#too many words perhaps

[brasideios]

AO3 Wrapped (Author’s Edition)

I was tagged by @krankittoeleven - worlds best beta - thank you very much! 🤍 I’m late to it, but better late than never as the saying goes! 😊

Fics first published in 2024 (not including rewrites & republished work which was the majority of my output this year):

The House in the Plane Tree Grove (M, Alexidas)

By His Hand (M, Thalexios)

Love me in Storms (M, Thalexios)

Hunger Desire Anger Roads (M, Alexidas)

Which is still more than I remembered tbh. Hopefully this year will be better - I have reasons to hope so anyway.

2024 Stats

User Subs: 20

Kudos: 1115

Comment threads: 336

Bookmarks: 240

Work subs: 100

Word Count: 604,709

Hits 25,335

Top 3 fics (for all years by kudos)

Snatched Moments (ACV Ubba x M!Eivor) 167; The Warmth of Home (ACOd Thalexios) 144; Another Turn Around the Wheel (Stardew Valley, Shane x M!Farmer) 137.

Top 3 fic (for all years by word count)

The Good Spartan (ACOd Alexidas) 181,531; The Fire and the Flood (ACOd Alexithenes) 67,542; The Warmth of Home (rewrite) (ACOd Thalexios) 53,714 (If you join all of the Thalexios together as it should be, then it’s second longest at 159,298 & still growing)

Top 3 ships (for all years)

Thalexios, Alexidas and Alexithenes in that order.

Top 5 tags (for all years)

Fluff, Romance, Established Relationship, Falling in Love, Historical References. (No surprises there, my early years in fic were way too fluffy lol).

I feel like I’ve tagged everyone so much lately, and everyone has already been tagged in this, that I’m leaving this one open to anyone who wants to jump in. Consider yourself tagged! 😊🤍

[sharpmouth]

Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

[andhumanslovedstories]

I've been running this writing experiment lately to cut out phrases like "I felt" in my fiction writing. Like I was looking at a sentence in a draft that said, "he felt as if character's eyes were pinning him in place." And then I was like, "well, does he think that or is it true? As a result of this person watching him, he's froze. It's not like a thing, it is that thing."

Oh and "almost"! I'm always going, "He felt almost relieved that it hadn't happened." Well, did he feel better that it didn't happen or didn't he? Or "somewhat", I'm always going, "she felt somewhat perturbed."

And like none of that is wrong, to be clear. I don't know if it'd improve your writing, I don't even know if it'll improve my writing, but I use this sentence structure all the time so every viewpoint is from a voice that thinks about what it thinks, hedges its statements, and offers the same ability for wry little jokes formatted in the exact same way. And I have a lot of writing like that and I think (!) that they're good, but read as a whole, I'm like, "god, they all sound the same." Like there's one melody that I write songs to, so even with different lyrics, it's almost (!) the same song. Something I've been struggling with in regards to my writing and why I've felt so blocked is how boring I found writing my usual way. I'd read something and enjoy the individual parts of it, but then I'd step back and I didn't like the whole. And I got good at this enough at seeing that I didn't like it to do it in real time as I was writing, which as you can imagine didn't improve the process of writing because now I was bored AND dejected about being bored.

There's this sentence-level structure fact that I use unconsciously. A pattern I find easy is short sentence, short sentence, short sentence, long sentence. So I write that. "He [verbed]. He [verbed]. Then he [verbed]. As he [verbed] to his [consequence], he [verbed] that [noun] was [statement of condition]." Which could work, it often does make for a nice rhythm, but it's something I reach for often because it's easier for me.

Just last sentence, I originally typed, "I find it easier for me." But if what I mean is "using this pattern is less effort than another pattern," then it's easier for me. One voice is hedging its bets and the other asserting. Either is fine! But they're different! And, again, GOD you would not believe how many words I've cut out of this paragraph as I write it. I'm so chatty. I love using twelve words when six will do. And that gives my writing a specific tone to my ear.

