#there is a method to my madness i promise

[corbenic]

Hii, I saw your comment on cambridge-madness post about the royals storyline and I have a royal too, for the last 8 years or so, and for the first time since 2018 I’m doing major changes (for reference, I don’t have a “real” country, I made up one because I wanted to use the relation to other royal families).

With that, I started reading you posts and they are amazing, I’m at the Swedish abdication right now, but I have some questions!!

1- I have the same question as anon, on how do you organize the storyline, do you use a different way to document everything? because your story it very detailed with two monarchies (France and Sweden)…

I use google docs and google sheets (I make up some random templates to try to make sense of the all the information on the country and monarchy, but at times it gets messy). I tried to use notion but didn’t adapt well to it…

2- In regards to the royal family tree, what yours do like, I know that you use the Bonapartes as a way to explain the continuation of the monarchy, how many monarchs you have since?

And what software do you use to make the family tree (assuming you make a family tree… I used to use paint, very time consuming, now I use Libre Office (there’s a YouTube that makes royal family trees and I love it he did a tutorial on how he uses it, the page is UsefulCharts)…

3- another question (for now 🤓) You use any of the real royal families, as I notices that you have French, Swedish and Italian royals in your story

Well, thank you!! It’s nice to find someone who have royals too 😆😊

I'm glad you're enjoying the story! Thank you for reading

1 - All of the most important bits are stuck in my brain. Evie and Julien have been with me since I was sixteen. Their story has changed a lot (Julien spent several years as the heir to the fictional country of Mufrana rather than France, for example) but the key components have always stayed the same: they're in love, his family is messy, and they are going to find a way to be happy together.

Other key bits I know: how many children they're going to have, how Julien comes to the throne, what Fiona's happily ever after will look like.

Having said that... I also use a TON of other resources to keep it all straight. I have a notebook with a bunch of research on the Bonapartes and other royal families. I also have a Discord server where I dump a bunch of information. I have an enormous Scrivener file with over 100,000 words of earlier versions of this story, too! I comb through that occasionally for good lines, scenes I can adapt, or information I forgot.

I plan the site on a month-by-month basis. I comb through the real events I've compiled, decide which ones Evie and/or Julien should attend, and plot out their schedule. It's also helpful at this point to remind myself of plot points I need to continue! The list of scene ideas lives in my everyday bullet journal along with my to-do lists.

2 - I once built the Bonaparte family tree in PowerPoint, which was a nightmare. Do not recommend. The most complete version lives in (you guessed it) a story-specific notebook. I really should create a nice version for the website, though.

I can write out the family tree here, but it would overwhelm this already long response, so it'll have to be a separate post!

3 - Since Princess Imperial is alternate history, I decided to make up all the royals. It's easiest that way.

Is it a bit weird for Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg, Monaco, UK, etc. to have different royals than the ones we know and love? Yes. But hopefully the completely fictional royal houses make it less jarring when the Egyptian, Iranian, Italian, and Russian royals appear!

[cozylittleartblog]

small PSA: if you shop at craft shows or artist alleys, please bring more than apple pay or a virtual card - especially if you're not comfortable entering your card number manually. not all of us have fancy card readers, so please also bring your physical card or cash, even if it's only as backup 👍

[auphelia]

I cannot stop thinking about Dottore negotiating with Nahida and the way his voice and demeanor shifts after she gives her verdict on his way of seeking knowledge

[qvietspvce]

no one yell at me for posting still. i'm trying to fix my sleep schedule by staying up for another idk 14 hours or something

[licks-many-trees]

Hi I promise to post my zombies headcanons and musings soon since people followed me for that, I'm just having trouble figuring out how to make "Marlton secretly invented the Thundergun" not sound like the most tinfoil hat epileptic trees headcanon ever

[theglareyousee]

a promise

Enid reached out, so slowly, as if she expected her to move away. Were it anyone else, Wednesday would have moved. She would have already grabbed the supplies left behind by those she slaughtered and sprinted out into the next chamber.

But this was Enid.

Enid was the one who came and assisted her in destroying the monsters, despite the many mortals on the surface no doubt waiting for a visit from Death. It was Enid, with her bright blue eyes and the ability to pin Wednesday in place with merely a look and a smile. It was Enid who Wednesday would gladly give herself over to in her last breaths if only to gaze upon her face as the world faded out. 

