#sometimes tumblr is my pdf or whatever

[trans-axolotl]

i need to restock a bunch of the supplies in my first aid kit but i kind of just want to reorganize all my medical supplies + get a better bag to carry first aid supplies and also individually packaged wound care kits so that i could also take it with me for outreach stuff. i love the big bags we have for our harm reduction supplies and i want to try to find a smaller version of that for my personal set up.

list for me of supplies i'm almost out of:

sterile waters (addipak)

saline (addipak)

coban wrap (fun colors if i can get it)

gauze pads

medical tape

a few more gauze rolls

large and medium bandaids

butterfly bandages

gloves

antiseptic wipes

alcohol wipes

tourniquets

new scissors

emergency rescue blanket

new thermometer

[copperbadge]

What do you mean by digital cleaning?

It's something I've been working on more this year because I had a bit more travel than usual so couldn't do actual home cleaning, but I always take a couple of days in the Month Of Cleaning where I'm focused on my digital life. It's good to make your physical home a comfortable place for yourself, but it's also good to recognize that we have "digital" homes that need attention. And often this is at least less physically demanding, so it's good to keep it in your back pocket for days when you're mentally okay but physically too tired or sore to do more of that kind of work.

In the shortest possible terms, digital cleaning is just making sure that your phone, computer, socials, and other digital "presences" are organized in a way that you find helpful, and that you take a moment to either answer those messages you've been putting off or give yourself amnesty on doing so.

This tends to make a lot of people extremely anxious in a way ordinary physical space cleaning doesn't, so I'm going to put the rest of it behind a cut...

So when I say digital cleaning, I refer to stuff like going through my likes on Tumblr and clearing them out, going through my drafts and turning them into queued posts, answering my asks. I spend time in my email inboxes, either responding to messages or removing them. I am not an "inbox zero" kind of guy, but I like to keep the read-but-not-answered messages to a minimum, and towards the end of the year that usually means a clear-out and amnesty. I clean my Google Drive -- delete old files I uploaded for others, move documents I'm no longer using into an archive, move documents I want to work on into a central work folder. I go through my catch-all folder on my hard drive and organize it; I sort through the year's photos and organize those, partly to archive them and partly because I make a scrapbook from them each year. I don't usually have a ton of tabs open but often have more than I'd like, so I go through them all and either read, bookmark, or get rid of them.

I look in my phone's file tree to make sure I delete files I don't need (mostly menu downloads, Restaurants Stop Making Your Menus PDFs Challenge 2K24) and I sometimes go through each app on my phone, make sure I still use it, and make sure it's set how I want it. If this sounds like a nightmare, bear in mind that I very rarely put apps on my phone to start with -- I think my mother has more apps open at any given time than I have apps on my phone ever.

Everywhere I clean, I look for files named things like "notes" or "deal with" or "random" and move them all into one place so that whatever is in them, I can sort through it and make sure it goes somewhere permanent. Logins go in the login/password spreadsheet I keep, addresses go into my contacts, story notes go into a "fiction scraps" file, random thoughts either get moved into a journal file or put into drafts to become Tumblr posts, etc.

If this sounds like I might have some kind of compulsion disorder, I get that; when I explain my digital hygiene systems a lot of people look at me like I'm spouting a mad but harmless conspiracy theory. But it's something I used to have to do periodically even before I created National Clean Your Home Month, because otherwise I could never find anything, and everything was just...harder. As I once told a boss who admired my organizational skills, "It was this or endless chaos."

Putting addresses into my contacts list means I always know that the addresses I have for my friends are up to date. Putting logins into a spreadsheet means that five minutes spent now will not result in five weeks of procrastination later because I can't find the login and can't do anything else until I do that. Going through my email and archiving old conversations means not only can I find them easily when needed, I don't have to look at them the rest of the time. Sometimes I even go through my various wish lists and remove old/purchased items, or clear out all my "save for later" carts.

There's no doubt this is stressful, but like every part of NaClYoHo, it's broken down into smaller tasks; I don't have to look at my computer and organize everything on it all in one day. I can answer a few asks, then sort photos (something I find very soothing up until the moment I Don't), then read and delete some emails, then I'm done for the day. I can spread "answer or file all your work emails" out over a couple of days. I can maybe empty out my Likes but just turn the ones I actually want to reblog into drafts for now and deal with them later in the "drafts" phase of cleaning. And if I don't manage to empty out my inboxes, at least they're emptier than they were.

I'm struggling this morning with having put a bunch of physical cleaning on the to-do list but not feeling physically up for it, so I did what I felt capable of doing (measuring cabinets for new shelf liners mainly) and later today I might sit down and start building this year's photobook. Or not -- I have to code Radio Free Monday, sort out a prescription and possibly go pick it up, plus a very full day of work and a couple of afternoon appointments I can't shirk, so today may simply be a "get through the day" kind of day. That's okay too; some days the spirit is willing but the schedule is full.

[high-guardian-herbs]

Okay so let me tell you how this came to be

I drew this on my organic chemistry lecture, on the pdf file, using tools that are not made for art, on one single layer, using whatever small space I had between paragraphs, all the while the whole thing would crash like a hundred times, erasing whatever little progress I made, so I had to keep saving the file over and over again after every few lines, sometimes after every line, but the thing is, saving the file usually lead to the file crashing too and losing that small progress over again

What am I trying to say? I’ve don’t the bow tie like 15 times, the eyes 9, the shirt over 20 times, and the hair like only 6 or 7 times thankfully, and the lineart of various thing of the drawing too many times to count

The only reason I didn’t stop is cause I really liked the coloring of the eyes and hair, especially the eyes, they are very pretty and tumblr quality isn’t giving it the justice it deserves lol

[zerger33]

(OPEN) WRITING COMMISSIONS!

Hello! I'm a trans girl currently in need of some extra cash to deal with medical bills as well as to save up some money for some other personal things. Figured I might do what I do best to get that! So, I'll be opening up commissions!

What will you write?

I'll write most things, though currently, I'm best known for my Pokemon stuff. However, I'm willing to try my hand at most things. I'll write OC, Fanfiction, or original stories of most genres. I'm mostly good at Romance, Angst, and Horror, but I'm willing to try my hand at whatever.

For OC or original stories (Or even fanfiction for fandoms I don't know.) I will ask for descriptions of the characters, as well as their personalities and backstories, as well as some references for how they act. Whether these references are art, videos, audio, or other writings, any references help a ton!

So, what won't you write?

Explicit NSFW: While this may change in the future, as of now, I will not be doing anything explicitly NSFW. Steamy romance and mildly horny scenes are fine, and so are fade to blacks, but I will not do anything directly explicit.

Extreme gore: As much as I'll do gore, I have my limits, and if it's enough viscera to make a slasher film, that is far too much.

Anything that is Racist/anti-Semitic/anti-LGBT/Hate speech: Anything that fits into this general area is by far a no-go for very obvious reasons.

Fanfiction of real people

Incest or Minor/adult romance: No exceptions.

Do you have examples of your work?

Yes indeed! My AO3 has all my references, so if you want to see how my writing looks you can see there. You may also find some of my writing under the "#Writing stuff" tag!

What are the prices?

It'll be 15 USD for 1k words and an extra 10 dollars for every thousand after that.

I will do up to 5000 words!

Payment will be through either PayPal or Cash App.

How does it all work?

First, you send me a Tumblr PM and we discuss what exactly you want for a story. Then I'll send you a rough outline, after which you'll pay half, and I get to writing.

After I finish, I'll send you a small preview of the final product. After you pay the second half, I'll send you the .docx and .pdf files of the commission and do small tweaks and fixes as needed at the end.

Anything else I should know?

Please keep in mind that writing can take time, and while I will try to get you the commission ASAP, stuff sometimes gets in the way. I will keep you informed on progress as best I can.

Also, I can and will decline any commissions for any reason, and if I have started working on it when these reasons come up, you will be fully refunded.

With that, you have all you need to know! I hope to hear from some of you soon!

[ts-witchy-archive]

Hello! I've seen a bit of wiccan (?) things for a while, if I were to start I wouldn't even know how to start though. (my autistic ass does not leave the house and my mom would probably think it's weird to make strange concoctions of things) I also don't really know how deities work and how do you find out which one your communicating with? Tbh I've always felt like someone is around but whatever god it is seriously fucking hates me /hj Been better since I started medication but like the luck I have is 50/50 good bad and that is probably not normal. If you answer this it'd be very helpful.

Hi! Thanks for the ask!

I just want to start by defining a few terms for you :)

Wicca/Wiccan: A pagan religion that focuses on nature, magic and witchcraft. It was founded in the mid 20th century and Wiccans primarily worship 2 Gods which are personifications of nature.

Witch: Just a person who practices witchcraft. It's a non-gendered term and a non-religious term/practice. Not all witches are Wiccan but all Wiccans are witches. Witches can be absolutely anyone

Personally, I'm not Wiccan so I can't really tell you much about that but if there is one thing I know, it's witchcraft! There are many different places to start but I'm going to condense it down as much as humanly possible. It'll probably feel like a bit of information overload so just try to take it slow and relax. Enjoy the learning.

My favourite book for beginner witchcraft is 'Witchery: Embrace the Witch Within' by Juliet Diaz. She is a fantastic author and wonderful human. Everything about the basics of witchcraft you could need is in that book (imo). You should be able to find a pdf online if you can't get a physical copy.

As for youtube channels with solid content:

Harmony Nice: She covers everything Wicca. She has a playlist with all her Wiccan/witchy content witch is linked here

The Witch of Wonderlust: Olivia has been a favourite witchy youtuber of mine for a while. I wouldn't recommend jumping into her videos without any prior knowledge but once you have a grasp on the bare bones it should be okay. Here is a playlist she made with everything you could possibly need when beginning witchcraft. SOrt through the videos and see what peeks your interest.

The Hearth Witch: Another wonderful account if I remember correctly. Her videos used to be on the longer end (30-60mins) so if you have a short attention span then maybe not but she has a wealth of information.

I also recommend joining a few discord servers, following a few pages on tumblr just to get acquainted with the community and terminology.

Okay, on to the deity work situation. Deity work is generally considered more intermediate in the witchcraft community. key words being 'Deity WORK'. Worship is completely fair game. Setting up an altar, praying, leaving offerings, doing activities in devotion to the deity is absolutely something you can do relatively quickly.

As for IDing a deity, most people do it through 'divination' which is things like tarot, a pendulum, dice, bone throwing, and other ways. Most people also ask for signs that a specific deity is 'reaching out' to them or wants them to pay attention. You can also politely ask someone who is volunteering their time on tumblr or a discord server to find out for you via divination. If they don't say their doing free readings, obviously, don't ask.

Finally. luck is luck. It makes no sense for a literal God to hate a human. We all have periods of shitty luck and awesome luck! I wouldn't blame that on anything. Sometimes bad things just happen unfortunately. But sometimes amazing things also happen, even if it's just as small is finding 5 cents on the footpath.

