#taking 2 months is still better taking a year
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Hellfire Adopts Steve Pt. 2
Pt 1
Eddie may be repeating his senior year, but he's no idiot. He's intuitive, a quick thinker, and generally, he's an excellent judge of character. Which is exactly why he protested Gareth's decision to drag Steve Harrington, the former King of Hawkins High and current King of Don't Fuck With Me, to lunch with Hellfire.
Jeff and Freak are both genuinely terrified to have His Royal Highness picking at subpar mashed potatoes in the uncomfortable plastic chair across from them; to his credit, Steve Harrington seemed unbothered by the situation, even as Princess Nancy Wheeler and her own little pet outcast Jonathan pass him on the way to their own table. Eddie watches with growing interest as Steve boredly ignores Nancy's attempt to catch his eye (it's almost hilarious- he'd been at the Halloween party last month where Nancy got absolutely shitfaced and then screamed at Steve in front of the entire student body, and yet here they are, Nancy trying awkwardly to speak to Steve and Steve resolutely going about his business).
Gareth stammers through a story about their latest DnD campaign, his round face practically glowing with excitement as he uses the peas on his tray to illustrate what their party had been up against. Eddie fully expects Steve to say something rude, dousing Gareth's smile and deserving every bit of ire Eddie can muster, but Steve just smiles at Gareth and ruffles his hand through the unkempt curls Eddie's been trying to get Gareth to take care of.
From there it only gets weirder. Steve seems to have taken a real shine to Gareth and is nothing short of a perfect gentleman to Jeff and Freak, but he loves to bicker with Eddie. Honestly, Eddie's impressed at just how much Steve seems to like bitching at people.
Steve is also surprisingly responsible? After that first lunch, Steve is around all the time; he shows up to Hellfire meetings with his backpack full of homework and a Tupperware full of something delicious (Eddie had nearly cried the first time he took a bite of Steve's macaroni), only to completely ignore their entire session to study. Occasionally, the walkie Steve carries with him whenever they aren't in school will crackle to life, and Steve will make himself scarce pretty quickly.
Overall, Steve is awesome. Eddie hates to admit it, but watching such a prim and proper guy emotionally destroy someone for commenting on Freak's size, and Eddie just knows that the damage done to Tommy Hagan's car after Gareth showed up to Hellfire with a busted lip and glassy eyes was Steve's fault.
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Steve is actually really enjoying his time in Hellfire. He doesn't really mention it to the kids, and both Nancy and Jonathan are still avoiding him, so Steve sees it as a win: he gets to make friends who haven't seen him get his ass beat by interdimensional horrorterrors that have ruined dogs and flowers for him forever, he gets to learn more about the game his new little brother is obsessed with, and innocent kids don't have to bear the brunt of King Billy's reign of terror.
Gareth decides almost instantly that he likes Steve; not only because he saved Gareth from bullies or brings them food better even than Wayne Munson's, but because Steve always listens to his DnD stories. Jeff and Freak (who Steve will only refer to by his Government Name, Melvin) grow to like him as well, not at all encouraged by the food Steve brings or (on one memorable occasion) the incredibly realistic melee weapon, straight out of a flick like Red Dawn, that they found under his seat one day.
#steve harrington#steddie#stranger things headcanons#eddie munson#stranger things#hellfire adopts steve au#bet yall thought i was dead#but no#ive been captivated by another neurodivergent mess
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Do you have any advice for writing in a web serial format?
Let’s look at this in two sections – the business part, and the actual writing part.
The Business Part
1. Consistency. Consistency in updates. Have a schedule and STICK TO IT.
If your schedule is too hectic and starts affecting your health or otherwise adversely affecting your life, change the schedule; update less often. Don’t update in spurts and then randomly stop. The audience will far more easily tolerate a slow schedule than an inconsistent one; an inconsistent one will lose many readers. You’re not Andrew Hussie and you can’t get away with that bullshit.
There may be times where you need to take a hiatus due to some emergency, life event, or health condition. This is fine – your wellbeing is more important than your story. But you need to be up-front with your audience about this; tell them you’re taking a hiatus and tell them exactly how long it’s going to be. If you can, you should tell them in advance (this isn’t possible for things like a car accident, but is very possible if you’re planning to, say, move house in a month). If you’re taking too many hiatuses, then it’s better to slow down your schedule and update less often. Audiences prefer fast and consistent, but if they have to choose, slow is better than inconsistent.
The #1 helper to consistency is having a big buffer – that is, have several weeks’ worth of unpublished chapters. The length of your buffer is personal taste, but I like to keep mine as long as possible so that if there’s some problem that stops me from writing for several weeks, it won’t upset the schedule. It keeps my stress down to know that I have that leeway. Other writers prefer to only write a week or two ahead, though, so different things work for different people.
2. Decide on your monetisation system early and prioritise it.
The most popular and most effective method for monetising a web serial seems to be the patronage method, which is the one I use. You set up a patreon, ko-fi, or whatever sponsorship system you prefer, and offer rewards to those who support you. Having their names in a credit list and getting access to advance chapters are very common rewards. Some people also lock access to their discord behind a paywall, or offer extra stories or let supporters name story characters.
