#this is a lot of reflection

[diodykus]

i want to grab someone by their legs and pull them onto my strap… continue until i’m settled no matter the amount of times they cum—no matter if they are overstimulated. i want to continue until they are in tears, till they look up at me with a little bit of fear in their eyes as they realize they’re in for a long night

[iaminsideyourwalls]

WHAT YEAR IS IT. SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YEAR IT IS. IS IT A YEAR WHERE FAT IS A BAD WORD OR IS IT 2023??? YOU COWARDS BETTER START PUTTING SOME RESPECT ON THIS FAT GUY'S NAME OR I'M GONNA START BLOCKING. I WISH I WAS JOKING.

[lucabyte]

sometimes everything just sucks real real real bad

[deathricedrawn]

i'm ready to try

[writeitinsharpie]

i have a thought about pjo that i can't quite articulate but it goes along the lines of:

athena gave annabeth as a gift to frederick because she liked his search for knowledge. in athena's eyes, any action of annabeth's reflects herself, which is why annabeth 'embarrassing' her had such strong consequences

poseidon fell in love with impertinent, stubborn sally jackson. percy wasn't a gift to her - he is a cumulation of all of her stubborn, steadfast love.

why wouldn't poseidon still love and aid percy when all of percy's insolence is why he loved sally in the first place?

[sir20]

Valentré bridge, Cahors by sir20

[milk-lover]

Sobbing uncontrollably reading through a dissertation about the college experience of students with ADHD. It is like reading a report about my life that just says over and over "My experiences are real. My hardships are real. I am not lazy, I am not dumb. My struggles were not my fault, and they were not a moral failing. The failure was with the system, not with me."

Here's a line that got me in particular:

"Hotez et al.(2022) compared the health, academic, and non-academic capacities of a nationally representative sample of U.S. first-year college students with ADHD and without ADHD. Students with ADHD self-reported lower academic aspirations and more feelings of depression and overwhelm, ranking themselves lower in their general emotional health. The fact that students with ADHD scored in the highest 10th percentile for many non-academic traits, such as artistic ability, computer skills, creativity, public speaking, social confidence, self-understanding and understanding of others, compassion, and risk-tasking, suggests that this population has strengths that are frequently underappreciated in academia."

(the paper is a thesis called "Understanding the Collegiate Experience for Students With ADHD" by Gia Long, 2022)

[wrenderart]

A tribute to the transmasc body

[jonnywaistcoat]

Have you heard of the “dark academia aesthetic”? If so, do you like it and have you employed it into the ~vibes~ and ~themes~ of some of your work? Asking because I’ve seen many people interpret Magnus as belonging to that kind of vibe and wondering if that was your intended vision

It's hard to articulate why exactly this ask a amuses me so much. Essentially "dark academia" tends to be a slightly cartoonish fashioned-up vision of old British scholarly institutions, as interpreted by American kids who are just picking up on the vibe. As a Brit who's spent most of their life in London, Oxford, Manchester and the various libraries and museums therein, it's not an aesthetic or a vibe - it's just what I know. Also, from what I can tell one of the other main inspirations for "dark academia" is adaptations of Victorian and Edwardian spooky fiction (James, Blackwood, Dickens, etc.) which are exactly the sort of ghost stories I was reading as a kid and which inspires a lot of my work.

So, I guess my feeling is Magus wasnt aiming for a dark academia vibe - dark academia is aiming for a *Magnus* vibe. And it's not nailing it.

[nothorses]

I think the other thing about it is that sometimes what you get out of art says a lot more about you than it does the artist. and what you see in people says more about you than it does them.

the people who looked at Gaiman's work and saw beauty and love for humanity and a life worth living may have been looking at the mask of a monster, and they may have been seeing a bit of something real in an otherwise abusive person, but what they were definitely seeing was a reflection of something already inside themselves.

your relationship with art isn't just about the art, and it isn't just about the artist. it's about you. you are a lens the art shines through, and you are a part of the conversation the art is having, and you are reflecting and being reflected through and by the art, and you are echoing and interpreting pieces of yourself alongside pieces of the art.

it's not foolish to see good things in art made by shitty people. it's not foolish to see good in people who are lying. it's not foolish to trust, believe, hope, or love. I think you might just have hope, love, and joy in your heart, and you might just be finding it in all of those places because you carried it there with you in the first place.

[nightmarish-fallen-angel]

One of the best (/sarcastic) things about being friends with certain cis women is that they'll make these little comments like

"oh I just hate whenever someone's upset at me calling them girlypop or girl or babygirl lol!! Like I use that for everyone" and "I hate all men!! Kill all men haha!"

and I just have to place my bets on hmm, is this woman's friendship conditional on how feminine she considers me? And how long will it take after I start testosterone for her to drop me?

[rendevok]

Act II ~ The Challenge

A tapestry for chapter 2 of Let No One Sleep by @azalawa-scroggs on ao3

[sunderwight]

I love how the general consensus in Scum Villain ABO fics is that whatever Shen Jiu's secondary gender was, he was lying about it.

Omega? Obviously he's going to cover that up. Potential weakness! Probably related to past traumatic experiences! No one can know! He's going to pretend to be either a Beta or an Alpha instead.