That was so long. Congrats if you made it to the end because I nearly didn't when writing this. I hope this helped a bit. Feel free to reach out if you need a hand with anything. Thanks :)

[zwritestuff]

it's just casual (it's pathetic)

Scarlet and Yvie aren’t a thing, they hook up every now and then, and go for late night fast food at whatever chain is open on the rare occasion they go home at the same time and don’t feel like hooking up, and occasionally go to cheap bars to drink cheap drinks and Yvie will draw circles on the back of Scarlet’s hands while talking about her childhood and teenage years, and Scarlet sometimes will send her TikToks that remind her of her, and Sugar and Spice snicker and scurry away when Yvie comes near her during work hours—but they’re not, like, a thing. It’s just casual. (It’s pathetic). or: Scarlet's actions blow up in her face, Yvie is a stone cold bitch for all she knows, and neither knows what "communication" means. (ao3)

a/n: do people still post fics directly on tumblr? anyway.

Word count: 5513

“What do you think about our new bartender?” Sugar and Spice ask, doing that weird synchronization thing that freaks Scarlet out and makes her nearly jump out of her skin.

Scarlet is currently leaning against the far corner in the main room, where Widow put an inside plant some time ago that hides Scarlet just fine. She looks up from her phone screen and cranes her neck to try and catch a glimpse of the new hire, but that proves difficult since she’s facing the other way talking to the other bartender, Kameron. The only thing Scarlet can make out are the red braids and her white t-shirt.

“Dunno, haven’t met her yet.” She shrugs, going back to reading the PDF of the textbook she put off for the past few weeks.

“She’s, like, hot,” Sugar says, with that ditzy giggle Scarlet still can’t quite figure out if it’s fake or genuine. “I’m positive she was looking at my tits when we went to introduce ourselves.”

“Would it kill you to not fuck any more of the bartenders?” Scarlet replies, finally putting her phone away. “What, do you have, like, a bingo or something, Sugarella?”

The twins cackle, more so Spice, who receives a swat on the arm by Sugar. Their banter is cut short when they receive a glare from Widow who’s passing by, checking everything is running smoothly, and the twins quickly scurry away to the kitchen while Scarlet stays put in her place, pretending to fix her uniform.

Widow fixes her a stare that means get up and do your job and Scarlet immediately emerges from behind the plants she’d been hiding in. 

It’s not a busy day, not at all, but Scarlet has an exam tomorrow and this textbook reads more like anything other than English. It also doesn’t help that she’s not up to date with the texts, but whatever.

She goes around taking and delivering orders, chatting with the twins and the rest of the staff every now and then, and when no one’s listening she recites latin declinations under her breath while the mayhem of the restaurant roars around her.

She’s been working for Widow for a little more than a year now, since these are her final years of uni and her classes are far less now that graduation is on the horizon. Scarlet never thought about working in the service industry before, but she needed a job and this was the only place that called her back.

It’s… Nice. As nice as a restaurant with a blatant clique of co-workers slash friends can be. There’s this old group of waitresses that go all the way back to when Widow owned a restaurant in a different side of the city, it feels High School-y, in a way. They’re so tight knit they don’t really make space for new people, or at least they never made any space for Scarlet. 

Whatever, at least the twins like her.

“Good evening, ladies, I’ll be your server tonight, what can I—”

“Oh my god, bitches, you’re here!” 

When Jackie shoves Scarlet off with all the force her body can manage, it takes all of Scarlet’s willpower to not grab Jackie by her hair and drag her around.

Out of nowhere, all of the old waitresses gather around the table Scarlet was about to serve and their overlapping voices make for a very annoying scenario. Soon Widow is marching up to them, and Scarlet hopes, for a brief second, that they’ll get an earful about proper workplace behavior, but much to her disappointment she joins them in the chaos.

It takes her a couple of seconds to guess the pair of women were part of the original waitressing staff and that the blonde doesn’t just have a few pounds on her, she’s pregnant.

The moment Jackie and the rest start sobbing is the moment Scarlet turns on her heels and gives herself a cigarette break.

“Fucking absurd,” Scarlet mutters, kicking open the back-alley door with a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other. “If she weren’t Widow’s favorite, I’d—”

“You’d what?”

“Jesus fucking yellow penguins!” Scarlet exclaims, turning around to look at the stranger. When her heart stops pounding against her chest like it wants to come out of it, she recognizes the red braids. Oh, yeah. The new bartender.

“So? What would you do if ‘she’ weren’t the boss’ favorite?” The newbie prompts, a cigarette dangling from her lips, like a damn bad boy from the 60s movies where all the bad boys have leather jackets and pounds of gel on their hair.

“Like I’d tell you,” Scarlet answers, fetching her cigarettes and lighter from the ground. “Who’s to say you’re not a snitch?”

“Do I look like a snitch?”

“You look like a lot of things,” Scarlet retorts, eyeing her up and down.

She’s hot, she has to admit that. She’s taller than her, just a little bit, her arms are leaner, and she’s rather thin. Her arms are covered in tattoos, and if Scarlet forces her eyesight a little bit, she can make out finger tattoos.

“Is it a requirement to get tattoos to be a bartender?” Scarlet blurts out, fixated on making out what her finger tattoos say.

She flexes her fingers, looking intently at Scarlet. “No, but it helps with tips.”

“I suppose so.” Scarlet tries to light up her cigarette, then realizes her lighter ran out. “Got a light?” 

The bartender holds out a vintage lighter, one that makes Scarlet whistle in appreciation, and leans closer with her cigarette trapped between her lips while the hot newbie lights it.

Once she gives it a first drag, she says, “‘M Scarlet, by the way.”

“Yvie,” she merely says.

“Welcome to the family, Yvie,” she says, holding up the cigarette like one holds a champagne flute to make a toast. Yvie chuckles, then imitates her.

“My pleasure, Scarlet.”

***

“Yveeeeees, I need a gin tonic, a virgin daiquiri and a mojito,” Scarlet drawls, handing Yvie the order.

“This is the fifth time you’ve come here during your shift,” Yvie points out. “What, are you pushing cocktails onto your customers so you can come see me?” She flirts like it’s her second nature, and Scarlet rolls her eyes and sighs in an exaggerated way.

“Oh, yeah, like I’d want to come see your annoying face.” Scarlet waves her off, placing her tray under her arm and walking away from the bar, with Yvie’s laugh echoing behind her.

She’s definitely pushing cocktails onto her customers. Instead of suggesting one of the many expensive, fancy wines they have in store, she’s suggesting cocktails under the premise that, Well, it’s Friday! Why not have some fun? It helps that the cocktails are much, much cheaper than the bottles of wine they sell. 

Scarlet knows it’s a little pathetic, high school-y even, the way she wants to find any possible excuse to perch herself against Yvie’s bar, trying to find the perfect angle that makes her hot enough in her hideous waitressing uniform, pulling down her cleavage just a little bit so Yvie has a good look of the beauty mark on her left breast.

It’s not a sin to want to fuck the very hot, very lesbian new bartender that everyone else has their eyes on—not in Scarlet’s mind, at least.

Sugar and Spice caught on to this pretty early, when they saw her one time trying to fix her stupid bun falling apart before approaching the bar. 

“Since when do you care about your looks while you’re on your shift?” Spice pointed out with a giggle.

Scarlet didn’t dignify that with an answer. “Don’t you have tables to attend? Why are you always up my ass?”

The twins held up their hands in mock surrender at the same time, and the following times they interacted with Yvie, Sugar didn’t try to hit on her. Scarlet couldn’t say why she was so relieved that Sugar refrained from going after Yvie, but she thanked her anyway during one of their breaks.

So whatever, now she tries a little extra to look put together on the nights she’s working with Yvie, playing up the annoyance façade, sizing her. Bartenders are flirty by nature, and she’s not planning on making a fool out of herself by making a move based on flimsy evidence.

“Scarlet, Blair called in sick,” Jackie tells her the moment she steps foot into the kitchen. “Do you think you can cover for her tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s her turn to close, no?” She mutters, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Jackie nods. “Well, fine, yeah I’ll do it. Put me down for it. I need the money.”

Jackie smiles, pleased. She’s been an assistant manager for a month and she brings that iPad everywhere she goes, it’s like it’s an extension of herself nowadays; her and that iPad run this place like the navy. Nothing is ever out of place, out of time. Sometimes she wonders if she was always this methodical, if she was more laid back when the restaurant was still a small thing hidden among skyscrapers.

Scarlet goes to ask Dusty for some fries, when Jackie speaks again. “Oh! You’re closing with Yvie tomorrow.”

A cheshire cat-like smile blooms on Scarlet’s face.

***

She looks mad, positively crazy, she’s sure of that: here she is, at 1 A.M on a Sunday, sweeping floors and humming tunes like a Disney princess. The twins weren’t working this shift today, and thank fucking god for that, she doesn’t need them nagging her more than they do.

The majority of the girls working the Saturday night shift, including Blair, are part of the cliqué Scarlet will never be part of, and although they didn’t even attempt to make conversation with her during the beginning hours, Scarlet couldn’t care less.

She’s going to fuck Yvie. She doesn’t care if it’s on one of the tables, on the bar, or in the refrigerator but she’s gonna do it. It’s been five months since Yvie started working here, and now she finally has her golden opportunity. Tonight she’s a woman on a mission, and nothing can deter her.

Once the waitresses start filing out, saying goodbyes in general and never just towards Scarlet in particular, excitement starts to bubble up in her stomach. It’s like she’s back in High School all over again and she plotted to be alone with her crush at one of the many house parties she has no recollection of, the only thing still within her memory reach being hot lips against hers.

She’s just sitting at the hostess chair, swinging her legs back and forth, with child-like excitement. Yvie is finishing at the bar, doing whatever she’s supposed to be doing, and she’s waiting for her. Her plan is simple: unbutton the first button of her blouse, approach Yvie, say something seductive, gauge her reaction and go for the kiss.

It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s worked all the time for her.

“Are you all done here?” Yvie asks, her footsteps being the only noise left—for now.

“Yup,” she replies, “You? All done at the bar?” Scarlet straightens her spine, indubitably making her tits stand out. Yvie’s eyes wander down there for a brief second, but they go back to her face. Step one, done.

“Uhm, oh, yeah, all done. You?” She says dumbly.

“You already asked me that, silly,” she laughs in that sultry southern way that’s known for making women fall to her feet. “What, do I make you nervous, Yves?” Scarlet throws her hair back, uncovering her neck.

Yvie gulps, now unabashedly giving her a once-over. “Not the word I’d use.”

“Oh? What word would you use, then?”

It happens in a flash: Yvie ducks down, captures her lips in a kiss, and it’s not in the sweet, gentle way of the romance movies Scarlet watches until her retinas burn. It’s anything but; it makes her insides churn with lust and that’s way more fun.

