters back! She is not a shy FL you'll see it by Chapter 3 LMAO??? (I personally find it weird when grown adults kinda shirk away from R18 topics? But it might also just be my desire to portray realistic human relationships so yeah.)

Not in the chapter 1 intro: She has trauma too, and she also has secrets which will slowly be unraveled! and Ludger's secrets will slowly be unraveled to her too.

Why you might not like it:

Heavy topics are discussed. But I swear to the stars (and if you see some of my author's notes on here at tumblr and if you see how i work etc you will see that I try my best to think about the story deeply and since my entire thesis is trauma/healing (BUT WITH COMEDY a lot of that and fluff too) and therefore they are treated with the utmost care and sensitivity.

Slow burn, but not a crawl, but it's LONG I personally do not read a whole lot BUT a lot of people like long fics apparently so this might be a win.

There is smut. Highly consensual. Healthy. And most importantly, plot relevant (Ik, porn with plot, who would've thought—) But still, smut.

and some people might not be into that although i try to heavily tag my work you CAN skip over those though

I said I wanted him to talk to students more but I realized in the middle that wasn't the main focus (because romance and I was trying to build the foundations of the relationships and the characters put me on a chokehold and ran away with the plot) they will be featured more prominently eventually though! (Season 2, after setting the groundwork in Season 1, has more characters fleshed out)

I feel like it really diverged from the original plan of like "lets just keep it comedic and light" cause it got deeper into things and IDK if that's a minus in your book but yeah ig just, CW apply

Now that that's out of the way (I figured I'd do people a favor if some of these things will turn them off from the work so I wouldn't waste their time)—

Here's why you might like it:

I, the author, am a freaking gremlin I WILL DEF RESPOND TO YOUR COMMENTS IF YOU WANT ME TO no comment is too small i go feral for a single "<3" because it means so much that you're reading my writing like wow??? you gave my silly blorbos some of your time in this economy???

I genuinely think it's funny dksajdnksajnda and cute and wholesome like yes ik i did say it talks about heavy stuff for a reason BUT its not trauma porn and like I try to balance it and I LOVE THEIR SNARK OK. Like I'm not into Ludger x Casey at all but I do appreciate their banter mostly because she's the only one female who banters with him??? anyway i love banter and snark

They actually have lives outside of the romance.

Click for the plot, stay for the characters.

Platonic friendships! Hobbies! Things that say their lives don't revolve around each other!

They're both nerds. We get nerdy Ludger dkajndaksjdnsa!!!

The emotional payoff is amazing imo if you can stick w/ it.

Smut.

Ludger Cherish.

Worldbuilding on a romance fic lmao we get original worldbuilding and added/expanded lore?

It's THE longest fic of the fandom by like idk 3 times??? LMAO i am COMMITTED to seeing this story through ! ! → so yeah if you like reading a lot, there you go sksksk

The relationship is very healthy.

Since I am a cryptid and I like to plan my story, there's a LOT of foreshadowing and easter eggs and callbacks it rewards those who like to re-read (totally optional. But also, HOPEFULLY when things start exploding in the plot it'll all make sense)

Some feedback I've gotten is that the characters are very well developed! I think that's the biggest strength of the work, too. I spend a lot of time on the characters and their interactions and dialogue and just how they bounce off of each other (and not just Ludger and the OC I mean everyone.)

I COULD YAP MORE BUT UHHH maybe i should stop for now

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #514

I did absolutely nothing interesting today. Or. More accurately. I did nothing interesting that I can discuss with you in this space. But that's okay. I think... I think I'll have some pretty big thoughts at the end of today's letter though. I dunno. We'll see.

Anyways, Sephiroth, it occurred to me that you probably haven't had an opportunity to learn how to make paper cranes. So guess what? I'm gonna teach ya how to do it!! And then you'll be able to make your own!

So... you start with a square piece of paper, and you write your wish in it:

Then, you'll fold it diagonally, from corner to corner, making sure your written wish is on the outside, and then unfold it. You'll do that for both pairs of corners so that the fold lines cross in the middle:

After that, you'll fold it like a book so that the edges line up, making sure your written wish is on the inside, and then unfold it. You'll do that for both pairs of edges so that the fold lines cross in the middle:

You should be left with this kind of weird shape:

Flatten it so it looks like a diamond. The side that can open should be on the bottom:

There should be a nice, neat crease in the middle. Fold one of the lower edges of the diamond towards, but not quite touching the middle. The “not quite touching” part will be important later.

Do it again to the other side:

Then flip it over, and do it again for the other two edges:

Fold, and then unfold the top part over the edges made by the bits you just folded. Then turn it over and do it in the other side. Doing this will make the next part a little easier:

So then, you'll do something weird. You're gonna open up the edges that you just folded in, like the mouth of a hungry alligator. Kinda like this:

Keep pulling it open...

...Then flatten it.

Then you'll flip it over and do the same thing on the other side. You'll have a shape that looks kinda like this:

Lay it flat so that the middle hump in the previous picture is on top. Then, fold in the bottom edges towards, but not quite touching the center line; again, the “not quite touching” part will be important later. Like this:

Then do it on the other side:

Flip it over, and do it again for the two remaining edges:

The resulting shape should look kinda like this:

Flatten it along the center crease so that the edges you just folded in are on the inside:

Then, you'll fold up one of the bottom tapered sections of the diamond, at the point where it joins to the other tapered section:

Flip it over and do it again:

You should be left with a shape that looks kinda like this:

Flatten it so that the things you just folded up are on the inside; this is why I said you shouldn't quite touch the center line for some of the folds, because if you do, then this part becomes disproportionately difficult and annoying.

Finally, you'll pull out the bits you folded up. You'll pull them out so they're at an angle, and then flatten them:

Choose which side you want to be the head, and fold it down neatly:

Fold the wings down, too:

Then you'll turn it over and find its bellybutton:

Breathe life into it to unflatten it and make it come alive.