This model is not the only way to make money from web serials. Some people make money via advertising, or selling merchandise, or use the web serial itself to advertise stories that they sell. You can of course use several revenue streams – you can have both a patreon/ko-fi and run ads on your website (I don’t because I hate ads, but you can), or start selling merch related to your story once there’s a demand for it. Many web serial authors (including myself) sell their completed works as books. But the important thing here is that one of these systems will be your main system, and you need to know what it is and behave accordingly. If you run ads AND have a patreon, are you more focused on ad revenue or patreon revenue? You’re going to have to put your time and attention into one of them over the other. You’re going to have to make decisions that will help one and harm the other. So know in advance which one is most important to you.
You don’t have to monetise your story at all, of course. Plenty of people write fiction on the internet for free every day with no thought to making an income at all. But if you’re serious about this, I would recommend monetising it, because that makes a better and more consistent product. The reason I’m still able to keep writing these year after year is that my supporters pay my mortgage; without Patreon and ko-fi, I’d have to get a different job, and wouldn’t have time or energy to write consistently. Also, the reason I can write and update even when I don’t feel like it, and the reason I always push to make my stories as good as possible even when I’m not interested, is because I owe it to my supporters who are paying me real actual money to read my work. If I didn’t owe my readers anything, none of these stories would ever get finished, because writing is only fun about half of the time.
3. Don’t expect to be able to turn this into a career.
This advice sounds silly coming from me, who has through sheer luck, as well as the generosity and passion of my readers, somehow turned this into a career. But I need to emphasise that that luck is not typical. Most web serial writers will not be able to support themselves solely with their writing. It can make a good side hustle, but if your primary goal is “low barrier to entry work-from-home career where I don’t have to answer to a boss and can support myself comfortably,” then web serial writing is usually all of those things except the last one. There’s no harm in trying to turn this into a career – I did it, as have many other web serial authors – but don’t expect that result, is all I’m saying.
Still, if you can do it, it does have a lot of advantages.
4. Don’t expect to make money fast.
I remember when I finally started making an entire $100/month on Patreon. It was a fantastic day.
It was when I’d been writing web serials for four years.
5. Your most valuable resource is your readership.
Your readership will grow and gather momentum over time. The best business decisions you can make are those that grow your readership and allow your readers to participate in community, even if you have to give up opportunities to make money to do it.
A good example of this is discord. Some people have private discords that only their patrons can access; while this is a useful anti-spam and anti-harassment tool, I don’t recommend doing this if you don’t have a major spam or harassment problem. Some people will pay for discord access, yes, so you might get a handful of extra dollars per month that way – however, you will also get a far less active discord. When it comes to readers, population density is critically important; the more activity, the more people talking about your work together (or talking about anything and bonding with each other), the better. Plenty of people have joined my free discord just because it was there and only read my stories after seeing people talk about them there. Then they go and get their friends to read the stories. Enthusiastic readers are inherently valuable, and the best thing you can do is give them the resources they need to talk to each other and share their interest.
This principle applies to a lot of things. I have a lot of free stories on my website that aren’t the usual web serials, and more than once I’ve considered whether they should be paywalled. The answer I always land on is ‘no’; I couldn’t tell you how many readers have been roped into my web serials because they liked Copy <|> Paste, or The Void Princess, or Drops of Blood. These readers may or may not then become monetary supporters, but even the ones who don’t will increase activity and discussion about the stories, have fun and tell jokes in the discord, and may even produce fanart. A thriving community is always going to be more valuable to you than a few extra dollars; make sure to support them accordingly.
Your readership will start very small. In terms of marketing, this is your hardest time. A big readership does the majority of the marketing for you, but when you’re on your own, it takes a lot to convince anyone to give your stories a shot. It helps if you have an existing readership to leverage, which is what I did – I’d been writing Animorphs fanfiction on AO3 for years, and many of my first readers followed me over from there. If you have such a community that already has faith in your writing, leverage it. If you don’t, you can gain one my writing in a place where people go to read stories similar to your work, such as an appropriate subreddit, or a web serial site like Royal Road or Scribblehub. You are looking to gain as high a number of enthusiastic, engaged readers as possible.
And now, the fun part – the actual craft!
The Writing Part
1. Always remember that you are writing for two audiences
A web serial author has to keep two audiences in mind; the serial readers, and the bingers. You are writing a story that needs to be fun and engaging when read very slowly, at the pace of whatever your update schedule is, but that also needs to be interesting when read all at once.
This is not an easy task.
It’s something I fucked up pretty significantly with Curse Words, which was my first attempt at this. Curse Words has a lot of complicated political stuff happening throughout pretty much the whole story, as well as a complex save-the-world plot that’s reliant on a lot of secrets, mysteries and extremely speculative information. With so many wheels spinning, I decided to make the protagonist not particularly smart and move him very slowly through the plot to make sure that the reader would be able to keep up.
This was a mistake.
‘Pretty slow and simple’ at a novel reader’s pace is torturous at a web serial pace. Readers got a full week to discuss the mysteries and implications of each chapter with each other, doing the detective work of ten chapters between each one. The frustration with Kayden’s slow pace was clear, and he came across as an outright idiot rather than an average teen. Personally, I think this lesson was one of the biggest reasons for the difference in quality between Curse Words and Time to Orbit. Don’t slow down for your audience; they’re already slowed down by your update schedule.