So Wednesday stayed and waited. 

Death's hand closed around the back of her neck, like a brand of hot iron, and pulled her in enough to press their foreheads together. Her heart stuttered in her chest, her neck burned where Enid’s palm met the smooth, unmarred skin, and she watched as Enid’s eyes slammed closed, before she followed suite.

"Come back to me," Enid whispered. "Do what you set out to do but come back. Okay?"

Wednesday nodded. "I swear to you, mi luz, I will return. By the Styx or your arms—" Wednesday hooked two fingers around Enid's choker and pulled her closer, close enough for their lips to brush with every word. "—I promise I will always return to you."

----

check out my other Hades AU post ^-^

feel free to send asks! i'll happily answer them

i crave validation

hope you enjoyed!!

[lordkingsmith]

I think what I love most writing the luke/Hector fics is that both of them and the two sequels planned for hollyhock…the fics do have a theme song. But I found that for each chapter I have to find the correct cover of each theme song.

Hollyhock’s is “don’t fear the reaper”

Chapter one’s version

Chapter two’s

Chapter three’s

Chapter four’s

Chapter five’s

Chapter six’s

And while I haven’t yet even got close…chapter seven, where the final confrontation with the knight happens.

Yes there’s three chapters after seven but I haven’t decided yet lol

While the other one, opposite of fate or destiny is sheer coincidence, has everything I wanted by Billie Eilish as the theme.

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Each chapter does have its own playlist for motivation when I’m working on it, but each playlist has its own version of the fic’s song. And the “couple song” I have for Hector and Luke. No covers, it’s just a banger I put in anything and everything ( @augment-techs it’s also on Daniel/Trek, Kim/Trini, and Stan/Matt playlists)

Fun fact, the sequel to Hollyhock’s theme’s already been picked, and so has the couple songs for Hector and Mara Jade, and Luke and Mara Jade respectively.

I love this little “oh I can give a fic a theme song!” Realization because it lets me tack on a song I can’t get out of my head, makes the story fun for me because even if I don’t tell someone I know it’s got a theme song, and it makes a fun little inside joke for me.

I just want to tell people for these specifically because oh boy I love these songs way too much

[rozugold]

WHY ARE YOU PUTTING IT IN THE MICROWAVE??? WHY IS THE TOASTER OVEN NOT ENOUGH?

SKSHHDH i gotta microwave it first so it’s hot all the way through before I put it in the toaster to crisp it up a bit!!! Otherwise it’ll get too crispy on top and still be cold in the middle…

[bookwyrminspiration]

omg quils sharing fic lines?? here <3

“Why? Why are you doing this?” 

“You had a nightmare.” 

[Name], impatient, waved away the explanation. “But why do you care?”

want a wip line? send me an emoticon!

[shdwtouch]

kaey just like. this is my... little sister. and gesturing to shade. shade just like ; w ; you mean it ????

I make him sound so much more tired and grumpy than he is in his assassin era but yeah. kaey just. this is a person in my care. I would kill and die for her. shade just dying internally because someone cares about her. she is overwhelmed by this knowledge. kaey just. yeah please don't die.

[allylikethecat]

i had to do an errand that required me to drive into the rural part of my city and i saw horses in a field and immediately started thinking about atkh… i’m suffering from the worst brainrot..(in the best way possible ;))

anyway talk shop tuesday!!

when you dont ask us which fic we want in a poll, how do you decide which fic you post?? i assume some fics are just farther along in your notes but do you update multiple fics at once or do you choose ahead of time which one you��re gonna post and then just focus on writing for that one??

-🥤

Hello My Dear Smoothie Anon!!

If it makes you feel any better, I am twenty eight years old, I own a horse, I typically see him 5-6 days a week, most of my friends also own horses, some who have them in their back yards, and I also live in a very "horsie" area so I see them literally all the time I spent SO MUCH TIME with horses its ridiculous. HOWEVER without fail, I do excitedly announce / shout HORSIE whenever I'm driving and see one out in the world, which is always extremely jarring to whoever is with me when they aren't expecting it lol So like, I get it 😂 I hope you enjoy Friday's update! I know I am excited about it!