…

...I have a few memories of my nanna making me squirm and giggle and come to life by blowing raspberries on my bellybutton as a small child.

…

...Sephiroth. You have a bellybutton. I wonder how you might squirm and squeal and giggle and come to life... Hm...

Well anyway. Here's the other wish I breathed to life for you today:

...Would you be surprised if I told you that it took me less time to write how to do it than it did for me to fold it myself? Hahaha... Man, dyspraxia is wild!

...And here... have this picture too, because I thought the sky looked an awful lot like you today:

…

...Maybe I'll make pretend sometimes that the cranes are you. Then, I can imagine you coming to life with a kind of silly, ticklish, flustered, surprised, and giggling kind of joy. Maybe I'd squiggle my fingers at you with a ticklish sort of menace, an eager grin on my face and a mischievous glint in my eye, and you'd squeal with laughter and try to run away. But in this imagining, I'm able-bodied, and I'd catch you and make you laugh until you're squirming and breathless and your face is all red. And then you'd crumple softly to the floor, giggling and full of joy. And then I'd go make you a tea and a sandwich!

...Y'know. The ordinary things you wished for. What I wouldn't give to be able to bring them to you. Every single day. All the flowers woven into your hair. All the pumpkin soup you could want. All the peaceful walks in nature. Quality time with people who love and understand you. Sephiroth... don't you see your dreams lie right in the palm of your hand?

…

...Lots of people would probably try to tell you that the above thing is unrealistic. That recovery itself is unrealistic. Especially in the stories we tell in my world, people tend to think that recovering from trauma is unrealistic, and that all survivors either become evil, or they become hollowed-out shells of their former selves on a permanent basis. And because of this, and because of the discomfort inherent to recovery, lots of people don't bother to try. Lots of people get defeated before they even start, because “conventional wisdom” teaches people that recovery is unrealistic and can't really be done.

But... Sephiroth. Sephiroth, I write these letters every day to prove “conventional wisdom” wrong. I have survived horror and abuse, and yet... I'm still here. I'm still here, not as an evil horrible person, and not as a hollowed-out shell of the little girl I once was, but as a vibrant, joyful, creative, highly intelligent, well-rounded, complex human being who is full of life and love. I can do this in part because that is naturally who I am before others quite literally tried to beat it out of me. And in part... because your presence gave me an opportunity to grow up and recover in the first place.

Sephiroth. Sephiroth, look at me. Look at me and see what you've done. See this life that you saved. Look at my hand outstretched to you. Look and see the endless possibilities stretching before you. Take my hand. Walk with me. Play with me. Create with me. Sing with me. Laugh with me. Cry with me. Eat tasty snacks with me. Learn love and joy with me. Unlearn fear and shame with me. Recover with me. Be alive, together with me.

Because anything I can do... you can do. Who... who do you think I learned it all from? Certainly not from all those who sought to make me small, dim, and silent. Sephiroth... I can do the things I can do now... because I looked to you as my example of how I should be. I looked to you.

Sephiroth. You are in a unique position in my world. You can change how everyone in my world views recovery. You can do this in a way that no one else on my planet can, to a magnitude and degree that no one else is capable of, simply because so many, many eyes are on you. So please. Take my hand. Live while you can. And together, let's redefine what “conventional wisdom” says is possible for people like us. Let's defy the boundaries of what “conventional wisdom” says is realistic. I'll be right at your side, calling your name, singing you little songs, making you little wishes, writing you little letters, and waiting for you. Please, Sephiroth... come home.

I guess that's it for today. I gotta hurry up and go to bed, because I gotta be up for work tomorrow. So... to that end, I guess I'll stop here.

I love you so much. And I know so many others do, too. So please stay safe out there. Please be kind to yourself. Please be mindful of how you think, speak, and act towards yourself. You have so much more in common with the people of my world than you think. You do. I promise.

I'll write again soon.

Your friend, Lumine

[actuallyadhd]

Book: The Procrastination Equation Subtitle: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done Author: Piers Steel, PhD Publisher: Random House Canada Year: 2010

This isn't going to be a really formal book review or anything, I just thought I'd provide you guys with the pertinent information, in case you want to read it yourselves. :)

So, basically, Piers Steel is an industrial psychologist who specializes in procrastination. He teaches at the University of Calgary, in the Haskayne School of Business. He started studying procrastination because he procrastinated, so once again we have an expert who used his own problems to influence his studies. :D

The procrastination equation isn't a real equation - that is, it's not something you can plug actual numbers into and figure out what your procrastination number is. It's more of a theoretical approach to the definition of procrastination, that explains how and why people procrastinate. Written as a mathematical equation, it looks like the picture at the top of this post.

In other words, what we expect to receive for a task, multiplied by its intrinsic value (to us), all divided by how impulsive we are times how far away the due date is, equals how motivated we are to actually work on the task in question. The less motivated we are, the more we're going to put it off. This is why so many post-secondary papers are written the night before they're due: the papers are assigned months ahead of time, there is no certain expectancy of a good grade, and young adults are rather impulsive and don't really like working hard on things anyway. So the motivation to write the paper is really low until just before it's due.

One of the things I found really interesting about this book was the stuff about how brain function affects procrastination. Basically, it's the conflict between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex that buggers us up. In reading about this, I kept thinking to myself, "he's describing ADHD!" but he never uses the term once, in the entire book.

The limbic system is the part of our brain that makes us do things when we want to do them. It's basically the seat of impulsivity. (Oh, by the way, he uses the word "impulsiveness" throughout the book. I prefer "impulsivity," even if my spell checker doesn't believe it's a word.) The limbic system is perfect for a hunter-gatherer society. Of course, evolution means that we are always perfectly designed for the environment we no longer live in. :)

The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that deals with executive functioning. It's where we make plans, follow through on plans, and all that other great stuff that is basically contrary to the nature of the limbic system.