At the same time, though, you don’t want to move so fast that you lose the bingers. You can’t assume that your readers will have time between chapters, or that they will discuss each chapter with other readers, or that they will go back over previous chapters looking for clues. Interested people reading update by update will do this, but bingers absolutely will not. So you still need to make sure that everything is comprehensible on a binge read with no backchecking or outside investigation.
My advice on this matter is to move as fast as possible, but take care to make sure that readers are reminded of everything important a few chapters before it comes into play. That way, both audiences can keep up. If you have to make a decision, it’s best to favour your update readers; they’re your most active community. They’re doing the up-to-date discussion, and probably doing the most word-of-mouth and fanart, although binge readers will do that too (I have plenty of dedicated readers who wait five or six weeks to binge a bunch of chapters on purpose, just because that’s their preferred reading style, and they’re still very engaged). But if you plan to publish your story later as a complete work, you also need to keep in mind how it’s going to read as a binge – and also, new readers will binge the earlier chapters of your story to catch up to the current one, so make sure it’s a good experience for them or they won’t get a chance to become update readers.
Two audiences. Mind your pacing and information reveals accordingly.
2. Chapter length
The general rule of web serials is that the more often you update, the shorter your chapters should be. The generally agreed ‘sweet spot’ is 1-1.5k words, 3 times a week, but this depends heavily on individual style. I update once or twice a week (depending on what stories I’ve got going) and try to keep my chapters between 2 and 2.5k words. If you update once a month, your sweet spot is probably about 10k words.
Don’t hold religiously to what other people tell you the ideal word count is – this will vary drastically with genre and personal style – but it’s best to try to stay fairly consistent. It’s not always possible to stay exactly on target because the best break points between chapters will vary (I’ve got 1.8k chapters and 3.5k chapters), but readers like to be able to predict about how long an update will be and they like it to not vary too wildly too often. As with choosing your update schedule, choosing your chapter length will depend on what suits your personal schedule, and what suits the story you’re writing.
“The shorter the chapter, the more frequent the updates” is a good rule for attracting the widest audience. Short, infrequent chapters will have a lot of readers losing interest between updates; long, frequent ones will have a lot of readers feeling overwhelmed. But the most important thing is finding something that you can consistently output year after year (remember, it took me 4 years to make $100/month; this is a long game).
3. It’s a TV show, not a movie
This advice is less useful in our age of Marvel movie franchises and made-to-binge Netflix series, so pretend I’m talking to you in the year 2010 or earlier. If a novel is a movie, a web serial is a TV show. What I mean by that is that a novel is shaped primarily as a complete experience, whereas a web serial is shaped as a chapter-by-chapter experience.
It’s best, in both cases, to have a well structures and paced story that is made of well structured and paced chapters. But sometimes you have to choose between the structure or a chapter and the structure of the story as a whole; making one better will cheapen the other. When you’re writing a novel, you should choose the structure of the whole, but when you’re writing a web serial, you should choose the structure of the chapter. Web serial readers will prefer a chained series of excellent chapters, over a beautiful story of chapters with mediocre individual structure.
In fact, whether you want a structure to the overall story at all is personal taste. My stories have strong overall structure and move towards a planned conclusion because that’s how I prefer to write (and it also makes the story bingeable, since it’s basically a novel being released really slowly), but plenty of web serials out there have no real planned ending and will wander about for years and years in no obviously consistent direction, occasionally throwing in a big twist or major change to freshen things up. These would make absolutely horrible novels, but make very popular web serials. Whether you write like me or like them, the rule is the same – the experience of each individual chapter takes priority.
Come to think of it, this might be why people call my stories “ADHD crack”…
4. Okay, so how do I structure a good chapter?
I generally try to do three things in every chapter.
- Hit the ground running
- Give them something new
- End on an open question
Hit the ground running – Unless it’s the very first chapter of the story, you don’t have to be coy getting into the action. Open the chapter as if it’s the middle of the chapter; start at full momentum. Catch the high point of the last chapter before it falls. It your last chapter ended with “We checked the fingerprints on the candlestick. It’s Colonel Mustard.” then you can start this one with “But he was in the library at the time!”, you don’t need to recap or slow down or anything.
Give them something new – Every chapter should give the reader at least one thing to talk and think about. A new choice, some new information, a shift in perspective, whatever. People are reading these updates one at a time so it is vital that they feel like they got something out of the experience. A chapter in which nothing is learned will make readers feel like their time was wasted, and they have all the time until next update to reflect on that.
This is also true of a novel, but it’s much more critical in a web serial. A novel with nothing chapters in it is just frustratingly slow-paced; a web serial with nothing chapters in it leaves the reader feeling cheated for long stretches of time.
The thing to talk about doesn’t necessarily have to be a big plot reveal or major advancement. An incredibly cute scene, or sad scene, or funny scene will work just as well. But you have to give them SOMETHING. If you’re giving them nothing, consider cutting the chapter entirely and integrating any important foreshadowing or whatever into the next chapter.
