#anyways. i am very normal about the media i consume.

[nexus-nebulae]

so like. lately I've been feeling like there's some kind of Thing living in this house with me, like a spirit or creature or something, and i feel like it's been here a long time bc of how long things have been going missing in this house with no explanation. and i noticed when i got really badly sick i lost something and it made me like. sob uncontrollably bc it was important. and then i started Finding things in odd places. so i started thanking the mysterious entity. and now I'm finding More Stuff more often. and like i feel strange for believing in this entity bc I've always been told believing in pagan things is childish (??????) and feel awkward thanking it but also i Want To bc it's polite. anyway i wanna like. leave a little offering or something but don't know what would be appropriate bc i also dont know what entity this is

#first thought is like. house fairies #I've always thought it was something fae related i think? #but like i. don't really know a lot about real fairy folklore bc of all the Media I've consumed #i don't really know what's accurate and what isn't #like sometimes fairies are depicted as extremely powerful and like. human sized #sometimes they're just tiny little trickster guys #and also i don't know what folklore like. applies to me if that makes sense????? #im White™ and whatever culture my ancestors had was scrubbed away to force jesus in instead and i don't know how much my blood matters #I'm mostly german and welsh and was raised like. loosely catholic #and the word appropriation has been watered down so much by The Internet that i can never tell if I'm Doing That anymore #I'm just scared to do literally anything bc what if someone says i am #but also i feel very very drawn to certain myths and stories and entities and feel like letting that go would tear me apart in a way #like I'd just lose something and there'd be a hole that couldn't be filled by any other belief #I've TRIED to fit in other beliefs but they just don't click #i dunno. im scared of doing something wrong but it feels like home to me #anyway i want to leave an offering to this Entity in my house to thank it for returning some things #but dunno what i could use #do you think a fairy would appreciate lactose free vanilla coffee creamer. we dont have normal milk #i also wonder if candy would work. i have a ton of chocolate and caramel #though i also wonder if the Entity is stealing candy from the jars on my windowsill #i wouldn't mind that i don't mind sharing

[eggy-the-boy]

I love Lockwood & co so much but I'm gonna be honest half the time when i hear 'Lockwood' I think of this guy:

#I'm fucking obsessed with this show right now and if you follow me you can tell #Or id have interacted with me in the past week #But yeah y'all remeber this movie? Classic #Anyway I love lockwood and co so much and if I don't get a second season I will lose my mind :) #I am very normal and cool and sane about the media I consume #lockwood and co #anthony lockwood #lucy carlyle #george karim #george cubbins #Lockwood & co

[kakusu-shipping]

I apologize for not posting anything at all. I'm no where near the end of VLR but these people have invaded my brain and I can't do anything about it.

#Emile's Arts #Koro-Sensei #'You're gonna get a crush on the rabbit' 'I am NOT' 'You are you always do.' 'I will not' #THE VA IS VERY GOOD BUT I REFUSE YOU CHINESE KNOCK OFF MONOKUMA #Also I REFUSE to gain a crush on Ten I'm so SCARED of him being Ace 2.0 #Last time this game series gave me an old man with a cute smile he called my favorite character a bitch and murdered everyone for fun #btw Koro-Sensei doesn't super like anyone this game and will not stop saying how much he misses Lotus #And HONESTLY same #But we both agree Luna is best girl and can do no wrong #Also I don't DISLIKE Clover or anything #I'm just saying if they were gonna bring back someone from the first game it should have been Snake #Sense he spent 90% of 999 Dead so we don't know him very well #Koro-Sensei does NOT like Alice tho she's kinda meeeean #ANYway #The SECOND I am done with this game we're getting a K spam and then I'll be normal #Until then I will just sit here and seethe about him #And GTM-CM-G-OLM I GUESS #Still mad about that one #But WHATEVER #I miss doing Koro-Sensei and I consume media together sketches I should do more...

[rainswings]

What if. I made a mianite oc

#i am being very normal and calm about consuming old media in a dead fandom #mianite #anyways. theyd be a follower of dianite but argue its about 'pleasure and living an enjoyable life' more than chaos or just problems #they would also cause problems. but like. would try to help others. and say its not as fun to trouble people who have actual problems #hence why they would actively help with actual issues #red is my color and dianite is bastard. and fun #rains talks

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

I admire your patience with those readers who need you to spoon feed them the story. Everything is in the comics but they still manage to go pass it. I can't help but feel a bit sad for them? Do they not understand what they read? Are they not attentive when reading it? I'm legitimately concerned because I function so differently I can't fathom this. If you like a story, isn't it normal to make your best to grasp it's essence and reflect on it? I know I project a lot about this, everyone works and registers things differentely of course but sometimes it's very frustrating to see people consume any media and just completely miss all the important messages in it, or even just fail to get the scenario sometimes, and it feels like it's very common now... Idk I just wanted maybe to have your perspective on this? Sorry for the long post (Been here for a few years now and your a true inspiration to me. All my luv to you! ❤️)

You know, I'm gonna be honest. I used to stress out about this... a LOT.

As a story-brained person, this is definitely something that comes naturally to me, and perhaps to you, and to many other people who are wired similarly. To us, following the path of a story in an analytic, highly detail-motivated manner and unwrapping the themes can be as exciting as lifting up a rock to see the bugs underneath. It's an exciting mental activity that's stimulating and feels effortless.

And yes, as an author who spends literally 60% of my day thinking about this comic and how to draw it, panel it, script it, make it better (I script and panel in my head constantly)........ I have trouble realizing/dealing with the fact that some people are just here to CASUALLY enjoy the story that I am lowkey obsessed with.

But I've come to realize that... that's NORMAL! And healthy.

People have different attention spans for different things.

People have varied ways to read a story and engage with it.

People have unique interests.

People don't have the same amounts of energy to devote to reading!