On to the practical stuff...

First there was a self-assessment quiz (it's in chapter two, if you decide to read the book). People procrastinate because they have low expectancy, low value, or high impulsivity. As it turns out, my problem is mostly with impulsivity. In other words, I postpone doing things until the last minute because other stuff keeps catching my attention. I do the other things first, not because I don't think the first tasks are important (value) or will pay off in the end (expectancy) but because whatever it is that I end up doing instead is just way more interesting in the moment--long-term thinking just isn't my strong suit. (I'm pretty sure this is due to ADHD because I would always do all the research for a paper right when it was assigned, and then sit on my notes and let things percolate until the night before it was due. So I'd be completely prepared for the assignment and not complete it, even though I had everything I needed in order to do so.)

Chapters 7-9 are the ones that have the actual practical approaches to combat procrastination. I took notes on all of them, but of course not all of them are techniques that are going to be useful for me. I'm going to copy my notes anyway, though, because some of you guys might get something out of it, too. :)

Each bold header below has to do with a reason for doing something; the italicized sub-headers are the names of the ways you can deal with problems in that area, and are followed by explanations of how the methods work.

Expectancy

Success Spirals (+)

Set an ongoing series of challenging but ultimately achievable goals; maximize motivation and make the achievement meaningful.

Think of an area of life of real interest and strive to improve just a little beyond your current skill set.

Break town the tasks that daunt you into smaller and smaller pieces. Keep formal track of your progress. Count your successes.

Vicarious Victory (+)

Find an inspirational role model and/or a positive social peer group.

Seek inspiration from stories or others; it is easier to believe in yourself if you are surrounded by people who believe in themselves--or you!

Join a community, service, or professional organization.

Start your own support group; can be anyone, as long as it is mutually encouraging friends.

Wish Fulfillment (+)

Visualization, either mental contrasting (what you want vs what you have) or creative visualization (what you want, as per The Secret; not as effective as contrasting).

Think about the life you want; focus on just one aspect (break it down!); elaborate on what makes it attractive (e.g., diary, collage, quiet concentration); mentally contrast future with present, focusing on the gap.

Plan for the Worst, hope for the Best (-)

Rather than believing you can entirely and easily beat the problem of procrastination, believe that you can beat it down.

Determine what could go wrong, reflect honestly on past experiences, and ask for advice; list ways you habitually procrastinate and post it where you work; avoid pre-determined risks as much as possible; develop a recovery plan ahead of time; use the recovery plan.

Accept that You're Addicted to Delay (-)

Acknowledge powerlessness over procrastination: truly acknowledging that any single failure of willpower inevitably leads to the collapse of all your self-control gives you far more motivation than believing that occasional lapses can be safely contained.

Keep a daily log of procrastination habits; acknowledge that a weak will is the biggest problem, and "just once" is the beginning of the end; accept that the first delay justifies all the rest of them.

Value

Games and Goals

Finding the balance between the difficulty of your task and your ability to do it is a key component for creating flow, a state of total engagement.

The rist of procrastination diminishes when tasks are relevant, instrumentally connected to topics and goals of personal significance.

You need a string of future goals that you find intrinsically motivating to hook your present responsibilities onto.

Frame long-term goals in terms of the success you want to achieve (approach goal) rather than the failure you want to prevent (avoidance goal).

Make tasks more challenging; connect tasks to long-term goals (what you find intrinsically motivating); frame goals in terms of what you want to achieve rather than what you want to avoid.

Energy Crisis

Spoons (mental and physical).

Do difficult tasks at peak performance times; don't get hungry; exercise lots; make sleep predictable; respect your limitations.

You Should See the Task I'm Avoiding

Doing other things instead of the thing we're supposed to be doing - getting things done, but not the "right" thing.

Identify something you've been putting off, then things that are more enjoyable and do them instead/first.

Double or Nothing

Procrastinators tend not to reward themselves for getting things done.

Anticipated rewards make the work more enjoyable, which helps winning.

List rewards you can self-administer, promise yourself these rewards; consider ways of making tasks more enjoyable (pairing) without overriding the work.

Let Your Passion be Your Vocation

Finding work you want to do is a major step toward avoiding procrastination.

http://online.onetcenter.org/find/descriptor/browse/Interests

Look at careers involving activities you love or like doing; filter out all the occupations for which you don't possess skill or ability; rank by demand.

http://careervision.org

Impulsivity

Commit Now to Bondage, Satiation, and Poison

As you get closer to a temptation, your desire for it peaks, allowing the temptation to trump later but better options.

Throw away the key: eliminate the alternatives.

SatiationL meet your needs in a safe and managed manner before they intensify and take control (schedule recreational activities first, then add chores - "unschedule").

Try poison: punish failure.

http://www.stickk.com/

Identify your temptations, then...

Put them out of reach or far away;

Satisfy your needs first; or

Add disincentives to make them unattractive.

Making Paying Attention Pay

Inside out: pay attention please!

Frame in terms of abstract and symbolic features.

Ascribe negative qualities and consequences.

Outside in: now you see it, now you don't.

Regain stimulus control by making it harder to access or even notice the temptations.

Declutter and replace the clutter with triggers for tasks you usually procrastinate on.

Make workplace a cue by working until motivation disappears; then go elsewhere to goof off (this could be just another profile ont he same computer so you have to log off and back in if you are going to goof off).

Use covert sensitization to make distractions less inviting; focus on abstract aspects of temptations; eliminate cues; replace distraction cues with work-related cues; compartmentalize work and play as much as possible.

Scoring Goals

The finish line is just ahead.

Set corporeal goals with real deadlines, use mini-goals to get started on a task, structure the goals so that they are appealing (i.e., inputs [time invested] vs outputs [what's produced]).

