#but ! i am not feeling very inspired to write anything in particular lol

[wavesmp3]

-

#if you follow my main #then you know #but really dislike my internship #which has made me really wanna throw myself back into writing just to feel some hint of passion and fufilment in something #but ! i am not feeling very inspired to write anything in particular lol #i have this one idea bouncing around in my head but I think I lost steam in it already lol #was about either a romantic relationship or a friendship kind of coming to a close because person b was moving back to thier hometown #but person a was not #and was supposed to document their final time together #both people taking this long train ride back home (home is the first grave) but one is staying and the other isn’t #anywyas #someone should send me a drabbling request so I can do something with myself to not feel so unhappy post them 9 to 5 (read: 7 to 4) #hold on im thinking #morning at the edge of time

[misc-obeyme]

(inspired by the barbatos makeup asks) imagine barbatos choosing which lipstick he should wear for the day, his choice being which lipstick he think would look best covered all over your face from his kisses

alsdfklsdfj anon how can you do this to me???

I'm so sorry. I had to write a drabble about this.

So here it is, Barbatos choosing his lipstick based on what would look best all over your face. There is making out and more is implied, but that's all. It's just a drabble but wow am I tempted to write full on smut about it lol.

GN!MC x Barbatos

Warnings: Uh... making out, implied further activity, lipstick? Does that last one need to be listed? I dunno.

Barbatos looks at the array of lipstick colors neatly lined up on his bathroom counter. Most of them are neutral colors, just enough to add a little something to his lips on regular days. He has a small group of other bolder colors that he keeps for special occasions.

There is no such occasion today. Not unless he counts the fact that you'll be coming over to the castle later. Something that he would not normally take into consideration. But he knows how things are likely to go and his mind won't stop flashing images of his lipstick against your skin.

Unable to stop himself, Barbatos reaches for one of his bolder colors. He applies it meticulously, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand rather than daydreaming about smearing it all over your face.

Barbatos goes through his day as he always does. He takes care of Diavolo, who mercifully doesn't comment on his butler's unusual choice of lipstick color. In fact, the only one who says anything about it at all is Asmodeus, which isn't surprising. He unleashes a little squeal before complimenting Barbatos on his choice and listing several recommendations he has for Barbatos to add to his collection.

For the most part, Barbatos is free to go about his day in peace, only allowing his mind to wander if he happens to catch his own reflection.

Before you arrive, he takes the time to touch up his face and hair, deliberately adding just a little more lipstick.

If you notice, you don't say anything. Barbatos makes you tea, but doesn't drink any himself. He doesn't want to mess up his carefully done lips by leaving marks across a teacup.

You say something about that, though. "You're not drinking any tea. Are you okay?"

Barbatos feels himself blush. "Forgive me, MC," he says. "You needn't be concerned. I simply-"

"You don't want to mess up your lipstick, huh?"

Barbatos's blush deepens. He stares at you in surprise, unable to respond at all. Was he really so obvious?

You put down your teacup and smile. "Waiting for me to mess up it for you, right?"

Barbatos is a very patient demon. He is able to remain calm and collected at all times. It seems the only thing that can cause him to act unexpectedly is this human. After spending the entire day attempting to suppress his thoughts of you, the remarks you make being so spot on breaks through the dam.

In moments, Barbatos has you pressed up against the castle wall. He presses his lips to your neck and pulls away to see the mark of his lips there against your skin. The sight of it causes heat to pool inside his gut, but he continues. He leaves a trail of lipstick along your neck and jaw until you finally catch his lips with yours.

Things get messy fast and he can taste the tang of his own lipstick when your tongue collides with his. You're gripping the back of his shirt with surprising strength and his hands on your hips squeeze hard in response.

With a gasp, Barbatos pulls away to breathe. He looks at you, slumped against the wall, mouth open, face and neck covered in that special shade he chose that morning.

Barbatos smiles fondly. "Just as I thought, this particular color compliments your complexion quite well."

Now you're the one blushing, but Barbatos isn't finished.

He tightens his hold on you even more and says quietly, "I would like to see how it looks decorating the rest of your body as well."

The next morning, Barbatos contemplates the line of lipstick colors once again. He was quite satisfied with the outcome of the previous day's choice. Your slumbering form still in his bed was a testament to that. And though he would choose one of his usual neutral colors for today, he knew that if he ever wanted to communicate to you his desires without speaking, he need only choose that same shade again.

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

#what can I say I get inspired by Barbatos almost every time #and this lipstick thing is just getting to me omg #obey me #obey me nightbringer #obey me barbatos #om barbatos #obey me barbatos x reader #om barbatos x reader #obey me x reader #x reader #anon asks #misc answers #misc writes

[shiftylinguini]

Fuck I Can't Write Crisis Pack:

@phoebe-delia asked in response to this fun lil ask game:

Do you have any advice for getting out of a slump/getting writing confidence back? . (for the ask anything) Do you have any advice for getting out of a slump/getting writing confidence back?

Now THIS. This is a good question, and something that is very much on my mind and has been for a while, as I am currently absolutely in the midst of this and trying to army crawl my way out. I don't have any magic bullets (is that the saying? idk) but I have been here before and i do have a small arsenal of tips or methods that I find can help me. 

Here is my Fuck I Can't Write Crisis Pack (In no particular order):

Write anything 

This is hardly groundbreaking advice, and it's also the hardest thing to actually do (imo) so do not beat yourself up if it takes a while to get to this. Basically, write ANYTHING―it can be aimless, it can be pointless, it can be crap (crap is subjective!! don't let the brain gremlins win!!). 

Don't think about posting it, don't worry about anyone else ever reading it, just fling a few words onto a page and feel the rusty faucet turn on, proving to yourself that it still works. 

Try and sus out what it is that's blocking you 

Again this one is hard and annoying but functional. Once you can put your finger on the particular reason you're staring at a flashing black line on a blank page it can help you kick that reason off your lawn and into the bin. 

And then, take it out of the bin and be kind to yourself about whatever that reason is. Maybe you feel shit because you're comparing yourself to others, your last fic felt like a lead balloon, you can't muster enthusiasm for what you once loved doing and fear that it's gone forever, you're projecting in a Tumblr post―whatever it is, it's something all the writers you admire and aspire to be like have felt, and been annoyed with themselves for, and so you can wrap it up in a blanket and put it on a shelf and be kind to it so it, (respectfully) shuts the fuck up. 

(and remember, everyone feels insecure about their stuff. Like literally everyone, at some stage, feels like their stuff is rubbish)

Cheat on your OTP 

Okay this one might not work for everyone, but it really does for me lol. Ruts (not the sexy kind) can often come with not wanting to engage in my usual ships, being annoyed by my lack of ability to fucking write them/anything/all my ideas taste like cardboard/bleh, and stepping out on them and reading something new can snap me out of it. Just, an injection of new ideas or scenarios or words or even just a little reprieve from being fed up with myself, which ideally, is why we're all here anyway. 

(And then I come crawling back, and am welcomed with open arms haha)

In a similar vein:

Engage in media 

This subtitle is genuinely terrible, i am sorry, LMAO, but essentially: find a piece of media that makes you go "oh, helLO sailor", unhinge your jaw like a snake, and consume it whole. 

Let it nourish you, inspire you, excite you, making you feel SOMETHING, and then take that and think "fuck, what if i wrote bleepbloopblarp" and even if you write nary a single word, you've thought about it and that fucking counts. 

It might be an album, a book, a song, a show, gifs of a hot person, the wikipedia summary of a movie, literally anything counts here if it makes you feel a twinge of creativity. 

Ask yourself, what would Astolat do? 

No for real. @candybarrnerd and I genuinely use this haha.  

Worried your idea is stupid? Astolat would say write it. 

Worried it's too weird? Nah, just write it. 

It's dumb and no one will read it? Just write it for you *waggles eyebrows* (and then find out that yeah, nah, someone else will absolutely read this and be real fucking happy about it haha.)

Worried you're a one trick pony and have already written this fic before, like, and not even once before, and also you're projecting again in Tumblr post? WRITE IT AGAIN! As Astolat once said, "it's a fic so nice, I wrote it thrice". 

It's good advice. 

Make a friend or lean hard on the ones you have here

Misery loves company because it knows they'll come out of this together :). I know, I know, that's fucking NAFF, but fandom is all about finding like-minded freaks and blowing up their DMs because you saw a gif and now feel a kind of ways about it. 

And lastly: 

FUCK STATS! 

I mean I love stats (yay validation!), but god can they make you feel like a worthless shit (hey where did my validation go :((( ). It can be really insidious, so piss that right off when it starts to fuck with your confidence or outlook on your own writing.

Hopefully there is something useful here, even if it's just looking at this advice and thinking "no that's shit, it's writing POISON" cos then you can maybe do the version you think is NOT shit, and that might work. 

Good luck, fellow travelers!!

#thank you for this ask #this turned into projected cathrsis but i hope this helps if you are possibly feeling in a slump!! #on fic #writing #writing advice #our lord and saviour astolat #shifty turns an innocent ask into a therapy session #also is there a fucking name for the flashing space bar line on a word doc LMFAO there has to be right?? i do not know what it is

[venomous-qwille]

Hellooooo! Saw the last ask about tarot cards and while you don't have to answer this, I'd like to give the meanings of the cards that we've seen in the chapter titles, which I'll let others make the connections cause this is already gonna be pretty long if you choose to answer this ask lol

Please note all of these are the general information and meanings about the cards (upright) I could find and the meanings can slightly vary depending on the kind of reading being done and the paired cards <3

Chapter 1: Death. Generally this actually refers to new beginnings and change! It's also a good reference to the talk of sight and death in the first chapter imo, very clever play on your part!

Chapter 2: Seven of Cups. This generally is interpreted as having many options or multiple possibilities, which can either be a comfort due to having options but also could inform you of a sense of being overwhelmed due to too many choices.

Chapter 3: Page of Wands. Often this means good news that should be coming to you soon (often represented by mail or a phone call wink wonk) though for the particular chapter I feel it's relevant to point out some other interpretations, including but not limited to: being inspired or creative, making new exciting plans, finding something you are passionate about, and having a tendency to rush into new things without thinking them through.

Chapter 4: Two of Pentacles. Oft a representation of trying to find or maintain the balance of various aspects of ones life! It can also be a warning to those trying to juggle too many things at once.

Chapter 5: Trochomancy. Not sure if this is a tarot card, I've never heard of it and I can't find anything about it in any of my sources so. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ though I did find a definition of the word from a simple Google search: "Trochomancy is a divination by interpreting the wheel tracks." Which plays in well with our little bike trip.

Chapter 6: The Moon. The simplest interpretation for this card generally is that everything is not as it seems, be it a person or a situation in your life.

Chapter 7: Three of Pentacles. This generally is seen as a good card in a reading, often representing things like learning and/or apprenticeship, hard work, dedication, and building on success or foundations!

Chapter 8: Seven of Pentacles. Generally, this card tells you that you've been working very hard and soon your hard work will pay off. A wonderful successor to a card like the Three of Pentacles! You've used these very cleverly, it makes me so happy to see these pair so well with each other and the chapters!!! New thing to be insane about your fic!

Chapter 9: Clamomancy. ALAS! Stuck again with one I've not heard of as a card or can find in my sources, my apologies. But, again, I could find a definition from the ever reliable yet not so reliable Google! "Fortune-telling from the random shouts and cries heard in crowds, at night, etc." I. AM. STARING. 👁️👁️

Chapter 10: Two of Cups. A little ironic considering it's general upright reading interpretation and how the chapter starts out lol. Two of Cups often means things should be going well for you and your life should be very harmonious. It can also mean harmony and mutual respect friendships/partnerships, and all in all has a lot to do with balance regarding life and relations.

Chapter 11: Six of Swords. At the time of writing all this out I actually haven't read this one yet so I'm very excited to see how the cards meanings apply to this chapter! This card generally means moving on or making progress (love that idea), but can also be interpreted as escaping/running away (👁️👁️) or travel! But most often means things like the calm after the storm (👁️👁️) I'm excited to find out how these apply!

I need you to know I actually love you (platonically) for being this amazingly creative and playing these so well!

Thankyou for going to all the effort of writing these! <3 Some of the chapter titles do play into the reversed readings of the cards too, which is something that's worth considering if you want to deep dive!

I anticipate GITM being 100+ chapters so while I intend to use the entire major and minor arcana Tarot as titles, I will also be including some Astral Houses, Lenormand Cards, divinatory practices and philosophical ideas to fill the gaps!

#asks answered #ghost in the machine #gitm au #ghost in the machine au

[wachtelspinat]

Hey, I just came across your post about how you’ve been feeling a disconnect from you and your art and about how you feel a mix of guilt for drawing the same fanart for so long….i just want you to know how nice it felt to see someone I have admired for so long going through the exact same thing I am. I have never played Overwatch or anything, but I’ve been following you for years….your art has always been such a source of inspiration. So I’m really sorry you’ve been feeling this way…..but I’m in a very similar boat…so please don’t feel like you are alone. I’ve been drawing Homestuck garbage for years and I also feel that mix of “it’s fine because it makes me happy” but also “you should be doing more”…..it’s not a fun cycle to constantly be battling with in your brain. But being an adult sucks ass, it has honestly felt like a process having to adjust to not having a sense of community like we did in the earlier days of tumblr or whatever else. But please know that your art has meant so much to me and everybody else and that you are not alone in your feelings ❤️ sorry this was massively cheesy….just wanted to give a virtual internet hug lol Also being a part of a “dead” fandom is always very lonely….i feel you on that so hard my guy lol

hey thanks so much for reaching out, it means a lot. i'm sorry to hear that you are in a similar pickle tho...

to give an update on that particular feeling and situation over here, i've been drawing more again, the pace just got adjusted, and i've kind of made my peace with this. doing a deep dive into older fandom bits also brought some sense back into my head... i actively reconnected with the things that made me love my blorbos in the first place again. which feels great. there is some lonliness to this because as current news about the game and fandom tendencies go still make me feel alienated. but i'd rather take this and do my own thing with the few people who also remember the good times than giving up on my boys or trying to bend myself into a different shape and draw sth that i actually don't want to for the sake of staying relevant.

it all actually boils down to "do what you want, draw what you want, write what you want, share if you want". because at the end of the day i make myself happy by just indulging into envisioning them and drawing unspoken interactions and their faces a hundered times from the same angle <3

[respondedinkind]

Okay, okay, so... the new year isn't here yet, but 2023 is coming to an end very soon and I have planned to make a post - so here it is.

What this post is about? You!

I just want to be here and say thank you to everyone who has joined me here on my blog, even though I haven't been around for long. I am insanely grateful for each and every single one of you being here, for all the good memories you allowed me to make, and that so many of you welcomed me - and my muse - with open arms. I am so happy that you gave - and still give - me opportunities to explore my own writing and my muse's behaviors, and I just cannot stop saying it enough: THANK YOU!

I met some incredible people over the last months - some of which are people that I have RPed with before and where I was oh-so-excited to have them met again, after all these years of me having been separated from my Khan-muse because of fandom-changes, interest-changes, whatnot; For those of you who don't know, I first started to write Khan in 2012, BEFORE Star Trek into Darkness even aired, solely based on speculations and a teaser trailer lol. It wasn't very serious, but then definitely developed into what is my most-written muse after the movie finally came out and Khan just invaded my brain like some kind of parasite.

Since then, I have made a few blogs, kept writing Khan for a couple of years, then went on hiatus - remade, revamped, wrote for a few more years, disappeared... and now here I am again, with an AU-Version I was very, very scared to just put out here but now I am so, so glad I did. Thank you all for allowing me to write it, and yeah, I'm repeating myself, but... the opportunies I got and still get? So wonderful. Thank you so much for giving my Khan a chance.

Besides that, I also expanded my horizon a little and made two more blogs: One is on a little hiatus right now, while I am very active on the other thanks to some wonderful human beings who basically set my love for that character into flames. I hope that, and I mean that with the utmost sincerety, my choice of 'second and especially third muse' is not taken as a will to replace anything or anyone, but rather me being so immensely starstruck by other writers that have given me such a great insight and made me want to explore the depths as well.

Okay, okay, this is already insanely long and I am so sorry (I am unsure if anyone will ever read this lol), but now I want to give a shout out to ALL OF YOU, who are here, writing with me! All of you are so, so amazing and I am so glad to have met you, and I hope we can continue to write for as long as our muses and our creativity will let us. Thank you, again, and please take a look at those awesome people in case you aren't already following each other:

First of all, amazing writers and amazing people in general that I look up to (in no particular order), who are inspiring me in so many ways, make me feel a bit like a teenager gazing at their favorite star (lol) and just... are great people, yes, that I just want to mention separately for varying reasons:

@ssolessurvivor (Friend! Omg! When you first followed me, I could never imagine how things would ever develop - and how well Logan would fit to Khan, how their story developed into what it is now, so deeply plotted and filled with so many sub-stories and little moments that push both our muses along, allow me to explore my Khan on so many levels... it's insane how attached he is to your Logan, and I am so, so happy about us being in so much contact and just keep plotting and talk about everything! You are such a friendly mun and I am so, so grateful that you indulge me, even over on Stephen (hehe). I hope we can keep writing for a long time; Thank you so much for letting me throw in all my ideas about Khan, all the quirky things about him, I am so, so grateful!!! ♥)

@darehearts (I felt insanely welcomed by you, giving my Khan *and* my Bones such a chance to interact with Kirk ♥ Thank you so much for that, and thank you so much for indulding in my Khan-joins-the-crew idea as a Kirk-writer. That's definitely not something you need to do and yet you allow me. Ahhh! I was so blown away when you asked me if I wanted to become mains sdfasadfasd. Still am honestly because I am just a potato haha. Thank you for being here and being such a kind person ♥)

@strxngetimes (seriously, I was so nervous approaching you first but I am so glad I did; I do look up to you like you're some kind of superstar (haha) and I am still amazed that you gave me the chance of exploring things the way we do. Thank you for indulging me AND enduring me (and my muse lol), and you really, really inspire me in so many ways when it comes to your Stephen, it's amazing. You actually caused my interest for him to go back up into flames and for me to join the MCU fandom lol (and I would also bother you on your tony BUT i am SO UNWORTHY hahaha). Thank you - I hope we can keep writing for a while longer ♥ And I look forward to everything that might further develop between Khan and Stephen. Very much <3 Love them a lot!)

@mehrere-musen (Ok but really, of course I have to mention you. The way you accepted me, the way we started to write and things just??? Happened??? I love interacting with you and your Stephen and I love the way he works with Khan too, and I am so happy that you allowed me to be with the two where they are. Our thread has almost 800 notes by now which is insane, and with how we keep having ideas, it might go further than that lol. Thank you so much for indulging me - and thank you to Stephen to make Khan so insanely happy. :) ! I hope we can continue to write for a long time! ♥)

@fasciinating (SPAWK! I know we don't do a lot of OOC chatting in any way but our thread??? You are so good for just throwing us into that mess and for you to be like 'lmao ok here let Khan do whatever' and where are Spock and Khan now??? A NIGHTMARE LOL. I love the creativity and how you maneuvered us into that mess of a situation and how we can just seriously fuck moments up and go 'ah yeah somehow there's a rabbit also the world explodes'. I also love the way you write Spock! Thank you so much for giving my Khan a chance, despite his 'AU-ness', and that I get to explore such an interesting storyline! I was also very happy to have found you again, because I remember you from a long time ago (even though we didn't write much back then I think? But I remembered your name!)).

@sxbaist (MY BELOVED! God, you have no idea how insanely happy I was when I realized you were still there. Vega has stolen Khan's heart back when we first wrote so many years ago and when I rebooted him with his AU Version, my heart almost stopped when I saw you were still active and around. I was so, so nervous to approach you - but you welcomed me back, so did Vega welcome back my Khan, and honestly... I love them so, so much, and I adore you so much as a person. Thank you for doing all of that, for allowing me back, for Khan to have his wonderful woman back and for them to enjoy each other. It feels like as if they never got separated at all and I cannot express my gratitude enough, really. You as a person are so awesome as well and I will forever wait for your return! You are also the only other Khan I write with, so I will mention your @paramounticebound here too because your Khan is insanely great and I look up to him so, so much, people need to know!!!)

@vuulpecula (OK but listen, I know we also don't do much OOC chatting at all BUT!!! I just have to mention you here too because the things we do are just so??? SO??? HNNG like lmao we just write each other like 'ok what should happen' AND THEN DOOM HAPPENS to either Khan / Fox and Stephen / Fox LOL as if we got no chill really! I enjoy it a lot to explore those plots and see where things will go! Also you are such a kind person and so easy to talk to!!! Thank you for also indulging me on Stephen hehe ♥ and also all the things on Khan ofc!)

If I could, I would write every single one of you such a text, but alas... if I were to, I wouldn't be finished in 2025 (lol), so I hope you take my gratitude and my love for you as a combined package as well; You are all wonderful people and I am so glad to have you here, and it has been a joy - I hope it will continue to be a joy in the future too, and I cannot wait to see how things will develop (once again, in no particular order):

@whydotheykeeptakingmine ♥ @noblehcart ♥ @resignedworkaholics ♥ (also over on Stephen) @he1msman | @spacesk1pper | @entrpz ♥ (also on Bones) @ensnchekov | @cosmiicheskaya ♥ (also on Bones) @vulku ♥ @onlybonesleft ♥ @wtsns | @agntross ♥ (also over on Stephen) @goodheartedfool ♥ @oceansfirst ♥ (also over on Stephen) @kingofthewebxxx ♥ (also over on Stephen) @fallenregent ♥ @danversiism ♥ @nursc ♥ (also over at Bones) @nightmdic ♥ @brooklynislandgirl ♥ @defectivexfragmented ♥ (also over on Stephen) @haiiling ♥ @gcldenratio ♥ @hiippocrates ♥ @tangleweave ♥ (In case I have forgotten someone: I am so, so, so, so, sorry!!!!)

Also, last but not least: Should you not be named on this list, this does not mean I am not grateful for you or don't appreciate you! I thank you for being here, especially if we have already written something... and even if you follow me and I do not follow back, I am still immensely grateful that you're here in the first place, even if you might not stay ♥.

Thank you so much for every single one of you, really - everyone I mentioned here, everyone I did not. Because of YOU my experience on this (and my two other blogs) is what it is. Without you I wouldn't be where I am now, I wouldn't be able to explore my Khan, my Bones, my Stephen, and I wouldn't be able to have such a good time.

I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST FOR 2024 - MAY GOOD LUCK, LOTS OF LOVE, HAPPINESS AND FORTUNE COME YOUR WAY! No matter where you are, or what your plans are... you are valid, you deserve to be here, you deserve to do what you want to do and you deserve all the good things coming for you.

THANK YOU.

L. finally over and out. (and if you read up this far, you'll get a cookie from me!)

#Out Of Character #tw long post #A thank you post to all of you. I know it is insanely long) #(but i can never keep myself short lol)

[aheathen-conceivably]

Hi! I’m a huge fan of your work (Josephine, in particular, has my heart! Gio, I tolerate… sorry 🫣), so, firstly, thank you for sharing your lovely creative mind with us.

Second, I hope it’s okay to ask a question! There’s a specific story idea that’s been rattling around in my head for ages now, but try as I might, I can’t seem to make it into anything concrete. I have a few things down (mostly snatches of dialogue, basic facts like character names, and start/end points - i.e. “z and a start as enemies but eventually fall in love”) but I’m struggling to connect point a with point b and actually make it, yknow, a story. Do you have any sage advice/pro tips/divinely-inspired guidance for making a handful of loose ends into something real and fit for Tumblr consumption? Lol.

Thank you in advance!

Hello, there! First and foremost let me apologize for some particular writer out there (ahem, it is me) who may have just gotten herself out of a real bad slump by making Gio a main character 😂

I am SORRY y’all I wasn’t supposed to like him this much I was a Jo girlie forever but now, well, the heart wants what the heart wants. Make no mistake Jo still has my heart but…can’t a girl have both? Y’all out here taking sides already oh my goodness I can’t wait to see y’all for the rest of this decade 😜

Now WHEW! Let me also say I appreciate your kindness about the story. I wish I had more advice for you, but I’m afraid I fell into this without much creative or really any writing background at all, so I’m not sure I’m the source for sage advice. Other than going on my resource page for other tricks that might be helpful, what I will tell you is to write every damn thing down. Like I mean it, one line of dialogue, one idea, one thought. I have stuff everywhere, under to do lists, in massive documents, in scribbles on the back of bills. Eventually I do try and organize it (and this would probably be the time to tell you to maybe not put it in random places where it’s hard to find later 😅), but I’m often shocked at what a small little tidbit later turns into.

As far as connecting those tidbits (which bravo for having them, that’s already more than I did for some parts of the story!), I honestly just feel like the more you write and inhabit the mindset of your little world, the more it comes to you when you aren’t thinking about it. Thanks to my boy Gio (please see above oops) I have been writing nonstop. Chopping onions, folding clothes, driving, just trying to live my life and a scene is playing out in my head. Now mind you, this comes after over a month without a single thought of the story, so it is a process that waxes and wanes.

I would also say not to get frustrated with yourself too early, as again, I think the process of getting into your story is a snowball effect. My early decades had much less going on, and that’s very much for a reason. The process moves with you. That means that I don’t really think there’s a benchmark for “fit for Tumblr consumption.” Doing it is practicing it, and the community is very welcoming to changing style and voice as your work goes on.

Just write my Nonny friend, write whenever your brain tells you to and don’t be afraid to share. And then fall in love with Gio with me 😙

#ask #answered #resources

[thegreatobsesso]

Hello my love! :D I keep seeing your spicy gay crime story on my dash and while taglists give me anxiety I am LIVING for it, so I thought I'd send you a random ask so you can gush about it some if you want. ^_^ Any fun facts? Was there a specific inspiration? Why script style? And anything else you'd like to share! 💕

AHHHHH!!!! Thank you for this, @pertinax--loculos!!! And let me begin by saying that I love your honesty. Everybody should engage with social media (and, situations permitting) life in general with the ways that give them the least amount of anxiety possible. I have my own particular tumblr-related anxieties as well as generalized social anxiety in just about every possible manifestation, so just to let you know, I feel you. 💙

That being said, THANK YOU FOR ASKING QUESTIONS! I logically know I can share this kind of thing without being asked, but without being asked, I pretty much won't. That's just how I'm built. 😊

--

Fun facts: Octavius was - originally - a drag persona of mine. As a cis woman who's always thought she looked incredible with facial hair, I invented a drag persona awhile back named Octavius Debonnaire. I fancied him a well-dressed British supervillain with a penchant for poisons and fancy suits. This was all well and good until one not-so-special day where he pole-vaulted into the realm of distinctly his own character that I could NEVER embody and had no choice but to write about instead. Things kinda spiraled from there, as they are wont to do. And now his last name became Sinclair, because Octavius Debonnaire is like.......... so exclusively a drag name it just doesn't translate outside that framework, lol.

Inspiration: The Insuppressible Callie Ray satisfied like, 90% of the narrative tropes that get me off. This WIP encompasses the remainder untouched upon. And, to be honest, I had to write a story without smut to convince myself I was ready to write a good story that comes with smut.

Why script? There's a couple reasons. Chief amongst them is that I knew I had two main characters (Milo and Octavius) and only one of them I was remotely interested from writing in the POV of (Milo).

To clarify, I love Octavius with my whole being. But there's something about writing from his POV that feels... uncomfortable? Counterproductive? It's hard to explain, but something very primal tells me that writing from inside his mind is the wrong way to go. And once I accepted that feeling, it was immediately clear to me that many, many things crucial to the plot of this WIP happen when Milo is not present.

I think at this point, I reached a critical crossroads where I realized I would either need to completely reimagine this WIP, or write it differently. And I thought of my bestie @i-think-im-so-so-but-cosplay, who is currently writing a WIP in script format, and the way forward was extremely simple.

[[ A clarification: I'm not saying scriptwriting is in any way "easier" than prose; it's a totally different animal for a totally different purpose. It turns out, this story is best represented as TV show, and maybe, just maybe, Callie might've been too, if I'd have been capable of conceiving such a notion at the time. The world will never know.]]

If I had any doubts in the beginning, they rapidly dissolved when I realized how ***freeing*** script format is. There's totally a trade-off - I think it's a lot harder to capture a character's deep internality or set a strong mood - but it lets me say, quite easily and simply, what happens. Not worrying about head-hopping is allowing me to actually tell this story the way it wants to be told.

One more consideration worth noting - my absolute favorite thing to write, and the thing that comes the easiest to me, is dialogue. Scripts are huuuuuuuuuge made of dialogue, so. Once I decided to try, it felt extremely organic, considering my writing strengths and preferences.

anything else I'd like to share: Aster Craine. My antagonist, to the degree to which she serves that role, although she might be more accurately called my foil. When I first started writing her lines she was totally one-dimensional and I had an idea of what role she would serve in the narrative and wrote lines that worked technically well enough, but my god. I've really been getting a grip on what she's about over the past few days and this is it:

What if the leader of an organized crime ring ran their business like a cult? What if, inspiring loyalty through fear, they used love? Or, a perversion of love - artificially produced positive feelings. What if people were loyal to her because they felt understood by her, seen, appreciated, taken care of?

It makes her a perfect foil for Octavius, who is a narcissist, unable to imagine what it would be like to be in someone else's shoes. Aster is an actual empath who can understand other people's emotions - she just uses that understanding to manipulate them into loving her and, in turn, doing absolutely anything she says.

This spark turned her into a character I rapidly became obsessed with developing, instead of just a cardboard cutout for my mains to bash up against, and that's a very, very happy feeling. :) :) :)

--

Thank you again for this ask, dear friend @pertinax--loculos! It provided me a way to put into words a lot of things that have rattling about in the old noggin 🥰

Ahh hell, I'll add my tag list... hopefully y'all aren't tired of me yet!

tag list: @winterandwords // @revenantlore // @space-writes // @indecentpause // comment to be added or removed!

#new WIP #WIP: spicy gay crime story #oc: octavius #oc: milo #asks #writeblr

[prototypelq]

if i may ask, what's your favorite fictional horsie? (ask inspired by the recent darksiders posting, which btw has some awesome-looking horses :D)

MUTUAL YOU HAVE STEPPED ON A LANDMINE. or more like a pressure plate that is wired to a nuclear landmine under Me.

oh no I am forced to confront my sins over unhinged animal obsessions now, okay

(MAGIC HORSEGIRL TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE)

sidenote: while writing this I realised that the ask implied any kind of fantasy horse, but I'm now shoulder-deep in gaming horses tangent soooooo lol sorry not sorry. as for fantasy outside of games I really like the idea of Sleipnir, or any other kind of multi-legged horse, Ghost Rider flaming spirit horse is also super cool. Any horse-like creature that is predatory is freakishly awesome. Additional points for adding horns, scales, or swapping hooves for split-fingered/artiodactyl-like legs.

To be honest, I wish this ask was harder to answer than it is, because truth be told, there are very few games with horses. Decent horse animation is even less common than actually good horses, which is another factor that makes me very sad and harder to enjoy these mounts. Additionally, most of the games use horses as... 'car stand-ins' basically, there's very rarely anything uniquely Horse TM about the mounts, and usually they feel like glorified speed booster with questionable animations.

(spoiler: no, rdr2 does not have good horse animation, I have looked with literal scientific lens at thas game, consulted with different horsegirl enthusiasts about it, saw literally every available to public lecture on everything-horse-developed for it, and have concluded that, horse animation is overly complicated with little to-no noticable results, as are most things with that game. more on this later)

I'll obviously be forced to come back to RDR2 topic, but shelf it for now. Here be some of my fav horsies in games, not in any particular order (except RDR2 which will be discussed below).

Darksiders is pretty much a DMC-cousin series but with horses and this makes it so cool. The designers of horses for the Riders of the Apocalypse have gone out of their way to make all the Riders and their mounts look absolutely stunning. Despair looks both awesome and riveting and is my personal fave, Rampage has Mane Magic TM same as his rider Fury, Mayhem looks really cool in that armor, but, of course, Ruin is the posterchild for the series, and rightfully so!

Ruin is built absolutely true to his name. This horse looks like it runs on V8 infernal engine and pisses nuclear monster energy. He has fangs. His hooves scorch the ground underneath. This horse has the muscle mass of a red giant sun about to go supernova. He looks absolutely insane, the only thing you could fear more than this horse in a room is the person who is controlling him. So yes, an extremely fitting mount for War. (Ruin also has awesome mane physics, much appreciated)

Sadly, out of four Darksiders games, there are horse levels only 2 of them - those being the first two games (3 and Genesis are good, Genesis especially, but they both distanced themselves from 'big maps with dungeons' style maps, so horses are not really needed. Genesis has levels you can ride in, but the horses are not really needed in it, still, they are a welcome addition, especially with fans getting the final fourth horse design). Darksiders I and II are very much horsegirlgamer games, as both have Mounted Bossfights, which are BADASS, the Guardian fight in DS2 especially. Both really make you feel like the mythic Rider of the Apocalypse, they are amazing.

Darksiders II also gets an important mention from me for having The Best Trot Animation In Gaming To This Date. The horse trot is fluid, looks very expressive and it's clear Despair slows a lot of this, so it's not his preferred gait for riding, but the main highlight is Death's animation.

Most of the games are lazy with trot, as one of the riding techniques for handling it is just...sitting in the saddle aggressively (I mean it literally, as horse movement on trot is designed to throw you off, so technique number one is basically pushing yourself back into the saddle to counteract this). So the games are usually lazy and just glue the rider to the saddle to show this. However, the second, easier really, way to ride on trot is posting, which is standing up and down in rhythm with the horse's leg movement. Problem with trot is that you need to relearn it for each individual horse, as they all have different builds, leg lengh, breed, etc. With one horse it's easier to stay sitting, with another it would be impossible, but posting will be easy to do, and with some horses you can't do either, so your only hope is holding on until you change speed and gait.

Death's movement in this trot animation is so fluid, so minimal and effortless - it's natural for him. He is in complete harmony with Despair, and the way he posts shows exactly that. 10/10 best trot animation ever, fight me.

Okay so, from a very much deserved highlight, to a not really deserved one - Dragon Age Inquisition. I'll say from the get-go, the mounts in this game suck, they don't even alter your speed of movement! They are completely useless. You could rip a minecraft horse in their place and it would feel better to control, be more useful and have better animation than DAI native mount system. That said, their designs are so cool, Dracolisks especially.

Fun fact, even the game's Horsemaster pretty much throws hands at seeing these things. You know how a normal horse when mean transformes into a 400 kilo beast with immense bite force and body mass that can crush you? Well, dracolisks don't look that heavy, but they also seem to be ready to hunt you for sport and giggles. 10/10 intense factor, they look awesome and as a supposed leader of a world-saving institution you look very impressive while riding them (and frighten 99% of the population). (it's also hilarious to imagine a Maximus-Flynn situation from Tangled between these temperamental beasts and your poor party members or love interest)

Thankfully, most of my mutuals have been acquired pretty recently, meaning, after my Big Horizons Phase xD I really love HZD, and one of the neat things about it is actually horses!

Horizon ZD is the game that has the best controlling horses out of all the games I've played (yes, even rdr2 loses to it for a big reason I will elaborate later on), and the formula of it's success is very fun to look into: it lies in three very important factors: horse brain, player controls and animation, all of which have been solved simply, yet with grace.

HZD has made sure that your chosen mount has it's own pathfinding system, which does not turn off when the player starts riding the creature, so you can, and I almost quote the devs here - you can ride into a patch of woods on high speed, leg go of your controller, and the horse will avoid collision on its own. Isn't it just great when your supposed animal has it's own pathfinding made to simulate brain activity and their feeling of self-preservation. Point two: controls. The most important aspect of HZD mount controls is that - you keep controlling Aloy, the moment she starts riding there is no magical control transition in favour of your mount. There is no 'go forward' button, even pushing the stick forward works only for walk. You keep controlling Aloy, who is now riding on top of a horse-like-machine, so to go faster you press the button for her to kick the horse into next gear. To stop or slow down, you don't use sticks and don't let go of 'go forward button', that will actually do nothing, instead you need to press the button to make Aloy hold the cords of the machine closer. Under the surface, every game's horses are just 'reskined cars', but details like this make the player feel different, make you feel like your controls don't magically transcend to the animal your controlled character is on top of. This detail is small, but it's impact is very big, I assure you. Point three: animation. HZD devs did an awesome animation trick for the running cycle of Aloy and the horses, as those two are the ones players see the most of, and they are the first ones to get repetitive and boring for the player. Basically, animators did three variations of run cycle with different weight distribution (model veers sideways and steers back into weight neutral position), then coded in a system to randomly blend bits of these run animations together. The result is a partially randomised run animation, made out of fleshed-out hand-made ones, so it always looks good, quite diverse, and is not as repetitive. (I wish I remembered the specific talk where devs explained this, but there are so many of them, all fascinating btw, and its been a few years so sorry no source for you)

Two honourable mentions for the games I have not played myself, but they really deserve it when we're talking about horsegirlgames: Zelda BOTW and Shadow of the Colossus. These games have horses right out of every horsegirl's dreams - they are big, their manes long and gorgeous, their run animation so cartoonishly expressive yet graceful, it's mesmerising. Certified horsegamergirl games.

Honestly, it's impossible to not fall in love with them (unless you don't have a platform to run either of these, ahaha, fuck console wars).

And now. Now for the black sheep of my horsegames list. RDR2.

Disclaimer: I have spent way too much time in this game. 'got Zoologist' kind of too much time. While I will be critical, the game is certainly an acquired taste, and there have been enough people singing praises to it and never having the issues I got after putting hundreds of hours into it. I had a great time, which turned very sour after these hundreds of hours. Some players keep loving this game forever, some despise it from the start. Play on your own to formulate a personal opinion and don't defer to any of these camps.

RDR2 is a western movie through and through, and by that I mean that the game is extremely pretty on the outside, but has nothing substantial on the insde. This illusion held for me for long enough, but I was much saddened by peeking behind the curtain, and seeing what I found there. Again, this is a personal issue, it doesn't mean the game is bad or good, but my dissapointement is tied pretty much directly to how the game handles horses, since, y'know, this is supposendly 'the ultimate horsegirl game'.

The sad truth is that RDR2 horses are exactly 'reskinned cars', which is the trap that renders most of gaming horses so so so boring, but the illusion the game creates holds strong for a long while, plus the personification of your horsie (saddle, mane customisation, etc.) actually strenghtens that illusion big time.

I have pointed out what HZD did right for horses to feel so good thoroughly for a reason, said reason is: RDR2 got every point on that list wrong.

Let me show you some examples of RDR2 horse pathfinding.

I chose these two specific clips for a reason - both are prime examples of exactly how lobotomised RDR2 horses are, but in different ways. First clip is user error (besides the fact that no horse could ever run on railways but I digress) - I have been enjoying the scenery too much, and the stick angle proved too much, so me and my beloved horse fell straight to our deaths off the side of that railway. I think it's pretty self-explanatory that irl horses are very self-preservation centered animals, and they don't just fall down random pits. If the RDR2 horses had kept their AI pathfinding running while the player controls them, this simple user error could have been negated - as the pathfinding system would quickly flash a 'don't fucking run into a pit', keep input from registering and the horse would just follow the side of the road without tumbling down. Which, in gamer's eyes would also roleplay as horse having it's own brains. The second example is even weirder - I've been using the 'cinematic mode', which means I put down the controller, and the horse is following the road to my chosen destination on his own, so, y'know, this should be a prime example of horse pathfinding. Wrong again! Granted, that weird woman is some sort of random event, she is not usually there, nor are there barrels, but if the object has a collison parameter it should have been freakin registered and the horse was supposed to jump over it.

So yeah, RDR2 horses are completely lobotomised to any sense of navigation, this has been likely done in favour of more direct player control and easier cinematic setups.

Point two: controls. This one is actually mixed, and I'll start with the good thing for a change. The good thing is RDR2 is literally the only game to allow for lateral movement for mount, in short, this allows you to turn around your horse clockwise while remaining in one place, basically spinning, on trot and gallop too no less! If you try the control inputs for this in any other game, you will end up circling around a set point, and not spinning in place. Which, very cool actually, and yeah the opportunity to do this feels good. Another great detail is Handling stat - which is, how responsive is your horse to your inputs (ex. more or less maneuverable, time to turn after input, how much you mash X to speed up to another gait), which all feel very distinct. Arabians are known for having exquisitely tight handling, you need only to lightly tap the button for them to listen to you, in contrast, work or draft horses will make live for your big thumb a living hell, as they need to be kicked a lot of times to do literally anything. This idea of changing character controls for each horse is very very good, and this I will gladly praise.

On the other hand RDR2 horse controls (dreadfuly). First off - your horse works based on a 'go forward' button mechanic, also the gait change is tied to it, and if you, for some reason, just 'let go' of your 'go forward button' you will after slowing down. I remember seeing a meme where the trigger and the X buttons were duck-taped to be constantly pressed on their own, and I can tell you it's not a joke. You just might need another controller after all the X mashing this game requires you to do. Just for horse controls - you mash X to go faster, you keep pushing X to remain at current speed, and the only time you let go of that button is to either mash it again, or if you want to slow down for a stop.

If you look at HZD controls explanation again, you might see just how damaging this control scheme is to the feel of your horse being an actual animal with their own head and brain, pair this controls madness with nonexistence of pathfinding, and well, RDR2 horses are justt lobotomised to a point of being a 'reskinned car'.