Alpha? Hates it and everyone else and has no interest in playing the type. Hides it less because of how other people might respond and more because he's having some kind of complicated dysphoria about it.

Beta? I've never see it but I bet he'd disguise that as well. He's totally an Alpha, don't ask questions, fuck off and don't violate the mile-wide personal space bubble.

Whatever Shen Jiu is, we all know he'd be wildly uncomfortable with it.

[naminethewriter]

Some writing asks!

Can you talk about a work you're really proud of? What about it do you like? Was it a challenge to write?

How about a work you're not particularly proud of, but posted anyway? What about it do you not like? Are there parts you wish you could go back and change? Are you happy you went ahead and posted it even if you're not 100% happy with it?

Thank you for the questions, Kye 🥰

There are two fics I'm very proud of and it's both of my entries for the Sanders Sides Big Bang, Vacation and Hurt No One Knew About.

Vacation was my longest fic since I stopped writing in German. When I first started writing fanfiction (ironically because I was bored in Physics class 😅) I had a lot of fun with it. I immediately got comments on how good I was writing, I made online friends, I was motivated. But that quickly fell apart and from the three fics I stared writing in that first week (all Kingdom Hearts and multiple chapters), I only ended up finishing one and that took me three years with basically no readers anymore. Which was fine, at that point I just wanted to have one done.

That experience led to me taking a long pause from writing until I got into South Park and then I didn't feel up for another big project. I had ideas for some, and I still have those Wips and kinda hope I'll get back to them one day, but I didn't feel comfortable starting to publish a story I wasn't sure I would finish.

So taking on Vacation was a challenge. I had the idea a while before the event and saw it as a good opportunity to try it out, especially with a team that should keep my motivated (they didn't really, but that's a different subject). I had the basic idea, I needed to get over 6k and so I started writing. And the story ended up becoming much longer than I anticipated.

I was so proud of myself after finishing it, I still am super proud of it 🥰 I love the imagery of the library, especially since I usually struggle a lot with visualization.

Vacation was them the inspiration for Hurt No One Knew About. The structure was nice, I really enjoyed the character dynamics and I wanted to do it again but bigger. So I did.

It was a lot of fun. Again the imagery still makes me proud of myself, I like my characterization, I loved how I managed to power through it and publish all the chapters on time with the schedule I set myself. The story took a lot out of me but I am so happy I trusted myself and wrote it till the end and working with the team was a lot of fun, with much less hiccups this time around 💙

As for a work I'm not proud of... I can't say I'm not proud of it at all or that I regret writing it, but my last entry for Intrulogical Week 2021, the second chapter of Always is probably the one I feel worst about. Mainly because it's so underwhelming compared to the first chapter. I wanted to write it as a connection to the Intrulogical Week the year before and give a conclusion to the story but I didn't prepare it very well and it feels very flat since it's basically just a summary and not an actual story. The first chapter was received so well and I don't think I got much feedback at all for the second.

It's a bad habit of mine to write the entries to ship weeks last minute and while that often works out rather well, this is an example where it definitely was the wrong decision...

Still, I'm glad I gave the story an ending, even if in hindsight, I should've approached it differently 😅

[doctorsiren]

paint it over

[phoenixcatch7]

Okay but it's super interesting how

Din = Power = Ganondorf

Naryu = Wisdom = Zelda

Farore = Courage = Link.

Because Din, in the hylian creation myth, created the physical world. Naryu then created the laws - gravity, time, etc. And Farore finally created life - plants and people.

Din created the body, naryu the mind, Farore the soul.

And the triforce and its wielders so perfectly reflect that.

Ganon is physical power, he is big and intimidating and he breaks things. He is cunning and determined, but that's not what he focuses on. He is might makes right.

Zelda is wisdom and cleverness. She is stall tactics and information and team work. She is a powerful mage with a spine of steel, but that's not how she'll win. She is the pen being mightier than the sword.

Link is courage and persistence. He is the wild card sneaking behind enemy ranks, always moving, plunging into terrifying situations head first. He's a phenomenal fighter with a keen wit, but that's not what will get him through his challenges. He is bravery not being the absence of fear but the triumph over it.

They sit in perfect parallels to each other.

And ganon is reborn through his body - his resurrection is immortality. No matter how low he is cast, as long as he has a body he can claw his way back. He can cling to his power, build it ever higher.

Zelda is reborn through the magic of her bloodline. It's the accumulated knowledge handed down for generations, the unique power she must master, the skills she must develop to survive and get her kingdom out the other side intact. Even her name, the knowledge of herself, is handed down from all the way from the very first. Her ancestors knowledge of her future presence, her stability, is what gives her the edge.

Link is reborn in spirit. He is not bound by flesh or blood. Just like his wanderlust soul he can reappear in any time or place. His variation, his unpredictability, is exactly how he fights. It's what makes him so hard to pin down.

Ganons need to build strength means he can't chase after link. Links impulsiveness means zelda can outwit him. Zeldas stationary predictability means she's an easy target for ganon.

But the other direction?

Fire melts ice, ice redirects lightning, lightning burns fire.

And that's the very essence of the triforce.