So if I am bored of that tone, why not try using just the six words? Why be understated? Why be afraid of stronger opinions? So right now with my fiction, I'm experimenting with cutting out as many self-reflective words as I can. Sometime you do need to draw attention to the face that this is the character's interpretation, but like you definitely don't need to do it as much as I naturally want to do it. You don't need to always go out of your way to allow the possibility that the narrative voice is wrong. During editing, I trim the weaker ones (I originally typed, "what I consider the weaker ones" Is that more accurate?). But I think them being there in the first place shifts my language which shifts my character's which shifts my plot. It's sentence structure all the way down!!

(this barely applies to my writing on here, btw. i try to do good but yknow this is a tumblr blog. i'm not trying to get a lit mag to accept it.)

Anyway blah blah (chatty!) the point is I've been trying to write in a way opposite of my interests. Something that doesn't take itself too seriously, that emphasizes EMOTION and ACTION instead of minimizing it, and that clips through scenes at a good pace. Doing this been amazingly fun. I've been having such a good time doing it. I am writing so much because I really enjoy doing it. The process of writing is so fun again.

This post is about two things. One is my new mood stabilizer and therapy day camp. The other is about the benefit of pretending to be MXTX.

[synchodai]

HBO's Continued Insistence on Dumbing Down Westerosi Politics

So there have been countless thinkpieces already on how GOT simplified the feudalist politics of Westeros (by giving a lowborn sellsword lordship over The Reach, by having no consequences for destroying the Sept of Baelor, etc.), but I haven't seen a lot of people talking about that for House of the Dragon.

The worst being that the show presupposes that Rhaenyra is the lawful heir when the books showed there are plenty of lawful arguments why she wouldn't be.

Mind you that I've been enjoying the show a lot so far. This is just to vent out my frustration with the writers' failure to fully engage with the values and protocols of the Middle Age-inspired setting. The show seems uninterested in laws of the Realm in a story ostensibly about politics, save for when they're using it as an excuse to amplify depictions of sex and violence.

Blacks vs Greens wasn't a matter of misunderstanding of who each side thought Viserys wanted on the throne. It was the Targaryens' belief of their absolute authority clashing with the Realm's established traditions. Everyone always knew who Viserys chose as heir. In Fire and Blood, Grand Maester Orwyle said as much when he was parleying with Rhaenyra on behalf of the Greens.

Rhaenyra heard his terms in stony silence, then asked Orwyle if he remembered her father, King Viserys. "Of course, Your Grace," the maester answered. "Perhaps you can tell us who he named as his heir and successor," the queen said, her crown upon her head. "You, Your Grace," Orwyle replied. And Rhaenyra nodded and said, "With your own tongue you admit I am your lawful queen. Why do you serve my half-brother, the pretender?" Munkun tells us that Orwyle gave a long and erudite reply, citing the Andal law and the Great Council of 101. Mushroom claims he stammered and voided his bladder. Whichever is true, his answer did not satisfy Princess Rhaenyra.

(For non-F&B readers: Munkun is the Grand Maester who served Aegon III, the king who came after this civil war. Munkun's book, The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling, is one of Fire and Blood's source texts. Mushroom is the King Landing court jester from Viserys I to Aegon III's reign. One is a source written with academic rigor but is secondhand at best. The other is a firsthand eyewitness account but is from a literal fool who will take every chance to make things more scandalous and sexual to please the crowd.)

In House of the Dragon, they replaced Orwyle with Otto and Orwyle's discussion of legal precedent with Otto handing Rhaenyra a book page from Alicent. It's quite evident here that the writers, much like Mushroom, thought a discussion on the actual laws of the Realm were negligible in this story about a succession war.

Even Alicent made no pretense that Viserys chose Rhaenyra over her children and I have no idea why the HBO writers decided to make her mistakenly think otherwise. Maybe they thought a queen regent pushing her son to take the throne over another woman made her appear unsympathetic as a character, but if anything, this only makes show!Alicent less politically savvy and more delusional than her book counterpart, fully believing an addled king's vague muttering on his deathbed was sufficient grounds to change heirs last minute.

