#which granted doesn't mean much but-

[demonwebs]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY FRIEND

IM GETTING OLDDDDDD CRIES IN MINION

[lord-squiggletits]

I was at a "making friends" kind of social event just this past week and ended up having two subsequent conversations with different people that gave me an interesting reflection on my own reasons for writing without me even intending to make the conversation about it.

First conversation: The person talked about the feeling of awe from being at a music concert and how incredible it is that so many complete strangers can be united by a singular love of music. I related to it with regards to my own writing and how many people have read my stuff. Ended up telling this guy about some of the AO3 comments I've gotten from people to the effect of helping motivate them to live/just reflect on life in general. Somehow went into a tangent about a suicidal friend of mine who died when we were in high school, and me saying that maybe the reason I write so much about the things I do is because of the influence his death had on me. And the other person ended up asking me, 'So do you think it's like every time you write, you're doing it in his memory in a way?'

Subsequent conversation was with someone who was a psychologist for a day job, and I ended up telling them that I was kind of thinking of getting a degree in psychology/therapy one day because writing about mental health issues had gotten me so interested in the world of helping people heal themselves. But then I was also like, "Well, I don't know, it could be that I don't need to become a psychologist to help people with mental health. Maybe helping people by being a writer and telling stories is enough."

It was just a surprising, but topical realization for me to have talking to a bunch of strangers. For someone like me who's often preoccupied with doing and having knowledge and expertise, I often fall into the idea that you need to be directly involved in helping people to really be making a difference. I've literally had thoughts in my mind along the lines of "I'm so smart, hardworking, and dedicated when it comes to writing, but wouldn't it have been so much more of a net gain to the world if I'd decided to be this passionate about something like being a doctor or activist that actually helps people?" It's not like I truly regret being a writer (or ever will, because there's nothing else that I love so much), but in my bad moments I truly do sometimes think "Why does it make a difference if I entertain people or make them feel nicer for a while if it doesn't actually change anything in the world?" To quote one of my favorite Transformers fics of all time, "There was nothing that would have been more worthwhile, but that didn't rule out the possibility that the whole damn universe was wasting its time."

I guess the answer is that making someone feel better, even in a small way, is changing the world, even if it's just a few people, and even if it's just as simple as making someone's day better.

[thebuttsmcgee]

Man. I just get so actually legitimately sad each time I remember that toh ended and that we live in the post-toh world. Like it really is over.

Ms Dana Terrace has said that she'd like to do more given the chance (and after some quality time off of bigger projects, just to chill), but as far as we know, it's the end.

Heck, we barely got anything after the final episode, no books, no special merch, no dedicated little chibi shorts, nothing really, aside from the, thankfully fun, get-togethers of the cast and crew!

Idk. Ah well actually nah, I do know, that this show just meant an enormous lot to me. Incredibly huge, the kind that you can't break away from and wouldn't want to anyway. The kind that feels like, man, where would I be without it.

Happy 1 Year, to the end of The Owl House. Thank you, The Owl House.

I hope the future is bright, for all of us.

[worstloki]

prize for least genre aware protagonist 👑

[platonicallylovesick]

Current brother ranking has gotta be

Beel & Bel (tied for first. NO NOT JUST BECAUSE THEYRE TWINS I just love them that much

Satan

Levi

Mammon

Lucifer

Asmo

[desalvar]

ayo i'm not dead!

[stellarsightz]

“All that I've been taught // And every word I've got // Is foreign to me” — Hozier, Foreigner’s God

Aka "nooo dont grieve the life you spent running away from everything and wish you could go back to that life of uncertainty, where you constantly wonder if you can survive another day, rather than stand in the middle of a civil war which has nothing to do with you, you're so cool and sexy you're literally the mythical hero of a land where everyone detests your kind ahahahh"

A silly drawing of my Bosaltmer Dovahkiin, Baltana :))

I fiddled with her design a little, aka i added a different facial tattoo (which mirrors Lynwallyn's because hehe they're twins)

-> a companion piece to this older drawing of Lynwallyn

(Alternative version under the cut; possible eyestrain warning)

