#(usually white conventions tbh)

[foursaints]

I NEEEEEEEDDDD your Regulus Black hcs. What is he like in your head??? Is he a perfectionist???? Is he downright insane?????? Which Sturniolo brother is he????? I need details on EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!

omg to start im not really a Regulus Blogger... i love him ofc but hes usually only in the background to my rosekiller. and i love all the regulus characterizations i read (more than my own sometimes tbh)

my controversial take is that my reggie is tall 😔..... he's small growing up but now he's the same height as James. who has a sort of furious, lustful conniption every time he wants to make a snide comment and remembers that The Baby Black is now a perfectly grown 20-something with unimpressed eyes and the world's unfairest aristocratic jawline

he and sirius both have that ethereal, feylike house-black thing going on, except sirius is prettier and more striking and softer and more girlish. like snow white. regulus looks every part the conventional pureblood heir: dark and austerely handsome and fine-boned and patrician. the thickest eyelashes.

undisputed leader of his friend group but not on purpose. reggie sees himself as this unappealing boring loser (the opposite of sirius) but he just has this? ineffable main-character thrall? once he's in your life you just want to die for him

he didnt mean to have the skittles but reggie can't help collecting outcasts & freaks like hes putting easter eggs in a basket. they really love each other but sometimes i see the slytherins as being a far more exaggerated version of the marauders perceived "roles": regulus as james (undisputed leader), barty as sirius (sexy ride-or-die), rosier twins as remus & peter ("nerds" 1 & 2)

very very tender and sensitive. perhaps more so than sirius

my reg is fastidious and organized and ALLEGEDLY an insane compulsive control freak like evan rosier. he has repressed every emotion he's felt for the last two decades under a cooly unbothered facade. except the difference is evan never slips up and regulus is having hysterical meltdowns into $5 chili's bottomless margaritas at least a couple times a month.

like he's eating a pint of ice cream alone in his car scream-sobbing to Since U Been Gone after he broke up with barty for the 800th time. #evanwouldnever

much love and respect to grumpy emo regulus but that is not my reggie... my reg is an posh antisocial City Gay drinking an extra dry martini at a gallery opening on the upper east side and scowling. wearing a fuzzy cream sweater and $800 loafers with no socks. his back hurts and he wants to go home

i fully believe he could survive being dropped in the alaskan wilderness with 0 supplies he just seems like he'd do whatever it takes to Survive etc. just like crafting a spear with the most "it is what it is" look in his eyes. wouldn't even faze him.

my modern au regulus works running one of those little stuffed animal hospitals repairing teddy bears and thats really important to me, personally,

#a #this was fun sfshfjkhs #t

[olderthannetfic]

I’d like to appeal to the advice of your followers with a question concerning the degree of realism of sex in smutty fanfic. Two questions really. I know fanfic is not reality- but if (almost) all authors describe certain things in a specific way, I start to wonder if I missed something. And since I write a bit myself, I’d like to get things right.

The first is about bruising. A tight grip on arms or hips is apparently enough to cause bruises. I have participated in enthusiastic and even rough sex and never, ever got bruised. So I decided to test it out with my husband and asked him to try and bruise my arm by gripping it. Even a very tight grip caused no bruises. I only got (mildly) bruised after asking him to apply full force, which took him some effort and was seriously painful. It really hurt and not in the sexy way. Now maybe I bruise less easy than most but encounters with table corners etcetera say otherwise. So am I missing something here, or did smut writers collectively decide that bruising is sexy and therefore bruises are easily caused by a tight grip?

The other thing is about soreness. In all or most fics, not only fanfic but also conventional straight romance novels, passionate sex means the receiving party will be sore enough to be limping the day after or even have trouble sitting down. In my personal experience, very rough, slam-in-as-hard-as-you-can fucking both vaginal and anal does not result in any observable soreness afterwards while walking or sitting. The insides may get chafed, yes, rubbed raw even, depending on the use of lube, and that will be supremely noticeable during consequent bathroom visits or the next fuck session if it follows soon after the first, but that’s it. The only soreness I ever had was muscle soreness in my thighs or other limbs if the position took some physical effort to maintain. But internal soreness, never. So again, did writers collectively decide soreness is sexy, or what’s happening?

--

I'm pretty sure they're both just Law of Horny.

Yes, probably some people do bruise more easily than you, but the way this is described in fic is as though those hands had finger paint on them. We're talking full on hand prints after a few minutes of slightly hard gripping. Nobody bruises like that unless they have a medical problem where they should be a lot more careful during sex. Haha.

TBH, the kinds of characters who end up with hip bruises are usually also the ones who have milky white/jade/etc. skin the narrative obsesses over. It's the same ones whose necks get marked up and obsessed over. It's one of those 'you're too pristine, so I'm going to come all over your face' kinks.

As for soreness... I think "sore" vs. "chafed" is just word choice. Authors may not mean muscle soreness. I've definitely managed to make the chafed feeling last for a while by using absurdly large dildos, and everybody in porn has a massive pornstar dick...

That said, while I've certainly had that sensation where something feels different the next day such that you notice it while walking around, not just in the bathroom, it's not your glutes. It's not usually deep inside either. It's more just the opening, where all the nerves are. The way people describe sitting gingerly is silly: Sure, you might be hyperaware while changing position because that area stretches a little, but it's described like the aftermath of flogging.

I think this is just the "Dick so big it rearranged your guts" style of smut writing where the body is ~forever changed~ by this particular sex even though people are made of a bunch of stretchy muscles that are going to go right back to what they were doing before. I mean, I guess you could forever fuck up the cartilage in your knee while doing something stupidly athletic, but that's not hot.

Do I believe somebody identifies with these porn tropes? Sure. Bodies vary. But there's definitely a canned porn version everybody uses, and I doubt it's because they're drawing from personal experience.

[majorbaby]

i was going to make a video compilation but actually i think that would give MASH too much credit or make it seem like I really think this show did generally well by race and racism, plus I can't go back and edit a video if I change my mind at any point. so here's my text-based list of race moments that actually land for me, whether intentional or based on my personal interpretation.

s01e05 The Moose - which is mostly a white saviour episode but actually does do a few things right:

this moment of solidarity between Oliver and Young-Hi

in response to the Swamp Rats' indignation that anyone would sell their child into servitude, Ho-Jon explains very frankly "Well some of the locals sell their kids for money Hawkeye, they have no other means." - not to say that it's right that Young-Hi's parents did that to her, but like, they didn't sell her to get rich, they did it because they're likely living in poverty and they have other younger children to support

Young-Hi cheekily explaining in her letter to Hawkeye "heehee the nuns have no idea I'm Buddhist" she's taking them for a ride, it's great

and Young-Hi's "I am also very beautiful!"

s02e15 Officers Only

Hawkeye introducing a black enlisted man as his brother-in-law - soooo very recently, like I argued this at the mic at my last convention, we've started to rethink the use of"brother" and "sister" to refer to your union comrades has start. if your boss caught you organizing with a friend after work, you would say "oh that's just my brother/sister". arguments against this are gaining traction now because of growing awareness of non-binary people but tbh it should have never been a thing it only protects white people who can reasonably pass as siblings, if you're black or brown you're SOL (as you usually were anyway). so anyway. this is a long ass paragraph just to say that Hawkeye saying " brother-in-law" in the union episode of MASH makes me feel ways. someone was thinking about intersectionality way back then.

s02e19 The Chosen People

Sam Pak in OR at the beginning of the episode, thanking America for saving Korea "from the bottom of our bomb craters." and also just generally making jokes that actually land about the Korean language because he's the one making them, "Pish-posh? That's my mother's family name"

tbh Sam walking around like he owns the base is pretty great in general

s05e08 Dear Sigmund

Klinger: Smaha! Smaha! Potter: [to Private Habib] What'd he say? Habib: He said "Smaha! Smaha!"