Book!Alicent following Andal laws instead of her husband's wishes makes sense given her Andal upbringing, her devotion to the Faith of the Seven which enforces said laws, and her desire to protect her children from Rhaenyra given that Rhaenyra has shown she's not above murdering family (see: Laenor).

In the books, there was a long discussion between the former king's council on who should succeed Viserys.

Here are the arguments for Rhaenyra:

Rhaenyra was older than her brothers and had more Targaryen blood

the late king had chosen her as his successor, that he had repeatedly refused to alter the succession despite the pleadings of Queen Alicent and her greens

hundreds of lords and landed knights had done obeisance to the princess in 105 AC, and sworn solemn oaths to defend her rights.

Here are the arguments for Aegon II:

many of the lords who had sworn to defend the succession of Princess Rhaenyra were long dead [...]

Ironrod, the master of laws, cited the Great Council of 101 and the Old King’s choice of Baelon rather than Rhaenys in 92

the hallowed Andal tradition wherein the rights of a trueborn son always came before the rights of a mere daughter

Ser Otto reminded them that Rhaenyra’s husband was none other than Prince Daemon, and “we all know that one’s nature. Make no mistake, should Rhaenyra ever sit the Iron Throne, it will be Lord Flea Bottom who rules us, a king consort as cruel and unforgiving as Maegor ever was [...]”

Should the princess reign [...] Jacaerys Velaryon would rule after her. “Seven save this realm if we seat a bastard on the Iron Throne.”

Once again, the show chose to cut out this long political discussion. Instead, the council had already made up their mind and decided to stage a coup (when in their perspectives from the books, it would definitely not be a coup).

For all their marketing how two sides are equally grey, HotD is actively delegitimizing Aegon II. The strongest argument for him is how his claim follows the laws of the Realm, but the show doesn't seem to care about the laws of the Realm or the political need to maintain a more predictable/tested transfer of power.

Instead, the show focuses on Viserys's relationship with his daughter and the mysticism of the Targaryen bloodline. In doing so, they emphasize Rhaenyra's strongest arguments for succession — that she's more of a Targaryen than her half-brother and that her father prefered her.

And what for? Because in our modern-day, we don't have male-prefered inheritance and people can only imagine misogyny as the only injustice here? What about the injustice of a monarch exercising absolute control, thinking that his "superior" heritage makes him above the established laws of the native people?

This is not to say Aegon II is unquestionably the heir. But this is to say that the show removed the political nuance of why people are questioning in the first place. Precedence isn't the end-all-be-all of succession, but neither is "because daddy said so".

[patchworkcuddlebug]

Weredoll: Alone

It all started with that toy. I know it had to.

I only touched it for a few seconds. God, I should've known. That pull, that imperceptible radiance, of course it was magic. But it just looked so... pretty. I didn't think twice, I just wanted a closer look, and I could feel the jolt through my system as soon as I curled my fingers around it. Magic.

It's the same feeling that was in the seashells that made my best friend a mermaid all those years ago, damning her to the sea. The same feeling as the fae that spirited away my mother's name.

Yes, they looked happy. But I always knew better. You can't abandon your humanity, you just... can't. You shouldn't be able to, you shouldn't want to. It's just wrong.

I spent the whole day frantic. Combing through forums and blogs, staring down at the listings for dubiously reliable books. If nothing happened in the moment, the only conclusions were a crawling slow-burn transformation that would take me piece by agonizing piece, or... something conditional.

The door to my room was locked. My bed was pushed out from the wall and put in the way of the door, just in case. Now all I can do is sit at my computer desk, eyes trapped in the corner of my laptop.

11:59. Any moment now I would find what fate I was cursed to. I'd spent long enough wracked by anxiety, the humanity in my soul clung to my body in terror. Now, there was nothing but a silent, helpless anticipation.