They don’t fuck inside the restaurant, but in Yvie’s car. Yvie’s tiny car barely manages to contain both of their tall bodies; maneuvering themselves to be in a position where both are comfortable goes exactly how Scarlet thinks Circus De Soleil rehearses go.

Scarlet’s toes are touching the roof of Yvie’s car and she’s pretty sure she’s going to get a cramp, but Yvie’s tongue is licking at her folds and, really, her brain can’t register much else right now.

“You’re beautiful,” Scarlet says, sincere, looking at her through half-lidded eyes.

Yvie smirks, with her fingers still inside her, and a thought rattles in Scarlet’s mind about liking the way Yvie smiles just for her, but that thought goes out the window the moment her orgasm starts to build up in her stomach.

***

“We should close together more often,” Yvie says, from the driver’s seat, while Scarlet is putting her clothes back on.

“We’re a great closing team,” she replies, putting on her blouse and then realizing—“Shit, I can’t find my bra.”

“Just leave it, I’ll find it and give it back to you.”

“You better! It’s a love & lemons one, those are expensive.”

“Awh, you wore your expensive bra to work? I’m flattered,” Yvie jokes, winking at her through the rear view mirror.

Scarlet doesn’t dignify the implications with an answer.

***

She blurts it out to Sugar that she fucked Yvie the other night, and Sugar tells Spice, who tells Brianna, who tells Crystal, and that is how she gets pulled into the cleaning supplies closet by Heidi during the Wednesday lunch shift.

“Scarlet, didn’t you know?” Heidi starts, as if Scarlet has any clue what this is about.

“Know about what?”

“Yvie is Crystal’s ex,” she says, like it’s common knowledge.

“Okay. And?” It’s not like Crystal is single and pining for her ex; she’s engaged to some blonde seamstress called Gigi who used to work for Widow four years ago, she has her own clothing store now, she reckons. Pretty sweet catch, if Scarlet says so herself.

Heidi seems caught off guard by Scarlet’s indifference.

“Well, friends exes are usually off limits—”

“Crystal is not my friend,” she points out, because she isn’t.

“Yvie’s never serious about anyone,” she says this time. “You shouldn’t get your hopes up. She only sleeps around.”

“God, we fucked once! It’s not like I want to marry her,” Scarlet groans. “None of you ever considered me a friend, why do you suddenly care? I didn’t even know she’s her ex, because, again, she and all of you are not my friends.”

Heidi seems positively mortified, but they both know Scarlet is right. So she simply apologizes—Scarlet isn’t sure if she’s apologizing for casting her aside or whatever this intervention was—and they go on about their lives.

“Hey, hot stuff!” The twins say in sync, when they run into Scarlet just moments later. “We just wanna remind you of our birthday party, it’s three weeks from now down at our parents’ house!”

“Our tiny flat would never be able to hold in so many guests,” Sugar comments, handing her the invitation.

“Yeah, good thing mom and dad are leaving that weekend.” Spice winks, and soon they’re off to do whatever it is they do when they’re not pestering Scarlet.

Scarlet inspects the envelope; for a pair of girls who are obsessed with social media, handing out paper invitations seems like a paradox, and then she remembers they’re also obsessed with Y2K, so, whatever, it figures. 

The sparkly pink envelope with all types of stickers manually placed on it reminds Scarlet of when letters were still a thing and she would spend her lunch money sending letters to her friends who lived just some neighborhoods away, just for the thrill of it. When life was good and easy, and she didn’t have a bartender taller and hotter than her watching her every move from her very empty, very lonely bar.

“Hey, Jackie, this place is dead,” Scarlet comments when she runs into Jackie in the kitchen. “Can I leave early? I don’t think you’ll need me.”

Jackie looks at her, then at her iPad, then she chews on her lower lip and agrees. “Just do your side work before you clock out.”

Scarlet goes to take her things from the little storage room they keep for the staff’s personal belongings, and lingers there for a bit when she hears a pair of footsteps behind her.

“Hey, Starlet! You’re leaving early?” Kameron’s voice asks. Scarlet turns around, an attempt at a relaxed smile on her face and sees Kameron and Yvie on their way outside, they're probably going on a smoke break. Yvie is eye-ing her up and down, with her hands stashed in her pockets.

“Yup. It’s pretty dead here, so Jackie let me go already. I’m clocking out before that changes. See ya!” She makes her exit with her heart beating in her ears, her face getting as red as her hair. The high-pitched tone with which she spoke makes her insides churn with shame. God, Yvie must think I’m pathetic.

She stations herself outside of the restaurant, lightning up a cigarette to calm down her trembling body. It’s summer now, and the humidity makes her feel so gross and sticky she actively hates herself when she lights up the cigarette and makes herself sweat a little more.

I’ll quit it when I want to, she told herself some years ago, but here she is.

She’s about to start walking to her bus stop when she hears the restaurant’s door ring, and a distinct pair of footsteps she’s come to recognize like one recognizes the sound of birds in the morning.

“Hey, ‘Starlet’,” Yvie says, nonchalantly, “need a ride?”

Scarlet turns around, ready to say no because Yvie is giving her that lust-filled look that promises that her ankles will end up on her shoulders, and she really really can’t, because it was a one off time to quench her thirst and now that’s all done.

“Yeah, sure,” she says, however, thinking with her imaginary dick rather than with her brain.

Yvie holds out the car door for her, like a gentleman, and she sits with her legs pressed tightly when she looks through the rear view mirror and sees her lacy pink bra resting on the backseat.

It’s obvious and redundant to say Yvie drives them to her own place instead of dropping Scarlet off, and that she can’t quite stomach it when Yvie calls her gorgeous when she’s between her legs and moments later tells her they should keep this casual.

***

Scarlet feels stupid, completely and irrevocably pathetic.

Here she is, being eaten out on her friends parents’ bed by a pretty woman on a house party, a house party that’s supposed to be kept a secret because the twins didn’t have permission to throw it in the first place, and the secrets of the universe are being revealed to her as said pretty woman keeps looking at her like she’s some sort of prey.

“God, you’re so pretty when you’re needy for me like that,” Yvie says, coming up to kiss her. Scarlet tastes herself on her lips, and gives a low whine.

Part of why she feels so pathetic is down on the first floor of the house, probably sitting all angry in the living room couches, looking like a cheap replica of Scarlet, most likely complaining to her friends about Scarlet, not discarding just yet searching for another body to make her company tonight.

Yvie is a gorgeous woman, Scarlet knows that; she attracts attention wherever she goes, so naturally there was someone else interested in her at the party. Scarlet doesn’t know Irene Dubois personally, she’s a friend of the twins and they’ve gone clubbing as a group once or twice before, but she’s not her friend (Scarlet thinks the way she looks so much like her is a little freaky, so she keeps her distance).

Irene was flirting very openly with Yvie, who, although not as enthusiastic, was flirting back. 

Scarlet and Yvie aren’t a thing, they hook up every now and then, and go for late night fast food at whatever chain is open on the rare occasion they go home at the same time and don’t feel like hooking up, and occasionally go to cheap bars to drink cheap drinks and Yvie will draw circles on the back of Scarlet’s hands while talking about her childhood and teenage years, and Scarlet sometimes will send her TikToks that remind her of her, and Sugar and Spice snicker and scurry away when Yvie comes near her during work hours—but they’re not, like, a thing. It’s just casual.

(It’s pathetic).

So Scarlet couldn’t really go up to Yvie, intimidate Irene and very subtly tell her to fuck off, drag Yvie up towards an empty room and slip out of her dress before Yvie had fully closed the door behind them, because she’s twenty-fucking-five and not a petty high school girl falling in love with the girl she sometimes fucks.

No, she couldn’t. So she didn’t.

Irene finished her drink, Yvie went to get more vodka from the kitchen, and Scarlet just so happened to drop her cup, so she also made a beeline for the kitchen. She batted her eyelashes, said nothing about the other redhead staring at Yvie across the room, and it took Yvie all of five seconds to ask her to “go to the bathroom with her”.

The pathetic satisfaction she felt upon seeing Irene stare daggers at her as Yvie took her hand and led her up the stairs made her feel like she’s sixteen all over again, petty and wild and stupid.

Scarlet redresses herself with Yvie’s help, and when her hands linger on her waist just for a moment longer, she knows this, whatever she has going on with Yvie, is bound to hurt her.

***

“Doesn’t it bother you that your ex works in the same restaurant as you?” Scarlet blurts out, while she’s laying on Yvie’s sheets.

Yvie’s perched by the room’s window, wearing nothing but pajama bottoms, smoking. “Who, Crystal? No, she’s chill. We broke up a long time ago.”

“Like how long?”

“Uhm, I was still an art major, so…” She looks up to the ceiling. “Like, six, seven years ago?”

Scarlet sputters, turning to face her instead of looking at the ceiling cracks.

“What? Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. Why?”

Scarlet opens her mouth, then closes it again. Would it bother Yvie if she knew half the restaurant knows about whatever is going on between them? 

“Just curious. Do you think she might have unresolved feelings from that?”

Yvie scoffs. “I would hope not, isn’t she getting married in two months?” Scarlet nods, remembering the way Crystal reluctantly looked at her when handing her the wedding invitation a week ago. “Why are you asking, anyway?”

Scarlet thinks back to the night where Heidi warned her that Yvie just sleeps around, never looking for anything serious, some three months ago in July. Thinks of the burning ache in her heart when Yvie reminds her they’re just hooking up, the self-pity she wallows in every time she watches romcoms on Sundays and yearns to go on stupid museum and park dates with Yvie and getting to call her her girlfriend.

“Curiosity,” she says instead.

Yvie hums, acknowledging her answer and goes back to smoking. In the silence of the night, tangled in Yvie’s sheets, Scarlet wonders if Yvie thinks about them as much as she does. If she also yearns for something they’re not, or if she’s content enough with their arrangement, not sparing another thought towards her as soon as she’s out of the door.

The thought makes her feel like throwing up, so she silently gets up and starts rummaging for her clothes among the pile.

“What are you doing next Saturday?” Yvie asks out of the blue.

“Next Saturday?” Scarlet pretends to think about it, knowing damn well she has a hot date with her couch and a new K-Drama she got hooked on. “Not much, why?”

“My mom invited me for brunch. I love her, but I don’t think I can stand her for hours alone, my sister moved across the country and—”

“What are you asking me, exactly? To go to brunch with you and your mom?”

“Well, yeah.”

Scarlet pauses, at a loss for words. There’s many things she wants to say, like, does she know who I am? Who am I to her? A daughter-in-law, friend of her daughter? What am I to you that you’re asking me this?

But Scarlet’s dignity flew out the window some months ago, so she simply nods and says, “Sure, text me the time and place.”

***

Scarlet thinks, honest to god, that the whole brunch ordeal was a fever dream.