Happy Talk Shop Tuesday! Now onto your question now that I got my horse fan-girling out of the way lol

It's kind of a mix, I usually try to work on each fic a little bit here and there (that way I don't get burnt out on any of them) but obviously sometimes I pull further ahead in one. When I don't do a poll it's usually because I've realized I haven't updated one in a while, and I have an update either ready or almost ready. For example, before today the most recent update to Ducklings had been March 26th so I was like shit- I should probably update that one it's been a month lol Now that today's Ducklings chapter has been posted, I'm pretty much in the same spot with all the fics in the poll (other than All the King's Horses that one is actually nearly completed, I however have two different possible endings mapped out for that one and I need to decide which one to follow - and I'm planning on using the feedback on the next few chapters to make that decision so it's extra important for y'all to tell me what you think lol!) SO I figured I would open it up and see which one y'all were interested in next because as much as I love writing and do it for myself, it is fun when people read it and enjoy it, and I do like to take that into consideration. If I hadn't done a poll, it would have been the next chapter of The Birthday fic purely because that one was updated the longest ago now (other than You Know Where the City Is but that one is currently hurting me so an update will be slower lol) I hope this makes sense!!

Thank you so much for being so wonderful and sending this ask and reading and being so supportive! I always get a smile when I see that Smoothie Anon has appeared in my inbox! Thank you so much! I hope your Tuesday was lovely and that you have a wonderful week!

❤️Ally

[the-creepy-guy-around-the-corner]

High school teacher but these are how I detect AI writing/ prevent it: One: Make a prompt that requires in class knowledge. Something along the lines of: "Explain how authors demonstrate character development using three examples from the short stories we read in class this week." Now- could the kids just look up what those stories were and edit the prompt? Yes. But it still weeds out a few. Two: Just like on a math test I make the kids show me their work. I break my essays up into paragraphs (I teach ninth grade so many of my students are learning how paragraphs are structured anyways so its good practice) I try not to teach cookie cutter five paragraph essays, but we will discuss in general and start off by writing our intro paragraphs together and even that process often gets broken down sentence by sentence. I wont grade essays until I see and grade the paragraph assignments, and its a big tip off to me that they had AI write the final essay if I cant find any correlation of their ideas from their brainistorming/chunked assignments to their final essays. Again, kids could get around this, but by this point ive weeded out most AI. What's more common is kids just copynig and pasting from these assignments onto their final essays and ignoring the editing phase lol. Three: Trojan horses. Hide a trojan horse in the prompt, search for it in the essay, pretty big give away. Just make sure the trojan horse is something not likely to show up organically in an essay. I usually use words like "banana" or unrelated nouns. This is the most common way I catch AI essays tbh. Four: Integrate AI into the lesson. One thing me and my kids did was use AI to write topic sentences, then we would rank, compare them to topic sentences from articles weve read and so on. For grammar once I had kids correct AI body paragraphs they generated and grade the AI on its use of syntax. It demystifies them, shows that often even if they do use AI and I dont catch it they probably arent going to be getting a great grade since more often then not we find these AI generated pieces to be mid at best. Five: Draftback. It's a google docs extension that lets me view a document being written in real time. Honestly this is the most full proof way, and its funny to watch kids make the typos then go back and erase them. I also catch a lot of plagiarism this way since I can see kids copying and pasting sentences then editing them to try and hide it. Six: I'll be honest, AI writing tends to just be kind of obvious. Most kids that I've caught with AI didn't even bother to change the font size/style so that tends to be a give away. And AI likes to write a lot of nonsense that means nothing and gets very repetitive. Sure a kid could hide this by reading the paper it produced and making corrections before sending it through the AI again, but at that point they are being critical enough of writing that I don't really care and most AI cheaters are frankly not that motivated. Seven: Just talk to the damn kid about their essay. If they can explain their thoughts, ideas, quotes, and so on then yeah they probably wrote it themselves. If a kid can get through al that and STILL I don't catch it, fuck it you get the grade you get. Congrats you made cheating harder than just writing the actual essay itself I hope you enjoyed it. So yes, teachers CAN catch AI, but using AI detectors isn't the way to go. And a good teacher uses these more comprehensive methods not just to catch AI, but it also safeguards kids from being falsely accused. For example I have english language learners that often use googel translate for help, or will copy and paste things that might trigger things like Draftback for example, but then if I can go back and be like "Oh I see they did the worksheets, hmm theres no trojan horses in here, and if I look at their brainstorming I can see their ideas developing from there to this final essay" then it also protects the student from being falsely accused and facing consequence's they dont deserve. Finally, for us teachers, it's important to accept we wont catch them all. You can lead a horse to water but they dont have to drink. We can give all the kids the tools to learn but if they still refuse then that's their choice. It is our duty to try, it is our duty to provide them all the accommodations and opportunities we can, but you cant control every factor of your classroom. And up until recently we actually had virtually no way to know if a kid was just cheating or copying. As my mother used to say: "Back in the 70s if I had an essay about Abe Lincoln I'd just go to the library, find a biography, and copy whole paragraphs. How as the teacher ever going to know they couldn't check against every book in the library." The era of us being 1000% a student wrote their work was an anomaly not the norm. Do I go through these factors every time? No. Usually you can get a pretty good idea when its time to start digging (like for example a kid who refused to do all the pre work for an essay suddenly turns in a ten page paper using the word acquiescence correctly in a sentence. Or if when I'm looking at an essay and draftback says that during the writing process the keyboard only was used for 170 keystrokes on a 1000 word essay. It's important we look for AI cheating in our students work, because AI writing (while its means are unethical thanks to scraping from works with out authors permission) is a tool. It's not going away anytime soon, and if were going to accuse kids of using it we need to have robust methods of detecting it that are HUMAN. Simply using an AI tool (which is what AI checkers are) to detect AI writing is hyprocasy. The most accurate AI checker is old fashioned human investigation.