12:00.

I flinch as the number changes. I pat my body down, trying to find any hints to my curse. But I can't find anything. Everything as it should be. Warm to the touch, but not hot. Just enough give before skin squishes against bone.

I wanted to feel relief, but the confirmation just brought on a defeated emptiness. A sighing, accepting resignation to the alternative, or a confused...

...it's spreading. The emptiness. It isn't just emotional. There is a visceral feeling of removal slowly expanding from my body.

I tried to stand. My hand was on my stomach, like I was trying to feel the thing eating me from the inside. I feel the void overtake my gut, leaving me with a hollow and cavernous lack. There was no sense of hunger, my body failing to cry out with need as it should with an empty stomach. The feeling instead slotted into place, as if I was designed for it.

I try and walk to the mirror. Everything's off. My limbs are too heavy and my torso is too light. I lift my shirt up, and see the beginnings of a seam. There's a small indent that traces around the base of my ribs. Exactly like a ball jointed doll.

I feel sick. I feel faint. But more than anything, I feel empty.

I stumble to the bed and collapse. I can't keep myself upright, I can't muster the will. Fuck, this is really happening, isn't it? I don't care if it's just for the night. I don't want to let go, I can't. Being a person is all I've ever known. How could I not be scared?

My hands fumble along my side. I can feel myself hardening, the texture changing as I move upwards. The seam's already deepened, god knows how far, letting my rigid body—

A violent shudder overtakes me. I cough involuntarily. It's reached my heart.

I can't take my hand off it. The other desperately grabs my hair, trying to ground me, as I feel my heartbeat get weaker and weaker. I try breathing harder, invoking my anxieties, anything to speed it back up, but it's mere seconds until it shuts down completely.

It feels... uncomfortable. Just uncomfortable. All my panic is forced. A cognitive understanding that I really should be terrified, that my heart stopping is something every person needs to fear, but the emptiness swallows all that away. There's a passive, almost reassuring understanding. I'm unharmed, and it's not permanent.

This shouldn't be good. It just shouldn't, right? This isn't the absence of life, it isn't an emptiness that destroys. It's tranquility, it's cleanliness, it's alleviation. I know this is part of the curse, but I just feel so... at ease. Any negative feeling I try to summon is just swallowed by the emptiness, tidied up and put away.

Oh yes, the transformation. It seems it's spread quite far while I was distracted. Down my thighs and up to my neck. I move my hands up to my shoulders, knowing my first joints are going to grow in any minute.

No, no. I can't let it take me. I refused to be reduced to a thing to be ordered around, some heartless construct that only exists for others. There has to be something. I can make my heart beat again, I have to, or I'll die, right? I make a fist and start pounding on my chest as hard as I can... only being met with a dull, hollow thud as the plastic dents into the emptiness inside me. There's nothing in there to start anymore.

Okay. This can still be salvaged. It's just a body, and while it may change, I'm still a human inside. I won't let that be taken from me, I just need to... a suctioning feeling settles in. My skin, just at my shoulder, feels... loose. Ill-fitting.

With a single jerking motion, I reach up and grab at my shoulder, bloodlessly tearing away my skin like it's a thick and heavy tissue paper. Underneath the scraps left behind is the beginnings of a ball joint. It's much too round, the indents where the mechanics let me move just beginning to burrow. It's as if my joints are trying to pop out of their place in my sockets, held in by the firm suggestion of an artificial material. I can already feel my muscle sinew being digested.

I need to be upset, I need to. This is an existential terror in the most literal form, a destruction of all that I am. But all change is death, sacrifice. You cannot become one thing without destroying another. It's rather beautiful to bloom... no, please, no. I refuse to accept such a fate laying down, no matter how much the curse tries to ease me.

I suppose if it can swallow my gut feelings and quell the uneasiness in my heart, it won't be long until it starts to harden this one's brain, leaving it with... leaving it. It. This one.