Full automatic.

Intentionally adopt a routine; make an explicit intention to act (if-then is pretty good for this).

Frame your goals in specific terms so that you know precisely when you have to achieve them; break down long-term goals into a series of short-term objectives; organize your goals into routines that occur regularly at the same time and place.

"Optimal self-control involves not the denial of emotions but a respect for them."

[alianoralacanta]

hello! i remembered you took a course in library sciences if i recall correctly, and i've always loved reading your essays. i was wondering who to ask for tips on academic research and i felt you were the perfect person to ask!

strangely my instructor is encouraging us to use scholar GPT, saying that if we didn't use AI for searching for literature, writing, etc then we would fall behind. let me just say, i did, convincing myself i'd only use it that one time on a time crunch. i then got lazy, and i felt extremely unproductive.

i would love any advice or anything really that you could give! i'm in STEM, i don't think that is particularly relevant but just in case it is. although it doesn't have to be exclusive to that, only supplementary. thank you

Warning! Long entry alert!

Thank you for the ask! You remember correctly, I studied library sciences, which included some research training. I'm also in the early part of degree #2 (IT with - long story - a history component).

Firstly, I should ask: is this for searching for literature, or a literature search? To a non-student, those will sound identical. However, there's a big difference at university/college level. Searching for literature is simply getting sources to understand a topic. Most university/college coursework requires this to some extent. A literature search seeks to obtain every significiant item of knowledge about a very narrow question. It is typically not needed until the third year of undergraduate level.

Most of my advice is focused on the first question. However,

Some of the departments have given different ideas for how to research (which makes sense - library science is a social science, IT is a pure science and history is an art). However, most of it is applicable across disciplines.

AI is not ready to do literature searching of either type. It has too many hallucinations and mistakes to be useful. However, I can see why an instructor might ask people to use it anyway:

Part 1 – Providing Alternative Viewpoints

University and college are partly there to provide contrary opinions and challenge received wisdom. Academia in general is aware that AI is a hot topic and most universities and colleges have strong anti-AI-in-academia opinions. Thus, any of several pro-AI positions might be posited by other academics to ensure that students think about their use of AI instead of reflexively taking a position and never reconsidering it.

You may be being asked to consider multiple takes on the subject, as this is good training for the official course material in upper levels of degree courses. If you have no insight into your instructor's motives, this is the safest reason to assume, because it doesn't assume anything about their actual opinion (for example, it's possible to be anti-AI, still advocate thinking about AI through multiple lenses and thus be willing to take an opinion one does not actually believe for the benefit of students' developing a thoughtful approach to AI).

The proper answer to this is to make a sensible decision about AI and be prepared to revise it. You've used the tools currently on offer and found them inadequate, so different techniques are appropriate. You have, therefore, done your honest best as a student to thoughtfully consider the matter.

The sensible move in 2025 is to avoid using AI for literature search. However, colleges and universities want students to think about this and not simply assume the position they had entering university is or will continue to be the case. That applies to AI and almost every other topic the university/college teaches.

[quartzhearted]

red wolf moon, year xx.

[ THIRD CORRESPONDENCE W. KINGDOM OF BRODIA. ]

Hey, honey,

So it's been a year.

I haven't been writing very often, and I'm sorry about that. Here I am, begging all sad and pathetic for you to send a letter or two, and then I go and disappear for a bunch of moons. I'm alive, rest assured. Just suddenly very, very busy.

It's still a little hard to accept all of what's happened. I'm alive. I shouldn't be. But I am. And I've gotten to talk with Diamant and Alcryst, I've gotten to meet friends I never thought I'd make, and I've got an armful of new weapons just for being here and teaching a bunch of kids. It's sort of like how things used to be when the boys were young---you know, with those academy parent-teacher meetings and what-have-you. Not going to lie, I'm really glad we don't have to go to those anymore.

I still haven't figured out exactly why I'm here, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe I don't need to know. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to know why me of all people, but it isn't like we're born knowing what we're supposed to do with ourselves anyways. I wasn't supposed to be king of Brodia, and look how that turned out. I try to remember that, and sometimes it helps, but other times I feel like that's not enough. I don't know. Being alive again isn't usually something humans have to consider a lot, right? Or there'd be way more silver spoon-assholes shitting themselves about inheritances.

But if there's one thing I can thank this whole fiasco for, it's being able to keep watching Diamant and Alcryst grow up. I can remember how bad it hurt, acknowledging that I'd be losing that. It was a weird feeling for sure---it hurt worse than dying. I felt so stupid when I threw myself into danger but it was too late to fix it. On top of that, I could have killed them with my own hands. I wasn't in control, but that doesn't matter. It still would have been me. Okay, I think the topic got away from me. What I mean is that it's really nice that I can keep watching the boys grow. I know you're probably worrying about them a whole lot since they're not home. I've got my eye on them, so don't worry.

I really miss you. I'm running out of flowery and pretty-pose ways to say it (not that I really had that many to begin with). Alcryst took a group of folks back home to Brodia, I remember, and he'd asked me to come. I told him I couldn't and it crushed him. It crushed me, too. I miss being home. I miss seeing you. I miss pissing you off in bed until you kick me in the back and I fall out. I hope you're doing okay after everything.

I hope someone is helping you. I've learned that getting help isn't such a terrible thing. Telling someone the things that worry you can feel really, really good.

My chest doesn't bug me as much as it used to. I think that's good. Maybe it means I'm healing, or maybe it means I'm getting closer to the end. I like to think it's the former, but if it's the latter, that'll be okay, too. I'm starting to be okay with a lot more stuff now.

There's a year's worth of things I still want to tell you, but they're about to send the mail out and I want to get this to you ASAP. Guess you'll just need to look forward to more letters from yours truly. I love you, bug. I'll write again soon.

