#word count accountability

[hxneyfarm]

Word Count Goals Accountability

BATTER UP!

Minimum Goal: 3,024 | Stretch Goal: 6,480 | Words Written: 4,337 | Total Current Word Count: 73,455

and for the folks in my inbox who requested bu! for wip wednesday, a snippet under the cut: @bifuriouswaterbender, @eriquin, @inairbinad, @sidekick-hero, and @steves-strapcollection (i'm gonna throw @thefreakandthehair on here too, bc baseball!steve besties)

feel free to request some more, we're going all weekend !

It’s the weekend before playoffs start and every fucking park in Chicago is prepping for winter even though it’s as hot as it was in August and twice as humid. The city parks department clearly hasn’t been putting their back into the care and keeping of the parks this summer - the grass is dry and brown with barely a patch of clover to be found. As much as Steve would like to not have to do this… it’s tradition, and he’s superstitious. He needs a four leaf clover for the first game of the playoffs.

He’s had the big ugly boot off for a month now, and he’s back in training mode. He and Robin decided today would be as good a day as any to get out and find a clover. They’ve been at it for a number of hours now, and it’s getting to be the hottest part of the day. They’ve been to nearly every park in the city and… nothing.

Lincoln Park is a fucking tourist trap, even in September. Steve’s done more autograph signing since they turned up here than he has since before his injury, and it’s getting harder and harder to be gracious about it. He talks to a few guys about his injury, about the playoffs, about the other team in their bracket. He even talks about Eddie a little bit to the fans that ask.

“Are you moving in with Munson at the end of the season?” they’ll ask, and he’ll beat around the bush with it a little, not really answering the question directly because it’s none of their business.

The relationship baseball fans think they have with the players on their favorite team isn’t unlike the relationship music fans think they have with their favorite band. There’s a word for it, one that Steve can never seem to remember, but it doesn’t rub him as much the wrong way as it used to when he first started out.

Steve is standing next to a bench talking to a middle aged woman with a bag of sunflower seeds. The pigeons and doves at her feet are cooing at her for more as she talks to Steve, her hands animated and her smile broad and toothy.

“That home run you hit against the Nationals back in June,” she’s saying, gushing about it, and Steve is smiling and nodding along, remembering. “Just crazy!”

“Yeah, it was definitely a season highlight,” Steve agrees. He’s glad to be talking baseball. He loves talking about Eddie but he’s talked about nothing but his relationship for months, it seems like. Talking about baseball again feels right, feels natural. 

He should be out there with Robin, who’s sifting through the grass on her knees in search of Steve’s elusive clover.

“Goin’ up against the Nats all over again next weekend,” Steve smiles.

“Think they’ll put Smith back on the mound?”

Steve laughs. He doesn’t usually like to talk shit about other teams to fans, but Garrett Smith, the Nationals’ starting pitcher, is nothing to write home about. He’s given up more home runs than any other pitcher in the majors this season and Steve just finds it… funny, almost, that they keep him on as a starter.

“I think if they want to win, they’ll put Jacoby on to start.”

The woman with the sunflower seeds nods along.

“Harrington, you ass!” Robin is calling. “Enough socializing and help me!”

“Lucky clover?” the woman guesses. 

“Yeah, we’ve been out all day.” He sighs. “I better get back to it. Great talking to you, though.”

“You too. Good luck next weekend.”

“Thanks.”

And so Steve jogs out to the field and crouches beside Robin, and together the two of them run their fingers through the short grass in a small patch of clover, searching.

It doesn’t actually take much longer, after that. Robin calls him over, just a few short yards away, and points at a patch of green between her feet. And there it is - vibrant green shot through with white, all four leaves round and uniform, and Steve plucks it out of the ground.

[infiniteglitterfall]

OMG, COULD EVERYONE PLEASE STOP IMMEDIATELY BELIEVING AND REPEATING DISINFORMATION?!

Sorry, I just. Was just on Twitter, and I snapped.

I literally haven't seen one true statement about Israel on social media in MONTHS.

It's gotten to the point that I'm seriously considering starting a sideblog fact-checking all of it.

PLEASE STOP BEING GARFIELD I AM BEGGING ALL OF YOU

BE NERMAL FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

I've written at least one really long post about fact-checking things before. I have another saved as a draft somewhere.

But all you really have to do at this point is GO LOOK AT AN ACTUAL NEWS SOURCE.