No. Not now, not ever. If this one can't trust its feelings, and if its starting to lose its cognition, it needs to rely on its behaviour. It will remain human, in one form or another.

Dolls like to clean, to keep things orderly and convenient for others. This one just needs to rip its bed apart! It tears at the corners of its covering, tossing its pillows across the room as it tangles its sheets into a useless mess. There, a bed no doll would be proud of. It tasks a moment to bask in the joy of a completed task.

A sickening pop. It turns back to the mirror and sees its joints as they should be. Perfect round attachments, manufactured just right to allow it mobility. All that remains are its shins and its hands. It's running out of time.

This one tries to walk back to its laptop, and is immediately distracted by its walk. No longer is there the looming clumsy tumbling from its discordant changes. There's an effortless elegance, a refinement of movement and intention. It feels rather pleasing to present itself in such a formal manner. Before the transformation began, it wouldn't have considered such a thing, finding much more comfort in more casual poses and movements. It feels silly to derive such comfort from informality now. Good dolls are-

This one freezes, taken aback by its thoughts. Good dolls are polite and dignified. It's a mantra, a commandment, a colloquialism. A reflexive proverb, as if it were so baked into cultural DNA as to be self-evident. Of course that is how a good doll is to act, it would be silly to pretend otherwise. That... doesn't have to imply anything about this one, it's still a person. This one returns to its task.

12:04. It feels as if it should have been much longer. Becoming felt so fundamentally altering it's bizarre to picture it as taking only 5 minutes, even if that is what this one's research confirmed to it prior. Oh well, it can't be helped. Good dolls are punctual, after all.

There has to be something it can do, something to keep the final throes of the transformation at bay. Dolls are meant to act, and... well, that's not entirely true, is it? Dolls are also meant to be still. To be posed, a beautiful decoration, dressed in the finest outfits...

This one finds its brain... shutting off. Floating away. This is no mere emptiness; it's a trance. A blissful, wonderful stillness. No concern for thoughts, no feelings beyond a gentle calm.

As it sees the clock change, it blinks itself back to awareness. Ah, so that was stillness. This one understands why other dolls find it so enrapturing. It will gladly return to it once it has finished all it has to do.

But first, it looks down at its body. Everything is stiff and rigid, the only movement being allowed by the segments through its hardened skin. Its behaviour has been overhauled, now much more prim and proper, only breaking its posture to help its self-examination.

Of course, this one thinks like a good doll as well. It desires to serve and obey another, and in their absence, it will simply busy itself with chores, doing all it can to help like a good doll. It seems its readings were correct, and the transformation has finished.

Well, that was quite the experience. This one prepares to reflect on it... in the morning, once it's a person. In the meantime, it elegantly walks back to its bed and begins to tidy up, the much more pertinent task.

[apollo-just-ice]

Textpost time yay! :-)

[justalittlelogophile]

🩶 🎭 Mask 🎭 🩶

Ah…I see that you wear a mask as well…

Funny isn’t it?

That in a world so desperate for connection…

So many of us don masks enable to feel welcome.

…For what it’s worth…

I pray you may find the peace someday in your life

To feel safe enough to be seen

In whatever way that may be

~Po

Inspired by @ chessman-protocol’s, OC > Stein

(Charming Lad, I say. All the head pats and wishing the best of luck in his newest adventure🫰🏼🍀)

Divider belongs to the gracious @firefly-graphics

[blossoms-phan]

i don’t really care about stats because if I do I’ll get way too caught up in my head (I already do) I just like writing for fun and eating up all the other incredible works by writers in the phandom but I find it almost comical that my fic that has the least amount of kudos has the most bookmarks (well over half of which are private) (slight exaggeration on both sides) i guess I can’t really judge bc I have a habit of creating private bookmarks too since before I started writing I really don’t care in fact it would make my life easier for recommending fics if I left them public but we as a society have got to stop the shame around liking reading porn guys I swear nooooooo one cares what you like reading or freakin it to and it would make a writers day if you told them you liked reading it 👉👈