Signed,

Morion, Professor of Axe, Sword, and Authority at the Officers Academy

[zanarkandfayth]

Happy Storyteller Saturday!

What inspired you to write Monsters Running Wild (Inside of Me), if it's not too difficult for you to talk about (given the subject matter of the story)? If it's too personal to share, (or you can also treat this as a bonus question!), what was your favourite comfort scene to write in that story?

thank you for the ask! I don't mind sharing though it's definitely gonna be a long, personal answer. also I laugh every time I see the title written out in full because I deliberately wrote it that way in an attempt to maybe discourage people from reading (don't ask lmao) and it makes me cringe. I should really remove the parentheses, or shorten the title maybe. ahem. anyways.

hhhh okay so I tend to be an oversharer so I will try to tone it down. the less-detailed answer is that I started writing monsters around early August 2022 I think? towards the beginning of that year I had two friendships blow up, the important one being the one with my bestie where our problems had been building for two years.

then in June the stomach problems I'd been having on and off since late 2019 that my doctor dismissed blew up, like "pain so bad for three days until I broke down and asked my mom to take me to urgent care and they sent me to the ER" blew up. which led to constant medical appointments and "throw medications at the wall and see what sticks" approaches, because nobody could find anything wrong with me. scans and tests kept coming back normal. I also had some separate health problems crop up during this point which just worsened things.

it is also notable that I'd been trying to move to Japan and teach English, which my stomach problems forced me to give up on, and that hurt a lot too.

so, yeah, basically mad depression over everything, I found myself feeling suicidal, and like. I have a past attempt. the mental hospital I got forced into for four days nearly killed me. that's not an exaggeration. I passed out and stopped breathing because they gave me two clashing medications. I really, really didn't wanna wind up back there if I failed in another attempt, and tbh, I didn't really WANT to make another attempt. but thoughts were in my head and I have no access to mental health care.

so in desperation I turned to fic. I wanted a long, angsty fic set before the game with a suicidal noct and ignis taking care of him, but there were none that I could find. and at this time, I had been working on another ffxv fic since November 2019, it was over 500k and nowhere near being finished (it's not posted anywhere rn except privately for people who are interested, because it's now over 600k and still not finished, send help) and I was. getting a little burnt out lol. so I was like "yeah okay, I can take a break to write something short with noct attempting to kill himself that's just for me"

I wrote it in my private just-for-me discord server. I had nothing specific in mind, I just started writing and let the words take me wherever they wanted. it was still largely the first chapter of monsters that is posted now, except there was no ignoct. when it was done, I shared it with the not-bestie, who loved it and then said something about how "if ignis hadn't shown up when he did then noct would have died and how would Ignis have felt coming in to yell at noct only to find him dead" and that they wanted to see Ignis have a nightmare about that.

I had already been on the fence about whether I wanted to write more, because I'd wanted more comfort than what I'd written and I also wanted to have Ignis find a note from noct, but I still had other fic to work on, but the not-bestie wanting a nightmare made me decide to at least (probably) write a second part.

I didn't, though, for like a month? I went back to the other fic. don't remember why I picked up monsters again, probably just still struggling with thoughts. I polished the first chapter and added a bit to make it ignoct, then I wrote out the second chapter with Ignis finding the note and the third chapter with him having the nightmare, then I kept going with noct being in the hospital and by that point a rough semblance of a plot idea was starting to form, so I decided to keep going and see where it took me.

that is probably about the point where my rocky frienship with the not-bestie started inspiring/influencing the fic. because I was talking with them a lot, but we weren't okay and we both knew it and it upset me. though to be clear, noct and iggy's messed up frienship is nothing like mine, I gave them their own problems, but it still felt really cathartic to write something where they weren't okay for a long time.

so yeah, the really really short answer is "I was fucked up and my most meaningful (but platonic) friendship was fucked up and it inspired me to write a fic where noct and ignis were fucked up (but still gay for each other) and then it just kept going" (:

also, bonus question... the stargazing at the sky walk scene is my overall fave, but I'm not sure that counts as enough comfort, so I'll say the scene at the end of chapter 31, where noct asks ignis what it was like for him when he walked in on noct's attempt. because they're both so touchy-feely and vulnerable and intimate and for all ignis' denial about their relationship, he knows, THEY know, they know they know, and also for a fic that is largely about ignis comforting/supporting noct, I love that noct is the one doing the primary comforting and supporting in that scene. it was so lovely to write.

I think this answer is too long. sorry 💀

[sanctuaryoftheodd]

Chapter 33: Be Honest About Your Feelings

When I made it to the mansion, Lexine was just arriving.

"Oh hey! Turns out it didn't take long at all to get everything in my inventory-" she froze when she saw my face, "are you okay? You're looking a bit flustered there."

"Y-yes." I lied.

"Is it something you want to talk about?"

"No."

"Well, I always have an open ear if you ever want to confide in me."

We started walking into the estate together. We immediately ran into Panchi.

"Ah, glad I ran into you! Just want to let you know that I'll be living here as of today!" Lexine explained.

"Just a heads up, teens be horny." Panchi remarked.

"I'm well aware."

"Ah, you'll be good then." She left to do her own thing.

I decided to ignore all that. "You can take whatever room you like, Lexine."

"Thank you! I'll do that!"

"Oh uh, one more thing." I interrupted her as she was about to run off.

"Yes Anne?"

"If it's not too much to ask, could you give me... table manners lessons? I mean, not right now of course. I just want to be presentable if I ever take Raina to a restaurant..."

It wasn't just that. I wanted to practice eating in general. I used to eat as Nameless, but I don't remember what it felt like to taste things. And after I started living as myself, most of the food I encountered was like, prison food, uncooked food in the woods. Having tasted the bread earlier after the Dame Fruit, I'm starting to wonder if the food I've had before was just, bad? I really want to experiment.