What do I mean by an Actual News Source?

An actual news source will tell you where it's getting its information.

Basically: Wikipedia rules apply at all times. Citation. Fucking. Needed.

Except with news articles, I don't mean a detailed footnote.

I mean, if they say, "Rosco Flubberish reported seeing a pig fly across Whatever Place. 'It was a flying pig,' he said," they're fine.

If they say, "Sources close to the President reported that the Department of Farmland Creatures launched a pig into the air this afternoon," they're fine.

If they say, "There have also been reports that pigs flew," they are purely making shit up.

Just check CNN or something. CNN checks their shit, and they're very quick on the draw.

NBC has been very reliable too, in my experience. So have ABC, Newsweek, the Jerusalem Post, the Guardian, the New York Times, the AP, PBS, the Washington Post, and Reuters.

You can break through most paywalls by putting archive.is or 12ft.io before the https:// of the URL. Or just go to either of those sites and paste the URL in the box.

Nobody is perfect. I've seen some articles from all of the above that were accurate, but left things out that I personally thought were important.

Journalists are humans, humans fuck up.

(Also, NONE OF THIS APPLIES TO OPINION PIECES ON ANY TOPIC. Opinion pieces are exactly that: opinions. They don't seem to be fact-checked anywhere, as far as I can tell. They range from super-accurate and informative to complete nonsense.)

(Surprisingly unreliable sources in my experience: Democracy Now, Jacobin, Workers World Party. The latter two act like news sites but are basically running nothing but opinion pieces; Democracy Now can do important deep dives, but I've also seen news coverage from it that was wildly misinformed in that same way.

On the flip side, Slate and the Atlantic are largely opinion -- the Atlantic more than Slate, maybe -- but they often have really well-researched analysis of political situations. Ditto Teen Vogue, and sometimes Vox.)

You don't have to read CNN or the NYT or whateverfor fun. You don't have to make it one of your news sources.

Just. Do a quick check on Google News before you assume anything is true, and then run it through a bullshit filter as described above.

You are being actively lied to, all the time. So am I. We all are.

And people will believe and repeat literally anything that sounds about right.

That's just human nature.

That is WHY none of us are immune to propaganda.

if you want my personal shortlist of Bad Sources, as in Sources That Consistently Publish Absolute Falsehoods:

Any and all state-owned or state-controlled media. For example:

Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari government, and so are a bunch of other news sites.

Mehr News, the Tehran Times, Al-Quds TV, and Al-Alam are owned by the dictatorship of Iran.

Oops. Looks like every form of broadcast Iranian news media is owned by the dictatorship of Iran, which has a monopoly.

Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Palestinian News and Info Agency, and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida are owned by the government of Palestine (the Palestinian Authority)

Al-Aqsa TV and Felesteen are owned by Hamas.

TASS / Russia News Agency, Russia Today, and a fuckton of others are owned by the Russian government.

State Media Monitor seems to do a pretty great job of tracking and listing these things. Check out your own country there!

I specifically listed those ones because some of them (especially Al Jazeera, Mehr News, and TASS) are sites I've seen come up frequently on Tumblr, or in my attempts to fact-check what people are saying here and on Twitter. The rest are just more examples from the same governments.

Al Jazeera deserves special notice because it's become a very popular leftist news source. Believe me, I used to read it all the time too.

It can be reliable and accurate sometimes. But:

It consistently tweets things that are unsourced, never appear anywhere else, and that would be big news you'd expect it to follow up on if they were true. It seems to be following a strategy of "tweet every rumor you hear in case it's true, so you can get the scoop."

It also does this with its liveblogs of the war. And ALL its coverage of the war at this point is liveblogs. So things that are verifiably true will run right next to things that are complete hearsay, but are too long to just tweet.

This is especially dangerous because as far as I can tell, Al Jazeera doesn't delete anything that turns out to be false.

I've also seen regular news articles in Al Jazeera, on multiple topics, that veer from Absolutely True Statements to Wildly Exaggerated Numbers and Speculation. Stuff you wouldn't expect a source on, like statistics or descriptions. And there's no way to tell the difference unless you already know a topic really well, or are fact-checking them while you read.

One especially terrible example, from Gazan activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib:

Al Jazeera has never posted or published a correction.