One major hurdle of mine with this rule is recap chapters. If you’re writing a very complex plot over a long period of time, you need ways to occasionally take stock and make sure everyone is on the same page and nobody’s forgotten or misinterpreted anything important. This information can be recapped or conveyed in the middle of an action sequence or something, but I personally find that putting other stuff in the scene makes it too distracting and therefore less effective. I like to literally just sit the heroes down in a room and have them go, “okay, we’re spinning a lot of threads at once right now; what do we know, what are we trying to figure out, and what are our next steps?” This is the literary equivalent of the save point or room full of health packs right before a boss battle. Game designers don’t put that room there to be nice; they do it so that they know exactly how much health you’re going to have going into the battle, and can structure it accordingly.
You can make these chapters entertaining with character banter, but you can’t really introduce new threads to talk about, except possibly as a twist right at the end. Introducing new information mid-recap distracts from the recap and makes it pointless. You might have something similar in your stories, chapters that are essential but don’t give the reader anything new to work with.
My advice for these is to just bite the bullet on this one. Release the chapter with nothing new to talk about. You can get away with doing this occasionally, if the chapter has a clear purpose (I get a lot of readers tell me that they appreciate my recap chapters). Readers who get nothing out of the chapter will shrug and talk about older stuff instead, so long as you only do this occasionally. But a chapter with no new information has a cost in opportunity and in reader patience, so only pay it if the chapter’s worth it.
End on an open question– End the chapter with a reason for the reader to come back. You want them to think about the story afterward and be eager to read the next chapter when it comes out. Adhering to this principle is probably why I have such a reputation for cliffhangers, although truth be told I don’t use nearly as many actual cliffhangers as people say, I just try to end by opening a question. By that I mean, the audience should always end a chapter asking a question, which can be something that will span dozens of chapters (“How can Colonel Mustard’s fignerprints be on the candlestick? Is he being framed? Does this mean that the candlestick was in the library and isn’t even the murder weapon?”) or span a single paragraph (“How will the narrator react to learning that Colonel Mustard lied about never touchign the candlestick?”) This could be the emotional height of a scene, or the point at which new information recontextualises everything. It could be the moment where the stakes are raised or an important assumption turns out to be false. Anything that makes the audience eager to learn what happens next will do.
There should always be at least one open question in your story, more if it’s thematically appropriate. You know how mmorpgs and crafting games and suchlike keep you playing for hours and hours by making sure you’re always near the end of an activity – keep playing til you reach the next level, oh but now we’re nearly at the end of this quest so we should complete that, oh but now we’re just 20 gold short of being able to buy that cool new armour so we should just… same trick. Readers should always have at least one ‘quest’, an open question that they’re following, and should always be close to an answer.
You don’t have to dramatically introduce an entirely new question each time; you can end a chapter by reminding the reader of an existing open question. I tend to be a fan of the Big Dramatic Reveal On The Last Line method (cliffhanger reputation), but you don’t have to do it that way. Indeed, it’s a good idea not to do it that way every single time, lest you get stuck in a rut; every chapter ending doesn’t have to be incredibly tense and snappy. Somebody mentioning that they wish they knew how they could get enough food to make it through the winter before a full paragraph of cuddling and falling asleep in their mother’s arms works just as well.
5. It will help if your story is good, but it isn’t required.
You don’t have to be very good at writing to do this.
It helps to be good at writing, of course, and I assume that since you’re asking me for tips, you’re the sort of person who wants to be as good at writing as you can. But there is some true hack garbage out there doing absolute numbers in the web serial circuit. I try not to harp on about this too much because Curse Words fans get really upset at me when I do, but I think most of us can agree that Curse Words kind of sucks. And that just sucks in an ‘author is still learning how to do this’ kind of way; there’s much worse writing, real bullshit Ready Player One-level writing, trucking along out there brilliantly.
The point I’m trying to make here is that this isn’t an industry where there’s any value in hesitating and wringing your hands and asking yourself if you’re a good enough writer to do it yet. You are. You can just start writing a web serial right now and so long as you consistently update, you’re probably already above average for the market. And your first one probably will suck (mine did), but it’ll teach you how to make a better one. I think that Time to Orbit: Unknown is passably okay, and it absolutely would not be passably okay if I hadn’t written Curse Words first. Just go for it. Try to write a quality story if you can, but if you can’t, it’s honestly not that big of a deal. What matters, truly matters, is that you are committed to improving your craft. And that means actually practicing your craft. Which means writing some chapters and setting up a release schedule.
Good luck.
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navel-gazey retrospective: man my pain is like truly almost entirely gone. i had allergy and effexor woes for like 2-3 years and then the last 2 years overlapped with the terrible mysterious joint disease+effexor tapering (AAH!!!! my back is only just starting to feel truly free!!!!!!) so its extremely welcome to only experience like a weird 1-2 pain scale achey hour or two a day at worst. it was so bad. i'm still not 100%, im still so tired all the time, but much, much better than i used to. things are looking up and im slowly getting back in the saddle. it's slower than i want, but it's at least trending upward.
sorry for being completely unhinged for several years. thank you for being patient with me if you could stomach it, because it is only in hindsight that i realize how caustic and vile it could be. i am pretty ashamed of my behavior during this time. knowing this can and will happen again if there's a pain flare/weird med issue is making me hyper-vigilant about my behavior to prevent this from just playing out over and over for the rest of my life, forever. im going to keep doing what im doing now, which i hope is unobtrusive and respectful. i was a miserable jerk and i am sorry i made it everyone else's problem.