I hate so much that professors who still can't figure out how to send messages on Zoom think they're capable of spotting AI writing. Professors are just feeding essays into AI detectors with massive fail rates with absolutely zero critical thought about the tools they're using. I moved across state lines. I've spent years of my life trying to get this degree. But at any moment I could be expelled because I got a false positive from a detector that tells you ChatGPT wrote Anna Karenina.

[thebubblesareevil]

UNO Reverse

So we all know Danny is batbait right?? But what if after vlad the fentons have developed a method to combat billionaires trying to adopt Danny.

So the fentons are in Gotham for some reason or another and they refuse the let Danny’s grades slip so they have him at Gotham prep.

Everyone knows Danny’s parents are mad scientists but Tim is really concerned about his new classmate that keeps coming in with new bruises everyday that he barely tries to hide.

He brings it up to Bruce after doing some investigations and Bruce decides to look into it.

Next thing Danny knows he keeps running into different members of the Wayne cult and the batfamily. It takes him longer than he’s care to admit to figure out they were the same people but in his defense he was exhausted from school, helping his parents with their clean energy project and training with fright knight.

That’s also his excuse for why it took him so long to realize they were trying to assimilate him. Once he does realize he starts going out of his way to avoid them, trying his best to keep his parents from finding out but he realizes it’s too late when his mom gleefully hands him a card one night and sends him on his way.

The next time danny encounters Batman he completely ignores his gentle encouragement and promises to protect him as he pulls out the card and throws it at batman.

Danny sighs and says “I’m sorry it’s come to this, but I need you to know you’ve brought this upon yourselves.” He turns and leaves behind a confused bat holding an UNO reverse card.

The next day Wayne manor is invaded by Jack Fenton carrying a stuggleing vlad over his shoulder and a giant tray of fudge in his other hand while Maddie gleefully hugs alfred proclaiming how happy she is to see her family getting bigger while Jazz is dragging Danny in behind her by his ankle while reading a book. Danny is snoring.

The Wayne’s are confused.

When Vlad finally breaks free he gives Bruce a pitiful look and asks if he also tried to adopt Daniel.

Jack then yells UNO REVERSE!! Instead of adopting Danny we have adopted you!!!!

This just popped in my brain so I thought I’d share

[sohelish]

'Are stock models real people?'

'Do they even exist?' And, most importantly, has anyone met one...

[thisisnotkitty]

slowly but surely piecing together a timeline for tbhk bc the time travel stuff makes things wonky but i want to prove that the past, future, and present are kinda sorta happening simultaneously and also i have like,, 7 theories that are neither coherent nor complete but still

[burketm]

( sometimes i internally ask myself why i chose charlie rowe as a fc for grayson aka elijah's oldest brother cuz he & finn wolfhard look almost nothing alike lol. but it's scary since iirc they both share physical traits with the person i chose as a fc for their father aksjfhsdjf )