If it is Arabic it's funny because Potter assumes Habib will translate and he just repeats the words in Arabic because that is what Klinger literally said. If it is gibberish it's funny because Potter assumes its Arabic and Habib gives him the gibberish. This is one of my favourite gags in the whole show and fun fact also the moment I realized Jamie Farr must be a native speaker because his accent is so natural. It's pretty cool he got to flex that.

s05e11 Hawk's Nightmare

this is just me, but I love that Hawkeye describes the people of Crabapple Cove as never changing colour, always the same "off-white" - this was a time you almost never heard white people acknowledge their whiteness, except when speaking about racism. really struck me the first time i heard it. probably my favourite thing from Hawkeye re: race and it's not intentional. I definitely prefer it to his white saviourism

s06e08 In Love and War

the exchange between Kyungsoon and Hawkeye where the extent of his naiveté is put on display, "You're being awfully practical about this" "I thought you liked that about me [list of things she had to do for survival that Hawkeye initially admired in her but is now throwing in her face]"

episode ends in Hawkeye having to accept that sometimes love is irrelevant, the circumstances are what they are (the love was there and it didn't matter, but it was there) - this imo is the only episode of MASH that even begins to touch on the realities of being a Korean civilian in the war

s08e03 Guerilla My Dreams

the gang fails to save a woman from being taken away and she will likely die, as would've probably happened irl. sometimes being on a sitcom isn't enough to save you from your fate as a prisoner of war and it was good to be reminded of that for once. it's the white saviour trope averted.

s08e08 Private Finance

I can at least appreciate that this time when someone is explaining how all sides of the war are to blame for the scourge of war, it's a young Korean girl in her own words. rest of the episode is questionable but normally such a line would go to Hawkeye.

s08e15 Yessir that's Our Baby

the Korean official biting back when Hawkeye tries to accuse him (on behalf of the country) for not recognizing mixed-race babies as Korean, stating that neither does America recognize mixed-race babies with American fathers as Americans, unlike France and the UK

s11e01 Hey Look Me Over

this episode is textually about the very specific and not uncommon experience of being desexualized as a fat, Asian-American woman - it deserves a proper episode recap/analysis with that lens and I'm planning on take a stab at it if/when I ever get around to that ep in my rewatch. these stories were not being told in mainstream media until like, five years ago. there are some the hypersexualized or fetishized Asian woman in media and usually the movie/show/comic is doing that as a selling point rather than commentary. it's unfortunate we haven't progressed much since that moment 40 years ago.

[citation needed, cannot remember the name of the episode]

while admitted a Korean doctor tells Hawkeye he wishes things were different and that he could work alongside Hawkeye and BJ and Hawkeye asks with perfect American ignorance (paraphrase), "You'd want to do that?" and he responds, "You treat the enemy, why can't I?"

And finally, Soon-Lee and Klinger in GFA, a little bit in As Time Goes By. I started writing an essay on Klinger as the romantic lead of GFA but I think I'm going to try to make it a video essay so I can include clips from the show without having to make a bunch of gifs.

But in a nutshell, Klinger gets to do stuff in GFA that the often emasculated brown man still doesn't get to do much on television. As MASH progressed we did occasionally get to see Klinger take on a more serious role, Alan Alda has spoken on trying to do that for the character rather than rehash dramatic plotlines for Hawkeye or BJ who got plenty of their own.

Having Klinger represented that way gives audiences a chance to see him more three-dimensionally. As someone who is capable of romantic love, attraction, courage and someone who might be sexually desirable to others - in a less direct way than Kellye demands of Hawkeye in Hey Look Me Over. I think the lack of subtlety in Hey Look Me Over is great because there can be no question about what that episode is supposed to do and also because it drives home that Hawkeye is so blinded by his preconceived notions of what a "desirable woman" looks and sounds like that Kellye has to scream it in his face before he realizes what he's been doing. But it's also nice to have an example that's woven into the writing and cinematography.

Normally I don't like to add these kinds of disclaimers because I value open conversation but if you're rb'ing, please be mindful of your tags. I intentionally excluded a lot of the moments where I know I'm supposed to give this show an A+ for its progressivism when it has a white person demonstrating basic human decency. That bar is just too low for me.

#race on mash #re: mash

[visualtaehyun]

Hi ✨ chances are you're here because of one of my posts about language in Thai shows (mostly BL tbh). And since I kind of keep writing more of those, I thought I should do some better housekeeping and neatly collect them in a pinned post. So here ya go!

- all posts about language in Thai series: #local woman harps on about linguistics Thai QL fandom 101 & 102

Be My Favorite ep. 10 - "We should stop using rude pronouns" ep. 11 - thoughts | the poem ep. 12 - thoughts and some translation notes

Hidden Agenda ep. 5 - food, tongue twister, misc. ep. 6 - the friendzone article, the meaning of sunflowers according to Zo, observations about boundary pushing misc. - ep. 6 cuddle and ep. 10 video call

Only Friends ep. 5 - SandRay and the word 'friend' OST MV "So What?" - on-screen subs translated ep. 12 - Big Bug and Little Rabbit

Naughty Babe ep. 2 - "What do I usually call you?" ep. 3 - How the main four speak with each other ep. 4 - "Ai...!" - "Hia." | names and pronouns between the two families | What's in a name? ep. 5 - Devotion ep. 8 - Yi's mom and sisters

Lucky My Love ep. 1 - Consulting the stars ep. 2 - care vs. care ep. 3 - subtitle addendum ep. 5 - misc.

Love Senior ep. 1 - Names, puns, and pronouns galore! ep. 2 - bits and bobs ep. 4 preview - Title drop! ...and SOTUS explained

Last Twilight ep. 5 - The phi-nong of it all | Of Partners and Pronouns ep. 1-6 - "You're good! - "I sure am~" parallel | Mork and August's changing language with each other | Evolution of MorkDay's language use ep. 7 - Bam bam in the ham ep. 8 - The Little Prince | The brothers, Day's anger, and Night & Mork ep. 9 - Rung the rainbow | Bam bam in the ham updated & in gif format | Different expressions for Sorry ep. 11 - Phi Night vs. Lung Night & Porjai vs. Poomjai ep. 12 - no explanations, just vibes (mostly Porjai and Night)

Dead Friend Forever ep. 1-8 - misc. translations and observations ep. 9 - more language notes ep. 11 - Tee's conscience vs. Non's fury, and more news headlines | Phee-New & Tee-White pronoun breakdown and New's disposition by the end of ep. 11

1000 Years Old ep. 1 - Title, pronouns, and WHOMST ep. 2 - Hashtags, ghost girl, and "allergic" ep. 3-5 - "You are mine", Pun does a pun, etc. ep. 6+9 - Puns, pronouns, and shenanigans

23.5 ep. 1 - Pronouns and puns ep. 2 - The Fixed Stars, haplessness, and more ep. 3 - Names, particles, aliens and ghosts, oh my! ep. 4 - Fortune favors the bold ep. 7 - Sass, banana ghost, and love advice

Only Boo! pilot | official trailer

La Pluie - #bella watches la pluie Cutie Pie - #bella rewatches ning hia

ONE-OFFS Wedding Plan ep. 2 - Wa & Rine Wednesday Club - Wednesday's child is full of woe | Naming conventions of Tam's yadom Cooking Crush ep. 1 - Onion-or-kiss pun Pit Babe ep. 13 - CharlieBabe NC Love Sea Intro trailer - pronouns & predictions We Are - cheat sheet for characters, relationships, pronouns etc.