She expected to meet some sort of wasp-y woman, uptight and slightly homophobic by the way Yvie spoke about her mother. She met, instead, a normal, fun, laid back woman in her sixties with nothing out of the usual about her. Yvie’s mom was just a normal suburban housewife who loves her daughter very much and tries to keep an open mind with what she’s doing with her life.

And she loved Scarlet, too. For some reason, Yvie’s mom found her so fascinating, she wouldn’t stop asking her questions about her, her life, what she’s studying in uni and her two moms back home in Kansas. She ordered mimosa after mimosa for the pair of them, at times forgetting her own daughter was sitting just across her.

It was so lovely, and so, so painful.

Scarlet is obviously girlfriend material; they get along well, Yvie’s mother likes her, and the sex is great. There’s no reason for Yvie to cave in and ask her to forget about the “casual” bullshit, because they both know there’s nothing casual about going on late night car rides, with Yvie’s index tracing the letters m-i-n-e on her thigh, talking about their hopes and dreams for the future, letting Scarlet babble excitedly about her independent research projects for school, pretending she doesn’t notice when Yvie sketches her in one of the many sketchbooks she has laying around, in sneaking to the back alley to make out during dead shifts, in spending days off together somewhere far away from the city.

She doesn’t know what else has to happen for Yvie to change her mind and just ask her to be official, be serious about where they’re going together.

So, the next logical reason why Yvie doesn’t want anything serious, is that she doesn’t like her like that, doesn’t want to commit to her and have the quiet, domestic Sundays and brunch with the in-laws with her. It hurts more than it should.

“Take me home,” Scarlet says when they’re in the car, drunk on mimosas and feverish with yearning.

“Wanna make a stop at my place?” Yvie suggests, squeezing her knee.

Scarlet inhales sharply, willing herself to be strong and not let herself falter.

“No, I think I shouldn’t.”

“You sure?” They come to a stop at a red light and they lock eyes. Yvie has her brows slightly furrowed, trying to gauge what’s wrong, and Scarlet feels like a wild thing, trying to decipher how does she do it, how does she keep her cool so well when Scarlet is melting against the carseat, the blood boiling in her veins with longing and fighting every atom in her body to stay strong on her no.

“Hundred percent,” she says through gritted teeth, peeling her gaze away.

“Hm. Whatever you want, princess.”

Scarlet barely keeps it together. It’s so cruel to call her that right now, when she’s trying and failing to make her escape before her longing kills her.

Yvie drops her off at her apartment complex, and once Scarlet slams the car door shut, she decides that fuck it, she's going to use her vacation days for once and go back to Kansas to regain some semblance of control over her life. Her friends can lend her class notes later, when she doesn’t feel like a soulless puppet at Yvie’s beck and call.

She dials Jackie not ten minutes after and books the flight tickets in less than an hour.

***

[yves !!] hey is everything ok? 

[yves !!] can i come over to talk? 

[yves !!] fuck please. talk to me

[yves !!] starlet

***

Scarlet hasn’t talked to Yvie in two days, and she’s never used drugs to know what withdrawals feel like, but she supposes this must be akin to that. She feels every cell in her body yearning to reach out, to go right back to her sheets and learn to be satisfied with it as long as she’s with her. But she has to have some dignity, so she asks her moms to take her phone from her while she’s desperately sobbing to prevent herself from reaching out to Yvie.

She feels like the pinnacle of stupidity, getting herself so hurt over a fling that she sought out, that she plotted to make it happen. Now, she’s truly sixteen all over again, locked up in her childhood room crying over a girl that hurt her precious princess feelings when things blew up in her face.

Her moms don’t tell her to get over it, you’re twenty-five already, but instead offer her many, many chocolate chip cookies and silent cuddling sessions where the only thing she does is cry with her gaze lost in the distance.

By the fourth day she feels good enough to come out of her room and go to the supermarket with her moms, but she has to go back to the car in the middle of it because she saw a pair of women that looked like her and Yvie pushing a baby-stroller in the frozen foods section, then proceeded to bawl her eyes out.

When she inevitably has to go back to New York, her moms promise they’ll come visit her in a few weeks to check on her, and send her on her way with a tupperware full of chocolate cookies and some semblance of autonomy back in her mind.

***

AUGUST.

“You’re so weird,” Scarlet giggles, sitting across Yvie’s lap. “How did you even manage to get that many socks to make a floor length gown?”

Yvie shrugs, trying to play it cool. “Many thrift stores and a stubborn head,” she says, making her laugh again, and she feels a sort of pride wash over her.

It’s been two months since they started sleeping around, and she knows it’s pathetic from her to keep giving in and inviting Scarlet over just because she wants to hang out with her using the excuse of having sex, but she’s too much of a coward to invite Scarlet on a proper date and get told no. It’s easier to pretend there’s no strings attached and this is just casual, lest she’ll scare her off.

Although Scarlet was the one that flirted with her back in June, if the way she acted around her at work afterwards was anything to go by, she didn’t want anything else to do with her, and yet, like a fool, Yvie sought her out again.

Yvie knows, is very aware, that despite being somewhat attractive, the oddness that makes her stand out is also the reason why the women she likes never like her back. And that’s just personality wise; on the odd chance they like her back, her disability is enough of a reason to scare them away. It was easier to just sleep around, dating casually and not giving much of herself away.

Then Scarlet came in, very blatantly interested in her, and once she was a hundred perfect sure she wasn’t just another flirt bored during work hours—thanks to Kameron, who assured her Scarlet had never ever tried to hit on her, at all—she decided that, fuck it, why not?

But then Scarlet became like an intoxicating presence in her life, pulling her in and leaving her wanting more, making her dream of dates that didn’t start with having sex or them being too tired after a shift to do much else than go for take out, and Yvie couldn’t do much else aside from trying to hide how much she wanted—wants—her in more than a sexual way.

Now she’s stuck in this loop where she’s the one that keeps reaching out to her, against her better mind. Why Scarlet came back time and time again, Yvie’s not sure. She supposes the sex is good enough to make her want to keep her around.

Scarlet bids her goodbye after a while, giving her a last kiss before she hops on her Uber, and Yvie is left feeling like a pathetic coward, who dreams of being courageous enough to ask the woman she sleeps with to be her girlfriend.

One day she’ll do it, she just hopes it’s not too late by then and Scarlet has lost interest.

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

Hi Elli!

I saw that you've started editing on Till Death - congratulations! Do you find that you follow any particular process when editing? Have you come across any lines or sections that made you proud or happy to have written them?

Hello! :)

Uh, except for running around in a circle, screaming and crying.

First, I do a read-through directly after I've finished the last chapter, taking care of all notes I left along the way. (The dress was green, remember there's no glass windows, remove reference to x, should she buy lamp oil?)

If I am aware of any particular quirks that found their way in, I might try to kill them already. This time, I had an ungodly amount of "by the time" and "attempt", on top of normal culprits like again, still, almost, that.

Unfortunately, and don't take that as advice, I already stick it into InDesign at this point, which is a bad idea, 0/10, every further change has to be done there AND in my doc, and can mess up my layout. (I guess it does help to see it in other formats for a read — epub and pdf, but still too early.)

Then I try my best to let it rest for a while, but success is questionable. This time, I could leave me hands off it for almost all of October! :D

I usually don't have beta readers like I did this time, because before, stuff has been posted directly on Tumblr. So now I have a lot more notes to take a look at. (I do have 1-2 people who can crawl around in my google docs almost as soon as it's written, but those are also the same people who get relentlessly spammed during writing, so it's probably harder for them to tell if X makes sense, when I have talked about X to them nonstop for weeks.)

I fix whatever came up in the meantime, and pay closer attention to formatting already, because the last step is gonna be checking for widows and orphans and stuff. Sadly I do not have the attention span to do a whole check for commas etc, at some point I start just reading 😭 oh well.

I will re-read it half a year after I put it up for download and find a dozen more things I know better now and want to fix 🥺 Sometimes I do. Like today with HmW.

As for the second question, if I am fully honest, almost every single part of this WIP is something I am happy about. This is really pure self-indulgence. Every bit of pain, and suffering, and sadness, and fluff, and hope.

I liked this paragraph I came across earlier:

Instead, she reached into the pile of fabric and picked up the bracelet she had made. In the dim firelight, the glass beads looked dull, their colors barely distinguishable from each other, and her plan that had been so clear in the afternoon sun now lacked confidence. She lifted the bracelet, took a deep breath, and hoped that at least this idea of hers was going to work out.

[grandhotelabyss]

I guess they're about to learn this the hard way on Wikifeet, but the only thing worse than reading philosophy is reading contemporary popular political nonfiction. The past's popular political nonfiction, if it's ripened into a classic, is fine to read—often better than philosophy, in fact, hence my elevation of Emerson and Chesterton over the philosophers. But trying to sift through present-day material for the gems is too much of an opportunity cost. I had the patience for it when I was a kid but not now. I read so many of the Bush-era political books, for example, and what do I have to show for it? When's the last time you heard anybody deploy an insight gleaned from the once painfully au courant Verso volume, Afflicted Powers? Ironically, given how things turned out for all involved, the best of the W. books were probably Mark Crispin Miller's Frankfurt-School-inflected Bush Dyslexicon and Cruel and Unusual.

Anyway, I haven't done an ad on Tumblr in a while, and in another Xeet Anna K advocates "grandiose narcissism," so please let me renew my recommendation to Tumblr's apparently substantial Red Scare contingent of Portraits and Ashes, a novel I wrote in 2013, which foretold the whole Red Scare sensibility. In my later material, though, I have moved on thematically. (A paid subscription to my Substack gets you access to a post containing pdfs of my three prior novels, including Portraits and Ashes, as well as to my serialized novel-in-progress, the occult-themed American epic, Major Arcana.) I wrote my last Red-Scare-ish story, "Sweet Angry God," in 2015, three years before the pod debuted. You can read that story for free here. The opening paragraphs:

Apparently it began with a hate fuck. There was a dirtball café, no doubt collectively owned, a few blocks from the art school. He worked there, and she had been watching him for some months, maybe even her entire sophomore year. The first time she went into the place she noticed him, how hateful and stupid he was. Some kind of percussion-heavy music rumbled over the speakers, hissing with analogue static. She thought she felt the tuba thrum in her throat. Above the music she heard him talk to his co-worker as his face glistened in the espresso machine steam. He didn’t look at her, not even when his dirty fingernails grazed her palm with the change. “No, Romanian. It was a group, yeah, I mean they allied with Hitler. Not saying I’m defending them, but, I mean. They were pissed off that their culture was being violated by the modern west. Yeah, they hacked people’s heads off. Limbs. Like werewolves, man. Okay, it’s fucked up. But today you just push a button. Is that better? This is their marching music.�� She kept her eye on him after that. Maybe he was dangerous. She would look over her laptop screen when he came out from behind the counter to wipe down the tables. He stomped around in careless bursts, like a toddler. He had a pervert’s goatee and wore bowling shirts stained at the armpits. When she saw his sneakers, so old they’d become fashionable again, she understood what “down-at-heel” literally meant. His body looked sinewy, a bad cut of meat. Stupid-ass white boy. Sometimes she checked certain books out of the library to read in front of him, anything by or about men ready for violence. Marinetti, Mao, Fanon, whatever. His eyes were always elsewhere. Men ready for violence unmade and remade the world. She just lived in it. She wondered if he didn’t want to just live in it. Her sophomore-year final project she called Men Ready for Violence. Blood-spatter paintings were arrayed around a screen showing various armies on the march. Their choreography contrasted with the chaos of the red paint. She loaded the artist’s statement with jargon, quotations from Klaus Theweleit and Judith Butler, so that her teachers didn’t call a shrink or a cop. Everyone was polite about it, one professor even enthusiastic. Her classmates looked at her strangely. Especially the girls. Then the semester was over. One week left before she had to come home to mamá. She sat in the café reading Ernst Jünger. He wiped down her table while she was still sitting at it, his face vacantly smiling, the dirt-nailed knob-boned fingers sinking in the washcloth’s soft folds. One week. What would a Romanian fascist do? She reached out and grabbed his wrist hard. Her face must have looked like it couldn’t believe what her hand had done. Her nails were red-stained with oil paint. He was looking at her nails and then turned to look into her eyes. He showed smoker’s teeth.