[fideidefenswhore]

been thinking about the AB Derangement Syndrome a lot lately and i realized i actually summed my thoughts up earlier in My Sacred DMs and felt like sharing, so:

i can’t really tell if it’s an anger over her predominance in the subject or just that that’s the filter you have to see through when you’re seeking out (free) content? ive been thinking about this a lot lately and there is like this butthurt thing i think about that the two major tudor resource collations are run by AB admirers (AB Files & On the Tudor Trail……) so it’s like a resentment about having to see it through that prism i suppose, that’s really obvious in their comment sections too where there’s always perennial lurkers that are like actually AB wasn’t that great. she was mean. poor princess mary :’( & i sincerely do not care, you cannot both expect/ask someone to do the work for you and also conform to your own opinions/slants or this unrealistic expectation of ‘absence of bias’ (which is really actually reflection of your own bias as ‘neutral’) at a certain point you are asking for AI history simulator content it's beyond entitlement, it is a belief you’re the main character and everyone must cater to your whims. like it is really a thing that make you go hmmmm when mary i/coa stans are like tehe i prefer alison weir > eric ives. or frankly any other academic historian bcus, why? she affirms your confirmation biases better? i don't even really get it with the former particularly because while weir pities mary i, she very obviously does not respect her. she has repeatedly said she was unsuitable to ruling and had minimal political intelligence. so like why would they gravitate towards her...? and so it seems like it's mainly bcus alison weir depicts anne as the villain of her story with zero nuance or examination of the credibility of the source material in question, and that this better reflects their 'emotional truth'.

[yellowocaballero]

this entire chapter was a joy to read but I gotta say I 100% understand knives’ fear of brad—the opening scene was one of the most strangely fear inducing things I’ve ever read. kudos and 10/10 for making me feel nauseous over what turns out to be a very funny scene of knives getting murder-grounded

Love this ask. Love asks about experiences that surprise me a lot, in a good way - part of me is always like 'write a dialectical essay on why you think so???' and the other part is 'the picture and vibes you've painted is incredibly funny and I love it'. Thank you for the ask anyway. Get to talk about Brad and Luida FINALLY.

I'm deciding that this is a victory, because it gave you a great insight into exactly how Knives felt LMFAOOO. He has spent literally this entire story acting superior, holier-than-thou, won't shut up about how he's physiologically and mentally leagues ahead of you puny humans, you're so lame and pathetic and Millions "Genius Cool Guy Surgeon" Knives is soooo much better than you. And then the minute he goes home and sees his foster parents he is suddenly the goodest little boy who you would both introduce to your parents and give a doggy treat. They are two geriatric astronauts and Millions Knives is pants-shittingly terrified of them.

I was legitimately a bit worried that I wrote Brad as too harsh in the flashback scene, or uncomfortable-in-a-bad-way in the beginning scene. I was really careful with both. How Brad and Luida raised Knives is absolutely not a great method of parenting, lmfao. But they weren't really raising a child - they were taming a tiger. I think you can safely assume that Knives was not given a single inch his entire adolescence. He didn't get away with shit. That's how behavioral conditioning works. I really can't stress enough that, although Knives is a pretty good guy in the present, he is still the literal actual Millions Knives. And what 14yo Knives here got up to wasn't all that different from what canonical 14yo Knives was getting up to. The difference is Brad and Luida - and they knew exactly what they were trying to prevent. They knew they couldn't fuck up. They knew what would happen if Knives didn't change. It must have been a lot of pressure.

The sheer balls on the guy who walks up to Millions Knives and just goes, "Okay, asshole. Kill me. Do it.". So insane that it gaslights Knives into believing that Brad and Luida are the only superior lifeforms to himself.

But at the end of the day, what that scene still conveys is - it's a farce. Their family is a social contract: Brad and Luida will give Knives what he wants (a meaning to his life, and on a deeper level he won't acknowledge, a family), and in return Knives politely pretends that they are remotely capable of controlling him. A handcuff is an insanely restrictive method of grounding somebody - and obviously Knives could have gotten outb of it any time. But Knives lets them do it, because if he doesn't then it would break the keyfabe, the farce. And that would destroy Knives' only path towards becoming a good person. Because Brad and Luida told him that they are the only path towards becoming a good person. And if you aren't a good person you have no reason to exist btw. Also we don't love you anymore.

Kinda fucked up if Knives was, like, a regular child? Yes. Only sensible thing to do if the child was Millions Knives? Yes. It's complicated but that's why I really love it. Also for the insane funniness of Knives experiencing fear.

TL;DR Handcuffing your child to its bed is only okay if the child has bad vibes and is unfun to be around.

[motheatenscarf]

Man, I'm REALLY liking Dancer in group content.