sincerely, if it were not for several things i think i would have been completely fucked: medicaid, being able to do comics for a living, and adam. if not for the flexibility of the work i do, i would not be able to have taken all that time off to try to at least inch toward an understanding of what was going on with me and take long periods of time to recover from it. people were endlessly kind with me and the sporadic update schedule that crept up on me in the previous years and i appreciate it. my life was improved by your support directly and it continues to be improved by it. it helped a lot.
but i was only truly able to have that incredibly loose schedule because of adam, who worked his ass off not only at his job, but also by picking up my slack around the house (there was a point where moving dishes from the table to the kitchen became "impossible" ?? and i'd have to wait until morning to do it??), cooking dinner every night, helping with laundry, demonstrated endless patience and respect for me when i spent an extraordinary amount of time sitting on the couch staring at my phone, covered bills when i needed the months off, and really just stepped up and showed up when i know he's exhausted too. thanks adam love you...!
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What are , your Head Cannon , for Drakken and Shego and , Kim and Ron :
Got lots of headcanons so I give 3 random ones for each: Ron - In Pre-K, Ron received a very colorful and glittery friendship bracelt from Kim. He wore it all the time but eventually got bullied for it by other kids. One day Kim noticed that he didn't wear it and thought it was because of the bullies, she decided to not mention it. The real reason why Ron didn't wear it is because the braceltclip broke off, causing the beads to fall everywhere. He spent an entire afternoon trying to find back all of the beads and repair the bracelet, but with his parents being to busy, he placed the beads in a little bag and kept it in his treasurebox underneath his bed, where it still remains till this day. - Ron is smart but it highly depends on what the context is. If you ask him to solve an equation, he'll be having a hard time. But the moment you ask him the same equation but make it sound like it has to do with "figuring out how many coupons I need for Bueno Nacho" or so... he'll solve it within moments. - Ron takes care of his nails and hands, especially since he's into cooking. He doesn't want anything underneath his nails nor does he want food to stick to him while preparing stuff. Hygene is no 1 priority when it comes to preparing food; eating food, however, is a whole different story. Kim - After the Zombie Mayhem tournament, Kim secretely continues to play the video game. She doesn't want to admit it but it was more fun than she expected it to be. She secretely trains in order to surprise Ron with a match someday. - Kim and Ron decided to dress up as Miriam and Jonathan for Halloween Trick or Treating and later on Kim reused the costume for her presentation on Miriam in college. - Kim has become less worried about brands over the years, especially after realising how dumb it was after people wore her mission outfit for a few days, only to jump onto the next best thing. She still is into looking into the latest fashion but thrifts it and tries to make it her own. Together with Monique they started upcycling clothes. Monique has her own business now. Drakken - After Graduation part 2. Drakken started working on improving the quality of the world rather than trying to take it over: Being praised for being a beloved saviour has better gloating perks than being a failing villain that has to hop from lair to lair. Though he does miss the thrill of villainy every now and then. So he sometimes does petty crimes like shoplifting a screwdriver from Planettool or anonymously blaming a fellow scientist for causing a chemical fire that resulted in a three months shutdown..., ...some tax evasion. - Drakken's scar was a result of eyebrow trimming - Drakken has a distaste for okra and bellpeppers and will pick those out of a dish no matter who prepared it. Shego - After Graduation part 2. Shego got tasked to train some of Global Justice's newest agents. She enjoyed it and eventually became an independent hitwoman for a while. After that she just decided retiring early is nice (especially with the money Drakken was making for both of them with his new job). She now does whatever... pretty much what she's always been doing. But also meets up with Kim and rekindled their sisterly bond in stop team go. - Shego is a horrible cook and either relies on someone else cooking for her or having take out/going to a restaurant. However after retiring early, she decided to try and get into cooking... a bit... the kitchen burned down. - Shego hates to admit it but the Snowman Hank song became an earworm. She hummed it once and noticed Drakken smiling widely from the corner of her eye.. or was that just her imagination? She doesn't dare to ask...
Hope it all makes sense. Still recovering from a cold so my typing isn't the most coherend at the moment :')
EDIT: I WISH TUMBLR WOULD STOP SCREWING UP THE COLORS IN THIS POST
#ask#headcanons#kim possible#kimpossible#ronstoppable#ron stoppable#shego#dr drakken#drdrakken#drakken
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I'm sure they'll uphold that last promise.
#the owl house#philip wittebane#kid belos#toh#wittebros#wittebane brothers#belos#caleb wittebane#taking 2 months is still better taking a year#if you hate free time study engineering
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Fanfics in which Marcy and Sasha idealize Anne as this angelic being filled with kindness and light are so sweet but also so funny. It's always abt how they feel like they don't deserve her because of all the harm they caused her but also. Lmao you can tell they weren't around Wartwood in S1. Anne was such a little piece of shit back then.