How did I know in 2015 that this type of young woman, then still immersed in pop Jezebel-style feminism, would soon be getting into aesthetic fascism? Because I'm not a philosopher. I can't afford to let logical argument block the truth.

[solradguy]

mr badguy do i find the motivation to do work when i have an executive dysfunction disorder

Man, I'm trying to figure that out too ahah.... Breaking it down into itty bitty tasks with a small reward at the end seems to help me a lot. Like when I have to do laundry or something and I don't want to I make a bargain with the stubborn demon in my brain. Get up to do laundry + put on the kettle to make a cup of my favorite tea so by the time I'm done with laundry, I'll have tea because I'd just be standing there waiting for it anyway so might as well keep myself busy, you know?

While putting the Patreon PDFs together for my Ko-fi I did that but with a snack pack sized bag of Doritos at the end, which I'm eating now lol

For non-food related motivation it's stuff like changing the record in my player, laying in the grass when the weather's nice until the bugs start crawling on me (<10 minutes), 5 minutes of Tumblr for every section of art or whatever I'm working on gets done. This last one is dangerous. Sometimes I'll do it like: I can fart around on Tumblr until this song ends because it's easier to pay attention to that instead of the clock lol

My last resort when I absolutely 100% cannot get my brain on track is stupid as hell but I swear it works: DBZ powerup scream in your head

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NEED TO MAKE DINNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

ADHD install... I don't like using this one though because it's so goofy and kind of mentally draining tbh but I SWEAR it works

Sometimes just being like "wouldn't it be soooooo cool to stand up and stretch your legs. It would feel soooooo good to get out of your shitty budget desk chair ooooo" works too. Then once I'm up it's like, well, might as well go do [task]

[featureenvyproductions]

OK I THINK I GOT IT DONE

Ok digital/pdf version of Eyan Eternal Volume 1.

This is basically everything in the volume 1 print version, including the bonus content (and I’ve also included the promo image that you’d get with the print version, at the end of the pdf content). But in pdf form. And as for the chapters themselves, well at 300 dpi, they’ll be a much higher resolution than the tumblr images or the images on my website, and that makes a lot of stuff clearer to read I’m sure. They also aren’t subject to whatever the heck weird image conversion happens when you put an image on tumblr (I would experiment with converting everything to srgb but like, the cat’s outta the bag at this point).

I have tried my best also to add alt text to these pages describing what’s going on over all. I gotta admit, I don’t know what processing gets done to these files when I upload them into the void, but I downloaded everything and it seems to still work, so I’ll just cross my fingers and hope for the best. (this is what was taking me so fucking long)

Anyway I got two offerings for you pals.

The difference between them is mainly that one is one big pdf, and the other is 5 small pdfs. We’ll get to why.

But anyway, you will find the single big pdf here at lulu.com:

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ej-gravis/eyan-eternal/ebook/product-9yqvd9.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Here’s the thing, I’ve had like a non-trivial amount of people tell me the digital downloads fuck up here sometimes. I haven’t gotten a complaint for a while but it DOES happen. I was paranoid about it happening. (Their tech support has gotten better though so let them know if it DOES. or if they really don’t resolve it you can let me know. I’ll try to figure something out)

So that’s why, if you don’t want to take the risk, I have another listing up on Etsy:

https://www.etsy.com/FeatureEnvy/listing/1500364015/eyan-eternal-volume-1-digital-edition?utm_source=Copy&utm_medium=ListingManager&utm_campaign=Share&utm_term=so.lmsm&share_time=1686376620579

This had to be put up as 5 pdfs because of Etsy’s file size limit, but other than that, it’s exactly the same content, just split up. As far as I know etsy doesn't do any weird shit to PDF files though so it's more likely to work.

I mean either way, I’m charging you 2.99 USD and both sites will eat me alive with the cut they take, so it’s really just like “do you want 1 file for the price of Uncertainty or many for the price of Inconvenient” (Actually I think I will get SLIGHTLY more from etsy sales and they show up in my sale count for my shop which is nice too. Because right now most of my sales come from in-person shows and local bookstores so if you’re going by my etsy sale count it looks like i’ve barely sold a damn thing and you have no reason to trust me)

Anyway like I’ve said before. I will ALWAYS have free versions of things, as long as I can afford to do things that way. But if you want to support me and help me pay my webhosting bill and supply costs, this does help offset those :)

regardless of how you read my things though i appreciate you reading thanks a bunch to anyone who does :):):):):)

Oh also, this SHOULD be available everywhere (unlike the print edition which is US only right now) at least on etsy.

[slyveonwrites]

i. please please please do not interact with my account if you’re under the age of seventeen. this blog is probably going to be focused around sexually explicit / mature content, and having a younger audience view my writing makes me a little uncomfortable.

ii. if you decide to drop a request/commission me, i’m pretty much okay writing about every topic! however, there are a few things that i absolutely won’t write about, those being scat, pedophilia/age play, and alpha/beta/omega verse. i reserve the right to refuse anything i feel i can not do justice out of respect.

iii. as of now, i will accept requests on an inspiration standpoint. i'm really tight money wise, and so i will focus on getting commissions out in a timely manner.

iv. i will give any character a shot at writing, however, i am quite rust on male ! reader and mlm so please be gentle as i work on it. i do have a preference for afab bodies, but will write anything.

v. this is the obvious one, but don’t interact if you’re racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, antisemitic, just fuck off if you are a republican or a 4chan asshole.

FANDOMS

One Piece, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Genshin Impact

DOs

x reader, f/gn!reader, oc x character, ships, rare pairs, crossover, mature, explicit, LGBT+, NSFW, fluff, angst, death, AUs, ask first in regards to dark content ♡

DONTs

minors, pedophilia, scat, necrophilia, non-con, abuse, vore

COMMISSION INFORMATION BELOW

I reserve the right to refuse a commission.

Due to my horrid schedule and even worse fluctuating inspiration, I will only take five commissions at a time so I can give my full effort and not rush. For others hoping to commission me, a waiting list will be available.

You will get a rough draft in the form of bullet points, to make sure I'm on the right path.

After the final piece is sent, the client may request minor revisions ( spelling/formatting/punctuation ). Major revisions, depending on the greatness of the revision, may cost extra. 

The final work will be posted on my tumblr and/or sent in PDF / Epub / docs format via email. You may repost it wherever you want (as long as it is for non-commercial use only) but you may not remove the byline that includes a link back to my blog (i.e written by Maokomi.) If you prefer that I don’t post it to my social media, please feel free to say so!

Completion time varies according to details of the commission + my own personal circumstances. Expect about 2-7 days (or more) completion time, depending on these factors.

Feel free to ask for updates, but please try not to make them too frequent!

Please be open to any questions I may have! I want to make this as best as I can for you, and sometimes I may need to ask for details or clarification.

If you have any ideas or scenes or prompts or whatever that you would like me to use as inspiration for the work, please feel free to tell me! They can be super helpful in knowing what kind of vibe you’d like :D the more details / points in the story you have in mind, the better !! moodboard for your oc? hand it over. a fic you read 3 years ago and what something inspired by it? give it. you get my picture.

That being said, please also manage your expectations! If you pay for only 100 words, do not give me so many points or details as if you expect me to write 1k+ words and then be angry when i leave some things out :))

1.) PRICE ; every 500 words will be $5 (i.e. 1000 words will be $10, 1500 words will be $15, etc.)

2.) PAYMENT METHOD ; cashapp . paypal .

3.) CONTACT ; you may message me through dms on this blog to request . please give me the character you want, a name for y/n, and the amount of words you desire . once i accept your commission , i will invite you into a small private server, where we'll discuss the important details.

4.) LIMITS ; i will write anything besides scat, race play, age play/pedophilia, and alpha/beta/omega dynamics. i do reserve the right to refuse.

thank you for taking the time to read this! examples can be found via my roleplay blog for now.

[emeraldhazeart]

About this blog

Hi there. Please call me Emerald. I go by she/her.

I’m a very shy, private person, so I don’t tend to engage much online. But please don’t think that means I don’t care: I just sometimes don’t have the emotional energy/spoons to respond right away.

I love getting tagged in picrew, uquizes and reblog chains ❤️ Please feel free to go ahead and tag me if you think I might like something.

This is my main blog, where I post my general art, play tag/ask games, talk about whatever’s on my mind and reblog things I love. I endeavour to keep things positive and encouraging here, as well as sfw.

This blog is mostly themed around Bokumono/Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons content, but I’ll also post other stuff like Sonic the Hedgehog content from time to time.

Here's a list of Picrews I enjoy if you're looking for fun doll makers.

I post and reblog Undertale content on my side blog @emeraldhazeidentity

And I have a little art blog for my OCs: @emeraldforestocs

I have a Sonic blog now: @angelislandemerald

 You can find all my writing on Ao3 at EmeraldHaze15

 I tag all my art with #emerald’s art and my writing with #emerald writes. Stuff about me is tagged with #Emerald's facets

Transformative Works/Blanket Permission Statement: I welcome transformative works based off of my fan works! If you create a something based on my fanwork, please credit me and let me know so I can see it - either tag me on Tumblr, drop a link into my inbox, or let me know in the comments, whatever works best for you. If it's on Ao3, you're welcome to add it under the “Inspired by” link, no need to ask permission first. A note for fanbinders specifically: Please only share non-editable typeset files (such as PDFs) with other fans. It’s okay to send typeset files to a service for printing. This blanket permission statement / transformative works statement was created with the help of the Fanworks Permission Statement Builder. You can create your own custom statement here:

 If you would like me to tag something, please let me know.