Maybe someone missed a detail I lovingly and painstakingly put into the dialogue because they're reading the update late at night after a long shift at work. And maybe someone scrolled past the dialogue completely and just got the gist from looking at the art, because they're in a hurry to get to practice at their favorite sportsball.

And maybe someone just had a really bad day with a really bad encounter, and they're reading the update in a terrible mood and instead of seeing MY grey-morality narrative, they're focusing on all the negative points and misread the vibes because of their own biases that stem from places of hurt.

The thing is, I have to be okay with that as an author, because I will NEVER be able to get into my audience's heads and read this comic 'correctly' for my own sake.

They will always have a slightly different interpretation of things, and they will always misunderstand details and miss clues. And sometimes, they will be wrong about the way they read a character's motivations... and sometimes maybe they won't be! That's just a part of communication. That's a part of telling a story.

An imperfect delivery, and an imperfect reception should, in my opinion, be a natural and accepted part of storytelling. We're human, and we all have a different lived experience, and we will ALL have different takes on a comic, even if it's so close that we THINK we are both getting the exact same thing. That small human interpretation variation is a home-made touch that makes it feel more organic.

In short.... Not all light particles make it here from the sun, but damn the result is stunning anyway.

#chekhov answers

[empty-movement]

May I ask what scanners / equipment / software you're using in the utena art book project? I'm an artist and half the reason I rarely do traditional art is because I'm never happy with the artwork after it's scanned in. But the level of detail even in the blacks of Utena's uniform were all captured so beautifully! And even the very light colors are showing up so well! I'd love to know how you manage!

You know what's really fun? This used to be something you put in your site information section, the software and tools used! Not something that's as normal anymore, but let's give it a go, sorry it's long because I don't know what's new information and what's not! Herein: VANNA'S 'THIS IS AS SPECIFIC AS MY BREAK IS LONG' GUIDE/AIMLESS UNEDITED RAMBLE ABOUT SCANNING IMAGES

Scanning: Modern scanners, by and large, are shit for this. The audience for scanning has narrowed to business and work from home applications that favor text OCR, speed, and efficiency over archiving and scanning of photos and other such visual media. It makes sense--there was a time when scanning your family photographs and such was a popular expected use of a scanner, but these days, the presumption is anything like that is already digital--what would you need the scanner to do that for? The scanner I used for this project is the same one I have been using for *checks notes* a decade now. I use an Epson Perfection V500. Because it is explicitly intended to be a photo scanner, it does threebthings that at this point, you will pay a niche user premium for in a scanner: extremely high DPI (dots per inch), extremely wide color range, and true lossless raws (BMP/TIFF.) I scan low quality print media at 600dpi, high quality print media at 1200 dpi, and this artbook I scanned at 2400 dpi. This is obscene and results in files that are entire GB in size, but for my purposes and my approach, the largest, clearest, rawest copy of whatever I'm scanning is my goal. I don't rely on the scanner to do any post-processing. (At these sizes, the post-processing capacity of the scanner is rendered moot, anyway.) I will replace this scanner when it breaks by buying another identical one if I can find it. I have dropped, disassembled to clean, and abused this thing for a decade and I can't believe it still tolerates my shit. The trade off? Only a couple of my computers will run the ancient capture software right. LMAO. I spent a good week investigating scanners because of the insane Newtype project on my backburner, and the quality available to me now in a scanner is so depleted without spending over a thousand on one, that I'd probably just spin up a computer with Windows 7 on it just to use this one. That's how much of a difference the decade has made in what scanners do and why. (Enshittification attacks! Yes, there are multiple consumer computer products that have actually declined in quality over the last decade.)

Post-processing: Photoshop. Sorry. I have been using Photoshop for literally decades now, it's the demon I know. While CSP is absolutely probably the better piece of software for most uses (art,) Photoshop is...well it's in the name. In all likelihood though, CSP can do all these things, and is a better product to give money to. I just don't know how. NOTENOTENOTE: Anywhere I discuss descreening and print moire I am specifically talking about how to clean up *printed media.* If you are scanning your own painting, this will not be a problem, but everything else about this advice will stand! The first thing you do with a 2400 dpi scan of Utena and Anthy hugging? Well, you open it in Photoshop, which you may or may not have paid for. Then you use a third party developer's plug-in to Descreen the image. I use Sattva. Now this may or may not be what you want in archiving!!! If fidelity to the original scan is the point, you may pass on this part--you are trying to preserve the print screen, moire, half-tones, and other ways print media tricks the eye. If you're me, this tool helps translate the raw scan of the printed dots on the page into the smooth color image you see in person. From there, the vast majority of your efforts will boil down to the following Photoshop tools: Levels/Curves, Color Balance, and Selective Color. Dust and Scratches, Median, Blur, and Remove Noise will also be close friends of the printed page to digital format archiver. Once you're happy with the broad strokes, you can start cropping and sizing it down to something reasonable. If you are dealing with lots of images with the same needs, like when I've scanned doujinshi pages, you can often streamline a lot of this using Photoshop Actions.

My blacks and whites are coming out so vivid this time because I do all color post-processing in Photoshop after the fact, after a descreen tool has been used to translate the dot matrix colors to solids they're intended to portray--in my experience trying to color correct for dark and light colors is a hot mess until that process is done, because Photoshop sees the full range of the dots on the image and the colors they comprise, instead of actually blending them into their intended shades. I don't correct the levels until I've descreened to some extent.

As you can see, the print pattern contains the information of the original painting, but if you try to correct the blacks and whites, you'll get a janky mess. *Then* you change the Levels:

If you've ever edited audio, then dealing with photo Levels and Curves will be familiar to you! A well cut and cleaned piece of audio will not cut off the highs and lows, but also will make sure it uses the full range available to it. Modern scanners are trying to do this all for you, so they blow out the colors and increase the brightness and contrast significantly, because solid blacks and solid whites are often the entire thing you're aiming for--document scanning, basically. This is like when audio is made so loud details at the high and low get cut off. Boo.