MISC. re: a BossNoeul clip - sugar daddy/DILF meme and song (ฟ้ารักพ่อ by Badmixy) re: a Last Twilight post - A clownery of typos and homonyms in romanization DMD Friendship the Reality - A pun explained (ft. FirstOne and Latte) re: a Pavel tweet - an attempt to explain and contextualize ผัว /pua/ and เมีย /mia/ re: We Are ep. 2 - Stir-fried water spinach aka Flying Morning Glory

- all posts not about Thai language but still about Thai shows: #ql musings (meta, thoughts etc.) #bella and the blorbos (gifs, edits, memes)

- other language related posts: #thai | #linguistics Love For Love's Sake - Hyung

#local woman harps on about linguistics

[cyberdragoninfinity]

I'd love to know what the other Barians are up to in the college AU!

YESSS like i said when i was talkin about Vector, I rly wanna properly draw all these guys sometime this year, theyve been bumping around my brain for Months now. some tidbits about the other guys:

Shark/Nasch: MISTAH TRANS MASC HE/THEY OF ALL TIME. Has a really dense Carrd covered in sea predator gifs and dA stamps. I thiiink I assigned him Pursuing a Marine Biology degree, naturally--he spends a lot of time at the aquarium wishing he worked there (he works at a country club currently. he drives golf carts to go pick up errant golf balls. his little nametag says 'Reginald'.) Does really well in his classes but is becoming. a Little Bit Burned Out trying to deal with them And work And whatever bullshit his current and ex-roommates are entangling him in. Vector stole his Ikea blahaj plush and tied it to a ceiling fan. Frequents Not-Lawrence State University's esteemed Smogon Club (usually because Yuma begs and begs for him to come,) and runs a nasty Walking Wake led Monotype team.

Rio: I NEED TO DECIDE ON HER MAJOR WAHHH Atmospheric Science would be kind of insane... invested interest in meteorology and winter events. I know she's dabbled in a bunch of campus sports and ice skates at a very skilled level, probably is banking on maybe doing that professionally if she can qualify. She's also buddies with Alexis! :3 Works at a bougie gelato place not far from the country club Shark works at so sometimes she will come bother him on her break. Has a modest interest in birding and sometimes meets up with the town Birding Group. All in all just likes being active and stylish and is closing in on a date with Miss Anna Kaboom~ lord dont get me started on butchfemme annario i aint got no brakes

Girag and Alito: THE BESTIES. THE ROOMIES OF ALL TIME. They actually live in the same apartment complex as Primo and Claus so they hang out and shoot the shit sometimes. Alito I feel is majoring in something like English, he's not super attached to it, what he really is banking on is a boxing career (whether or not that pans out for him remains to be seen.) He goes and spars at a local gym frequently! Girag is a history major with a focus on feudal Japan and he's also a furry. The boys' r/malelivingspaces ass apartment is a haven for the other Emperors if they dont want to be in the Nightmare House for a hot minute. Don't mind the giant knockoff red panda squishmallow taking up half their couch. Also Ponta is still there he's still a little spirit guy that Girag is nebulously aware of but Alito isn't.

Mizar: OH MIZAR..... one of my favorite zexals in the College AUverse tbh. my failwoman. Tentatively out transfem overdramatic fake blond trying out she/they pronouns for the first time. Has a big expensive gaming desktop that lights up (it looks vaguely like Tachyon Dragon lol) and uses it primarily to get into heated furry drama online and write extensive papers and lab reports for her Physics degree, usually while under some degree of white knuckle meltdown stress. She and Dumon were dating for a while but broke up and truth be told Mizar's still got a couple hangups about it. Gets into a LONG, STUPID beef with Kite over their fursona designs "being too similar" that culminates in them having a brawl on the roof of a hotel mid furry-convention. Yes they were both in fursuits. No you can't tell anyone you saw Kite in a fursuit keep you voice down shh!!!!!!! They end up having some kind of t4t qpr-ish situationship i think. not avoiding the mizakai allegations i fear HDFHSFGF

Dumon: WHO UP STUDYING THEY MEDIEVAL TEXTS. god. I love college AU Dumon. little library dyke. dweeb he/him butch kind of sort of dating clark's Paula From Earthbound and they are having In Depth discussions about a podcast they just listened to. Medieval lit major who knows more about knights than you ever will in your entire life. He was born in Utah. Organizes the finances of the Barian Rental House and takes it all dead seriously and Vector still owes like three months of back rent and he kind of wants to strangle him over it. Type of guy who spends all day at the campus coffee shop nursing the same matcha latte for five hours. Mizar is his best friend and they still hang out post-break up and they're both just kind of constantly putting up with Vector's bullshit. i mean all the Barians are but STILL.

Shark, Rio, Dumon, and Vector also all have the distinction of having known each other when they were kids, before they all moved off on their separate ways (until reconnecting in college) As you can imagine, Vector and Shark's playground wars would get. Violent. 🥴 Dumon has had a bit of a crush on Shark since they met but has absolutely never disclosed this. Because I think it is funny.

The funniest detail about them as a whole in college AU to me is theyre all transfer students from NLSU's sister-campus in Barian, Indiana. WOE! Midwestern be upon ye! And also the previously mentioned nightmare queer housing situation they live in under Don Thousand The Dogshit Landlord (or, well, at this point it's just Mizar, Dumon, and the Kastle twins living there. The situation has improved Somewhat after Vector got kicked out HHDFDF he still loves fucking with all of them though in true 🥕 fashion)

#DONT MIND THE RAMBLE THEYRE ALL VERY LOOSEY GOOSEY THOUGHTS waauughh i wanna draw themmm #also yeah alito n girag do frequently hang out with their fucked up ex-roommate's cousin and they thought he was a vector psyop for a WHILE #ygo posting #ygo spinoff college au #asks #anonymous

[fairycosmos]

I'm sorry to rant on here, but man I'm so tired of whiteness being the end all be all of beauty standards. Everywhere, I see white girls. It's freaking inescapable. Even in artwork, made by "woke" people, the white character is the soft feminine one while the (usually) POC character they're with is the masculine one. I have nothing against white women as people, but as symbols of beauty/femininity/fragility it's so fucking annoying. Especially because the (usually) white people who reblog/post shit online are not critical at all when it comes to these things. PoC are an afterthought, and whiteness is the perceived "normal" or "standard". Why isn't anyone else tired of seeing the same waifish, pale ass, long stringy hair girl everywhere? Sorry Chloe I just had to yell this out to the void and hope someone could understand my frustrations.

i don't have anything to add to this other than like my agreement and understanding tbh - i'm sorry if that's an unhelpful response lol - but i feel this really speaks for itself. yeah, the conventional beauty standard absolutely IS bullshit and frustrating and boring and racist. representation is so important and depriving whole communities of it in the mainstream media the way they continually do is gross. i'm sorry you have to deal with it - and no worries about yelling into the void <3 i'm happy to be a listening ear. sending love to you. x

#anon

[grokebaby]

Hell yeah, OC questions time >:)

How does Pesticinger feel about how people perceive her? How correct are people's assumptions about her?

Oh this is interesting hmm. I'm sure it can depend for some people but I think most would perceive her as this, kind of, horrifying creature tbh, despite her vaguely angelic appearance. She looks great in moonlight! Oh oh this is the perfect time to talk about her color scheme bc it relates to this topic so hard!!!

See, in the setting where she comes from, white is The Bad Color. It has the same kind of vibes and connotations as black does for us. It represents death most strongly and prominently, along with things like starvation, withering, a lack of things, deprivation and so on. That, along with like, a desaturated fleshy purple are The Danger colors but she doesn't have purple so I'll carry on. Sooo.. To us, her appearance is a bit creepily contradictory: Pearly white and golden feathers, yet it has a skull for a head and those icky lung sacks. It definitely looks eerie and does communicate a sense of wariness and danger to us, however, if I'd have designed her with the color conventions of like, regular color theory as it's understood in our corner of the world, she'd look something more like this

At least, if I'd use color symbolism to communicate things about her. But to the people of her world, she, in her white feathered glory, looks the same as That^ would look to us. Death on wings. There's even a saying back there, that goes "Beware of white wings", which she definitely fits into!

Anyhow, all that to say, she may be perceived differently based on culture. But I wanted to babble about how I made her white on purpose :3

I doubt that even with having white feathers, she'd look very friendly to us either, though.

I think she takes pride in being feared tbh! So for the most part, it's very favorable to the way people perceive it! However as I mentioned in it's original intro post, she also tends to sort of lure people in, like a siren's call, to come along and follow it and join her little nightmare parade of pillaging animals. Pesticinger is quite a social entity, I mean Hello it's a bird, a songbird no less, this gal needs playmates! In fact, the song that she sings whenever coming to pillage, is an invite! It's lyrics repeatedly encourage the listener to come along and join in. So to that extent I'd also say, maybe she might also wish to be perceived as more approachable. Beautiful, even u_u obviously she sings for a wide variety of reasons but maybe, just sometimes, she wishes to be heard by an adoring audience, who can't get enough of her song. So while yes it's happy to scare humans, sometimes Pesticinger wishes to be able to draw people in without the need for a hypnotizing song. I will say, she's a bit attention hungry..

I feel like a good amount of the time people's assumptions about her are.. Vaguely in the right direction but not necessarily accurate. If she's not being thought of as a sadistic menace (fair), she's perceived as an idiot (Maybe understandable but c'mon..) no, she's a smart bird, and extremely self aware, however humans see her engage in silly play and repeat playground rhymes ad nauseum and think "Ah, I can outsmart that, it's just a creature!", which, usually doesn't end well. If you don't get to know her beyond her raids, you'd probably just remember her as a terrifying monster. However people who've seen that, tend to be surprised to learn how playful and goofy she is, and that's usually when they'll start thinking "Oh it's just a big bird." which isn't incorrect but it's very reductive, as she's on the same level as a person, in intellect. And the intellectual part is what most people miss, see even among her peers she's thought of as the playful goofy one, but you can't be a singer without at least a little emotional baggage amirite!? :D

Unfortunately in order to be taken a bit more seriously she tends to be a bit of a playground bully, or some form of nuisance, as we see with characters like Margaretta Wormer. She does like goofing around and being her obnoxious nuisance self but she also has great memory, is poetic, good at reading people (at least their emotions) and an insatiable learner.

I'm also sad to report that she has gotten captured by humans a few times, and been kept in very cruel ways due to a combination of being seen as a monster and also just some creature rather than a person. If there's one thing she's scared of, it's nooses.. But I won't elaborate on that here, this reply got way more substantial than I expected haha whoops. Enjoy! Thank you for the ask :3

#Ask #Lore #Pesticinger Tuholaulaja #Margaretta Wormer #<-I've written about her a few times on this blog but haven't talked much otherwise #But she's uhhh a coworker of Pesticingers :3 #What can I say.... Bird and worm.. Classic dynamic

[bisluthq]

Tbh I’d say rep aesthetics / tour was very sexy esp in contrast to the rest off her work

She’s said she felt more comfortable with that because a lot of the “sexiest” songs were from the persona’s perspective so she was portraying a character and not just yk trying to be sexy as Taylor (which tbf is how sooo many pop stars do it generally like their stage persona isn’t an extension of who they are, it’s a character they play).

That said I don’t think it was a huge jump from 1989 choreography or outfits and the Lover era outfits were less edgy but very similar design wise. Full choreography for the tour imo would’ve veered into Rep kinda choreography.

It’s also important to remember that pre 1989, she was a country act in full or in part so she obviously didn’t wear shit like that or pull that kind of choreography because it literally wasn’t genre appropriate. The person I can think of with comparable outfits (her now v pre 1989) in that field is Shania and I mean Shania is WILD for country/pop country. If you look at like Carrie and Miranda and Faith and Martina McBride and Lee Ann Womack and and legends like Dolly - who obvi did her surgeries and used her looks - they just wouldn’t wear shit like that on stage. Like in that genre it is still very common to perform in long dresses, pants, and even like jeans and a cute top. They do perform in shorts and some more risqué dresses/jumpsuit vibes but none of these would really be worn by a pop country act:

It’s just not the conventions of the genres.

Some of the younger acts have started to do it - Maren would wear similarish stuff but also has done plain pants and a cute top, Kacey has occasional risqué adjacent outfits but like sooo adjacent and more camp inspired than sexy inspired, Kelsea B looks like she’s copied some Tay lewks sometimes 💁🏻‍♀️ but ya.

The one with the bomber jacket above and LED light outfit (don’t have a pic rn but you can Google it) could’ve been if the girlie in question. was feeling wild lol and her sparkly white jumpsuit (not pictured google it) is similar to stuff Shania has worn but again Shania is far more risqué than any of her peers and she obviously looks PG as fuck next to even the fairly tame pop girlies and the younger pop country acts that do do wilder stuff post Tay also look at most the same but usually more PG than Tay. (Not good or bad btw, not a value judgment).

#nat talks tay’s marketing

[msviolacea]

You know, I watch video game YouTube and BookTube and things like that, and I think “wow it’d be fun to do some rambling about the things I love like that,” but then I remember I’m a 40+ woman who is overweight and not entirely photogenic, and that video is not my medium in any way.

... which probably means I should get to starting that podcast, because at least my voice is semi-okay. *shrug*

#jaime rambles #i always come into things going #i wish i'd had the energy and drive to get into this 5 years ago #but depression and laziness are killers every time #whee #video is as always #a medium for nearly any men #and women who fit standard beauty conventions #(usually white conventions tbh) #so I admire anyone who has the nerve to do it #who doesn't 100% fit those conventions

[mediocrevideopodcast]

Smitten

Request: Another cute reaction request, the rottmnt boys finding out their s/o was smitten with them from the start? (It was not obvious to the turtle of interest but it was obvious to everyone else).

[A/N: It’s Donnie’s turn!! I had a lot of fun with this one, but what else is new? <3 I feel like I could spend decades just trying on suits with him. King of fashion tbh]

Pairing: Donatello/Reader (Established Relationship)

Content Warnings: None! Just fluff, maybe a swear or two if you’re sensitive to that. 

Word Count: 673

Formal attire is incredibly strict, especially when it comes to suits; thus, it’s rather difficult to stand out from the crowd without breaking conventions. Oxford shoes, white or light blue French cuffs, neutral toned suits: perhaps a needlepoint micropattern, if you’re feeling adventurous. Even small accessories like ties, cufflinks, and pocket squares are subject to scrutiny, if you’re in the wrong crowd. The smallest deviation from the rigid laws of attire is noticeable, for better or worse. 

But fuck, none of those thoughts are in your head at the moment. No, he looks absolutely perfect. He runs his hands over the black cashmere lapel for a moment before moving to adjust the collar of his dark, purple button down. He looks incredible like this, you think to yourself. Somehow, he looks even more beautiful, more breathtaking than ever. You didn’t even think it was possible, and you smile to yourself. 

“What do you think of this one?” He asks.

You hum, “I think it’s my favorite one yet.” You lean forward on your hands, resting your elbows on your knees. Although… somethings off. Ah! “Your tie is a little crooked, though,” you remark. 

“Is it?” He looks down, fussing with the deeply dyed silk; although, he can’t seem to fix it. He pulls gently at the fabric, pushing it from left to right in an effort to correct the wrong before you intervene. You rise slowly to your feet and sigh with content at the stretch in your legs. 

“Let me fix it, my love.” You walk towards him slowly and stop at his chest. You run your hands over the smooth material of his suit slowly, taking in the soft texture. He breathes slowly under the confines of the fabric, and you smile gently to yourself. You undo the tie with precision, careful not to tug too much, before retying it yourself. Cross, under, over, and through. How funny, how such a simple act can be so domestic and intimate. You slide the knot up, straightening it and tucking it back to its home. You refold the collar with featherlike touches, straightening each angle and smoothing each fold to the best of your ability. With one last look over, you run your hands over his arms once more before looking up at him. “Perfect as usual,” you grin. 

His eyes are soft, and you can’t seem to identify the emotion that swims beneath them. You smile gently back at him, and he returns the gesture before putting his hands on your waist. You put your own arms around his neck, swaying from side to side slowly. 

He mutters softly: “You know that I love you, right?” 

“Yeah,” you hum, “I love you too.” 

“Good, good. You know, we should go out somewhere. Have to get some more contacts in the otherworld, find someplace we can dance. Be free.” 

“That sounds nice,” you whisper. “Wanna know something?” 

“Always,” he chuckles. 

You giggle, “Dork. I just… did you know I was smitten with you, from the very beginning?” 

He pauses for a moment, before letting out a chuckle. His laughter vibrates through his plastron, sending chills both through your heart and down your spine. You’ll never get tired of that feeling. He chuckles a little as he speaks: “Really? With me?” 

“Uh, yeah?” You laugh, “I used to get so much shit from the guys about it, but… you’re exactly my type. Always have been.” 

“I doubt you had, quote-unquote, turtle mutant savant on your wedding list, but I’ll take it,” he laughs. 

“Nah, Hermaeus Mora was supposed to be my husband growing up, but honestly? I think you’re better,” you jest. 

He snorts, “Okay, shut up.” He kisses the top of your head once and grabs your hand, running his 'thumb' over the top lovingly. “Come on, it’s your turn to have a fashion montage.” You laugh, allowing him to pull you to one of the many racks of suits and dresses. 

“Hey D?” 

“Hm?” 

“I love you.” 

“I love you too, hun.”

#tmnt donatello x reader #TMNT x reader #tmnt imagine #donatello hamato x reader #rottmnt Donatello x reader #rottmnt x reader #rottmnt imagine #tmnt donnie x reader #rottmnt donnie x reader

[b-a-pigeon]

Self-publishing FAQ

So I’m really not what you would call a “successful” self-publisher, as I have 1. not quite broken even (despite doing most things as cheaply as humanly possible) and 2. truly not sold that many books, in part because I made many mistakes when I was just starting out.

Still, though, I have self-published, and I post about it and tag my posts, so I get a lot of questions. I’m always happy to help but I also often forget to respond and sometimes people ask for a lot of information - so I thought it’d be helpful to answer the usual questions all in one post. If you have any other questions, feel free to let me know!

Should I self-publish or pursue traditional publishing??

I don’t know! This depends on you and your book. Look into the differences between self-publishing and traditional publishing & decide which works best for you!

Do I have to use Amazon?

Nobody is going to force you but Kindle is something like 80% of the e-book market, so unless you already have a following it’s going to be really hard to sell books otherwise tbh.

Do I need a professional editor?

The general consensus is “yes, definitely.” If you have the money, do it. I personally couldn’t afford it; I relied on free editing from a writer friend, a ton of self-editing, an Autocrit subscription, and beta readers. Most self-publishing people are super insistent that you 100% absolutely need to pay a professional editor to sell any books but realistically if you cannot afford it, I’d recommend getting other people’s eyes on your book & using some kind of proofreading/editing software at minimum.

Do I need a professional cover designer?

It’s definitely a good thing if your covers look “professional” but honestly I’ve seen people make some pretty good-looking covers just from stock images and Canva so I don’t know how necessary this is. My own book covers are art from a friend + Canva; I designed the Mirrored in Evergreen cover, the artist designed the Worm in a Jar cover.

How do you market your books?

I’m not good at marketing!! My books are also uniquely hard to market, so if you’ve written something a little more genre conventional + with a wider target audience you’ll have an easier time than I. Personally, though: I’ve tried Amazon ads, Facebook ads, and unpaid social media posts. In order from most to least successful: 1. Tumblr 2. Amazon ads 3. random people finding my website on Google 4. everything else. If I could go back in time I would send out some ARCs so I could have started out with more reviews, which opens up more promotional opportunities, but it’s too late now!

Am I going to make money?

It’s very unlikely, especially at first. If you keep writing & publishing & promoting yourself - and if you find your audience and a way to keep them up-to-date with your new publications (a lot of writers have email lists, at minimum you should have social media) - you’ll definitely have a chance at success! I’ve read that it can take a lot of time and multiple books, so don’t give up if your first book doesn’t sell!

On a final note: if you want to read experiences from people who have sold more books than I have, check out 20booksto50k on Facebook or the selfpublish subreddit. Honestly I think a lot of the people who post on these are either weird grifters whose only interest in writing is profit-motivated or people who have these super hardline black-and-white takes on everything (e.g. many of them would be appalled that I have even suggested that one might publish w/o hiring a pro editor) so you should take their advice - and mine - with a grain of salt!

#writing advice #writeblr #effort posts #self publishing #advice #original posts

[selfpublished]

Self-publishing FAQ

Originally posted @b-a-pigeon

So I’m really not what you would call a “successful” self-publisher, as I have 1. not quite broken even (despite doing most things as cheaply as humanly possible) and 2. truly not sold that many books, in part because I made many mistakes when I was just starting out.

Still, though, I have self-published, and I post about it and tag my posts, so I get a lot of questions. I’m always happy to help but I also often forget to respond and sometimes people ask for a lot of information - so I thought it’d be helpful to answer the usual questions all in one post. If you have any other questions, feel free to let me know!

Should I self-publish or pursue traditional publishing??

I don’t know! This depends on you and your book. Look into the differences between self-publishing and traditional publishing & decide which works best for you!

Do I have to use Amazon?

Nobody is going to force you but Kindle is something like 80% of the e-book market, so unless you already have a following it’s going to be really hard to sell books otherwise tbh.

Do I need a professional editor?

The general consensus is “yes, definitely.” If you have the money, do it. I personally couldn’t afford it; I relied on free editing from a writer friend, a ton of self-editing, an Autocrit subscription, and beta readers. Most self-publishing people are super insistent that you 100% absolutely need to pay a professional editor to sell any books but realistically if you cannot afford it, I’d recommend getting other people’s eyes on your book & using some kind of proofreading/editing software at minimum.

Do I need a professional cover designer?

It’s definitely a good thing if your covers look “professional” but honestly I’ve seen people make some pretty good-looking covers just from stock images and Canva so I don’t know how necessary this is. My own book covers are art from a friend + Canva; I designed the Mirrored in Evergreen cover, the artist designed the Worm in a Jar cover.

How do you market your books?

I’m not good at marketing!! My books are also uniquely hard to market, so if you’ve written something a little more genre conventional + with a wider target audience you’ll have an easier time than I. Personally, though: I’ve tried Amazon ads, Facebook ads, and unpaid social media posts. In order from most to least successful: 1. Tumblr 2. Amazon ads 3. random people finding my website on Google 4. everything else. If I could go back in time I would send out some ARCs so I could have started out with more reviews, which opens up more promotional opportunities, but it’s too late now!

Am I going to make money?

It’s very unlikely, especially at first. If you keep writing & publishing & promoting yourself - and if you find your audience and a way to keep them up-to-date with your new publications (a lot of writers have email lists, at minimum you should have social media) - you’ll definitely have a chance at success! I’ve read that it can take a lot of time and multiple books, so don’t give up if your first book doesn’t sell!

On a final note: if you want to read experiences from people who have sold more books than I have, check out 20booksto50k on Facebook or the selfpublish subreddit. Honestly I think a lot of the people who post on these are either weird grifters whose only interest in writing is profit-motivated or people who have these super hardline black-and-white takes on everything (e.g. many of them would be appalled that I have even suggested that one might publish w/o hiring a pro editor) so you should take their advice - and mine - with a grain of salt!

#writeblr #writblr #self publishing #self publisher #self publication #kindle direct publishing #indie author #indie authors #writers #writing

[dallonm-archive]

TABBY | SHORT STORY UPDATES #4

In Tabby, a reclusive man who’d rather exist as a phantom than a human notices the neighbours aren’t feeding their cat, and is sucked into a world that breaks the stillness of his own.

Genre: literary fiction, “soft” noir (??)

POV: 1st person present, very observational and detached for most of the narrative

Setting: late 1940s/early 1950s, unnamed US city but implied to be Los Angeles 

Atmosphere: a summer that’s sickly, orange juice, the smell of paint, shaky hands, peach skies, sunflowers, blood splatter, a cats purr, the gut feeling that something is very, very wrong

Literal Logline: this cat is my friend and he doesn’t judge me over silly little things like the murder i just committed (also i think he might be god??)

Hi I wrote a story about a cat and got way too into it and accidentally made it about murder and now it might be my favourite thing I’ve written! Lets talk about it! cw for murder and blood imagery!

general taglist ; @kowlazovdi​ @avi-burton-writing​ @ryns-ramblings​ @melpomeny​ @kitblogsthings​ @ezrathings​ @aetherwrites​ @bookphobe​ @haldimilks​ @alicewestwater​ @bookpacking​ @shaelinwrites​ @writingamongthecoloredroses​ @harehearts​ @zemnian​ @onlyganymede​ @theelectricfactory​ @write-like-babs​ @oceancold​ @notphilosopherstudentblog​ @veiliza​ @sidhewrites​ @wolf-oak​ @feverdreamwritings​ @oasis-of-you​

This entire story sparked from this photo, which I couldn’t find a specific source for, but is cute and a Mood nonetheless! 

My thought process was essentially “man sits on bench with cat...........and also.......murder?” I don’t know why my brain is like this!!! 

I imagine this story being set in the late 40s/early 50s, but haven’t pinpointed exactly, in a suburb of Los Angeles (but this also isn’t clear in the story as of now). This used to be my go to setting when I was really into noir, and it was fun to return to that in a non-noir piece! This started out as purely literary, but now I do see some noir elements here. They’re just very subtle - nor was I intentionally trying to capture any - and the story misses some of the fundamental conventions. To me it’s almost like...soft noir? Noir lite??  I feel like it’s inherently noir and inherently not noir at the same time but I love the vibes of it a lot. There’s this “glow” to the story that I can’t exactly put into words, like a very subtle golden hour that is very tranquil and strangely undisturbed by the general chaos going on in the actual story

I took this setting, the vibes, and the idea of a character with an innate connection to this cat, plus a murder chucked somewhere in the middle and ran with it.

I wrote this over the course of a couple days, and it came very naturally! The prose is a little more sparse than my usual writing which made the process much quicker, and I’m really into this style at the moment. A lot of it is also internal thought, which y’all know is right up my alley. I really, really love the voice in this. It starts very unremarkable, but there is an unsettling undercurrent that grows and grows and it’s been very fun to blend the mundane and the creepy. This story really reignited my drive for short fiction because the trend lately has been coming up with an idea I love that just doesn’t translate on paper, but this one despite needing a good deal of work was very smooth!

I’d say this is my first successful attempt at a nameless/faceless character and it’s one of the most interesting experiences of character development I’ve had in a long time?? The only other time I’ve done this is in my story Rinse Cycle, but the narrator never really felt much like a character (which is very unusual for me), whereas the narrator in Tabby feels as fleshed out and nuanced as any of my characters with names or faces. I rarely focus on appearances for short story characters anyway, but I’ve never struggled with finding a name for a character and this narrator just Does Not want to be named. But I think that really fits him! He likes to be invisible and drift through life unnoticed, where he is merely an observer rather than a participant; so when he does get chucked into the middle of a very messy, very chaotic situation he essentially shuts down. I really like the tonal shift this creates where we go from a very detached narrative to very in the moment, very vivid and intense, like we go from 0 to 100 real quick. I don’t want to share a lot of plot details (which makes writing this a little frustrating sigh), but it ends with him committing a murder that, whilst intentional in the moment, is entirely impulsive and practically out of his control. He is not a natural killer and goes from barely being an emotional participant in his life to fully immersed in the moment and absolutely terrified by that. I’m really looking forward to digging deeper into his psychological state as I work on this draft because Boy We Don’t Have Time To Unpack All This. A quick summary of him would be though

people watcher, picks up more than he realises

living in a house he inherited from his dead father 

made eye contact with a stranger and it was physically painful

quietly unhinged

doesn’t feel like he’s a person 

oh no, now i have to face the consequences of my actions!

I’m trying to limit the amount of excerpts I post when it comes to short stories [because I am always basing the value of my content on prose I share which is! not healthy!], so the only writing I’m going to share is this little description that’s not very plot relevant, but is a good demonstration of this narrator’s funky little voice:

Every morning, at seven sharp, I routinely sit on the swinging bench behind my house to eat over easy eggs and burnt sausages. I still don’t understand how to cook meat. Behind me, cars murmur and sputter into the city, housewives chatter from their separate square gardens and I do not exist in the same reality as them. I am boxed in by off-white picket fence. The fence dividing my neighbours and I – a saffron coloured house with sunflowers bordering the perimeter – is painted pinkish red like an infected tongue. Every morning, I routinely think, that I do not know what’s stranger: how the red jolts the sun house’s otherwise harmonious existence, or the way the job was never finished. It’s not as if the painter died, because if the painter died there would be a corpse; perhaps blood spatter would darken against red wood, perhaps paint would pool out of the dropped can and mimic the presence of an exit wound. 

Y’all might be wondering, where does the cat fit in all of this? And the answer is it’s complicated! In terms of form, we bounce between observations/interactions of the cats behaviour and the “main plot” of the story - which is to do with the rather unhinged new neighbours disrupting our neighbours unremarkable life. Thematically, the cat definitely symbolises a lot of things and opens up a lot of conversations that I still haven’t polished because well, we’re on draft one and I was focused on some funky Cat Descriptions. Some fun ideas include the distinction between human and animal, how capitalism is impeding on our chances to live a fulfilled life, and the idea that all humans do is overcomplicate everything. It’s presence also acts as a grounding technique for the narrator, since he so easily detaches himself from the rest of the world. The writing started with a scene of the act killing a mouse and how clean and simple it all is that I’m lowkey obsessed with, and is definitely some non-subtle foreshadowing for what comes later. 

I like to joke that the cat is God because sometimes the narrator says some weird shit like, how the Earth stops orbiting the sun when the cat goes to sleep and how the cat doesn’t need to worry about predators because it hasn’t invented any. So the cat is not officially “God” but like,...,,It Might Be

Quickly adding this to the end but! Your girl finally has a (working title) for her collection! I’m not ready to share it yet because I’m still not 100% on it, I feel it matches the stories thematically but not always tonally, however it captures the core idea that I’ve been following so it’s good enough for me. This was a really important step because as much as I tried I could Not Visualise a collection at all without a title, which is v annoying because titling a collection is the worst!!! I was fine just writing short stories and letting them exist but I really wanted to build them as a cohesive collection as I went, and now I really like where it’s going - it’s definitely got a long way to go but I feel like I’ve finally managed to take control of it and steer it into a direction that reflects what I enjoy to write. I spent a lot of months clinging onto the collection I started in late 2018 before The Great Writing Hiatus Of 2019, even though it really didn’t resonate with me anymore, so I’m very happy to feel like I’m now on the right path and I feel the collection really shows my growth as a writer this year! This is definitely not set in stone, but I have a lot of fun imagining the potential order of the stories and right now it looks like:

[Some of these are stories unfinished, and some of them are finished and I just haven’t talked about them because I am the Worst at remembering to write short story updates, but tbh I’m thinking of just talking about them all briefly in a big post about the collection when I write a proper intro for it in the future]

We love to see it! I’m hoping to put a lot of time into this collection in 2021 and get some submissions rolling too (I had the goal of submitting at least one story by the end of this year and I! Don’t know if that’ll happen but January definitely). I’m likely going to be taking most of the year out of uni due to the whole global and mental turmoil rn [also I’d have to apply for writing masters atm and that is NOT happening lmfao], so I’m v v excited to have some extra writing time and see where this all goes!

#atlastracking #am writing #short stories #writeblr #i am once again posting at an odd time when my dash is ~dead~ #also playing around w how i format these posts as always

[mego42]

fav animated films

tagged by @joeyjoeylee and @pynkhues (ty ladies 💖)

i’m gonna be real with y’all, it physically hurts me to see some of you dismissing animated films as for kids and cartoons. if you’ll allow me to put on my art kid hat for a second, i have a (usually drunken) impassioned rant that i roll out around the topic but to spare y’all and sum it up, it is an ART FORM made up of three different art forms in a trenchcoat and quite frankly, you fav ~films COULD!!!!!! NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!

mary and max

you want an animated movie that truly deserves the film moniker? look no further. this gorgeously stop motion animated film is the story of an eight year old australian girl who forms an incredibly unlikely friendship based on a life long pen pal relationship with a 44 year old new yorker with asperger’s. it’s a really beautiful story that, fair warning, gets pretty dark at points but i can honestly say has moved me like very few films have possibly for personal backstory reasons but also because it’s so damn good. idk, it makes me cry a lot. also, the soundtrack? incredible.

fantastic mr fox

i love wes anderson, i think he’s an artist and a master of visual and micro-storytelling. fantastic mr fox isn’t my all time favorite of his portfolio (that prize rotates between the royal tenenbaums, moonrise kingdom, and the grand budapest hotel), i love this movie a lot and it is one of my favorite animated films. it’s another stop motion (LISTEN THAT IS SUCH A COOL TECHNIQUE AND HONESTLY BREAKS MY BRAIN WITH EVERYTHING THAT GOES INTO IT) and the visuals can get downright eerie in a way that makes me shiver with glee.

coraline

another stop motion! the visual style of this movie is so gorgeous and complicated, i lost a bet over whether or not it was digitally or physically animated. i belligerently insisted capitalism would never allow for an animation studio to build such vibrant and intricate sets because there was absolutely no way that would be even a little bit cost effective and i have never ben happier to be wrong, tbh. the first time i watched this movie i immediately watched it two more times back to back bc i am very normal when i love stuff.

coco

i watch this movie a minimum of three times a year.

up

the first ten minutes of this movie is a greater love story than most love stories could ever aspire to be and that’s just the launching point for the rest. i am an absolute sucker for both found family and cross-generational relationships so this hits on multiple levels.

wall-e

this movie makes the list for a couple of reasons. one, I remain in awe of the kind of storytelling pixar can do without dialogue. two, it’s an inside joke between me and my husband (i’m eva, he’s wall-e, i never said it was a complicated or even a good joke but it makes me squishy nonetheless). we actually had a wall-e wedding cake topped with wall-e and eva funko pops and i hear it was gorgeous. i never saw it bc my flower girls stole it and smashed and ate it all in the back seat of their parents rental car.

spider-man: into the spider-verse

this movie is a mfing instant classic and if you haven’t seen it you’re only hurting yourself. the story is impeccable, the combination of depth and humor is absolute perfection and the animation is I N C R E D I B L E. they scrapped current CGI convention and went back to the hand-animation technique of shifting movement every second frame (alternating which frame, the first or second, depending on the vibe they wanted to give the scenes). they also scrapped motion blur to give the whole thing a sharper, more staccato feeling that (imo) really ramped up the energy and made it feel more comic book in a vague but crucial sort of way and also unique from other animated movies. THEN they went in and did the line work, painting and dot effects on top of all of that to give it that hand drawn, living painting feeling and honestly the whole thing is so lush and gorgeous if i think about it too much i want to punch myself in the face.

kubo and the two strings

look, the casting of this movie is a trainwreck, enough of one that i waffled a lot about putting it on this list. the fact that they told such a steeped in japanese culture story with all white people is a disaster and everyone involved should have known better. on the flip side, it’s one of the most breathtakingly beautiful animation jobs i’ve ever seen in my life so idk, i hold both of those facts in my head at the same time i guess.

anastasia

i have such a soft spot for this movie, I vividly remember seeing it in the theater. idk, it’s fantastic

the secret of NIMH

looking back this movie was SO DARK and i was SO OBSESSED WITH IT as a kid (still kind of an, tbh, in spite of the relentless cat slander, it’s incredibly thematically rich)

idk who has been tagged already so no pressure if you’ve already gone or you don’t wanna @nickmillerscaulk @foxmagpie @riosnecktattoo @jazillia007

#i have a lot of thoughts and feelinga about animation as an art form clearly #i need you guys to know i have never said films this many consecutive times in my life #tag games #shut up meg

[the-second-tonks]

Hihi! I have arrived to send you a request for your game! For Harry potter, can you do Cedric Diggory, George Weasley, Fred Weasley, Luna Lovegood and Hermoine Granger (sister)?

I'm a Ravenclaw, personality type: INFP

Let's see, what haven't I told you yet that might help?

I have a very interesting sense of style and I love music ( you know about that). I daydream way too much for my own good. I have trust issues but they are very unique. I trust them fully at first then begin to doubt them years later. I'm very extroverted around friends but more introverted with my family. My hair is kinda cool, I have 4 hair colours, black, dark brown, light brown and white. I have many half black, half white hairs for no reason and it's pretty cool.

I hate being conventional. That's why I always choose the more eccentric path. When we have to write essays and stuff like that, I always take it in a different way. Like when we had to write about how monkeys ruined a picnic, I wanted to write in the pov of the monkey. Kinda weird but eh who cares.

I think that should be enough! Yes, thank you so so much, lots of love, lots of hugs, lots of everything!