Not to toot my own horn, but as a melee dps main at heart, this feels like the ranged class that was built for me specifically because I'm really good at syncing up with Reapers in particular because it's my main class and I know the fights decently enough by now to know when to buff them for uptime.

Picking ONE dance partner and buffing them specifically makes me feel like a god of war handing out boons to my champion.

In my heart of hearts, all I want to play is a gremlin with a shiv but that's why I'm good at Dancer. I understand those people and will make them the best murderer here.

Go forth my gremlin, my champion, and KILL!

[une-sanz-pluis]

The 1403 rebellion bears the hallmarks of a rash and reckless act on the part of Hotspur. Before the rebellion itself, Percy's dream of establishing his Anglo-Scottish lordship was for the first time a real possibility and it is difficult to imagine that the old campaigner would abandon that for which he had consistently worked over several decades, to suddenly attack his king. Yes, he had helped remove Richard II from the throne, but the situations were radically different. In 1399, Percy had been part of a broadly based coalition moving with great force and purpose against a massively unpopular monarch who was no great friend of the Percy family. In 1403 however, the forces that met Henry at Shrewsbury were a hastily cobbled together,`ramshackle' army drawn almost exclusively from one county, and whose allegiance was based upon the lie that Richard II was about to return. The rebellion was the brainchild of Hotspur. It is difficult to imagine Percy planning, or even approving of, such a scheme. In the summer of 1403, he had far too much to lose. Hotspur did as well, but he seemed not to have recognised that fact. That the 1403 rebellion was Hotspur's scheme also accounted for the frankly bizarre timing of Percy's movement south. If he had stayed in the north as part of the plan for the rebellion, in order to guard the marches, as has been suggested, then why wander down into Yorkshire some days after the battle had taken place? If the campaign had been well planned, one would expect that Percy would have either stayed in the north to guard the march, or moved south at the same time as Hotspur in order to support his forces, and not simply get caught in between. Hotspur's movement south was reminiscent in its recklessness of his actions at Otterburn, and the late movement south by Percy suggested that he, as well as the king, had been taken by surprise by his own son's actions.

Kris Towson, "Henry Percy, first earl of Northumberland: ambition, conflict and cooperation in late mediaeval England" (PhD thesis, 2005)

[boleynqueenes]

The specific thing I think of for you as a writer is 1) your wit and 2) your characterization of Anne (two things which also go v neatly hand-in-hand!). I’ve read soooo many works w Anne and even the really good ones (Anne of a Thousand Days for example,) it’s always ‘a little to the left please’ yours was the first piece i sat up and went HELLO! That’s HER!!!! Like I myself have a v specific vision in mind of her yknow? But even I can’t capture it. You just…do! It’s amazing!!! In awe honestly!!!!!!

She definitely had the wit of someone very determined to rise and make the most of the places her parents' ambitions brought her to, yes. This doesn't seem to have ebbed at all once she finally became Queen, because she was just as determined to secure her place as she had been to rise.

But tysm, I definitely do try to capture that <3

[anyroads]

Posts I've seen in just the last week:

AO3 is one of the most visited sites in the world

It's ok if your fanfic [that you're writing for free in your spare time] is unfinished! You do you!

How very dare these WGA writers not finish writing my stories for me [that they spend full work days every day working on] just because they don't get compensated fairly for their paid labor and decided to go on strike?

Respect unions! Unionize your workplace! Respect picket lines!

Posts I have not seen ever but maybe it's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

AO3 would not exist without the paid writers who are currently striking. You would have no stories to write fanfic of. The entire world your fic exists in was created by someone else's labor.

[heloflor]

Had some fun and decided to make a custom remix, if anybody wants to check it out!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

i mean this amongst the material where we were Ever supposed to be at all on the same page about axe & wendy's nightmare quasiromance including that it was after the vicious pettiness stalking & relationship sabotaging from axe that we got the warmest & fuzziest rather than wendy finally reaching a breaking point, or know that it's not great if prince goes around taking advantage of young employees his kid's age but we would never disrespect that person by calling them a victim and also we can't even think too badly of him until he outright confirms (rudely!) he feels entitled, and then we also will actually do nothing about this save for eventually saying actually it looks bad if his wife also has sex outside the marriage, which would defy his entitlement

[pennyserenade]

i hate modern day war movies because they’re all so fucking boring and they usually are so graphic and macho, even when they’re historical, but old hollywood war movies? there’s some good ones and that is 100 percent because the girls were traumatized. society was so bleak. this is bascially my long way of saying if you want to watch a movie about war, look for an old hollywood one