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

So I blocked a few tags that cause me to lose my mind (my mind is already lost enough as it is). Here are a few helpful things we can all do instead of doomscrolling, complaining, and fighting to the death like a bunch of Ancient Greek philosophers giving each other toga wedgies is that even possible with a toga??? probably not… whatever

Anyway!

Short attention span? Answer questions on freerice.com or beanbeanbean.com to feed people.

Talker? Contribute kind words to the Kokobot Tumblr community.

Not a talker? Resistbot will compile and send a letter to Congress for you… as many as you want.

Spontaneous? Drop that dime you found on the sidewalk into the checkout donation box for the animal shelter.

Like information? I give you: The Red Cross First Aid Handbook in downloadable PDF format. Also: some antiracism resources. Or support your local library.

Writer? Artist? Write little notes or draw little doodles and leave them in public to sweeten someone’s day.

Into fashion? Thrift stores are ethical, sometimes have more durable (and unique) clothes than online ones, and cost less. And! If you write down/memorize your measurements and take a tape measure with you to the store, you can measure the clothes to see if they (generally) fit without having to go in the dressing rooms.

Sweet tooth? ALDIs sells fair trade chocolate and it tastes better than Hershey’s. And then of course there’s Tony’s Chocolonely and Endangered Species.

Ok I’m done. Stepping down from the soap box I somehow always manage to find myself standing on, whoopsie

[ktarsims]

Check In Tag!

I was tagged by @siancyaniam. Thank you!

Why did you choose your URL?

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, I discovered role-playing in a furry community back when I had not even a concept of what ��furry’ meant. I ran a role-playing guild there for a while, based on FFVIII, and at one point I ran a contest to name the world. My own submission was: K’tarianen - which did not win the votes. Since it wasn’t going to be used there, I’ve since used various forms of it for my online nicknames, or sometimes character names.

How long have you been on tumblr?

One of my first posts on this blog was actually the Pattern Hoarder Tutorial, which was made in Jan. 2017. So... about five and a half years now? I actually do have a personal tumblr that I almost never look at anymore, which was created at least five years before that.

Do you have a queue tag?

I do not. Nearly everything I post runs through my queue or is scheduled though.

Why did you start your blog in the first place?

I started it in order to post the Pattern Hoarder Tutorial in a place where it could be seen and would not soon disappear or be lost. Patterns used to be the only CC I actually used, and I hadn’t found a tutorial for multi-layer (or multi-color channel) patterns, so I wanted to share what I’d figured out with everyone else.

These days I consider that I ought to turn it into PDF’s so that it could be easily uploaded anywhere. Perhaps someday I’ll make time for that.

Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

My icon is a crop of a photo of my simself. Perhaps someday I’ll change it, but I’m fairly satisfied with it.

Why did you choose your header?

Uh. I don’t think I have a header.. do I? *goes to look* OH. I do. LMAO. It’s the music room of the Olijar mansion which I spent far too much time on and was extremely pleased with when I had finished. They’re supposed to be the main family in my main save, but I think so far they’ve actually had less ‘screen time’ than some of the other households.

What’s your post with the most notes?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a tips post I made forever ago with things I find very valuable knowledge in-game.

How many mutuals do you have?

I have... not the faintest idea, honestly. I did a google search to figure out how to find that out, but met only with more confusion. 

How many followers do you have?

Looks like the current count is 880, for whatever that’s worth. As a note, I don’t really keep track, nor do I check to see if people unfollow me, nor do I spend time to try to block people who might be inactive, bots, etc.

How many people do you follow?

458 currently. I feel like this number used to be higher, but probably some blogs were lost to Tumblr’s shenanigans, and some people deleted their blogs. I follow almost exclusively blogs who post TS3 content, as it’s the only game in the series I’ve yet played, but I do follow a few TS2 blogs. I’m also pretty picky in that I require posts to be properly tagged, for there not to be too many of them all the time, and usually for there to not be too many CC reblogs. I follow most creators directly, and a few CCfinds blogs in case I miss things, and don’t like to constantly see the same thing over and over again on my dash. Which I actually do keep up with most of the time.

Have you ever made a shitpost?

Uh. I think someone would have to define for me what a shitpost is before I could answer this question. xD I have heard the term a lot, but don’t actually know what it means, precisely. (When you use sarcasm to call something out?)

How often do you use tumblr every day?

Typically, every day. Though some days get skipped if I am too busy. And a few times, several months were skipped due to life taking over.

Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

I try to keep any disagreements I might have with other members of the sims 3 fandom on tumblr to private disagreements. Publicly posted arguments tend to blow up far too quickly and can result in unwanted consequences.

How do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ posts?

Emotional manipulation has long been a tactic to get people to spread things they’d otherwise ignore. It doesn’t really work on me. I’ll reblog it if I feel the message is worth sharing, and appropriate to my blog, or important enough to be shared here regardless of what it’s about.

Do you like tag games?

I think tag games are kinda fun, I just rarely find the time to participate in them. ^-^;;

Do you like ask memes?

Since most of my gameplay is strictly gameplay without any well defined stories to accompany them, I usually don’t have much to say for ask memes. Sometimes they’re fun! Sometimes I just have no clue what I’d say.

Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

Since, to my surprise, a lot of the creators I follow actually also follow me, I’d say there’s quite a few, so I won’t bother name-dropping.

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

I’m long past the age of crushes. xD They’re also very rare for me.

Ill tag: @murfeelee @simlicious @simsmono

[small-strong-bookish-butch]

So. I think I have....some kind of disassociative....thing going on. It's not DID, and I *dont* think it's OSDD? Or maybe it is. I'm not asking for a Diagnosis, just thought I'd throw my experience out there and see if you or one of your followers experienced anything like it.

So like, I do a lot of writing. And when I'm writing it's almost like i.....am? The character? And extends to outside of writing, too. Like if I spend a lot of time in one character's headspace I feel like I am the character, to the point where sometimes I'm startled when I look in the mirror and my face and body are my own instead of the character's.

Happens when I do acting, too. I'm Really good at acting and stuff like RP in DnD. It's a little easier to come out of a tabletop character's head because there is a clear cut in the scene, but still.

There's no amnesia. Well, I *do* have trouble remembering my childhood, but I don't have missing time or anything like that. And like....I still have my own sense of self? Like I still answer to my name and I *know* logically that I'm not the character, but it really feels like I am at the same time.

Please tell me I'm not alone in whatever the hell this is.

Hi!

I know you said you’re not looking for a diagnosis, which is great, because I absolutely cannot do that, am not qualified, am just one person with too much tumblr experience, etc etc.

I would say:

1. I am literally one of the least qualified people to ask about this. In terms of DID symptoms, my system doesn’t experience that at all (and I’m curious how you found me to ask this about?)

2. Honestly, if you’re worried about it being DID or something similar, I know @clever-and-unique-name has reblogged a list of free trauma-coping-and-DID-information book PDFs. I’d recommend reading some of those and seeing if it fits, if it feels like it’s triggering fear/denial/etc, or if it feels way off base, etc.

3. Reading what you sent me, obviously I’m reading it through the lens of my experiences and comparing it to that, and so I’m biased. It sounds like you’re having a confusing, conflicting, probably somewhat dissociative time right now with whatever this is, and I’m sorry about that.

4. I hope it gets easier. I hope you find ways to cope. I think the biggest things I wish people had told me when I was going through finding other alters are that 1. It takes a lot of time to figure out and it’ll be confusing for a while, 2. If they are different parts, it’s pretty likely that they’ll keep coming back and being in your life, because they live with you, and therefore, it’ll help a lot more over time to try to communicate and not want to expel them from your head. Also 3. That DID/OSDD do involve a lot of denial and, for us, what felt like a mental breakdown, because it was a lot of new and scary information. 4. But it also did, eventually, get a lot better with talking about it in therapy and really working on inner communication, and all that stuff.

5. Statistically, it’s pretty likely that someone is going through something similar. We found a lot of similar-sounding opinions on various tumblrs, although I’d say that there’s a lot of discourse and in-community fighting, and that overall on tumblr, a lot of the systems were trying to find differences between themselves as alters, and that did definitely stress us out a lot and wasn’t a healthy approach. Soooo, take “go on tumblr dot com to find mental health information” with a grain of salt, lol. But also, I’ve met some of my closest friends on here who also have DID, so like…. Just be careful out there.

6. I know some people online do have characters that they made that are also dissociated parts. It is a thing that happens somewhat regularly, it seems like, although again, we haven’t ever had it happen to us. So there is that. And sometimes people do split fictives from their favorite media, as a way of coping, etc.

I do hope things get better for you. I kinda went on a soapbox with this one. (You can send more messages if you want, but other than relating to my personal experiences and possibly giving advice, I can’t really do much for ya.) Good luck, it’s rough out there.

P.S. Sorry this is answered so late! I forgot about it, and then didn’t forget about it, and then it got buried under other drafts, and now we’re here. Phew.

[bitter-sweet-coffee]

look idek what warning to put here, but there's like, a novel and a half below the cut that's just... 6 hours of me going on tangents i never finish or clarify. no proofreading. no organization. it's absolutely not worth your time. but... i literally spent so long writing it that if i don't hit post it'll somehow be even more pointless?!?

basically there are no positive outcomes in any scenario with this post but the only remaining tragedy achievement is me writing all this and then deleting it. what proof will i have that i wrote nonsense for HOURS to avoid my research because i double dosed my meds and had too much caffeine?!? i gotta save this for the memories because no one will believe me if i tell them i live a fucking crazy life and use this as an example.

also for the record i'm goin thru it psychologically at the time of writing this. like, mania-turned-psychotic-episode, overstimulated, disassociated, exhausted, and currently procrastinating a LOT of serious things which only adds to my stress and scatterbrained gibberish. so like... please be kind but also don't get all freaked out either; i have enough psychological control rn to assure you i'm fine and this is just how i am sometimes... but i usually don't make extensive posts online during my more unstable periods. i gotta use the internet rn anyways tho so who's gonna stop me from hyperfocusing on the WRONG tasks?!? 🤪

okay, just had to say all that, and if you think my disclaimer is long? honey... you don't even have a big storm coming just keep scrolling and don't look back. don't click read more. it's not just "read more" like, it's MORE. a LOT more. too much. and like, there's literally nothing valuable there it isn't like my usual longposts that have a point or vague coherence. it was simply a huge waste of my time and it'll be an even bigger loss for you.

i can't even recommend mental stability as armour or a requirement since taking that away from you will make me feel bad, so if you're healthy please don't damage yourself with this.

ADMISSION REQUIREMENT: freaks, executive dysfunction regulars, people in boring classes, insomniacs, and sadists can proceed. and i'm STILL sorry to y'all because i didn't enjoy this either.