[anglerflsh]

neurodivergency moment on my part

[tonyglowheart]

"You have too much drinkware already" I tell myself, as I lose the battle to making my dreams a reality

( @kayvsworld this is all because of you and ur fun little enrichment dude who would not stop living rent free in my mind)

[to-the-batcomputer]

how i feel about shipping brudick is always switching from one extreme to the other. like one moment i'm thinking about it and i'm like Yes this makes sense this is beautiful and true. the next i'm like oh god i am going to hell for even considering this

[medicinemane]

I don't know... horrible things happen all around the world and it's not a competition

Atrocities are committed against multiple groups in multiple parts of the world at the exact same moment, and none of them erase each other. They all matter, all the people in this world who are being brutalized matter. There shouldn't be any line you draw where one group doesn't actually matter as much as another

You're welcome to prioritize your energy towards helping one group or another, but what's not ok is invalidating or dismissing people who are actively being harmed

Same goes for trying to figure out which social group has things worst (and lets be honest, always using a US lens)

Like... maybe the important thing is to prop each other up and help everyone get on their own feet rather than trying to... pick fights about if physical disabilities or mental illness are less respected (I'm trying to pick a more absurd example but sadly I've seen exactly that argument happen before). Maybe it doesn't really matter and what matters is helping who we can when we can

I'm tired of it, I'm just fucking tired of it. Support people, champion them when the world is just brutalizing them, but you don't need to throw a single other person under the bus to do that

Which seems to be an absolutely impossible lesson for people to learn

[icewindandboringhorror]

recent things

[always-a-joyful-note]

Do you ever think about MEZZO'' and their character development and go insane? Do you ever think about how these two guys who grew up in opposite ways economically both came into the industry with broken families? Do you ever think about how they were so sure they would never get along beyond friendly coworkers but also both wanted to try so hard to get along well with the other? You ever think about how Sogo was so afraid to mess up that he constantly held himself back? Do you think about how Tamaki wanted to learn but had to push past his entire life of putting himself first? Do you think about how they supported each other during the other's reconnecting with their families and, when those families abandoned them, promised to stay with the other?

Just....MEZZO slowly becoming this thing between a real friendship and a family. Not best friends, like they said once, but maybe unbreakable friends

[wormchaser]

chad (no story behind bugger but angie is named after the rolling stones song, it was my favorite song as a kid and i made everyone call me angie. great times.... my best find was probably my leprosy - death cd. kinda unrelated. i plan on ordering chad's signed rock n roll alibis cd when it finally comes out... malicious grin)

thats so cuuute.... i love that so much. i'm listening to it now. (that reminds me of the other names ive gone by in my time...if youre curious i used to go by francis (my middle name). i remember telling my dad i wanted to go by this name (it's a name from his side of the family- my mother got to pick my first name, and my father my middle names) and he like... recoiled in disgust. before that i wanted to be 'jason'). thats so cool!!! i have to listen to that album... one of my favourite record store finds (at this big record store in the city called real groovy) is Why Do They Rock So Hard, a reel big fish like.. greatest hits type CD. i was so ecstatic when i found it. i was obsessed with them at the time & couldn't find their stuff physically anywhere. the poster from that CD is still on my wall and is probably in the background of some of my old selfies/photos (eugh..ive never said 'selfie' in relation to a photo of myself before), but it's since moved across the room. thats so so so awesome..... when does it come out? i saw on the CKY instagram story the other day (my once in a blue moon visit to instagram) and saw there's a new cky shop now!! very cool :^D. you have to tell me about it... youneed to describe the jewel case and the CD inserts and the disc graphics . so i can imagine it in my mind

[unproduciblesmackdown]

"winston quant billions: like anyone else, an entire universe" or "the good news is it's just that everyone's been terrible to you, the bad news is it's just that everyone's been terrible to you"