#amphibia#my posts#sashannarcy#s1 Anne still ends up coming across as leagues better than sasha and marcy because her bad deeds were more of a#they were very casual and small potatoes. Anne's shitty behavior was more of a matter of quantity than quality#pressuring sprig to confess to ivy as a main attraction at her frog of the year party#shaming polly for not being girly enough#pretending to be sick to avoid work causing the plantars to get sick themselves#this is opposed to marcy committing only three big crimes. but those were BIG#1) kidnapping her friends 2) doubling down on it by striking a deal with Andrias. lying to them and manipulating them for months#and 3) never taking a side in sasha and anne's argument. which i think is a BIG thing and i wish we mentioned it more because#she's not brave enough to take anne's side she's not brave enough to question sasha and her struggle to maintain the status quo#is hurting everyone#and sasha... do i even have to elaborate 😭
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Wverytime I sit down at a computer to make music I get so scared
#i like siting down with a guitar and writing music but the daw is still so scary to me and i dont know how to make it less scary#its like i dont know where to start#i understand music theory i can write chord progressions i can write melodies but arranging feels so daunting#like just trying to pick keyboard voices and stuff im like overwhelmed and then its like i just dont even know where to start#i think i need to do more covers to practice arranging because trying to do it with my own songs im just like i have NO IDEA#i do think that trying to recreate arrangements of other songs I like will help me but also just idk#i really want to get better at writing at the piano but i find it really hard#rn i write almost all my songs on the guitar then i guess what i have to do is try to think of like what style i want it to have#and sort of try to create a map like probably literally on paper and then try to go in and sort of do it but god its so hard i dont know#it feels so so daunting#even trying to make silly little stuff with just like some synths is really hard for me right now its so out of my comfort zone and AUGH id#its frustrating im scared of the computer but i also very much do not want to be an acoustic singer songwriter but thats all i can do#because all i can do is play fucking guitar!!!! and its just so frustrating#technically im like with a midi controller i should be able to do whatever program drums write little synth lines etc i dont have to like#know how to play piano and yet whenever i try to do it i just get so overwhelmed and freaked out with how many possibilities there are#that i just . cannnnnt#AHGHHHHHHHHHHHH im so im in such a bad mood right ow#ive had such a horrible night honestly#i think i will just go engage in fixation for comfort and then go to bed sigh#i dont know what to do to improve at making music in the daw i guess ill just maybe try again this weekend to take another crack at it#god its just so frustrating that i only started writing songs 2 years ago and have only learned to use a daw in the last 3 months i WISH#that i was one of these teenagers who spent all my time writing silly songs and playing around with a midi controller but i just didnt#because i was scared!!!!!!!#playing the guitar and singing has always been like the only thing that felt safe cos i felt if i tried to actually write and arrange songs#by myself i would fail so now i just feel so frustrated because i dont feel like a real musician and i feel like im starting too late#AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH whatever sorry for using the tags of this post as my diary but#i am frustrated!!!!
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anybody remember the stephanie brown essay I was working on under a research grant fully last summer? yeah it’s not done yet it super needs to be done and I’ve been avoiding working on it for weeks. someone tell me to just do it already
#the problem is. actually there are several problems#1) I’ve been out of the Batman/dc comics phase for almost a year so I don’t care that much about the topic#2) I am fifteen pages in and have not touched it in months so I’ve completely lost my train of thought#3) I can’t just reread it because I hate first five pages or so and I know I need to change it but I was trying to finish before editing#so now my only solution is I need to open up a new doc and completely restructure the whole thing by splicing together the existing writing#so that I can figure out where the hell im going with this and make sure things fit together better#unfortunately that sounds fucking exhausting#but I told my mentor I would have an update for him by the end of the week and. well. it’s the end of the week#I have to present it in April. I have to write and submit an abstract in March#the school gave me $1500 for this stupid essay and if I don’t have anything to show for myself.#well. I don’t know they can’t take the money BACK but it’s not a good look#and also I would feel bad#I did the research!!! i interviewed comic writers even!!! I just haven’t finished WRITING IT DOWN#and I KNOOOOWW once I get started it’ll be fine once I’m going I’m going#but STARTING is hard because I feel like I have to finish it in one go which makes it so huge and daunting#I’m like. slamming my head into a wall. just write a couple sentences Jess something is better than nothing#just start it you don’t have to finish just START just MAKE the new DOC#I know!!!!! that is what my therapist would say!!!! Jess you’re trying to oneshot it bc of your dumb adhd brain!!!!#stop looking at it like that and making it scarier!!!#but even tho I know that logically I’m still like oh I should put away the dishes o should make bread#I should work on my six different art pieces I should do laundry i should play with the puppy I should go for a walk I sh
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i know my body is doing its best but christ alive.