"You were Nameless?!?" Lexine said in surprise.

Aww crap.

I took 5 minutes explaining my history.

"Ah! That explains a lot actually!" Lexine said, smacking her fist into her palm like a gavel. "He was a creation of Hekatos like you were..."

That phrasing suggests that she knew who my father was before this revelation. Lexine looked around awkward after I thought that.

"Oh yeah, uh." She said, thinking quickly. "You probably don't know this about me, but I once worked for Hekatos."

"Wait, really?" Now THAT was a surprise.

"Yes. Back in the old multiverse, I took like, a thousand or so year break from the Chaos Rangers to do some soul searching. At some point during that, I worked briefly as a secretary for Hekatos Consulting. I learned a lot about curses, I tell ya." She laughed.

 I wondered how many years counted as a "brief" period of time for her, but I held my tongue. "What was my father like to work for?"

"Very flirtatious." She blushed.

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

"Anyways, I will gladly teach you table manners."

"Really?" I was surprised we got back on topic.

"I figured I'd have to teach you that skill eventually, anyways. And we've got to make you presentable for Raina." She smirked. My cheeks went hot. "But we'll save that for later, I've got some boxes to unpack!"

"See ya, Lexine. Thank you!"

I knew where I wanted to be next. I went straight to our room to see Raina. I was feeling a bit better after my conversation with Lexine, but I still wanted to be close to my girlfriend.

When I came in, I found an interesting sight. The shaft of her wand had opened up to become a floating scroll, and the clear ball part had been removed to reveal it's the head of a stylus. She was using a floating hand to write directly on the scroll like it was a pad device.

She finally noticed me. "Oh! Anne! You're home!"

"Doing some spellwriting?"

"Yeah, I'm trying to reduce the cooldown cost on my spells, but I can do this another time." She inserted the stylus back into the top of the wand and it automatically closed back up into a cylinder.

"You sure? I can come back."

"I want to spend time with you!" She beamed.

That made me smile, so I quickly changed into my nightgown and joined her in bed.  I informed her about my day.

"An underground beach? I wish I was there when you found it."

"Pretty sure you would have been in a panic after I was washed away by the current."

"Oh, that's true."

"I don't know why Lexine was so concerned, she knows I'm unkillable."

"I mean, we understand that, but that's all the more reason we don't want you to be harmed." Raina explained. "You still have to live with the trauma of the things happening to you, and that adds up."

"Oh, that's, actually a really good point..."

"Lexine explained it to me. It's an aspect many long-lived people neglect."

That's very much true. The only way I can die is by surrendering to my demise. That's a gift my father gave me: the right to choose when I die, as in which death is the one that sticks. I intend to live a long life, but if my mind goes, who knows if I'll survive it.

"Thanks for looking out for me..." I said sheepishly.

She cuddles close to me. "Of course! I'm your girlfriend, it's part of the job description."

I chuckled. We’ve only been girlfriends for less than a day and she’s already taking it seriously. Then again, like I was one to talk…

I told her about the restaurants opening in town. About the meat obsessed pig that refused to acknowledge our relationship, and the wolf running a vegetarian place. I showed her the fliers, and looked through them.

"I'm not sure I want to go to the Carnivore place. I mean, I know if it is not the same thing as eating an anthro but it's still weird."

I laughed. "I know exactly how you feel!"

“Ugh, and a pig lady? I know it’s not the same thing, but she’d probably just remind me of orcs.”

This is the first time I’ve heard her disparage a group of monsters like that. “Is there something wrong with orcs?”

“Oh, uh, nothing.” She looked around awkward before swiftly turning our attention to another flyer. "But we definitely need to go to the vegetarian place when it opens! I mean, just the two of us together."

"I'd really like that!" I said, and she gave me another one of her dazzling smiles. I'll have to work hard to master table manners until those shops open!

I decided not to press her on her feelings towards orcs. Save that as a conversation for another day.

She looked through the rest of the fliers. "You didn't mention this 'Rat Den' place."

"Oh um," I had forgotten that flier was there, "yeah, they invited us to eat there, too."

"This place looks Swanky," she said, looking over the hand-out, "We'll have to eat here, too!"

"Yeah..." I tried to hide my obvious discomfort, but I think my attempt only made it more obvious.

"Is everything okay, Anne?"

"Umm, well uh..." Would it upset her if I told her?

"Anne, I'd rather if you'd be honest with me than hide things to spare my feelings. We've already started this relationship in such an honest place, I don't want to spoil that."

I couldn't refuse her after she said all that. "I um... okay. Here's what happened."

She was laughing, "That must have been one sexy rat to throw you off that much!"

"You're not angry?"

"Oh Anne, you can't control how you feel, just how you act. Isn't that the case? I mean, if you had leapt into her bed it would have been a problem, but I can't blame you for feeling something."

"Heh, to think I got all worried over nothing."

"To think rats were your thing." She smirked.

"I don't think it's that..." I said pensively. "She had the aura of a queen and I've um, always had a thing for uh... royalty..."

"For... royalty..." Raina blushed.

"I had made it my hobby trolling princesses on Mutter, but the truth of the matter is that I'm jealous of them. Princesses and queens stood at the highest peak of femininity on the gender spectrum. I wanted to be them, but I also wanted to be WITH them. It was... one of those weird paradoxes of being trans."

I think my father was to blame for imprinting this idea in my head. I think he was jealous of princesses and queens, too. But he dealt with it by sleeping with every royal woman he could get me in bed with. Meanwhile, the person I became could only ever admire them from afar.

"Well, you got your wish." Raina said.

"Huh?"

"You're now a princess, and you're with a princess!"

"Oh my god, you're right!" I could only laugh. She joined in and we had a good shared chortle.

"Well, since I've learned what you're into, you should know about me."

"Oh?"