What I get instead is as much detail as possible, but also at a volume that needs correcting:

Cutting off the unused color ranges (in this case it's all dark), you get the best chance of capturing the original black and white range:

In some cases, I edit beyond this--for doujinshi scans, I aim for solid blacks and whites, because I need the file sizes to be normal and can't spend gigs of space on dust. For accuracy though, this is where I'd generally stop.

For scanning artwork, the major factor here that may be fucking up your game? Yep. The scanner. Modern scanners are like cheap microphones that blow out the audio, when what you want is the ancient microphone that captures your cat farting in the next room over. While you can compensate A LOT in Photoshop and bring out blacks and whites that scanners fuck up, at the end of the day, what's probably stopping you up is that you want to use your scanner for something scanners are no longer designed to do well. If you aren't crazy like me and likely to get a vintage scanner for this purpose, keep in mind that what you are looking for is specifically *a photo scanner.* These are the ones designed to capture the most range, and at the highest DPI. It will be a flatbed. Don't waste your time with anything else.

Hot tip: if you aren't scanning often, look into your local library or photo processing store. They will have access to modern scanners that specialize in the same priorities I've listed here, and many will scan to your specifications (high dpi, lossless.)

Ahem. I hope that helps, and or was interesting to someone!!!

#utena #image archiving #scanning #archiving #revolutionary girl utena #digitizing #photo scanner #art scanning

[qqueenofhades]

Is it normal that I’m legitimately so scared of saying pretty morally tame things like “I don’t want to talk about genocide because it makes me severely uncomfortable” or in general expressing my political opinion.

Like i’m not even kidding when I say that all my drafts are just my possibly offensive (probably not) political takes i’m just so scared of everyone leaving me it’s not even funny.

Anyway i also think that if you talk about Palestine but not Ukraine you are a victim of Russian Propaganda™️

I’m sorry I don’t know why i did this have a nice day ok baiiiiiii

Here's the thing. You and every other average social media user should not have to masquerade as a sudden in-depth expert on every single social, political, humanitarian, etc. crisis that we are dealing with in this wretchedly miserable excuse for a timeline. It should not be a baseline expectation on you that when you log onto your little social media in your little average life, you have to come up with The Correct Opinions on everything and if you don't, you're "perpetrating oppression" by not vigorously spreading misinformation, instead of simply admitting that you don't know what to do, you as an average citizen are not in a position of making this change and therefore don't actually have to spend every waking minute obsessing about it, and that maybe, just maybe, you'd like to spend more time informing yourself until and/or IF you decide you want to talk about it. This is the same as the Instagram Activists (TM) who traumatize themselves to the point of PTSD by constantly consuming torture and/or war porn and/or graphic content about murdered children because they "don't have the right to look away." Actually, you do. You are able to make choices to control your personal social media use and to set boundaries as to what you do and do not want to do and/or see, rather than insisting that the only moral choice is to literally mentally destroy yourself with all the weight of human suffering in the world and then expected to act as a de facto expert on all of it, on pain of being Cancelled. This is a stupid, irrational, unhealthy, and generally idiotic expectation. You should not have to take part in it. Nobody should.

Likewise, I think that this is a large part of why people are so scared to voice any opinion that goes against the Prevailing Groupthink: they are afraid of losing friends, of having nasty bad-faith internet trolls say mean things about them, being accused of being a "bad person," or otherwise being guilt-tripped, shamed, and blamed for not centering their entire existence around something that they cannot actually do anything about. Once again, people think the only way you can be Known to Oppose Something Problematic (tm) is if you post on social media about it all the time. Forget whatever you might be doing offline, in your real life, or otherwise; it "doesn't count" if you don't make a big virtuous display of your Rightthink, or you will be viciously harassed. Now, look, I am old and/or tired enough that I don't give a shit what stupid internet users say about me, but I can tell you that I sure did when I was younger, it was incredibly painful to be on the end of those kinds of attacks, and it's (again!) not something you should just have to expect as a baseline level of gaslighting and harassment. As I have said. This is Tumblr. It is a stupid blue website mostly for fandom and/or three in-jokes. This is not a platform where we are expected To Do Social Justice all the time, nor should it be. As for Elon Musk's Twitter: yeah. No.

Also: yes, if you do spend all your waking moments obsessing over Palestine, but say nothing whatsoever about Ukraine and/or openly support Russia, you are in fact very much a victim of Russian Propaganda and you 100% support genocide when it's done by an "anti-western" state that you support for that reason alone. You only care because you can use the cause to make yourself look morally superior, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with opposing genocide on a basic, universal, or fundamental level. The end.

(I hope you have a nice day too. The anger in this is not directed at you. I support everything you've said here and hope that you're able to set healthy boundaries and protect yourself.)

#wolfieisacat #ask #politics for ts #apparently i am in a fighting mood today #so i might as well get it all out

[paranorahjones]

okay so in the interest of this being the tmi website i'm gonna go ahead and say that the effects of ovulation on women really, really need to be talked about more. so expect some major tmi. sorry but also im not sorry because there is much about ovulation that i wish i had known when i was younger. so if you don't wanna get super intimate super quickly with how my body works, you might wanna skip this one.

pretty much everyone has at least a basic idea of what menstruation entails but it seems like, for the most part, the only knowledge the general public seems to have regarding ovulation is "haha woman horny".

and i mean. that is definitely an aspect of it for a lot of women. that's what the hormones do. but there's SO MUCH MORE.

i'm just gonna talk about this in reference to my own personal experiences. i don't have the scientific knowledge to explain the "why" behind a lot of it, it's just what i experience.

first off: ovulation cramps. they are painfully real. they don't last anywhere near as long as menstruation cramps but for me at least, they are often more intense. they are a more sudden, knife-like pain and they happen in a very specific place in my lower back and down there. they usually only last for a day, but sometimes they're on and off for a couple days.

