#yet this stuff is still popular

[ethekitchenator]

Have creative writing skills just died over the last few years? Between movies and games (TV has been a little better), I'm just finding it harder and harder to actually find decent, or even forgivable, writing.

Take the film Longlegs. Did Nicholas Cage play his part really well? Yes. Was anything else about the movie good? No. You had a bland and passive protagonist who literally does nothing and was played so vacantly that she was boring as anything to watch. The whole plot line made zero sense, and the FBI were laughable at best. The film could not decide what it wanted to be, so it was just left as a poor, confusing mess that really didn't solve anything or make any sense.

No take Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Oh boy do I have some thoughts about the writing in this game. I'll save most of because I'm not finished, but it's been really hard to get through. It has it's moments, don't get me wrong, but those gems really shine compared to the rest of downright awful writing. Almost everything is told to you, not shown, told. The player is hand held through the story, and your character is...sickeningly nice the entire time. There's no character building, no nuance, and it's like being forced fed on old, dirty spoon.

Now, these are just two examples off the top of my head, but surely it's not just me noticing this right? Time and time again I'm being disappointed by modern media, mostly because of poor writing and storytelling. The times where I'm not disappointed are becoming rarer and rarer that it's hard to look forward to anything. I'm sure there's multiple reasons I could put it down too, but it's becoming increasingly frustrating from a writers perspective. The basics seem to be being thrown out the window in favour of...something. There's a time and place you can break rules, but these should never be at the cost of your story.

I don't know, maybe it's just me.

[quibbs126]

You gotta love that people are so into Shadow Milk already despite him barely being seen yet

Like he only has a general backstory which he shares with the rest of the Beasts, and then a couple lines at the very end of the episode. We do not know this man and he already has a devoted following

Personally I’m convinced it’s because of the jester theme

[swordmaid]

i am wide awake thinking about that post canon jb au again when I should be sleeping …!!! such is the nature of the jbrainrot…

[sonknuxadow]

my honest reaction

[transgenderprototype]

Ill go onto someone's profile and their pinned post will have like "DNI IF YOU SUPPORT [insert artist] ILL BLOCK YOUR ASS IF YOU REBLOG THEIR ART anyway u can dm me if you want more info on why i have a vitriolic hatred for this person, i pwomise it wont be biased and full of bullshit :3"

Ill be like "okay thats fucking stupid, im not dm'ing them for what'll clearly be a biased response. I should probably look more into it.

I find out why.

"Oh these are lies. These are lies being spread because someone leaked a queer person's nsfw alt and found something they could twist into being "morally wrong" and theyre still continuing as the artist clarifies that what they drew isnt [whatever theyre trying to twist it into]."

[demonic-shadowlucifer]

"kids today will NEVER know what OLD music/cartoons were like" wait until you hear about reruns and DVDs and youtube and radios and streaming services and-

[junkyardisles]

I joke about finding characters hot a lot as an asexual but obviously I'm not truly attracted them (like I've called wildstorm hot before but really I just think he's cool) it's so weird how people only seem to be interested in certain characters because they find them attractive lol, it just seems shallow to me. "Ugly" characters are so fun

most harrowing experience as a pokemon fan was when i realised people don't like my fav champion (diantha) cause she's not attractive

[quirkle2]

who wants zombie au writing. don't answer that ur getting it anyway (1.6k words)

His shoes knock against the old flooring of the house, wood creaking under rubber soles that slide over the woodgrain. He drags them a bit, lifts his limbs up no more than he strictly has to, and they lead him to the nearest sittable surface.

The couch is old and dusty and has likely gone untouched for months, much like everything else nowadays, so he watches the thin cloud of dust billow off the cushions largely with disinterest. He collapses into the fabric heavily, feels the whole thing scoot back an inch and hit the wall behind him. The sound echoes, carried by lifeless rooms, while he unceremoniously drops his backpack to the floor by his feet.

The breath he lets out is slow and methodical and born of pent up muscles, aimed at the ceiling where he rests his neck against the back of the couch and relaxes every limb one by one. It’s a process he forces himself through, if only to rid the constant ache beneath his skin.

Slow, sweeping footsteps meander around the room in front of him, and Ritsu angles his gaze down from his craned back position to look at his brother. He wanders, like he so often does—seemingly aimless, but there’s something procedural about it that he’s convinced he just hasn’t figured out yet.

Shigeo’s empty eyes crawl along the hearth of the fireplace, explosions of ash sprayed out across the red brick. His head tilts up to trace his attention around the angular lines of the television, hung on the wall and screen grey with dust. He flits back and forth between the roundness of the bricked mantle and the sharp edges of the screen, like he’s taking notes.

Shigeo paws the television. Four lines of muck are cleared. The zombie blinks, paws at it again with dusty, curious fingers. Ritsu watches him make a mess of the television screen in silence, blinking tiredly.

He almost closes his eyes, but he fights against the urge and moves his fingers down his lap to reach for his bag. His middle hooks around the loop at the top and he lugs it up and into his lap, where he unzips it and peers into the shadowy contents.

Ritsu fishes out the water bottles. He finds the one with the messy R scribbled along the cap in sharpie and takes a big swig of it. It’s warm going down, constantly insulated in a bag of old, sweaty clothes. He feels like he can taste the odor in it, but it clears the grain in his throat from stomping all over dirt roads today, so he’s still grateful.

He holds out the one labeled S to Shigeo. “Thirsty?”

Shigeo looks at him from where he’s crouched down to the floor now, inspecting the soot along the hearth. Unfortunately, he sees handprints in the black already, and when his brother reaches a hand out to take it, his palm is covered in soot.

He lets him have his fun and settles his own bottle back in the mess of tangled clothes and rolls of bandages. Ritsu rakes his fingers through their stock with no real purpose—he knows exactly what’s in here, and none of it is useful.

They’d been searching all day; Ritsu doesn’t really know how far they’d walked, but it had to be a lot of miles. In and out of stores, up and down empty houses, weaving between warehouses—they didn’t really stop for a break. Not when Ritsu can hear Shigeo’s stomach from here and he himself has shaking hands. They can’t afford a break.

Nothing, though. Not a single goddamn thing worth taking. A settlement must have come through here long ago and swept the highway. They’re in the countryside, where houses are spaced out acres from each other and there’s entire cow pastures between properties. And yet every house they’d seen and entered provided nothing.

Ritsu stares into the negative space in his bag where there should be supplies. His stomach cramps and if he smells another whiff of that godawful sweaty, bloody sweatshirt he still carries, he’s going to throw up bile.

He leans away from the open pouch, eyes wandering to his brother who draws… something into the soot of the hearth. His water bottle sits on the floor, abandoned and still unscrewed. Ritsu leans forward with great effort and a grunt, leaning over his bag to grab at the top of it.

It takes him two tries to get Shigeo’s attention, and one more for an answer on where the cap is. It’s then placed in his palm, covered in soot and also saliva. Ritsu swallows down the nausea that rolls up his throat and wipes it off with his frankly already disgusting sleeve, and screws it back on.

He leans back again, succumbing to the urge to let his eyes rest, and he listens to the very subtle swipe of his brother’s hands across brick. There’s birds outside, chirping, and even though it’s still very much a common occurrence, Ritsu cannot help but feel nostalgic about it.

If he ignores the awful hum of silence, and the distinct lack of an electric thrum throughout the walls, and the fact that this is a stranger’s couch and not his, he can almost imagine normalcy. He can almost say this feels like those quiet moments after school, when he settles on the couch and scrolls through his phone in a house that only holds him and his brother because their parents simply aren’t home yet.

He can almost hear the creak of wood from Shigeo walking around his room upstairs. He can almost tap his fingers on the couch cushions to the pattern of his brother making his way down the steps. He can almost hear the fridge opening, and the sound of milk being poured into glass.

Almost. But Ritsu listens to sharp silence instead, and he tries not to think too hard.

He drifts for a while, feels himself truly sink into the couch and let the cushions claim him, and he thinks about nothings because if he doesn’t, then he’ll lose it. He carefully sifts through the nothingness of his mind, through the passing thoughts that have no bearing, and he focuses on that, on the lack of substance. His head is too full of things that have too much substance.

He misses boredom. He tells himself he misses boredom—the complete insubstantiality of it—because if he lets himself think of what he really misses, it’ll drive him insane.

The cushions move, and Ritsu peels his eyes open and lets himself get pulled from liminal mindspace. The cotton in his head recedes, and he blinks, and then he’s swiveling his head to look at his brother who sits in the cushion right next to him.

His hands and the cuffs of his hoodie are smothered in black. Shigeo sits hunched, gaze still wandering even when there’s not much decoration in this house to look at. He studies the off-white walls, the chips in the paint, the holes drilled in where there maybe used to be photos hung.

Ritsu gazes at him quietly, chest instinctively rising and falling to match his brother’s rhythm. He watches the expansion there, under his hoodie, in the subtlety of the folds and the way they warp over the movement. It’s slightly quicker than what he’s used to, but Ritsu knows his brother’s heart rate is much slower. He’s felt it before. He’s listened to it before, with his ear against a chest.

Ritsu’s attention moves to his eyes, and the heavy bags underneath them, and the paleness of his pupils and the ghostlight of him underneath that. He stares into them, looks for stray, familiar thoughts that might enter his head. Looks for old memories that might shine through in the form of recognition when he sees furniture layouts, and candy wrappers, and ads for soda.

Ritsu looks for it all the time, that glint of familiarity. And he finds it, sometimes. And really, he thinks that’s keeping him going more than food ever will.

Shigeo turns his head, and looks at him. Sometimes, when his brother looks at him, there’s not much there. No substance, no anything. And Ritsu finds it a bit evil that he craves silence in his own head, and yet noise in Shigeo’s, and often times it is the other way around.

His brother looks at him now, though, with that comforting recognition. That growth of the pupils, that softening of the hard edges of his face where unknown stressors have gotten to him. Ritsu wonders what zombies get stressed out. He figures it’s the same deal with humans, considering they’re largely alike.

Ritsu wonders if Shigeo knows he’s sick. He wishes he could ask him. He wishes for a lot of things. Silence in his own head is one of them.

Ritsu swivels his head away and stares at the ceiling, if only to force the thoughts to pause. He studies the popcorn ridges above them, traces the peaks with his gaze. It calms him, gives him something to focus on. He looks for patterns in the shadows they make.

Shigeo shifts next to him. And then he shimmies down, settles into the cushions, and plops his head right down on Ritsu’s shoulder.

Static roars in his mind and his heart stammers. Ritsu swallows the lump in his throat but that just makes it bigger, so he clamps his mouth shut and breathes carefully through his nose.

The tears cut through the grime on his face. He plops his own head down against his brother’s, and lives in the noise.

[seventh-district]

again and again i find myself lamenting that audio roleplay isn't taken more seriously by some people. like yeah, they often have a romantic element, and by nature they usually directly involve/address the listener- and i totally get that those things aren't to everyone's taste. no art or entertainment is universally appealing, and that's okay! but.. it still makes me a lil sad that the "cringe" reputation of asmr/audio rp precedes it. there's a whole lot of talent and creativity being poured into these audios by so many people that i feel goes unrecognized and/or disrespected simply due to the medium that the stories are being told through.

[sysig]

The brainworms are winning, clearly (Patreon)

[burgycreeper405-blog]

a oj x soap doodle cuz yes

[thatonecrookedsmile]

"Effective today, you are dismissed from any employment at Joey Drew Studios. This is due to complaints received about the grim and disturbing subjects of your work. May your dreams come true somewhere else."

[Opportunity is always just a step away from you]

"Gent Corporation looking for research subjects. Pays three fifty a week."

[When one story ends,so does another unfold]

-Umbrella-

-----

My participation in an Ink Demonth would not be complete without at least 1 drawing that takes a few days to complete.

I've had this idea in my head for a while, so this prompt was a good opportunity to put it into action. Featuring Riley Wells and Alan Gray.

I don't remember if I've ever drawn a rainy scene before. This was a first attempt. I liked it, actually. I think it worked for what I wanted in the end. (Thanks old tutorial from 2004) (The raindrops running down the umbrellas I had to learn by myself. Probably not the best thing possible, but better than nothing).

I'm happy with the overall atmosphere of the drawing and how it turned out. I think I managed to encapsulate the original vision I had in my head. I kind of messed it up during the process but I managed to turn it around and get it how I really wanted it.

When it comes to Riley and her joining Gent: all things considered, it would make more sense that she ended up at Gent in a similar way to what Archie Carter talked about in his audio log. She probably found a newspaper about Gent looking for test subjects and decided to go with it. She may have met Alan for the first time when she started working there, no doubt. Rather than meeting him before she joined the company in a "he was the one who offered her the job" situation, as I showed above.

I only went with this second scenario just because I found it more interesting to draw. And I wanted to touch on the possibility of Alan offering the chance to work as a test subject directly for certain people (without saying too much about the darker details of the job, of course). It's kind of evil, but at the same time, so is Gent (shockingly/j), so it's all good. (Realizing now that I may be making shit up for a character that has yet to be characterized. If this isn't the Bendy experience I don't know what is) Also, poor girl, she was fired from a shitty company and went to get a job at another shitty company. How sad.

Also, as an addendum, I don't know if their heights are 100% accurate. My vision for my Alan design is that he's a tall guy. Taller than Joey and, for that matter, Riley. When I was drawing him I realized he wasn't that tall and I had to resize him in the end. And Riley I never thought about how tall she is. Maybe her height here is a little off-model. So, don't take this drawing as my definitive vision of how tall they are. Because I don't even know for sure lol.

Next drawing is simpler so it probably won't take too long. I hope.

[rotisseries]

inspired by elli's poll lol cause this seems fun actually but if you guys have bad answers I'll kill myself on your doorstep or smth

[13eyond13]

one of the lesser talked about fun things about intentionally reading more books is finding new stuff to be a bit of a hater about tbh

[comfortlesshurt]

Skyler's October 2024 AO3 Recs

Boysssss, I have been slacking with sharing other people's fics, so I'm gonna work on being better with that. Below the cut is a non-exhaustive list of fics I've started/finished in October 2024 (i.e. all the ones that didn't get too buried in my AO3 history page and aren't PWP) that I enjoyed. I tried to sort fics from least to most traffic, so the higher on each list, the more it deserves some attention!

I didn't read a ton this month, so we've got a pretty short list. Expect the same in November, but December is usually a big reading month for me.

I enjoy stuff others find triggering, so particularly in the whump-focused section, make sure you read the tags first. I didn't relist triggers that the authors already noted on the stories.

More Whump-Focused

Since October's weird because of Whumptober, I'm just going to link to my whumptober reblogs tag to knock all the Whumptober fills out! I liked all of these, but there are far too many to go into detail on. You'll find a lot of shorter fics under this tag because I mainly follow people who tried to complete every day. It's mostly VLD in there, but I know a few FMA fics made it through! If you're as much of a Keith stan as I am, definitely hit all of @perpetuallylatetothefandomparty's posts under this tag. There are more than what I reblogged for everyone in this tag as well, so follow these people for more! I just burned out halfway through the month and needed a break from oneshots. You'll see 'em reblogged later though.

Swoon by Le_Tournesol: pre-Klance. short oneshot. chaotic dumbasses keith and lance, my beloved.

Even the People in Your Dreams Will Lie to You by popering: Klance, but the ship's not so much the focus imo. LONG. technically, I did NOT find this in October but I haven't hyped it up nearly enough yet, so here it is anyway. also, I re-read it in October, so maybe that counts. follows keith and lance being rescued from galra captivity. the author describes it as a science fiction mindfuck and that is so accurate. plenty of angsty content, but not like... over the top. like it all has a plot purpose. this may have usurped my previous all-time favorite fic... unfinished but I have no reason to believe OP won't come through with the rest, and it is close to complete. catch me in the comments as I work on my re-read.

The Future Freaks Me Out by gghostnebula: Klance. longfic. I forget how long ago I found this, but it COUNTS because I read it again this month. (I say as though I don't reread it every few months obsessively.) when I say my ideal fic... very Keith-focused. lots of hurt/comfort. slowburn Klance with fake dating. painful backstory that gets resolved. somehow takes a couple tropes I hate and makes me love them. heavily inspired something i'm writing now, so if you don't like it, you're gonna have a bad time following me in a few months... if this fic has no diehard fans then i am dead.

More Ship-Focused

To Whom It May Concern by heavily_caffeinated: Klance. short. a follow-up fic to Dear Reader in the relatively near future! modern AU. Cute & a nice little chance to get back into that AU for a bit. Strongly recommend reading Dear Reader first, but I guess you don't have to.

to breathe in this mirage by existwound: Klance, but pre-slash (sort of). there's time travel, so technically it's also not pre-slash, but you see the vision here. pushing that border between what I consider medium and long for a fic. canon-verse. this is 1) adorable, 2) just that little bit of angsty, and 3) so fucking well-written. (am I biased bc I love existwound? yes, what of it?) unfinished but I trust Astra with my life, so the other chapter will come.

A King and His Fisherman by heavily_caffeinated: Klance. long and finished! modern AU. sold me on dad Lance (coming from someone who typically hates fics involving child characters).

it's you that's haunting me by perfchan: Klance. long and finished! this is the first fic, but it's a whole finished series. ghost-hunting AU (I know, I also didn't think I liked those but this is different, I swear). I binge read this whole series in like... 3 days?

And just in general, here are my AO3 bookmarks for everything else I loved but didn't read this month. The include and exclude filters are your friends, so pls no bully for what I like thx. I think we've all spotted my weird niche by now.

[simcardiac-arrested]

honestly don't even remember what happened in 2017 at all, it was a year. that year is no longer.

what the fuck DIDN’T happen in 2017