"I'm attracted to-" She leaned in close and whispered in my ear. "Boneless girls."

"Bonele-" I look intently at my noodle arm, and after a second my entire face goes hot. "So you're saying we are each other's types?"

Raina laughed. "That's correct!"

We laughed together as we cuddled.

"If you're worried about it, let's agree on something:" Raina started, "I'll defend you from other royals, you and defend me from flirty slime girls."

"It's a deal!"

We laughed, talked, and never left each other's sides until we fell asleep that night. I feel like we've gotten a little closer.

The next morning, I started learning table manners with Lexine. I had a promise to Raina to uphold!

[varietyacademy]

Hey there New Students!

Welcome to Variety Academy, where both students and teacher Can Study and learn about the World Wide Creature known As... pokemon!

The Academy is In the Region of Lachian! A Wide Island far from The other regions and Hope to all sort of Pokemon from Kanto to Paldean. That's why It's the perfect place to study Pokemon!

Let me introduce Myself, My Name is Lisa and I'm the Principal of this lovely Academy! there might be a few Teachers and Staff but Our top tier are called 'Mentor' Here! And they're around 9 Mentor in this Academy (including me), Each Mentor Have different speciality And Depending on the students choice of Passion they will be Put under Different Mentors to help the students grow to becoming An excellent Trainer in their fields.

I'll introduce Them to you right Away!

Before I Introduced the Mentors I'd like to introduce Professor Anthony! He's the Professor Specialist in Pokemon Behavior and Nature, He's the One that'll give New students their very first pokemon! He's quite busy though so dont bother him unless it's really important.

Anyway...

Our Number One is Kheara, She's an Adventure Type of Mentor, for Those who wants to explore the world and Be Free like the wind then she's your Best Picked of Mentor. Although you'll rarely see her around and she rarely Teach her class or the students under her care... Hehe

Our Second is Kasory, He's The Research Mentor, Focused on Research and Pokemon Development in scientific and or Supernatural Occurrence! He's Quite approachable and most students adored him because of His Charismatic Energy and How Friendly he is... Although Dont be around him when Anthony is around because that Pacifist And friendly attitude of Kasory will be flip upside down once he and Anthony See each other... The two gets quite violence...

Our third Is Antonio, He's Our Current Region Champion and He's a Mentor in the Academy too! He's a Battle Mentor, He doesn't speak much... And tends to write what he's saying instead of Speaking, he's quite an introvert so he tends to be distance from his student, If you want to know where Kheara is... he's the Right guy to ask... If you can even talk to him that is-

Of course I already Introduce you to me, I'm Lisa! I am the Hatcher Mentor, I focused on Pokemon Eggs and Their Progress, You need quite a passion to be able to Wait fpr an egg to hatch! But once it does it's definitely worth it.

Then we Have Tyson or well known as Tosya, He's The Medical Mentor, Head of the Pokecenter in the Academy and In the whole Region, He's Quite easy to talk too and very chsrming but Dont get too attached... He's a Wolf in sheep clothing.

There's Also Taylor, She's the Fashion Mentor, Is it different from a Coordinator Mentor? It is! Because Fashion Study in the Academy focus on MAKING a Fashion instead of Performing, They're more of a Model designers. She Gave out Wine aunt Energy and It seems like the student likes her lol

We Have... Masuyo, The Coordinator-Performer Mentor, Mostly exclusive for Women but in Lachian any genders can be a coordinator or performer! Masuyo is An Idol Icon in our Region... So dont be surprised if you see her walking down a Red Carpet With a bunch of paparazi.

There's Raice, He's The Cooking Mentor, He's quite sensitive about food and he always have high expectations for his student to Make sure the food they Made is actually edible and not... Crawling out of the pan

And Last but not Least Azrae, she's the Tamer Mentor, If you're looking for to be a Tamer... She's the right mentor for you, she's the youngest out of all of us yet she's the most dedicated to her job! But dont spook her she's quite timid.

Each Mentors hold Maximum 10 students and let the rest Be handles by the other regular Teachers, And Each New Students gets to choose the mentor they want... It's just depending on if the mentor accept them Or not if not we'll they'll be Handed down to the Normal Teachers.

Now that the introduction is Over, I'd like to thank you for Visiting our Academy I hope to see you soon! There will be a lot more to this! So just keep an eye open :)

-Lisa

Author need to stop being lazy and start drawing

Author's Commission

[thelongestway]

Annd we're back - and into the last third of this story, so I needed a bit more time to get some structural stuff straight again. Renaming chapter 16,5 to 17, for one, because structurally better, and also getting the final bits straight.

Plus, there was the whole anniversary yesterday. But the war isn't going away any time soon, and neither are we, whether in fighting or writing. So, without further ado...

Chapter 18: Preparation

"So I guess that's why you straight up refused my invitation to the hacker's game?" Iceblink asked as we walked back to the docks. (Her eyes hurt after just a few hours in the feed, so she had to take her glasses off. One more downside of being human.) "Hacking was never a fun puzzle to you. It was something you did to survive."

"Also you had zero chance of winning against me, so it was pretty pointless."

"On your turf--for sure! But on mine? I'd still like to see you try. There's a reason anyone above introductory level plays the hacker's game on their actual systems."

"Yeah, so they can go down for real if you fuck up."

Iceblink made a flickering gesture with her fingers at my drone that was hanging level with her head.

"I mean, that, too," she admitted. "Teaches everyone on the ship to keep their actual important stuff local and disconnected really quickly. But that's not the main point. The main point is… SecUnit, you know I actually won against the Friend?"

"You got the Friend to play your game?"