Alkhatib has also blamed it for destabilizing the region, although he's exaggerating about it being Hamas's official propaganda outlet:

TL;DR: If you see a Tumblr post making any kind of factual news statement without a link, at this point you need to assume it is absolutely not true. And either scroll on past, or go check Google News.

If there IS a link, you need to click through to see what it's from and what it actually says.

(Honestly, you need to do that with Wikipedia too. I've repeatedly clicked through on citations that absolutely did not say what the article implied they did.)

And pro tip: on mobile, you can just smack a button to sort Google's news results by most recent, and it helps A LOT. There's gotta be a way to do the same on desktop, but if there is, it's not immediately visible, which sucks.

[altschmerzes]

y'all gotta cut it the fuck out with the ace- and arophobia i mean it

[project-sekai-facts]

I miss your analysis essay 💔💔

i'm working on another one but it's kinda long so might be a while (definitely before the end of summer though dw). Sorry I haven't done anything since the Akito one, school was kicking my ass for a few months and rn I'm prioritising some stuff for my personal blog. It's nearly done though, so I can work on essay stuff for this account again soon!

[menelaiad]

1/4 of the way through my thesis. ✨

[horsemeatluvr23]

i would pay obscene amounts of money to see bdubs stream Barbie: Horse Adventures

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

y'all i've been upset about nanowrimo's shenanigans since last year, when kids weren't safe, and now there's this AI shitshow, and i want to cry about it again, because nano has been SO IMPORTANT to me since 2008--it helped me hack my writing process and make a bunch of cool shit, and i've written so many stories i love using it as a jumping off point. but. we gotta protect kids, and we gotta get the fuck out of here with AI bullshit.

so. the decision i have come to is that i will still be participating in nano. but now it stands for "now a's [that's me] novel writing month." i'm still going to write a book in november, and i'm still going to shoot for the 1,667 words/day (even though my finished projects wind up way longer than that, invariably), because i've structured my creative life around this routine, but i won't be using their site any more.

i will also not be tagging my november project posts as nanowrimo, but i WILL still be tagging them as "nano[YEAR]" (because that's been my tagging system for untitled projects for uh. years.). and it's now a's novel writing month :)

[steelthroat]

*looking at my history notes*

"Okay so this is 4.7k words long, I usually can read at least 40/50k words of fanfiction a day so I should be able to..."

[woo-wahhhh]

[ hello, my sunshine–; just the intimacy of sitting in the sunlight and bathing in the warmth with alhaitham ] 

the sound of the antique mahogany clock you gifted alhaitham a couple months ago echoed through his home. it was admittedly out of place, a mondstadt style clock in his house filled with sumeru style furniture, yet it was placed delicately by the stained glass windows. light streamed through them, the sunlight blending into the shades of green and turquiose before it hit the rest of the room. 

the man of the hour himself could be found dozing away on his couch, coloured diamonds reflecting on his blemish free skin. he looked uncharacteristically peaceful while asleep, one hand lying on his stomach and the other just barely holding onto a book as it hung off the side of his couch. he was entirely relaxed– you could tell from the way his ear pieces were left on the coffee table and the fact he didn’t even flinch when you accidentally called out his name before you realized he was asleep.

you thought it’d be funny to wake him up after travelling to liyue for a couple weeks, but at the sight of him sleeping so contently, you couldn’t help but put aside that plan. 

you would’ve left but it would be awkward to leave as soon as kaveh had let you in before leaving to go meet with a client, or so he told you. so there you were, crouched by alhaitham’s side, idly gazing at his content expression. 

“how tired are you that you didn’t even hear my footsteps?” you murmur to yourself, setting your chin on your knees. you suppose even alhaitham could overwork himself, especially taking in the recent crisis in sumeru into consideration. 

“alhaitham,” you called impulsively, stretching out his name in a singsong tone as you decided to impulsively reach forward and poke his cheek. he had surprisingly squishy cheeks, you noted as you pinched him. “alhaitham,” you repeated.

“god, why must i be surrounded by nuisances?” ah, so sleeping beauty is awake, you giggled to yourself. you were tugging his cheek at the same time as he spoke so his words came out muffled.

“good morning, sleepyhead. i didn’t think a day would come where kaveh would be awake and working before you, but i suppose even pigs can fly if we try hard enough,” you teased. 

alhaitham, though now awake, hadn’t opened his eyes fully, squinting when the harsh sunlight hit his face. you took note of the unpleased expression on his face, so you reached forward to shade his eyes with your hands. 

“what are you doing?” he said, sitting up to rub his eyes furiously. you weren’t particularly bothered by the tiny sliver of irritation in his voice; you knew that was just how he spoke.

“nothing much,” you chirped with a sweet grin, “i’m just really happy to see you again.”

you two weren’t exactly the types to beat around the bush, and neither were you two particularly the types to be easily flustered, so your confession wasn’t out of the ordinary. 

but perhaps it was his sleep addled brain being far more irrational than his normal self, but he was awfully enchanted by that dazzling smile you’d just given him.

“did you just come back from liyue?” he murmured, reaching down to carefully trace the back of his hand against your jaw before pressing his hand onto your cheek. you thought he looked quite handsome like that, his silver hair falling over his eyes and the sunlight illuminating his figure as you sat down on the rug.

“mhm,” you hummed, pressing your own hand over his, threading your fingers between the spaces in between. his skin was rough to touch, fingers calloused from his time spent using his swords. “it’s okay, though, i’m not very tired. besides, seeing you is energizing enough.”

“i think someone’s lying,” alhaitham snorted, though his face remained passive examined yours, tracing his thumb over your cheekbone. “don’t think i can’t see those bags under your eyes. knowing you, you probably got too caught up with exploring to actually sleep, huh?” he accused.

“ack, i’m busted, aren’t i?” you returned, playfully gasping. 

“indeed, you are, and if my deductions are correct, then you didn’t come here to see me, rather you came here to take a nap because my bed has a better mattress than that sad excuse of one in your apartment, no?”

that got a deadpan out of you, which in turn pulled a smug grin out of him. “could you not call me out like that? and for the record, yes, yes i did come here for your bed, but i also came here to see you.”

“mhm, and i’m gonna go accept the kshahrewar funding request today,”

“you are?”

“no,” he deadpanned, “i’m clearly going to reject it again.”

“poor kaveh,” you muttered listlessly. “one of these days, he’s gonna murder you and stage it as an accident.”

alhaitham laughed with such bemusement, you felt a bit more pity for kaveh. “i’d like to see that guy try.”

“well, you can do that later today, but can i please borrow your bed? i’m genuinely exhausted...” you thought your puppy eyes were good enough to convince him, but perhaps as revenge, he only smirked as he gave your cheek a good pinch. 

“hmm... how about no?” alhaitham suggested, awfully smug as you tried fruitlessly to pry his fingers away from you. “you can sleep here though,”

“on your couch? no thanks,”

“no, idiot, with me. what happened to coming here to see me, hm? or are you so cruel to–,”

“okay, okay, fine! no need to guilt trip me!” you pouted, holding his gaze dramatically. “just let me go grab a blanket from your room,” you huffed.

“... in this weather?”

“yes?” you quirked an eyebrow up. “what? it’s perfectly normal to get a blanket if i’m cold,”

“you’re cold in this weather?” alhaitham reiterated. “it’s warm enough because of how sunny it is.”

“do you want me to sleep beside your or not?” you demanded, jabbing a finger in his face. “assuming it’s yes, i hope you know you’re going to have to sleep on your side because i intend to sleep like a log on my back.”

“alright, alright,” he chuckled.

as always, nothing amused him more than an argument. how awful of him, you often thought but he always had the most boyish smile when he bickered with you, so you let it slide. 

letting out a satisfied huff, you pushed yourself onto your knees in order to go grab a blanket. you were about to stand up, however, you paused when alhaitham called out your name, his hand once again cradling your cheek. 

before you could ask what was up, your voice died in your throat when he swiftly pressed his forehead against yours, lips barely a centimetre away from yours– hell, when he spoke, your lips brushed against his. the proximity was dizzying, and you could tell he enjoyed the sudden speechlessness of yours from the way his emerald green eyes crinkled into crescent moons.

“don’t leave me hanging for too long,” he murmured, promptly capturing your lips in a searing kiss.

 your eyes squeezed shut, the heat rising up your neck and across your cheeks as his lips moved against yours without a break, barely holding in a gasp when his tongue swiped against them. your hand had long flown up to grasp his forearm, but it still felt absolutely maddening, the way the tiniest of action from alhaitham could have you melting to putty.

you were thankful he pulled away when he did, because you didn’t know how much you could take of such breathtaking delirium, lest you pass out embarrassingly as he gave your bottom lip a brief bite.

“what,” you began, chest heaving, though you couldn’t hide the creeping smile on your bitten lips, “was that for?” your face flushed strawberry red, as was your ears and neck, and perhaps he should’ve kept a kamera on hand from how smitten he felt just from your embarrassed expression. 

“a welcome back present, what else?”

[voetballers]

I will say that I am extremely sorry for bringing my discussion of this situation to my blog where I'm aware that none of my followers (save for like... 4 friends who I already talk about how much I hate Dream) really want to see, but I do just want to rant about how purely disgusting this man has been as of late.

We all become aware of yet another victim of his, an underaged fan that he was acting sexually towards (a 16-17 year old whilst he was 20), someone who has contacted the proper authorities and after contacting them, posted video proof that Dream had sent the victim a SnapChat video of him moaning and saying that he wants to "fill (them) up", and says previously that Dream was in possession of CSEM, and he calls the person calling him out an "not mentally stable individual" and that "it's from a person who hates (his) guts" because 1) of course he would default to saying "oh she's crazy don't believe her" that every perpetrator loves to say, and 2) of course the kid you were acting sexual towards hates your guts. Of course a friend of someone whom you sexted when they were 16-17 and you 20 would hate your guts. That is typical behaviour of a friend — my friends hate my sexual abusers' guts. I would be upset if they didn't.

He actually confirms that he had contact with this teen, says that they "were in an awkward and weird relationship with (his) ex-girlfriend" — who is known for... also grooming his underaged fans to get sexual material from them — and still tries to paint himself as the victim. He says, verbatim, "I made the mistake of being intimate with with this completely above age friend years ago, and haven't talked to them in years", however the individual is currently 20. A few years ago, when he still had contact with his ex, the victim would have been 16-17. He doesn't deny that this happened, does not write it off, and yet still says that it is only being brought up to "kick him while (he's) down". He is a truly despicable individual, and it's sickening that he still has millions of fans whom will stay defending him, and whom still actively defend him even now. He said that the middleman (the person who made the burner account/talking publicly about it) screen recorded the video yesterday, however the victim had these videos back in 2019, when they would have been underaged.

He makes "jokes" about he, himself, liking minors, even with all this being known. The first time someone came forward, he said that it was the individual hating him. The second time, it was accusing them of defamation. This time, it's "they want to kick me while I'm down". He is vile. And this is not even counting everything else we already know about him.

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

What am I up to? Well, I promised myself I would use this final conveniently chill seaside week to finish up the draft of the final part of Moon-chosen, Moon-guided that I've been poking at for more than six months at this point. As distracting/inspiring as lounging around on moonlit beaches at night might be.

The thing is a monster, even as riddled with holes as it still is:

And, in a super exclusive super exciting preview that everyone is certainly clamouring for, Isobel has decided to be a Jaheira/Nine-Fingers truther:

[banesberry-anomoly]

Bluesky 🦋 gijinka? Bluesky 🦋 gijinka. [He/They]

[onlyaperfectdisaster]

This time—for the first time—he doesn’t try to fight the words that float through his brain as it rises.

God, I love her.

Five times Lockwood nearly tells Lucy he loves her (or pointedly thinks it at her) and one time she does it for him.

My fic for @lockwoodandcobigbang2023! Or the first chapter anyway, oops. In a departure from form, there’s, like, a plot and dialogue? Who could’ve imagined. Massive thanks to @synestheticwanderings, my cheerleader and beta. I do not think I could have done this without you <3 Go check out @melnonny‘s art for this fic for a preview of what is to come! It’s gorgeous, and Lockwood and Lucy are adorable, and I simply can’t.

[universalfanfic]

2024 Word Count Tally (Goal: 100k)

JAN: 24,871

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Okay, I've made sure my Bluetooth keyboard is easily set up to my phone. I will now be able to type seamlessly on different devices. I am ready to try and start writing next month.

I still have no clue what though. I've found some prompts but am not ready to post them. So uh, free for all prompts in my ask/comments for now? 😅 If anyone's interested XD

[octubreazul]

Edmond Dantes: "Comrade, I adjure you, as a Christian and a soldier, to tell me where we are going. I am Captain Dantes, a loyal Frenchman, thought accused of treason; tell me where you are conducting me, and I promise you on my honor I will submit to my fate."

Guard: We are locking you in prison.

Edmond: Fuck no, I'm out *tries to jump out of the boat*