Hiiiii !!!! Oh my god that hair thingy is soo cooollll . Hahah thank you for lots of everything 😂right back at you !!! And I'm tagging you just in case you miss this @eccentricbookwormm

Cedric Diggory

His thoughts about you

He is in love with your weirdness . He loves how you're always out of the box and unique . It usually challenges him to do better since we know Cedric can be very competitive . I also know how you're really interested in chem and bio and stuff haha so I think you're the one who can always keep him in his competitive mode and.. this can pretty much be rivals to lovers (but I still might ship you with the Weasley 👀)

Your relationship

Complicated !

First impressions

He was shell shocked to see how much of a competition you were to him in one of the space (I mean astronomy) lessons , and so he just became friends with you and competed in a friendly way !

Fred and George Weasley

Their thoughts about you

Well , while Fred loves you in a romantic way , George is a friend to you that everyone would die to have . They both love you a lot , but the love is different . Like , Fred would flirt with you (be sus too) and he'll be super duper cheesy and romantic and pampering you , but George will comfort you when you're down and will often try to keep you strong , basically , he'll try to be the friend who'll always have your back . They both love you a lot and it would be just like loosing one of the twins if they ever lost you , really .

Your relationship

Well , I'm sorry Cedric but I still ship her with Fred (okay ced , you can definitely try to win her) and with George , well he's your bestie !

First impressions

They thought of you as nerdy sister Granger hahaha . Lol . They thought you were just like Hermione , but they thought you'd help them with their prank !

Luna Lovegood

Her thoughts about you

She might find you really interesting and she might even say ample of times on how 'we both are the same' . She's really going to like you and is going to be a great support system . She loves how you're really good at studies and I bet she'll be the one to really appreciate how you wrote that essay from the POV of monkeys ! She's going to stay in touch with you always !

Your relationship

Close friends

First impressions

You both instantly clicked due to your uniqueness . She liked how she found someone who saw the world as she did .

Hermione Granger

Her thoughts about you

She loves how she has someone who can stay in the library with her and research . Tbh , she loves how someone is as smart as she is , because our Hermione was tired of being around stupid people lol kidding. She loves you .. she might be intrigued and maybe even feel a bit left behind when your uniqueness saves the day , but she recovers soon and you both are the bestest friends of each other . No , not only sisters , but bestiess , study mates , competitors and adventure partner . I really love your relationship with Hermione .

Your relationship

Sisters , bestiess , study partners , rivals , lol can't label one name on this beautiful relationship !

First impressions ?

Ummm...hehhe...like she's your sister so , first impression is kinda .. idk? Lol I'm really sorry hehe . But if you both are not real sisters , she must've definitely met you in the library and then you both would look out for the answer of the philosopher's stone together !!

That's it ! I hope you liked itt !

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#kat 🤘 #harry potter hermione #harry potter requests #harry potter #hp ships

[doc-bryan]

time to learn about Actual American Hero Robert Smalls!!!! split into two sections: before and during the civil war, and after the civil war

before and during the civil war:

born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1839 (his owner was most likely his father). he grew up as part of the Lowcountry Gullah community.

his mother had grown up in the fields but worked in the main house when he was born. Robert was a favorite of their owner but she wanted to make sure he understood what it was like for field slaves so she requested that he work in the fields and witness a whipping

he was sent to Charleston to work when he was 12 and earned $1 a week, with the rest of his money going to his owner. he started as a laborer and eventually started working on boats, working his way up to become what was essentially a pilot (even though he was a slave and couldn’t be given the proper job title). due to his work on ships, he knew Charleston Harbor really well

the civil war started in spring of 1861 (the Battle of Fort Sumter, which started the war and took place at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, was in April 1861) and in the fall he was assigned to steer the CSS Planter (CSS stands for Confederate States Ship). the ship’s jobs included surveying waterways and laying mines. he earned the trust of the crew and owners by pretending to be happy working on the ship while secretly planning an escape with the other slaves on board

on May 12, the Planter picked up four big guns from a Confederate post that was being dismantled south of Charleston, then returned to CHS and loaded 200 pounds of artillery and a bunch of firewood. that night the three white officers left the ship to sleep on shore and left the enslaved crew aboard as usual.

early in the morning on May 13, Robert Smalls put on the captain’s uniform and a straw hat similar to the one the captain usually wore and left the wharf. they stopped at another wharf to pick up his family as well as family members of some of the other enslaved crew, all of whom had hidden out on another ship earlier on May 12. Robert Smalls and his straw hat copied the captain’s mannerisms and sailed past FIVE confederate forts using the correct hand signals; the alarm was raised at Fort Sumter only after they had passed out of the fort’s gun range. Robert Smalls drove that confederate ship directly to the Union blockade at the mouth of Charleston Harbor and raised the white sheet his wife Hannah had brought to surrender the ship to the union

not only did the ship have four guns and 200 lbs of artillery - Robert Smalls also had the captain’s code book of confederate signals and a map of all of the mines in charleston harbor, as well as a ton of knowledge about the waterways around charleston and the confederate military instillations and movements. he was viewed as extremely intelligent and hailed as a hero in the north (obviously)

he was given what we all can agree was a criminally small amount of “prize money” for the transfer of the Planter to the union - his share was $1500 (he was one of eight slaves aboard) based on the appraisal. in the 1880s, the appraisal was disputed and it was said the value of the ship should have been close to $60,000. even still he didn’t get any more money until 1900, when he was given an additional $3500 (bringing the total to $5000, which a lot of people still felt was too little and they were definitely right)

RS served as a civilian in the union navy and army and was instrumental in convincing Lincoln and Edwin Stanton to allow black men to enlist in the union army at Port Royal, SC (google the Port Royal Experiment for more information!! I could do another entire post about Mitchelville tbh). he was supposedly given a commission in the navy so he could be properly paid as a pilot. when he tried to collect his pension after the war, he was told he hadn’t received an official commission. it took TWO acts of congress (1883, which failed probably because he was black, and 1897) for him to be put on the Navy retired list and allow him to collect a pension of $30 per month, that of a Navy captain

you thought that shit was amazing? after the war:

he moved back to Beaufort and bought a house. which house you ask??? that’s right, he bought his FORMER OWNER’S house (511 Prince Street) which had been seized in 1863 because the dude refused to pay taxes (and then won the court case when his former owner tried to sue him to get it back, which became a very important precedent case). his mom lived with him for the rest of her life, and he even let his former owner’s wife live in the house at the end of her life

he taught himself to read and write in less than a year(!!) and bought another building to serve as a school for african-american children

he had several successful businesses: a store specifically to serve the needs of freedmen, a horse-drawn railway line that went from the wharves in charleston to the depots 18 miles inland, and he owned and published the Beaufort Southern Standard newspaper

his fame during the war and the fact that he was fluent in the Gullah dialect spoken in the Lowcountry helped him in his very, very successful political career - he was a delegate at the SC constitutional conventions in 1868 and 1895 as well as at several Republican National Conventions (back when the republicans were the good guys); he was elected to the SC House of Representatives in 1868 and then selected to complete the unexpired time in Jonathan Jasper Wright’s SC Senate seat; and he was elected to the US House of Representatives five times (until the mid-1900s, he was the second-longest serving african-american member of congress)

while in the HoR, he introduced an amendment to a bill that would desegregate the army, which wasn’t considered by congress. he was a supporter of racial integration legislation while serving in the senate.

the 1895 SC constitutional convention he and five other african-american delegates tried to stop the disenfranchisement of black voters, and worked to publicize the issue, but weren’t successful in stopping the ratification of the new constitution

he died in 1915 (aged 75!) and was buried at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Beaufort - a monument to him was installed in the churchyard in 1976 and is inscribed with the following quote of his: “My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

#robert smalls #black history #I told you I would do it and I did!!!!!! #it's a long one but VERY INTERESTING PLEASE READ