#keeping it fun and funky fresh#personal#i need a chronic illness tag#i've been doing frankly a lot better in the past week+ bc we got an upstairs window ac#and we've been keeping the house air conditioned bc even tho it gets cool overnight it is incredibly humid all the time (70-90%)#and the ac units take the humidity out from indoors as well as keeping things a consistent cool temp for me#but today i painted so i aired out the house all day. and. it was a mistake.#i feel fucking miserable. i could not get comfortable At All All Day.#also like. i haven't talked about this but i've gained quite a bit of weight in the last 2 years & especially the last 6 months#(being completely sedentary d/t chronic fatigue will do that to ya)#and so a lot of my clothes fit weird and feel bad and i haven't replaced them yet bc i still don't rly know how to shop#for clothing for trans women. especially bc a lot of those clothes are thrift store finds that Happen(ed) to feel good on me#and today i happened to be wearing underwear that i didn't realize were among the no-longer-comfy and the waistband would not stop rolling#and then it'd get pinched between my stomach & my lower abdomen and chafe horribly especially w/ how sweaty & sticky i was#it was just awful. it was just awful. i finally turned the ac back on even tho it's only 70° outside#bc i couldn't stand being in the (currently) 80% humidity anymore#and grayson helped me take a sponge bath after i broke down crying#and now i feel a little better but i'm just. tired. i'm tired & all of this is getting worse & my doctor doesn't seem to give a shit#heat intolerance
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Ok, back to girlblogging eheh (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧
#wren text tag#like I said I got busy with my finals and I still have to take 2 exams in a week or so#and I know I could have been online in the time being#sadly I got ill and had to take antibiotics for the third time since the beginning of this year 😂 didn't feel like being silly#or drawing stuff in general sorry 🙏 mostly I tried to get better#there's no way I will have to postpone those finals#very funny how this month I wasn't online all the things happend#final chapter of StS: ND is out and oh boy#they announced a new Lady Oscar anime and * Oh Boy *#also a new Magic Knight Rayearth might drop in some time (oh boy but we will see)#oh yes I think Lore Olympus should finish soon bc I remember reading the announcement some time ago#and Roll20 got hacked again I'm 😐😐😐 can you please stop getting hacked I don't want my email full of spam again 😊💖#btw I haven't read the latest chapter of ND yet. I think I will wait until it gets published in italian (hopefully 🙏🙏🙏)#tho that doesn't mean that the second I logged in I saw 300 posts abt it 🤨 lol I cannot escape spoilers I guess#but IDK guys... I've seen some reviews and I had a “is this a jojo reference” kind of moment that I cannot explain#well I have the vague feeling of knowing how to explain it but also I will wait until I've actually * read * it#yeah now I will go to check my inbox byeeee 🏃♀️🏃♀️🏃♀️#I never get tagged in anything but for reasons I was? Obv when I was in my sickly victorian child era and I couldn't do anything for it#Wren arriving late to the party once again lmfao 😂
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IVE NEVER GOT THIS HOWE DIALOGUE. THROWING UPPPPPPPPPPPP
#GOD. THIS GAME. RENDON HOWE DIE HORRIBLY CHALLENGE (EASY)#tay plays dao#A FOOL HUSK OF A DAUGHTER LIKELY TO END HER DAYS UNDER A ROCK IN THE DEEP ROADS????????#'bryce couslands little spitfire all dressed up and still playing the man' has always been one of my favorite lines Ever. AND NOW THIS ???#BRO.......................................................................................#oc: elspeth#for her this is taking place like. a bit less than 2 months after the deep roads supertrauma i was talking abt yesterday lol#her being at her weakest psychologically and. dsfkjhjfsdfd#hearing THAT?????????? and being like ok. some points have been made#but also after the deep roads shes simultaneously stuck in this ''nothing is real and nothing matters'' mindse so it doesnt hurt as much#since shes already been telling herself all that for months anyway.#like yeah ok and what of it. i might be nothing but im abt to cut YOU into nothing and that will make me feel better <3#GJKGFJKFG#i also think its so funny going from the deep roads to howe's estate quest. like going frm the closest thing in lore to hell itself#to the mansion of some fucking scrawny prissy loser who hasnt picked up a sword in 20 years w guards who dont know shit abt shit#the whole party just. cutting thru them like a wave sjdksjk#ANYWAY NOT TO TIE EVERYTHING BACK TO THE DEEP ROADS BUT IT IS LITERALLY ALL ABT THE DEEP ROADS BTW <3 ALL OF IT <3
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what is going on w my brain
#huge tag rant coming but dw about it#basically. if anyone here has known me on the internet for long enough yous will have gathered that i badly struggle w motivation and#fulfilling goals that i set for myself even if it's for smth i enjoy eg languages#it happens so often but especially over summer where my brain just goes Nope#“i have all this free time to do the thing I've been planning for weeks and i've been so excited about planning but now we have the time i#will be numb and sad and scroll“#i also have huge problems focusing unless every factor is perfectly balanced and even then it's still 50/50#i do have a bad attention span from being chronically online but even if you put me in a blank room w my task i'd be distracted by thoughts#external deadlines are some of the only things that can kick me into gear and i've been fine at uni so far#but i'm scared i'll have another a levels situation where my mental health was so awful i missed every essay deadline for french for 2 years#sometimes by up to a month#the only reason i got away w it is because i had a breakdown in front of my teacher and he was like “yeah take care of yourself the essays#are not that deep just get them in first thing after half term ig“#like that was v kind of him but if i ever have a situation that bad again i will genuinely fail uni cus you can't get away w that#where was i going w this (<- is aware of the irony)#right yeah this week i've experienced the epic highs and lows#highs of really enjoying my downtime and putting active effort into my hobbies instead of my downtime being “scrolling but i don't hate it”#but lows of realising how much time i 'wasted' in my teen years feeling sad and scrolling when i could have been developing skills and#having fun#and yeah i'm having a high rn and genuinely enjoying life but it's making me realise that my default state of being is just 😐#like even when i'm at uni where my mental health is so much better than at home when it's just me home alone or in my room i'm just 😐#not really having fun just existing v passively mindlessly scrolling waiting for the day to be over so i can see my friends in the morning#like not every day has to be amazing but surely there's more to life than just 😐 in 99% of your downtime#like i've struggled for years on how to answer “what do you do in your free time” cus i had to search for answers#i read and go on walks. which is true. but they were always things i did as phone breaks during weekends and not something i actively did#because i liked them#and because of past mental health issues reading and sports based hobbies have become tainted for me#i'm working on it but yeah#huge tldr. i'm finally starting to accept that i probably have a combo of undiagnosed mental illness and neurodivergence#because if it's taken me this long to realise how much it truly impacts my enjoyment of life then surely that's smth
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what are the consequences of lying to a psychiatrist asking for a friend
#AKA what wld their reaction likely be if i told them i havent been taking my meds for the past month#and that ive felt better in that time than ive felt in the past 2 years#thats like. thats good right#thats a sign i *shldnt* be taking these meds right#like im not saying im anti-medication or smth#there are still things going on w me that i think meds cld help with#i just really truly believe i was put on the wrong ones at first#and rather than stop and go “okay maybe these ones arent working” we just started treating the side effects with OTHER meds#like#fuck#i KNEW they werent working from the moment i started taking them#and i TOLD my drs#but they were just like “give it more time” or “well lets add this one on and see how you feel”#im so curious now what this past year wldve been like if id never taken any meds#i genuinely think it wldve gone better#anyway. i think im just gonna be honest w him#im not a danger to myself or others rn#i dont think hed see it as a Red Flag or anything#im specifically trying to tell him how much *better* i feel off of them#god. wish me luck.