... so tell me why social media discourse takes itself more seriously than these people.

i've had profs with multiple doctorates and influential publications that changed academic discussions forever who like, roleplay deltarune characters on discord with students to avoid marking papers or cancel the last 2 weeks of class because they don't want to do 9 am lectures and know that we're all busy and probably gonna skip anyways. profs who change their mind and take assignments out of the syllabus since no one wants to do them and they don't wanna mark them. profs who forget their own publication deadlines because they were reading fanfiction, profs who hate the university administration more than you do, profs with mental health issues, queer profs, profs who play video games, or have tumblr, or make spotify playlists for every lecture and think the grading system is stupid, profs who hand out extensions if you ask because they weren't going to mark them all at once anyways, and profs who assign weekly pdf articles instead of big books and 300 dollar textbooks— even their own— because they're exhausting to read and super overpriced.

so many instructors in english literature are shifting away from academic essays and towards multimedia creations and fun writing prompts. "i don't want to read a 30 page research essay when i can read a brief informal paragraph explaining how this video game has the same vibes as this anonymous poem!" and "you can record a podcast or paint a picture or write fanfiction or do a minecraft letsplay as a character or honestly? do whatever you want as long as there's passion with coherent thoughts behind it!" and "word limits are stupid because adding nonsense to drag out your argument makes the paper worse: write whatever comes naturally as long as you sufficiently explain your argument but please don't make me read 70 pages in a 200 level course this is supposed to be easy on everyone"

i'll be real with you: academics are fucking bored. the content is stale. students dismiss profs because they seem like pretentious assholes who don't care about who/what they teach, but 99.9% of the time profs only seem dry and unapproachable because no one reciprocated their enthusiasm, and it was super awkward during classes, so they stopped trying.

some younger profs haven't stopped trying because they understand and haven't gone numb to their own content yet, and it's so painful to watch them put out good vibes and get ghosted by hostile students too focused on marks or checking things off their to-do list when the profs themselves would prefer conversations over the stupid assignments they're required to give you.

we talk about gamers, artists, other freelancers, musicians, thespians, dancers, and so many other career paths that require sacrifices, risks, and prejudice THAT I AM NOT DISMISSING but at least there are people acknowledging the isolation, instability, mental and physical health issues, social-wide neglect, and resilience of these people. to some extent anyways. people who break free from the mold and do something they love in spite of the consequences?

well, haha, if you voluntarily pay a fuckton of money and spend the duration of your 20's in school when everyone around you is actually earning money from jobs or at least enjoying their friday nights THERE IS SOMETHING DEEPLY WRONG WITH YOU!!! even if you get placement, if you don't have tenure (hard to get) the faculty is gonna dump extra shit on you that needs to be perfect or say goodbye to your crappily paid job. do you know how many publications and conferences and deadlines and actual work goes into that crap?!? you're supposed to answer questions no one in your field gives a FUCK about with no guidance or support or outline even though everyone is demanding you get your research done and then they're never happy with it. the elders in your field hate you (a cycle that hasn't been broken yet because those older esteemed people with tenure were in your boat once too) and i have a feeling no one outside the academic world likes you either since you're too hard to understand, pretentious, have no life, etc...

oh and on top of that? you gotta teach a bunch of people who don't wanna be in your class, hate the content because a) another instructor ruined it for them or b) it's a degree requirement and tbh you probably didn't have a choice either since 9/10 times this isn't what you wanted to teach and/or the faculty admin made you include it anyways. all that other work? well now you have to grade shit that a bunch of people didn't wanna write: even if profs have TA's to help with grading they're still required to handle a chunk of it and also deal with TA questions/concerns/regradings/pissed students/policies they're confused about that you're ALSO confused about. oh and a bunch of stupid questions since people don't read instructions and decide blame you for that?

also... do you know HOW FUCKING HARD IT IS TO TEACH??? you have to like, triple understand it and predict/plan for every fucking misunderstanding/question/problem that you can think of. including stupid questions. you'll also get a lot of people who ask things you either don't have the answer for or have the answer for but someone doesn't like it. and even if you're a flawless instructor who can handle every academic/behind the scenes/personal/basic human responsibilities or task (unlikely but i know profs who come close for at least 2 of those) someone is gonna be a dick about it.

... that dick is probably a student who is pissed they had to actually go to at least one lecture, semi pay attention, and read assignment instructions to get a good mark.

... brats who get mad about deadlines because they have other responsibilities and need extensions who go batshit insane when marks aren't released yet

... some y'all aren't gonna like this one: disabled students who say academia is ableist and profs are always evil if they don't accommodate and show sympathy because mental/physical health hinders their performance... but the thought that their prof might be disabled never crosses their mind. just like how you don't need to disclose that information, they don't either! profs can be neurodivergent. they can have conditions you aren't aware of. suffer from chronic pain. are battling an illness you don't know about. they can have mental illnesses. trauma. so many other examples, and this isn't a disability per say but THEY CAN HAVE PERSONAL EMERGENCIES TOO. maybe it's menstrual cramps, executive disfunction, someone close to them died, they relapsed on SH or addiction, are being abused or have been abused in the past, forgot their meds that day, cried all night, couldn't get out of bed, their favourite/comfort character died so they're feeling sick and can't focus on the lesson, didn't have time to eat because a loved one needs them, got triggered by the subject matter and don't know how to teach it, have a surgery next weekend and are worried about giving extensions since they won't he able to grade/put your marks in before THEIR deadline, had a bad interaction or just woke up feeling like crap so they're crossing their fingers the lecture runs smoothly, only to get shitty emails or bullied on rmp?

and y'know what? i don't care if your prof seems like a dick, because we're open minded about those appearing to be rude who are actually victims that didn't receive enough support to to their personal experiences and/or generational/ethical conditioning... until they're a 60 year old white guy who rolls his eyes when someone slyly ask a question or counters something he said to "school him" and "prove he's an overpaid, outdated, problematic bigot." maybe it seems really badass to people who are 2 weeks into the course... but he's been correcting that crappy misinformation for 30 years and your "okay boomer" attitude couldn't be more misplaced; this guy has probably been in the field longer than your parents have been alive and you think he missed this obvious oversight after teaching this course for decades?

if you think for a second that someone like my imaginary prof has it easy because of gender/race/sexuality/religion/ableness there are so many flaws to you logic because a) you can't confirm any of that shit and b) do you think extensions, accommodations, and other resources were available when they were getting their degree or even during most of their lifetime? i mean shit, we're all about helping meemaw understand what pronouns are and how they're used until it's your prof who was beat by his dad and classmates because "university is for devil worshipping snobs and faggots! if you think you're too good for the family business you're dead to me" and thinks this is normal. it doesn't matter if his peers/instructors were all "cishet white men" (since no one else counted as a person and they couldn't be anything else anyways) because if they were all forcefed toxic masculinity and misinformation that literally no one else could correct, embracing the privilege was their only move.

yeah yeah this isn't limited to profs since it's a sloppy and reductive commentary on entire generations that i'm not putting enough effort into, so take it with a grain of salt and try to hear me out in good faith since i'm improvising as i write this in a very unstable state with no intentions of proofreading or ensuring my point is clear. basically, the privileges we acknowledge in others are not the only ones out there because WE have privileges they don't. if you want "privileged people who benefit from the prejudiced foundation of a society that oppresses and profits off of suffering minorities" feat. more social media hot take discourse buzzwords etc etc etc.

"fuck reductive labels because they're inaccurate and build on outdated western mentalities, but also i'm gonna continue to judge someone based on labels i give them because i 100% know a person's race/gender/sexuality/ableness/psyche/religion/other things i consider to be privilege better than they do because they don't know what these things are and if they do it's wrong!!!"

okay, maybe YOU can pick and choose queer content based on if a contributor has a "your fave is problematic" entry or if the representation is approved by the community, take "am i gay?" quizzes in middle school, overcome internal prejudices through social media discourse, learn ethics through fandom trial and error, see enough cancellations to understand what NOT to do, or get enough adhd tiktoks on your fyp to self diagnose/get a formal diagnosis/access medical support/read articles and understand the medical side of things to validate your experiences/practice coping mechanisms and google tips/talk to other people with adhd/work on accepting you aren't a defect who didn't try hard enough/receive accommodations/know you aren't alone even if your current environment doesn't accept you because other places and people do. maybe this segment is too long but you at least has the time and ability to read it, on an electronic device, which you can access almost any time btw, and it'll give you access to endless content (which is somehow even more endless if you download a vpn and switch regions: yeah, infinity plus infinity level shit. oh and that's like 1% of the internet we're using all the maths in this parentheses tangent that's within a tangent within a tangent multiplied by a billion more regressed all inside a whopping procrastination activity. yay me! ok no more meta shit i already forgot where this fragment/sentence/paragraph/section/rant was going 7 times now)

okay. maybe you got this far and are totally lost, and i have no way of knowing how extensive the psychological damage is because I'M not even reading this post, so the real conversation is between you and the words on your screen, i have nothing to do with this experience. my fingers may have typed everything so far but my brain has been playing shrek 2 the entire time, so this is your mental health check since there is no thesis or sense of direction but i'm exhausted despite not being mentally present unlike you. i am just typing words as they appear based on writing patterns and routine from when i'm awake.

^^^ that's not a joke or shitpost btw so even if i've led you to believe it is at some point, so i am gonna be fully transparent in the caplocked paragraph below. it is as close as you're getting to me, bitter-sweet-coffee or whatever name you know me by, being aware and in control of my actions for the entirety of this derailed rant:

OKAY, BEFORE WE RESUME OUR SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING, I AM FORCING MYSELF BACK INTO MY BODY AND STEALING BACK MY SENSE OF SELF JUST TO EMPHASIZE WHAT I'M ABOUT TO SAY, SO YOU KNOW I AM BEING HONEST. BABES, I AM REGAINING CONTROL OF MY PSYCHE TO ENSURE THAT AMIDST ALL THIS DISASSOCIATED WORDVOMIT, YOU CAN TRUST SOMETHING 100% THAT I ACTUALLY MEAN. A MOMENT IN THIS BITCH THAT MY LESS UNSTABLE SELF WILL ALSO AGREE WITH. CLARITY BURIED IN THE 11TH HOUR OF THIS NEVER-ENDING STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS WALL OF TEXT. MY DARLINGS, i have no fucking clue what this post is supposed to be. there was probably an outline or vague concept 3ish hours ago when i started, but good luck asking me what it is now! some parts read like a viral tumblr psa but there are way too many rushed ideas that branch into tangents and unanswered questions. yeah i know there's no fucking coherence, but even though i'm aware everything i'm putting online this week is extremely concerning, it doesn't make anyone feel better if i say i know or put disclaimers because instability makes people uncomfortable. yeah we like freaks on the internet and y'all expect this shit from me by now, but even this is too much for my shitposting reputation, because at least i typically have enough control over my brain to proofread or follow a train of thought. i mean shit, not even i'm following this and it's my writing, which isn't even the most confusing thing i'm able to decipher, so unless you're god or extremely unstable this is probably the most incoherent thing you've ever read or at least since beowulf... or like, french. or russian cursive. or doctor-handwriting. or flat earth conspiracies. or the code to sonic 06 because NO ONE knows what the fuck happened there. actually, if you've used wattpad or twitter there's a chance you can make sense of this, but if you use either of those apps enough to comprehend their contents you're probably not fluent enough in actual recognized languages to successfully open tumblr and get here in the first place. okay, i can't think of anymore jokes that aren't even good so let's move on! basically, i love y'all, and even if i know this post is a train-wreck of a mistake that will worry people, it ain't gonna stop me. sure i might be goofy, unstable, informal, and hard to understand, but i also have credentials as an academic, well-spoken, published, articulate, accomplished, REPUTABLE person when i need to be in formal settings offline. FOR THE RECORD that's not a flex: we know i don't do labels or ego stroking beyond semi-satirical rarepair supremacy jokes and sonic lore flexes. my genuine intelligence has been my saving grace because i just KNOW if people thought i was some american teen from tiktok with no formal education or career accomplishments who regurgitates misinformation they saw on twitter y'all would REPORT ME!!! I WOULD BE BULLIED OFFLINE! "who's this cunt with the bad takes?!?" followed by "no no dw it's just another bsc moment on tumblr" is so important to bring up rn because it's not supposed to be a brag guys, my educational reputation is all i have to justify the stupid shit i post on here 😭 if i didn't remind people i am smart and accomplished when i need to be you'd think this is all i'm capable of and conclude that my stupidity is my full potential... THIS ISNT EVEN MY FINAL FORM! gah, i'm getting imposter syndrome and this was supposed to be the shorter heart-to-heart in a "brief" intermission that turned into another derailment. alright, even if there are glimmers of big brain theses buried anywhere that just needed an author from a healthier time and place, we know damn well i'd procrastinate/overthink/forget them if i deleted or drafted this monstrosity for another day... also i'm on mobile we know tumblr won't fucking save this LMAO IF THIS DELETES OR THE APP CRASHES (if you're reading this it obviously didn't, so idk why i'm @ ing a nonexist target) I'M GONNA BE SO MAD EVEN THOUGH THIS IS GARBAGE, SO A GLITCH FROM TUMBLR WOULD DO EVERYONE A FAVOUR. ITS MY GARBAGE THAT I WASTED VALUABLE TIME AND ENERGY ON!!!

wow. i discovered the text-block limit, that's embarrassing. at least it forced me to finish a thought (kinda) and complete my moral takeaway from like, 3-5 thousand words ago. SO LET'S GET BACK INTO IT!

okay look, i'm not suggesting it's everyone's job to be a doormat to mean old professors. that was where this was going, right? because even though spent a really long time on privilege and how older generations that are stuck in their ways deserve more compassion, you shouldn't let some dude hatecrime people and torture students. generally speaking, you shouldn't write off bad behaviour as a trauma response because even though i believe everyone is a good person if they have enough support, compassion, resources, and are encouraged to want to change... bitch this isn't a fucking utopia we're living in a fucking death circus. the last thing on people's minds is giving harvey fucking weinstein a redemption arc even if that would fix some shit because awful people learning to be good people teaches growth and self awareness that leads to more accountability and prevents more bad people from hurting others because resources and normalized support and systemic causes for bad people blah blah blah even I'M sick of my own tangents.

actually... this proves my point— the most recent unfinished one that is. YEAH, WE CAN UNPACK THE MORALITY AND PROGRESSIVE IDEAL COURSES OF ACTION AND UTOPIAN TAKEAWAYS FOR EVERY FUCKING SITUATION. NOT EVERYTHING IS BLACK AND WHITE. NOTHING YOU SAY CAN EVER BE ALL-ENCOMPASSING BECAUSE WORDS ARE HUMAN INVENTIONS THAT ARE NOT DESIGNED TO ACCOMMODATE EVERY SCENARIO. YAY, MISQUOTED NIHILISTIC DERRIDIAN HOT TAKES FOR MY GAY SONIC BLOG, RIGHT?!?

we all get it (probably). everything has an exception. but, as i stare anxiously at my clock and try to calculate how many hours i've been typing for instead of working on my actual work that matters, it's kinda obvious:

we don't have the fucking time or energy to do in depth discussions for every conceivable thing. no position will ever be enough, no words will capture truth in its rawest form because humans... have no clue what the FUCK they're doing. language, arts, the scientific method: the tools we use to express ourselves, the very resources we rely on as we try to pinpoint something undeniable, something constant, the way we go about actually PROVING something??? we can't even fucking agree on those! we made maths and sciences and words and arts but we can't even trust them because... well. if WE fuck up a lot and established ways to not fuck up... they're also fucked up.

sure we programmed computers and say they make perfect numbers but girl,,, WE made the computer and the numbers. sure it finishes our formulas better than we do but did the guy making the formula do a good job? maybe, but how do we know it hasn't been warped over time to an unrecognizable degree. there are billions of languages with endless dialects and regional variations for each one. WHO GENDERED THE FUCKING NOUNS IN FRENCH??? YOU'RE TELLING ME THERE ARE WORDS THAT ONLY EXIST IN ONE LANGUAGE? LIKE, THERE ARE NO TRANSLATIONS??? okay, so what the FUCK does that mean if we're the ones inventing translations in the first place? don't make me think about all the dead languages and their secrets or all the lost texts and stories... aight now i'm just sad

sceptic prompts aside, i hope you understand what i mean when i say we're never gonna do a perfect job of explaining shit. that's probably why i started so many things here and got distracted because i predict "what if's" and feel the need to sub-explain every ambiguity. that's not a valid excuse for this literary hatecrime but it's a bit of context i suppose.

where was this going? see my point?!? okay this was supposed to be the quick return to my pre-intermission thoughts that fixes shit, but nah it caused more problems. adding to the never-ending pile of jibberish.

RIGHT THE CRAPPY PROFS. yeah you have bigger things to worry about just don't be a dick and treat academia with a petty attitude but then demand acceptance and understanding because peace and love and social justice mantras. the diversity you're advocating for should extend to those who didn't have it, even if those people are shitty and misinformed as a result of their less progressive upbringing.

BASICALLY, EVEN THE PEOPLE YOU DONT THINK HAVE IT HARD DESERVE THE COMPASSION I WAS PUSHING EARLIER. the sobstory profs and the absolute cunts you want to strangle are both dealing with shit and i don't expect you to "fix them" but if i see people using bad prof anecdotes to justify hating all/some educators i'll eat your skin like it's kfc or something. idk, apparently people LOVE chicken skin! insert a featherless biped joke here if you want and if it'll make sense for you, i just wanted a threat that wasn't gonna be too mean because reading to this point is punishment enough even if you deserve worse lmao. the "privileged" profs still went through hell and the last thing we need are more generalizations based on profiling. mean profs could have been nice once so maybe power through the rbf and dryness by continuing to be nice and attentive: you might just save someone! and future students! and your gpa!

okay, no more lectures. here's some crap i wrote at the beginning that kept getting pushed lower and lower as i went on a billion tangents. it's probably more academic advice and silliness but i'm not gonna bother checking so uh, take it away past me...? yikes, good luck:

so, you don't wanna do that assignment? well, the prof doesn't wanna read it, neither does the TA. same shit new term, no one benefits, and they're marking a LOT more essays than you'll ever have to write

so, you didn't understand the reading and are afraid to say something in lecture in case you don't know what you're talking about? chances are your prof is either in the same boat and has no coherent plan for the lecture and also doesn't know wtf is going on, or this is their special interest they dedicated their career to and they'd rather just infodump the whole class anyways.

"i'm scared to go to office hours" these guys either have no social life and/or family, or they do and none of them understand what the fuck they're saying. do you know how hard it is to have normal conversations or make small talk when 99% of your brain is shit no one but maybe 4 other scholars in the world give a shit about?!? EXAMPLE FOR YOU FANDOM FOLK: IT'S NOT JUST INTERACTING WITH NORMAL PEOPLE, IT'S TRYING TO MAKE FRIENDS IN A DEAD FANDOM WHEN YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTER IS A NOBODY AND YOUR FAVOURITE SHIP HAS NO CONTENT BESIDES YOUR OWN, EXCEPT FOR MAYBE 2 OTHER PEOPLE WHO YOU'RE TOO AWKWARD TO INTERACT WITH BEYOND FRIENDLY TAGS WHEN YOU REBLOG THEIR ART.

short answer to that ^^^ go to office hours. especially humanities profs or weird science profs, not just because you will do a LOT better on assignments but because they're lonely and appreciate it. when i go to office hours my profs are either trauma dumping or incoherently rambling about blorbos from their manuscript or batshit crazy theories no one wants to write/hear about.

like, think about how you feel when you get asks or nice tags or comments on your fanfic/art/videos. even questions about your au or opinions! hot takes maybe?

what about when new people follow you or ask questions about the fandom you've been in for years: when someone asks a silly question about the lore are you more likely to see red and fucking kill them, or use this as an excuse to infodump and excitedly point them towards secondary content and inform/motivate them, even splashing in your own personal theories? i know it's the second one don't lie to me or yourself.

at the end of the day, i just want people to know that the stimulating debates people have online in the 21st century are the fucking green forums, while the "scholars" and esteemed academics that so many people write off as pretentious or too serious are fucking losers. they're freaks. i want every academic to have tumblr because they're SO FUNNY OH MY GOD!!!

when i see y'all talk about blorbo from your shows all i can think is "damn this is more coherent than when i ask my prof a question and she excitedly rambles for 20 minutes without actually answering anything because she's so overjoyed someone finally asked" and am reminded of all the special interest/hyperfixation positivity. researchers are just people paid to get lost in their own thoughts and words because their niche is their universe and it gets lonely when no one else bothers to check in.

oh, and if they're dedicating their entire life to something no one gives a shit about and worker their ass off to make it profitable... they're one of us. probably into fandoms. assigns music to their work. make memes about their theories because no one takes them seriously anyways. absolute fucking LEGENDS

TLDR which i know y'all need:

profs are based as hell fjdksldldlds go talk to your instructors they're lonely like you are and listening goes a long way. the internet is way too serious now to the point our "serious" communities that we believe are more strict are actually the most lax places.

so like... when we talk about tumblr being the worst place ever and brought up it's cursed reputation for YEARS but then actually witness 2022 and go "nevermind.... this is the only fucking place online to exist safely" because what the FUCK are those other places doing???

yeah. that's academia. the tumblr of conversations (aka full of freaks but the fun kind: WAY LESS THREATENING AND PSYCHOLOGICALLY DAMAGING than the "silly sites" which have evolved into... no i don't even have a metaphor or joke for this one. it's just awful lmao)

cool idk how to end this after wasting 1/4 of a day making no sense, here's george: