#thanks for reminding me this happened

[inkskinned]

sometimes we just need someone to pay enough attention.

for the longest time i had been trying to read The Lord of The Rings. everyone had sung the praises for it, over and over. i'd seen clips of the movie and it seemed like it could be fun, but actually reading it was fucking horrible.

my parents had the omnibus - all the books squished into one big tome - and in the 4th grade i started sort of an annual tradition: i would start trying to read TLR and get frustrated after about a month and put it back down. at first i figured i was just too young for it, and that it would eventually make sense.

but every time i came back to it, i would find myself having the exact same experience: it was confusing, weird, and dry as a fucking bone. i couldn't figure it out. how had everyone else on earth read this book and enjoyed it? how had they made movies out of this thing? it was, like, barely coherent. i would see it on "classics" list and on every fantasy/sci-fi list and everyone said i should read it; but i figured that it was like my opinion of great expectations - just because it's a classic doesn't mean i'm going to like experiencing it.

at 20, i began the process of forcing myself through it. if i had to treat the experience like a self-inflicted textbook, i would - but i was going to read it.

my mom came across me taking notes at our kitchen table. i was on the last few pages of the first book in the omnibus, and i was dreading moving on to the next. she smiled down at me. only you would take notes on creative writing. then she sat down and her brow wrinkled. wait. why are you taking notes on this?

i said the thing i always said - it's boring, and i forget what's happening in it because it's so weird, and dense. and strange.

she nodded a little, and started to stand up. and then sat back down and said - wait, will you show me the book?

i was happy to hand it over, annoyed with the fact i'd barely made a dent in the monster of a thing. she pulled it to herself, pushing her glasses up so she could read the tiny writing. for a moment, she was silent, and then she let out a cackle. she wouldn't stop laughing. oh my god. i cannot wait to tell your father.

i was immediately defensive. okay, maybe i'm stupid but i've been trying to read this since the 4th grade and -

she shook her head. raquel, this is the Silmarillion. you've been reading the Silmarillion, not the lord of the rings.

anyway, it turns out that the hobbit and lord of the rings series are all super good and i understand why they're recommended reading. but good lord (of the rings), i wish somebody had just asked - wait. this kind of thing is right up your alley. you love fantasy. it sounds like something might be wrong. why do you think it's so boring?

[hinamie]

playing around w slightly different hair renders

[doctorsiren]

I loved your headcannons about inukawa, reigen and reigens sister and I would really like to see what you think would happen if mob and reigens sister met and I was wondering if you could possibly draw them :D

hello yes I accidentally made a comic after seeing this ask yesterday 😁 bro psychoanalyzed her 😨

[royalarchivist]

Pac: Oh man, what is this, what is this, what is this man? Where can I buy this? [Slaps his desk] I'll buy two.

Pac: [Laughs] It's very good man, very good. "I love you, Fítche!" [Laughs] You're going to think the worst, this is the worst phrasing you could think of. Like, I mean– a guy might say 'I love being fit, I love go to the gym,' but it was a certain way… I don't know, in English it seems wrong, right? "I love you, Fίtche" I don't know if that makes sense, right? Because it would have to be "I love fitness," right? There should be the 'ness' there at the end, right? Or am I crazy? My understanding of English there should have been an 'ness' at the end, right?

[rosesradio]

ok, so we all know Leo is very affectionate when he finally settles down and realizes you're not leaving. so could you pretty please with a cherry on top, do Leo with a very affectionate partner? like always holding his hand and slipping in kisses and 'i love you's at every possible chance and like- how he'd react? you don't have to if you don't want

Leo is touch starved. Like, really touch starved.

He wants to be affectionate with his friends, and they probably want the same thing, though they’re all really repressed. So, they bottle things up, and beyond the occasional pat on the back, Leo has nothing.

He’s so touch starved that, by the time he starts going out with you, he has no idea how to react to your affection.

You always move close to him, wrapping your arms around him from behind while he works on plans for projects. You kiss his cheek, nuzzling into the crook of his neck as if it were crafted just for you.

And Leo loves it. He loves you.

But he also can’t deny the feelings that come with the good. How his head spins, leaving him dazed. How overwhelming it is to go from nothing to everything so quickly. It’s a feeling like he hasn’t eaten in so long, now the thought of a whole meal makes him nauseous.

So, he talks to you. He’s hesitant, worried you’ll laugh or dismiss him, though you don’t. You listen, and as much as you love showing him affection, you agree to slow things down.

You do little things, asking beforehand, reassuring him that there’s nothing wrong with his shyness. You still talk and joke around like friends—because that’s what the building blocks in this relationship were, and that’s what they always will be.

Slowly, you find he breaks out of his shell easier when he takes the reins. You watch a movie in the Bunker, sitting on the worn couch. You compliment the quality from his homemade projector (it really is better than the movie theater). You glance over at him, more interested in seeing his cute smile than you are the movie.

15 minutes in, his hand rests on top of yours.

25 minutes in, he links his arm in yours, resting his head on your shoulder. Every touch from him ignites sparks across your skin, making you smile like an idiot. You just squeeze his thigh affectionately, letting him know that everything is okay.

45 minutes into the movie, he’s laying between your legs with his arms around your waist, using your chest as a pillow. He’s still watching the movie, of course; the pair of you use the movie as a crutch for all of this. You run your fingers through his messy curls, and he sighs with such a fulfilled peace.

Soon enough, you’re in a swift competition for who can be more affectionate. You sit with your leg against his at breakfast, holding on to one of his arms as you talk about your plans for the day. Leo ends up tapping I love you in morse code on his desk so many times, he loses focus on his projects; somehow, pulling you into his lap and resting his head on your shoulder makes him regain focus like magic.

Chiron considers a few new rules against Camper PDA, though seeing what the two of you have been through as heroes, he decides against it. For now.

[razzafrazzle]

wanted to draw my human homestar design in the hot homestar costume... causing sexuality crises since 2005

[image description: a drawing of a human design of homestar from homestar runner, where he is depicted as a fit dark-skinned man with medium-length curly brown hair, freckles, and chin stubble. he is wearing the same outfit as the picture on the right, which is of a woman in a feminine homestar costume, which consists of a red crop top with a star on it, a red miniskirt, white stockings, and white high heels with blue bottoms. above the picture is a sketch of homestar saying "you good?" to a flustered strong bad. end id]

[tojiscrack]

to my all little liars!! (edit: wtf happened to my english? 😭)

we’re at 24.6k words rn 😟 if you plan on reading it next week, i recommend you read it on the weekends when there’s no school or work for you waiting in the morning 😀

calling in the troops rn ‘cause there’s still one final scene i have to write and it’s gonna be LONG (this isn’t including the bonus scene btw) but it’s extremely important for the story to continue, and without it, the rest of the story literally cannot go on 😭

we’re locking in guys. it’s 100% gonna border 30k words for sureee. sm has happened in that ONE chapter and i literally cannot wait to release it for all of you, you have no ideaaa

gonna go to bed and then wake up, study, break, write for the fic, repeat. had to randomly drop an update here cuz i’ve been edging you guys for so long i’m sorryyy, but it really is nearly here <333

edit: fck it guys i’m writing it rn (the immediate comments got me motivated)

[blitzwhore]

It's always fun experiencing severe mental illness symptoms because of fiction, eh?

[mitskiluvr]

seeing shuake art so tragic i have to turn off my phone and open p5r

[manzanamarim]

I love both my sweet kind hearted son and my evil fucked up son equally, actually

Bonus memes that came to me in a dream:

[xxplastic-cubexx]

I LOVE your art first of all gahh!!

And i love the way you draw Charles like, did you just make this bald old man incredibly attractive????

thank you so much !! with that i always say I Draw What I See ... charles xavier already attractive nuff said tyvm i didnt do anythin extra.....

[letthestorieslive]

[brown-little-robin]

it went fine yesterday btw :}

[astralleywright]

another week.

[always-a-joyful-note]

Based off ch. 19

[mrcowboydeanwinchester]

🌸 Sapphicnatural Statistics Spreadsheet 🌸

link for the spreadsheet here!

hello hello! in may 2024 i completed a university essay studying the subversive shipping conventions of sapphicnatural fanfic in the Sapphicnatural Collection over on AO3, with the thesis that sapphicnatural ships are often rarepairs with little-to-no grounds in canon (e.g: a guest character/one-off character who have never met on screen), conversely to standard fanfic practice. as part of this, i gathered some statistics about the fics in the collection, got slightly carried away with the scope, and made a giant spreadsheet with 6 sheets of various data. with the project over, i thought it would be nice to share it with tumblr in case anyone else finds it helpful or just interesting!! i'm likely going to post the essay that i wrote alongside this in the next few weeks, so give me a shout too if that's something you'd like to see

to pique your interest, the spreadsheet includes:

Notes on methodology and the vocabulary used

Statistics on the popularity of each sapphicnatural ship in the collection and the frequency of characters featured

Analysis on some significiant ship factors: whether the characters have met in canon and how frequently characters re-occured in the show

'Ship potency', a new framework i'm workshopping to quantify how 'viable/strong' a ship is, specifically when measuring the makeup of femslash ships against mlm ships

i've written up some of the key points i found and some extra analysis about them under the cut, so read more if you're interested! <3

Contextual note: there are 129 fanfics in the Sapphicnatural collection.

Top 5 most popular Sapphicnatural ships:

donna/jody (10 fics)

anna/mary (7 fics)

jo/cassie (6 fics)

anna/ruby (5 fics)

kaia/claire (4 fics)

21 unique ships have 3 fics per ship. 24 unique ships have 2 fics per ship, and 52 unique ships have 1 fic per ship. So, only a quarter (25.3% of ships) have more than 3 fics written about them.

Rarepairs (and thus multishipping) are much more frequent in Sapphicnatural fanfiction than across most fandom fanfic collections which often centre around a specific ship

Have the characters met in canon?

Only 34.2% of ships involve two or more characters who have met on-screen in the show, with 59.6% of ships featuring two or more characters who have never met

4 out of the 5 top ships are between characters who met in the show's canon

BUT the most common dynamic is between two characters who could potentially meet in canon (are alive through the same seasons/at the same location (hell/heaven) at the same time) but who never meet in the show

This idea of 'canon potential' is the most exciting space for a lot of sapphicnatural writers, where finding gaps in the existing narrative and placing two similar women together to explore what their relationship could look often seems to be more inviting than those established on-screen

What is the spread of side/guest/one-off characters in ships?

A third (32.9%) of ships are made-up side/guest character

None of the characters featured are main characters (as none of the women spn characters can be realistically classed as 'main characters' lolol)

17 ships feature at least one one-off character, with 3 being one-off/one-off

Sapphicnatural fanfiction has a unique appreciation for reinforcing attention to minor characters, often as part of a feminist agenda to restore their agency

How frequently are individual characters featured?

Jo Harvelle is the most popular character in the sapphicnatural collection, involved in 15 unique ships across 34 fics. So, over a quarter (26.4%) of the fanfics in the collection feature Jo

Author's note: honestly this could be my individual impact on the collection as a jogirl oops

Mary Winchester is involved in 14 unique ships across 25 ships, so both Jo and Mary are significantly multi-shipped. Mary features twice across the top 5 ships

Sapphicnatural writers often write in service of a particular character rather than a ship - ie. exploring Jo's sapphic identity is more important than who her relationship is with

Charlie, Anna, Ruby, Claire, and Bela are the other characters involved in more than 10 fics each across the collection

Ship potency:

I explain this concept more on the sheet itself, but I essentially assign numerical values to whether a ship is (possible in) canon or not, how frequently characters re-occur in the show, and how popular a ship is respective to the fandom (as sapphicnatural is small, donna/jody is popular with 10 fics, for example)

This is to gain a measure of how 'strong' a ship is, assuming that a standard mlm ship will rank highly in most of these criteria (control variable of destiel ranks 29.5/30, whereas the average potency sum for a sapphicnatural ship is 11.8)

Across the top 5 ships, the average potency sum is 20.9

4/5 of the most popular sapphicnatural ships are in the top 5 for ship potency, with donna/jody, anna/mary, kaia/claire and anna/ruby having strong canon foundations and so high potency ratings.

jo/cassie is irregular as the third most popular ship because they only rank 14th for ship potency, as the pairing have not met on-screen in canon, and features a one-off character

Ships with higher potency sums do tend to be slightly more popular, but there isn't a clear pattern among any of the ships. I'd like to do some more work with this to fine-tune the system

Wordcount, kudos, and hits:

Average wordcount of a fic is 3,511 words. This fits with my other working theory (links to my post about my history essay on women's fiction through the feminist waves) that sapphicnatural writers utilise short stories and one-shots to most succesfully explore sapphic identities

Average kudos is 48, with a median of 13

Average hits is 353, with a median of 122

So: sapphicnatural fanfics receive a fairly low level of interaction, especially when compared to the mlm ships in the Supernatural fandom (destiel, etc). This is in-line with most fandoms and femslash as a whole - a small, dedicated community are reading and writing sapphicnatural

I didn't explore much here, but it would be interesting to go into further depth anout how many fics in the collection are written by different authors, etc

and that's it from me! if you've made it down here, you're an absolute gem and thank you for sticking with me! hope you foundd it as interesting to read through as i did to write up - and that you give the spreadsheet a nosey too if you fancy <3