second: emotional upheaval. you know the memes about shrimp colors? that's what ovulation emotions feel like to me. shrimp emotions. a lot of women experience feeling irritable or super emotional on their periods, and i am definitely one of them. but the majority of the time, my emotions are even more affected by ovulation than menstruation. it's intense. when i'm on my period, the emotions usually manifest as major rejection sensitivity. when i'm ovulating, they most often manifest as grief, but also a myriad of other things. i'm usually a lot more sensitive to the media i consume, and a lot of times this hyper-awareness of my own feelings can be a blessing. depending on where i'm at in my cycle, i often experience a few days of hyper-creativity. being connected and understanding of my hormonal/emotional state helps me to also be more in tune with my creative tendencies. and with ovulation, i'm not distracted by the other symptoms that accompany it (except for the cramps) like i am with menstruation.

thirdly, the one everyone knows about: haha woman horny. ehhhhh . . . for me personally, not really. occasionally, but nowhere near every cycle. that might change when i'm no longer single, but for now it's just not a big deal. the way these hormones affect us vary wildly for every woman and that's normal. if we're being completely honest, i often feel ✨that way✨ more often when i'm on my period than during ovulation.

which. damn. that's gonna be inconvenient.

but anyways, i have a feeling that that has something to do with the fact that a lot of people also desire sex when they're grieving. it's a desire for intimacy in the midst of pain. it sounds weird on the surface, but it makes sense when you think about it.

so yeah. those are my main experiences during ovulation. hopefully this gave you some more understanding on what to possibly expect during ovulation, or an explanation of why you feel how you do during a "random" time of the month that isn't your period.

#it's been a while since i did a tmi post #so here's my best one yet lol #how should i tag this #uhhhhhh #ovulation #menstruation #tw menstruation #women's health #i don't know #hopefully that's enough

[not-poignant]

how do you have the time to write all this stuff /and/ play video games etc etc at the same time? Is it just that you write insanely fast after all these years? I have a lot of hobbies, writing being one of them, and i have such a hard time juggling them lol.

Hi anon,

So, real talk -> The reality is I don't have the time to write and play video games at the same time most of the time.

I haven't written anything since the 17th. I haven't started the next Palmarosa chapter. I'm on day 8 of not having opened a new document and writing anything.

I've edited a whole two chapters (which I suspect I have to go over again) and I've responded to some comments and asks, and that's it. No writing, no growing wordcount, I've been stagnating / not doing anything due to burnout since the 17th (I know the date because I have a giant whiteboard of completed chapters next to me).

Honestly, most of the time I don't actually have the time to read, play video games, watch television, or movies. I am too busy writing/editing/sleeping. With Toby in the mix, the small amount of media I was consuming has vanished.

Sometimes I can play certain video games while writing - these are usually low stakes video games I can endlessly put on pause and then play for five minutes at a time, like Dorfromantik and Garden Galaxy. Any kind of idler video game, like Havendock is also good for this.

Anon, you can't have a lot of hobbies and actually keep up with them and write the way I do, and therapist/s wouldn't recommend you drop all of your hobbies to write the way I do anyway. Trust me.

I had two things I wanted to start learning this year, and I haven't started learning them yet. I don't have the capacity. I had a therapist gently point out to me that if I was always at 100 in terms of output, how can I have any energy leftover for self-work and processing? The answer is: I don't. (That's actually why I've spent a week playing video games, and if anything it's just reminded me that my capacity is still at 100 and this is going to take a bit of concerted decompression).

Most of the time it's not normally quite this overwhelming. Toby has just maxed me out because he's a high energy dog who is also a puppy with Separation Anxiety, and there's no quick or easy fix for that. But most of the time it's still very intense. The list of shows I really want to watch, and books I really want to read, is very long. But I often don't have time to indulge in those things because I'm too busy writing.

A lot of the time I don't actually have the time to reread my own fics anymore, outside of editing.

This year was meant to kind of tackle that more decisively but you know then we got a puppy so... not so much.

But yeah anon, there is no 'how do you do this and do this' - you don't do one of those things, or you do it very haphazardly, in small amounts.

I do write very fast (my wordcount is 120-150wpm), but I don't edit fast (I'd tender that editing fast for most people is a bit of an oxymoron), I don't answer asks fast (some of the longer ones take me an hour to compose), etc. And even then, writing fast is not the same as the time it takes to think out the chapter, to figure out what's happening, letting it percolate etc. A lot of my life is also just resting. I lose about 2-5 hours of every afternoon to sleep or rest for example, where nothing productive happens. And I think one of the reasons I read so many manwha atm is that they're so easy to read comparatively, and so quick, and that's the only way I can really consume stories these days.

#asks and answers #what folks think they're seeing on the surface is often not is what is actually happening #those who track my wordcount on discord (where i update it) #will notice it's not been updated since the 17th #will i write anymore chapters between here and the end of the month? #i don't know #and if i don't #i will have to work even harder next month dsalkfjasfas #anyway yeah no most of your hard working creatives around you #cannot actually find the life-work balance that allows them to enjoy their lives and leisure time and their hobbies #even if they're writing about characters who are learning how to do those things #part of it is capitalism - it's hard to take a break when your antidepressants went up in price #(which is a broader ironic analogy to life in general)

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 8/29/2023

my ENTIRE SUMMER has been either worrying about moving or actually moving. ALL OF IT. however an incredibly hot butch milf on the gay community bulletin board/dating app lex has finally answered my piteous call for gun safety classes with an invitation to her private range. unfortunately she is a landlord who owns a VERY large apartment complex. houston is a land of contrasts

listening

more joywave! one of my favorite bands bc they are best listened to in full album format, and i did a fuck of a lot of driving this weekend. little lies you’re told has an opening like a big machine warming up while you are in a control room way high up on a gantry somewhere. spotify

-

reading (2x bonus round)