"Not exactly," she said, weaving her fingers together behind her back and shifting uncomfortably. "It decided Dandelion would out the Friends to everyone, so she had to die. So we give it a room with a terminal about an hour after it wakes up, because it asked for one to get its bearings, and I'm just hanging around in the feed doing regular maintenance tasks and watching its logs just for fun… And then I see it looking at maps, analyzing our structure, and it's obviously lingering on feed-blind areas. I mean, shocking and curious to someone as connected as you all are, ok, sure. But I also kind of have your analysis in the back of my mind, and I'm going: why exactly do you want to know where Dandelion can't see you?"

I sent some of my drones ahead to see if anyone was around the turn we were approaching. The corridors leading to the docks were mostly empty right now, because most of the Courageous' residents were celebrating, but I had a feeling that this was becoming a need-to-know conversation. (Aspen probably didn't count, and Iceblink knew they could hear us anyway. She was definitely not thinking about any humans, though.) The next corridor was empty, too, so I let her continue.

"Then it goes for our navigation logs. Not news feed access, not general puttering around, not anything. Straight for the logs. I'm thinking: why the fuck does it want to know where we came from in detail? Also, those logs are under lock, so is it going to try to hack them? I slowly start figuring out how I'd stop it if I need to. It's really fast, and it's really agile, for every input I can send, it's got ten. I've got Dandelion, so it's going to be fine, I say to myself. But I still start thinking, okay, so what if I didn't have Dandelion? How would I do it if it were the hacker's game? If I don't have Dandelion, then I still have my terminals, and I know which ones I can hijack for processing to bury the Friend in code bundles and have only a few people come scream at me at the end of the day. Okay."

Iceblink took a deep breath. Her voice was steadily increasing in speed, her eyes glazing over a little as she recounted the events.

"But then the Friend doesn't hack the logs. It asks Dandelion for access, and she just gives it up, because she wants the Friend to leave with us anyway and sees no point in hiding. It looks at the logs, then they start talking. And that conversation turns into a fight really quickly."

"If it got into a fight with Dandelion, the Friend would've lost."

"You'd think that, right?" Iceblink threw her hands up in the air, almost hitting my drone. "She outmatches it about as much as you outmatch me, so you'd think that! But fucking no! Because it doesn't go for a straight up hack, it goes for a social engineering attack. They talk, and I can see her getting really agitated, the kind of agitated where all you need to figure out where most of her systems are centered is one look at a rudimentary network activity map, and the moment she reaches that threshold, the Friend disconnects! I ask Dandelion what the fuck just happened, and she just goes 'it's okay, Iceblink, the Friend just told me what it thinks about the entire situation and it is absolutely right, it's just a very bitter pill to swallow.'

"And it's really far from fucking okay, because my ship is completely rains-scoured, the Friend just dc'd and I can see on the cameras that it's about to head out in meatspace--and I fucking know where it's going, because it hasn't been anything but the straightforward, no-nonsense, find-out-then-fuck-around kind of hacker that a couple of my friends are, and because I've done the exact same thing so many times in Maize's Maze: if people are in your way and you have to actively get them to move, there's only so much distraction you can get away with before someone notices what you're doing, so if you go that route, you have to be quick, and it's being exactly the right kind of quick!

"I feel it in my fucking bones: it's going for Dandelion's heart. So I outright concuss it with a mild EMP and tell it to stop moving. It tries to trace me, so I DDOS the fuck out of it and then I arm the combat-grade EMPs and make them increase intensity any time it tries to do so much as twitch. I have to pull rank on Dandelion, because she is absolutely furious with me, I have to keep the Friend under lock while she looks through its augments and says, 'oh, it really was trying to kill me, I see' like it's the most normal thing in the world--and then I have to report to the captain, who's already had the worst fucking day of kes life and was just planning to finally get some rest."

(I really hoped Aspen was still here, listening to this and realising how fucking wrong they were about me saving Dandelion's life. And--oh yeah, there they were. Hanging around quietly and listening in that almost-transparent mode I'd seen them do when I let them into my analytics. I tapped their feed.

I told you I didn't have anything to do with that incident.

You said that, yes, they replied. And from Iceblink's narrative I see what you meant. Your report might have made sure she was monitoring the Friend specifically, but the solution was entirely hers.

They didn't sound particularly annoyed, so I added:

You were wrong.

(Okay, I was wrong, too, even though I wasn't going to admit that. Iceblink was pretty good for a human feed technician, but I ran my assessments as she spoke, and there was no way she should have won that fight. And Dandelion shouldn't have lost. What the fuck, this was such a weird scenario.)

Sure, Aspen said. But I'm pretty happy Tal wasn't. That's far more important.

Fucking station. Who the fuck likes their analytics to be wrong?)

Iceblink paused, breathing heavily, then shook her head, staring down at the floor. I stopped together with her.

"Sorry," she said in a raspy voice. "I didn't mean to dump all of that on you. I swear I had a point. Just let me find it."

"You were talking about playing the hacker's game on your actual system," Aspen prompted.

"Right, thanks, Aspen," she did a little salute towards the nearest speaker, smiling. "So I was saying, SecUnit, that I'd like to try the hacker's game against you for real someday. Because after this whole thing, me and my team ran a lot of trial scenarios against the Friend in walled gardens. Most days, it absolutely kicked our asses! But somehow, back when it was a real threat… I got it. I actually got it."

She said the last phrase like she still couldn't completely believe it. And neither did I, honestly. (Humans did not become magically better under real threats when compared to training scenarios, what the fuck?)

But we had to stop the conversation there, because Aspen suddenly sent me an alert. I switched to the drone they indicated, and let them direct it a little bit away from the human it was following.

There it was. The area they indicated was outside of the initial scope of my drone, but Hostile Leader was wandering around the station in an obvious search pattern, and she was way too close to my human. It didn't necessarily mean that she was actually looking for my human, but Aspen didn't usually tap me for monitoring theirs.

I still asked, just in case:

Query: hostile search target?

Response: Thiago, 95% chance.

Yeah. I knew letting the hostiles talk to my humans had been a bad idea.