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semi infrequent positivity posting. i love how I look now, i like the purposeful and active decisions I have made to change my body and my appearance to be what i want them to be. testosterone did save me but it goes far beyond just that
#looking in the mirror and not being disgusted. everyone say thank u t!!#29 months tomorrow. i stopped doing monthly voice recordings after a year and a half or so but i might do one tomorrow jjst for fun#my voice has almost certainly stopped changing which is nice to be stable.#crazy fact. taking t for 2 and a half years makes u look like a cis man. why am i still pleasantly surprised by this#running. lifting weights. eating better. getting better haircuts and wearing different clothes#yea doing all that without t would have helped too but ykwim.
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Very excited for next summer. Got some tickets to go see Ghost. Gonna be looking forward to that, so it'll help me get through the incoming seasonal depression/work frustrations.
Only thing is not looking forward to potentially having to be the one to drive into the city. We'll see what happens, lots of time until then.
Just gonna focus on the excitement and anticipation. 😌
#personal#just talking about stuff im gonna go do next year#as long as nothing catastrophic happens with work i can attend the concert without even having to adjust anything with my schedule#though it's far out enough and not near any holidays so even if i did have to take a day off work very little could stop me from going now#i WILL go have a good time and do something for once#was gonna go to a nearby convention mid october but didn't quite have the funds/transport and work was hellish so ended up not going#which is sad because some of my friends from out west flew out to attend and i haven't seen any of them in person for years#and i suppose will continue to not see them in person because of how things worked out#but yeah now i can't get a car as soon because i did just spend a good chunk of money on tickets#i am not going alone and the other 2 have said they'll pay me back and ive told them not to rush it we've got a year and i have the tickets#ill just have to save a little better over the next month or so#ideally get a car before it gets too cold and starts snowing and stuff#doesn't have to be anything fancy just something i can drive around town in and not cost a fortune to repair#still gotta figure out putting together comission stuff so i can earn a little more that way#maybe get the funds together a little quicker#anyhow ill stop rambling in the notes now#if you read this far in uhhh you are a star i guess lol
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please forgive me, but I need to complain and over-share or my brain is going to explode please feel free to ignore
#I'm not doing well.#the last two places I worked (in a tourism-adjacent sector) closed. broadly speaking due to post-lockdown financial issues#for the past year at my current job I've been earning less than half what I used to. this was the only offer I got at the time and#I haven't found anything better since. this is not sustainable I'm barely making it each month...#I live with my parents and cancelled my health insurance I don't know how else to reduce my budget. it's depressing tbh#the solution is obviously to find a better job but that's just not happening and I'm beginning to feel discouraged.#I hate being negative it's a very unattractive character trait but I just feel myself slipping and spiraling#I know I should be taking short courses or volunteering to boost my cv but like when ! and how !#I can't afford to work less but I get home at 20h so even evening courses are tricky. I work every other saturday too so weekends are out#and like I do need to rest at some point you can't be depressed and burnt out that's a terrible combo#was looking at a dtp/typesetting short course and 1) I'll need a new computer that can actually run design programs#and 2) the course itself is like 2 month's salaries which I cannot realistically save right now#and yet I'm still ''over-qualified'' for entry level positions because I went to uni. well maybe that's just a polite excuse#because as interesting as my humanities degrees were they didn't equip me with any practical or marketable skills#besides being good at reading and writing. but AI can do that for free now so that's not helpful#I always thought I was reasonably intelligent but I cannot solve this puzzle. there must be a creative solution that I'm missing#but i feel so stuck and trapped#and at least once a week some poor soul stumbles in to the office practically begging for a job so I feel bad for complaining#a little truly is better than nothing#but thank god we elected more pro-business capitalists into government that really is going to be great for us workers (sarcasm)#also I should acknowledge#I am getting some déjà vu. I feel like I've vented about this topic before#the difference is. back then it was a potential concern. now the concern has materialised into reality and rendered the situation desperate
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