All The Trimmings by Tesni Morgan (published 2001 in the UK) is a gift from @believerindaydreams. it is “erotic fiction written by women for women” (debatable) and “the publishers recommend that this book should be sold only to adults”. also, “Black Lace novels contain sexual fantasies. In real life, make sure you practise safe sex.” idk i’ve ever seen that kind of notation on an american novel before? fascinating precursor to the saccharine little “stay safe kids” ao3 authors notes

i do find the premise genuinely fun and compelling— two divorced milfs opening a hotel/bordello with historically themed rooms. i have had to look up a lot of british purple prose and i refuse to believe anyone says “rogering” in real life.

im being edged with glimmerings of bisexuality. every time one of the milfs gets turned on and goes out roaming to distract herself from being turned on, i go “oh?” like at a pokemon go egg, but so far all the dalliances and encounters have been dudes.

had a very strange experience with cormac mccarthy's blood meridian. i don’t normally interrogate whether or not i am the intended audience for a work except when it’s literally made for children, bc i as a modern bisexual woman am the intended audience for vanishingly few works. for example, many entire genres (westerns) are very challenging to enjoy.

a western has never made me go "wait so why DO i like westerns at all" so hard. like, what AM i doing here in this genre that is often deeply fucking uncomfortable to consume as a woman, and where the most foundational american and european works of the genre often uncritically embrace the worst parts of the american mythos in the most violent way possible? i do believe critics when they say mccarthy is not embracing violence for the sake of, and in fact has something to say with his revisionist western, but my god is it hard to wade through. anyway, dad media will not fuck me and i still have only a tenuous grasp on why i try so hard to glean enjoyment from it.

i know what mccarthy is trying to do and the overall tone of “weird old maybe-uncle” spinning a yarn to a big group of you and your cousins around a fire somewhere is pretty effective. unfortunately I have less tolerance for mccarthy’s style now than when I read The Road thirteen years ago in high school. i was immediately super invested in The Road’s single dad and how he and his kid were surviving, which does not need a lot of interiority.

blood meridian also has very little interiority. the first five chapters are a teen falling in and out of various fights. i was not, and am still not invested. if im reading A Man Goes On A Journey western (as opposed to A Stranger Comes to Town western) i would like to know two or three things about the man, especially if it seems to be angling at a bildungsroman. i don't typically care for third-person objective narration when it is this closely focused on one guy, and i really don't care for loving descriptions of maggots. comforting to know a lot of critics were also squicked out by this book. so it goes.

-

watching

finished watching s1 of spy x family! a Legally Not West German spy in Legally Not East Berlin has to go into deep cover and pose as a family man in order to gain access to Legally Not Erich Honecker, because the only social events Legally Not Erich Honecker goes to are the ones at his son's elite prep school.

this man FLINGS himself into being the absolute best husband and father possible. for the mission, of course.

i found the first few episodes the best, which is generally the opposite of my normal anime experience. i think it does a really good job of balancing high-octane spy hijinks and chases and explosions with very domestic concerns (he PROPOSES. with a THE RING OFF A HAND GRENADE. AFTER THROWING IT), and once you're really hooked on these characters it turns into a bit of a curtainfic. curtainanime? i had fun with all of it and anxiously await season two, but the actual applied spycraft does drop off significantly as the series goes on.

-

playing

we're going to continue with out of context genshin screencaps for the duration. the watery land of fontaine has a neat smorgsabord of visual style-- freshwater but also saltwater but also the aquarium section at petsmart.

-

making

unpacking mostly. acquired this coffee table and its mother. needs a very deep cleaning and some touchups but is intact. the individual tables are a bit large for like individual party drinks tables but all six together are QUITE large. four tigether would be a comfortable coffee table size for many apartments imo but! bc everything truly is bigger in Texas including my apartment it works for right now. for the first time in my life i am considering a sectional sofa bc the living/dining room is that dang big.

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

[raedshadowlegends]

LO Ep 249 (MINOR FP SPOILERS)

TW for SA

Ok so here's the thing. I've had issues in the past with this kind of topic. I don't want to elaborate much upon it but I just need to preface all of this by saying it is something that has affected me.

However, I am not normally triggered by SA in media. It takes a lot to get me to that point and even more so with a comic like LO. I just need you all to keep that in mind.

This episode has a trigger warning. I genuinely didn't this RS was going to include one given the preview on Thursday (It was a Hera/Kronos one btw). Since she didn't put a warning in with the last Hera and Kronos episode, I was pretty damn surprised there was one here. However this warning only said "abusive relationship dynamics."

And yes that was very prevalent. The ENTIRE comic was nothing but uncomfortable moments and a lot of moments attempting to "humanize" Kronos or whatever the fuck. There's a line that says, "The Titan King Kronos was a tyrant. But the Titan King Kronos was still a man." And it's disgusting. He's a tyrant! Hera said it herself! He's an abuser and an implied r*pist. And that just gets worse and worse and WORSE through the episode.

There were three panels in the middle of this episode that genuinely terrified me for a moment. Lore Olympus has never made me PANIC before. Despite all of the disgusting, rage induced moments, I have never truly panicked with an episode.

I don't even really want to talk about it because it was just so unsettling for me.

And this brings me to the thing I really want to say;

Fuck you RS. This is one of the most upsetting and insensitive things I have read in my whole life. What kind of story is this? What is happening? It seems like every week it's another piece of rage bait to get people pissed! What else could be going on here?! This is genuinely disgusting and I'm pissed off!

This story is being consumed by teenagers! Most likely, very young girls! With the bright colors, stylized appearance, and twenty billion ads on Webtoon, OF COURSE KIDS ARE GOING TO READ IT. This comic has some of the most uncomfortable themes and it wears them like badges of honor. The age gap being one of them.

I am terrified for the people who are younger than me and who do not comprehend the messages here. I am genuinely terrified. This comic is normalizing age gaps, power gaps, and for some reason ROMANTICIZING THE GROSS ABUSE BETWEEN HERA AND KRONOS, and young girls are seeing it. And they are internalizing that this is ok because it wasn't shamed in the source material.

We know what has happened between Hera and Kronos. We have heard about it many many times at this point. Why are we actually seeing the awful things told to us? WHY? It is not ok.

I am very sure that this episode and its contents only exist because RS has no idea how to follow up with the last ep's cliffhanger. She spent all her time doing nothing and now she has to come up with a way to pad things out so she can come up with a plan. Y'know, a lot of writers plan things out before making a story. Just saying.

But this is just not ok in any way, shape, or form. My skin is actually crawling from those panels. I feel disgusting. I'm so tired of this comic. I need RS to stop trying to "own the haters" and reflect on what she's done. This is far from the feminist its acclaimed as. I am so sorry to anyone who read this fp. This is awful.

I apologize for the long winded, not-sober rant. I couldn't not say anything about this one. Anyways, that's all I got.

#anti lo #anti lore olympus #lo critical #lore olympus critical #unpopular lore olympus #unpopular lo

[inchidentally]

I know wives and gf talk isn't for everyone so asks under a cut - and I hate the term 'wag' so I'll start tagging these 'f1partnertalk' for those who want to bl!

right??? and the fact that in his Australia tourism type video with her he refers to her as his 'partner' which to me is both him being socially minded but also respect bc by that time they'd been together 3 and a bit years!

and exactly !! on the one hand he's not using her as a status thing of 'look I have a gf' but he's also made the very smart decision (and I think this was the Webbers influence) of not having her be a secret or a mystery. her acc going private is pretty normal for F1 gfs who aren't using their profile for business but the fact that he casually reminds people about her and that she'll like certain content posted about her or them is enough to stop anyone thinking she's 'fake' or whatever. there were some feeble attempts to claim they were broken up just bc she didn't go to many races but when folks pointed out she was in final year of uni for a very difficult degree it died down.

gotta say though - and this isn't in reply to you it's an aside about comments I see - I find the straight people thing of jumping to theories about marriage for long term relationships SO weird. it's like there's this ticking time bomb for het relationships lol. it's esp weird since they're so young and his career requires him to be so selfish (his and Lando's words) that I'm like how do ppl see that and leap to them marrying buying a house and planning kids when they not only don't live together yet they also spend most of the year apart??? sure they're super mature and stable for their age but who I am now and who I was during hs and college has been so incredibly different! I couldn't imagine making that huge a commitment esp if I had an all consuming career like Oscar does. I just hope those comments (however well meaning) don't reach them bc that feels crazy over-stepping and would be so awkward to read.

these asks I felt like went together really well lol

(this is the post anon refers to) oh anon. idk if you've seen them but have a look through here to enjoy Oscar's 8-year little crush on Lando and I think it's safe to say that Lily will at least have had an inkling about it.

and the thing is that being physical just isn't Oscar's way even with Lily which if Lando was at all hmmmm about then he'll have seen that pretty early on. as anon listed above, Oscar shows his affection for people by including them when he talks about his life (which Lando also gets!) also acts of service and signs of respect (which Lando also gets!)

this is me projecting here but idk the way Oscar talks about the boarding school guys he's still friends with and his friends back in Oz but doesn't post about them or have them to many races just makes me think that Oscar decided very early on to just avoid the distraction of sharing himself on social media apart from memes? he's never wanted to establish any kind of online persona and he got really solid a levels as a backup in engineering if F1 didn't work out so he's never planned to be a public person anyway.

where I'm going w that is that Lando will absolutely by now have learned all of this about Oscar. Oscar will like and respond to content about Lando but most of what Lando gets from him will be the acts of service and signs of respect. which is exactly what Oscar does with Lily, his family, Mark, etc. Oscar's own content will be about generically positive stuff re McLaren and the occasional funny post (like P1,P2,P6?). but the people he considers his most inner circle will stay largely off the map. which lbr is what Lando himself does with a lot of his closest friends! especially since his fame began to grow he's stopped posting a lot of those people and we only hear them bc he mentions seeing them. Lando is Oscar's little long harbored 'crush' and Lily is his long term gf. I feel like if that's obvious to us then it def will be for Lando :)

so we can count ourselves incredibly lucky that Lando being Oscar's teammate means we get as much of a window in on them as we do <3

#inchreplies #f1partnertalk

[empresskylo]

HELLO!!!!

i just discovered ur acc today and have been FURIOUSLY stalking it for the last few hours reading over everything you've wrote. as you do. normal person activites.

I just wanted to say I APPRECIATE YOUR CONTENT SO MUCH!!!!

literally have been looking high and low for some cod fanfiction that is just Soft and Kind even in the nsfw 😭😭 bitches be writing Ghost in the most like violent sex scenes and im like bro has literally witnessed toxic behavior and violence towards women and just in general his whole life and ur telling me hes gonna be mean to his girl and non-con her duing sex??? no bros gonna be so soft and kind and so scared to overstep boundries 😭🙏 (furthermore it. stumps me how ppl consume that kind of media. i know what ppl may enjoy reading may not always be what they actually would want irl but it makes me cringe just reading sometimes i cant fathom)

ANYWAYS i digress i just wanna shout u out for writing some of the softest and sweetest fanfic out there on tumblr ive seen so far latched onto every word literally gnawing and rattling the bars of my enclosure.

i am such a sucker for the soft and sweet that anytime i see some non-con dark fanfic (most of the stuff i see on here) i do a little sigh. ur doing a service for the country tysm 😭🫶💗

thank you sm!!! i really appreciate you writing all this out to send to me! 🫶🥰 i cannot believe you love how i portray ghost, that is so kind and makes me so happy!!!!

it's hard to explain why i, personally, enjoy some dark romance/fanfics. everyone is different, but I just find exploring darker content in writing is a way I kind of cope with my own trauma. it's like taking the power back in a sense?? most of these kinds of fics are written by women, and it's just a safe space for me?!? idk how to explain it well but I just wanted to share why I sometimes enjoy some dark fics! but I do think the cod fics on here are overly saturated in that kind of content so I'm happy you find my work so satisfying 🥹

that being said, i totally agree with you on ghost having experienced so much trauma, i'd think he'd be so gentle in all aspects of a relationship. especially in the comics where he had witnessed so much violence towards women that he genuinely didn't want to emulate. i think he'd be very anxious about hurting his partner. there's also just something I love about the big bad burly man actually being such a softie. i want an overprotective ghost who just wants to shower his partner in love and maybe sometimes doesn't know how to fully express himself 🥹

#chatting ˘͈ᵕ˘͈

[lqfiles]

everyone on team chenle is only making me more team y/n🙅‍♀️ i completely get where chenle is coming from, i get why he’s upset but i also completely understand why jisung is all she talks about, just based on my own assumptions its probably her first serious potential relationship esp as basically an adult, id be excited too.

but chenle has every right to be upset that it’s all she’s been talking about, but he went about it in such an immature and mean way for a so called best friend to do so (kind of publicizing it on twitter “jokingly” or not and then making it awkward in the gc) if he had just spoken to her normally it wouldn’t have happened the way it did but he bottled up how much he disliked it, as well as just projecting it on how he felt about jisung all together.

the way he acted just automatically made me team y/n the more i think about it, because sure what she’s doing can be annoying, it’s not inherently WRONG nor is she intentionally hurting anyone in the process.

[this is also probably stemming from my immediate reaction to defend any women in fiction media i consume when people r against her, let alone MEN?! i was victim of the anime to kpop pipeline (still am) and the wars i had to fight for haruno sakura when i was heavily into naruto…]

—🪼

OH ME TOODHDJD LIKE I FEEL LIKE I HAVE TO BE HER LAWYER RN LIKE NO ONE GOT HER BACK OMGGG 😭😭😭

CLOCK ITTTT like his response was definitely immature and could’ve been handled better. and though the tweet came off as a joke, that response was DEFINITELY meant to be shady (as i intended) which is honestly a shitty way to behave as a friend. it definitely all come to this due to his bottled up dislike for jisung and its also why his reaction was so hostile and harsh because he’s been making small remarks this whole time but, like i said in that post, the lack of reassurance in friendship him and y/n have been having for the past weeks with her being more busy with jisung definitely made him grow more agitated

PLUS he just dropped that bomb and leaves it at “i’m not going to argue” even tho he started it!!! and you’re right she TECHNICALLY did nothing wrong 😭very immature but that’s exactly what i’m going for with him atm

i’m more of a “everyone is right in a way” like i ALWAYS try to see from both perspectives i just can’t help it 😭😭 this actually caused me some issues with my friends because they’d think i’m choosing a side in their argument she genuinely i can see why both are mad lollshdjd ANYWAYS YOURE RIGHT i’ll fight for any women against MEN of all people 😑 AND OMG NOT NARUTOO plss my younger brother is crazy about that anime

#asks. #( score that goal! ) #from 🪼 anon #the way i was team chenle like a day ago and all these ask got me to become team yn like pls guys chill on my cousin 😭💔

[forerussake]

Shipper tag game

I was tagged by @dual-domination :DDD thanks!

What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care about anymore?

Okay so this whole tag game is gonna be interesting, bc i'm not actually that much of a shipper. I don't really care about shipping for the shipping itself, if that makes sense. I care about the characters and their dynamic, and ships can be interesting for what the characters may or may not bring to each other. Anyway, that was all meant to preface that I don't remember if I really strongly shipped anything when I was a teenager... At the very least I don't think there's one I don't care about anymore. Most of the things I shipped as a teen would have been tolkien ships, and I still carry a great fondness for those even if I'm not an active creator in that fandom atm.

2. Which ship would you consider your first one?

As said above, likely something Tolkien-related?? Maybe Glorestor? I remember reading fics about them but I don't remember actively shipping them. Perhaps Finarfin/Eärwen, that is the earliest ship I remember caring about in a way that I might consider shippy??

3. Your first fanfic was about which couple?

Neither the first fanfic I ever attempted to write (sth about Legolas that I wrote with pen on paper when I was like 10) nor the first serious unfinished attempt (about Thranduil taking up the crown in the aftermath of his father's death) nor the first one I ever published (The Last Son, a character study about Finarfin) are about couples at all... My first one that is about a couple though is Broken, about Turgon and Elenwë, but that is not 'shippy' at all.

4. Do you remember the first couple you saw fanart of?

In Tolkien fandom circles, that will probably have been sth like Gigolas or maybe Glorestor, but I don't remember. The first I have active memory of is Angbang :D

5. Have you ever gotten into ship discourse?

No. I try to stay far away from that...

6. Did you use to have any NOTP or have one currently?

Maybe? There's definitely ships I don't care about, even ones that the rest of the fandom is all about, but there's very few ships I actively avoid. The only thing I actively filter out of my AO3 searches atm is anything that ships Ye Zun and Shen Wei together. That's just not for me... But that is what we have the exclude tags button for, so others can enjoy what they enjoy and you can too :) I also avoid the Pingxie tag like the plague, bc I've seen one too many people in the fandom have bad opinions, but I wouldn't call them a NOTP. It's more a 'missing a third party (namely Pangzi)' kinda deal for me xD

7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read?

My mind immediately went to Weilan, but then I remembered that actually it's Zhubai <3 Both are a very likely answer to this question at any given moment.

8. Currently, do you have any OTPs?

See above! Weilan for sure, and definitely also Zhubai (and the extended polycule in the whole of and i will make a silence for you, for which I am eternally grateful to mumble and Sam) <333

9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together?

No. As I said before, I'm not really a shipper. I don't consume media in that way. The story is the story, I don't see a reason to get mad about it. If you're unhappy with canon, you throw it in the trash and start writing AU fanfiction. It's not that deep.

10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting?

Nah.

11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, would've been considered normal but now you would be cancelled over?

Idk, I suppose some people these days would cancel me over my RPF ships? I've also read a lot of Tolkien fanfic back in the day with ships that the modern purity-police would probably like to put me on a stake over (Celegorm/Curufin(/Finrod), maybe Silverfisting (when we still had the collective guts to call it that) and such.) Look, I was there for all the Yuri On Ice ship wars (that I didn't participate in, mind you), don't @ me with your anti bullshit. Fiction is fiction. Reality is reality. Go touch some grass.

12. What is your favorite crack ship?

I don't think I have one. Crack is not my fanfic genre.

13. What is the couple you read the most fanfics about?

Weilan probably ranks high by now, as does Zhubai. I've read a lot of Silverfisting and Curufin/Finrod in my day. I've read everything that was in the Finarfin/Eärwen tag up until a couple years ago, but that is a rarepair (even though it's canon... that's what you get when your OTP are only mentioned by name 3 times in the whole entire book). Xiyao and Nielan and 3zun are probably high on the list as well. I don't know who wins it, bc I only started keeping track of my reading habits with bookmarks in the past couple years so I have almost no data about the amount of fic I read before my Guardian days.

14. What do most of your ships usually have in common?

Uuhm, often there's something potentially fucked up about the dynamic. Some friction. A certain level of codependency or otherwise unhealthy attachment is interesting to me (how do they work through that? can they?). Most important though is just the deep affection they have for each other. I'm really big on like, choice and consent and free will. When characters could've chosen to part, and it might have even been easier for them to try and let go, but they decide the pain is worth it and they want to work on themselves and the relationship to make it work? When they love each other so much it dwarfs all else, but they still make the active choice to be vulnerable and share that love? That's my jam :)

15. What you absolutely hate in a ship?

Why do we have to end on a negative :(((( hhhm, okay i guess the lack of the above. I hate the soulmate trope with a passion, because so often it erases the element of choice from a relationship. "These characters were meant to be together" okay that's cute but do they want to be? I dislike it when a ship is written in such a way (either by the canon author or by fans) that it takes away the agency from the characters. I'm all for characters living for each other, but there must be meaning behind it. It can't just be fate. It has to be choice. For that matter, when a fandom collectively decides one ship is the way to go and all else is wrong and sucks, that is when I jump ship, because that ship is sinking.

Thanks again for tagging me, this was fun!

Tagging: @pangzi @lucientelrunya @programmedradly @the-marron @lunarriviera @scaredysap @mjsakurea @elenothar @lynne-monstr @aredhel-of-doylkien @thedaughterofshadows if you want to <3

#tagged #shipping #tag game

[0nelittlebirdtoldme]

I have an nfsw vamp question. If you’ll humor me. We see Lestat and Louis have sex multiple times in Interview with the vampire. And in the book. Duh. It’s implied that Dracula has sex in nearly any version of media we see him in. Edward Cullen and Bella must have had sex in order to have a baby, and of course you have your own smuts that you write yourself, birdie. So that leads me to my question: How does it work? Anatomically? For vampires? I mean they’re undead but clearly certain tools still work. Please explain, because I can’t compute

Please, we just talked about this yesterday on the server – also, how dare you use logic against me?

Either way, of course I had to make this an essay, so thank you for entertaining me. I will try to keep this PG friendly. Please take this with a grain of salt. This is just my own, pseudo-scientific explanation. If you have a different take, that is perfectly fine as well! I’d actually would like to know other suggestions for this dilemma!

Vampire Dicks and their Mechanics

First things first, I want to point out that there are some adaptations in which vampires do have a form of heartbeat; whether a normal one or it being, for example, heavily slowed like in A Dowry of Blood. That said, I am not overly familiar with the mechanics/biology of the Vampire Chronicles’ vampires – I have only seen the show and read half of the first novel.

Anyway, this is just my head canon, and the solution I most often use for fic writing on my own. Of course, I could just handwave this and say “idk, magic or something” but why make things easy, huh?

The Bloodstream

In my understanding, vampires don’t have a heartbeat or pulse. That said, they can and do bleed, so there must be a constant support, flow, and renewal of blood inside their bodies happening. I did like @alpaca-clouds suggestion from yesterday, namely that blood flow does exist, but it no longer goes via the heart, but instead is kept moving through magic. Perhaps because, as monstrous creatures, they are (metaphorically) heartless?

The Biology

My Vampires do have access to all of their senses. They feel touch and pain, but simply in a different way (for example, since their own body temperature is lowered, they don’t really feel cold outside) and are receptive to it, meaning that they have fully functioning nerves. They can, therefore, get aroused in the conventional way (direct stimulation) in addition to my head canon that drinking blood is for vampire kin inherently arousing. Since the act is very intimate, intense and sensual, there is little distinction between food and sex. Drinking from someone, whether human or vampire, can therefore very well result in literal, physical arousal. On top of that, I love writing vampire venom, which is transferred through a bite, working like an aphrodisiac - you see, there are many ways for a vamp to get hot and bothered.

The Produce

So; vampires can feel arousal, can get aroused, and stay aroused. Where does now the actual release come from?

To reference back to Dracula: Vampires can age, when they don’t drink blood for a long time, and grow younger again, as they consume it it. Therefore, in addition to the common trope of a fast regeneration factor and advanced healing, their bodies must be able to produce new cells, while old ones die off. In my personal head canon this means that they can grow (body) hair. Their nails, if cut, would grow back. If a vampire drinks a lot of blood, he will have to use a toilet, even if I don’t ever mention it in my fics (although, who wants to read about that, honestly?). Vampires can produce sweat, blood, spit and tears. So, why make the exception in regard to all things concerning sexual intercourse?

To sum up

Despite often times being portrayed as having no heartbeat, vampires can get erections and ejaculate.

#thank you for indulging me anon #i made this way more detailed that it should have been #tumblr ask #vampires #dracula #a dowry of blood #interview with the vampire #amc iwtv #dracula daily #my fic