Last point, might be our saving grace here - animation. And, ehhhhhhhhhh, this one's positive but mixed. RDR2 devs did a great job at recognizing how different gait speeds for horses work, as well, gait is just the type of movement horse uses, it is not as strictly tied to speed as you might think. Just as you can hop down the street, or walk down the street at the same speed, trained horses can gallop at practicaly walking speed for shows (this does not work in reverse though - you cannot reach gallop speed while trotting). Game animators did their best to recognise and implement this, so the game is calculating leg movement and is blending animation when the gait-change is happening. However, what I ended up with in game, a lot of the time, is this:

I am not sure what this is caused by, I interpret this as the animation engine shrugging and going for a coffee break. This mistake is not uncommon at all, and there will be a lot of time when you see your horse 'hopping' like this with both front and back legs for a couple of seconds.

Let's just say, this is not how horses run. This is not even how they could run if they want to, or are trained to do this. Horses' entire anatomy revolves around their movement, which is built on a foundational truth that legs move in a set pattern, if that pattern is broken - horse will damage itself.

Again, this is likely just a technical issue, it appears often enough, but unless you know this is an error, you will likely sleep soundely at night. As you can see, I am not one of those people. I did not sleep soundly at night after looking into this. I have also consulted with all my horsegirl friends and a horsekeeping student over this and all of them confirmed this as an error. Still, it is very strange, that a game that bragged it has horse testicle physics down, has this blatant and frequent animation error in it.

Okay, I've thrashed RDR2 quite enough I think, the last bit I wanted to list here is another positive one. Muscle animation and animal sounds is this game are certified clinically insane. All the breathing muscle movement after cantering has been noted and animated to a golden standard, head muscle, snorting, leg muscle, all of these look insanely good. I mean literally insanely good, the animators that worked on this deserve awards.

Also, you could never say no to horse customisation. So, I wanted to wrap this monster of a post with a compilation of my RDR2 pretty horses photomoding.

#i hope this post is horsegirl enough #honestly i needed this thank you for the ask #we need more good horse games #like a lot more #(please im begging you) #give rdr2 horses the engine of hzd ones and that game could have been perfect #alas we have what we have plus lots of stupid fall compilations #horses #darksiders #darksiders 2 #shadow of the colossus #zelda botw #rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #hzd #horizon zero dawn #rdr2 photomode

[lincolndjarin]

Best Kept Secret Q&A

contains spoilers for all of bks !!

thank you @znerac for asking these !!

Is there anything you would of written differently? Why, and what would you of done?

the short answer is yes lmao.

the long answer is also yes but with a bunch of explanation. writing bks chapter by chapter and posting as i go is great and also not great for several reasons. getting immediate feedback is always great, and it pushes me to keep writing but it also means that i can't change things once they're written.

if i could the main things i would change would be :

i would rewrite any and all reader descriptions. in the early days of bks it was just a silly story that i wrote for myself. that being said i did my best to write the reader as ambiguous but a lot of my self bled through. very specifically is the fact that i get very very red when i'm embarrassed. i don't know the exact line but there was at one point in dins internal monologue something along the lines of "you blush blah blah blah, he wonders how deep the crimson tint goes." so i would change all of that for sure

on a less serious not i would rewrite all of chapter seven LMAO. i was stressed about six being the first smut chapter and i convinced myself that there needed to be more dirty stuff since i'd already started with it. i am haunted by the chapter seven blowjob. it feels so out of place to me like it's not needed, it's gotta go, i hate it but can do nothing about it.

hypothetically, If a movie/Show director came up to you to make a producion based heavily on BKS, would you take the opportunity?

yes and i would do it lin manuel miranda style by insisting that i play the lead and then i would demand pedro pascal as my counter part (he'll def take it, im convinced that man will do any movie.)

what inspired you to write bks?

a lot of things!!

mostly music, all sorts of songs. when i started it i had also just finished queen charlotte. (if you havent watched queen charlotte and like bks i highly recommend it.) i would say that bks!reader was based on charlotte early on. (i'm also gonna use my favorite line from queen charlotte in the epilouge)

and i just love telling stories. i love making these worlds and the people in them and this was the first time i ever put it into words!!

how do you think writing and posting bks has affected you? Positively, Negatively? What do you think would of changed if you didn't write it?

definitely both but the negatives aren't bad, and the positives make up for it.

bks in it's conception was always intended to be a coping mechanism for me. at the time of it's start my best (and realistically, only) friend was getting ready to move away for college and i realized that he was the only person i ever spent time with and i needed a hobby. i tried a few things until one day writing stuck. the intention was to have something to keep me busy but i ended up really loving it.

there's never been any external negatives, it really is just that i can be hard on myself but at the end of the day it's been a huge point of growth for me.

@knopes-waffles thank you lovey for sending these !!

was there a particular reason that you chose blue as Kodo’s color?

terrible answer to a great question but uhhh no lmao

i just had to pick a color and this is what my fingers typed lol, i knew from the get go that din's favorite color would be green so i had to pick something that wasn't that.

thank you to the anon who sent these !! (i assume these were from the same person bc they came in and the same time!!)

will din and queenie have more babies? or just grogu and their son?

i suppose we'll have to see ;)

(although after bks 28 this is answered haha)

where will they raise the babies? in the cabin?

i think so !! i like to think that they live in the cabin, bks!reader became attached to naboo and bks!din will happily live wherever she is. i also like to think that they travel though. they leave naboo as often as they can, din likes to show his children the galaxy so when they're older they definitely invest in a ship

thank you anon !! luv you !!

what was your absolute favorite scene to write?

there's so many gahhh im gonna try and narrow it down to a top three:

#1 : Chapter 16 - their first kiss

this was a big deal to me, i worked for quite some time on that scene. i had several long conversations with friends about it because i wanted it to have the weight of a scene from bridgerton. i love love love bridgerton, it's my guilty pleasure, and i wanted that scene to make me feel the way bridgerton love confessions make me feel. i needed an "i burn for you" and i had a lot of different versions but i eventually settled on "I ache." because i wanted it to be something that hurt, i think that bks!din is complicated (i sound so pretentious rn im so sorry) in a self hating way that makes even the idea of being happy extremely painful to him and i wanted to get that point across

#2 : Chapter 23 - the markets

the markets in general were always so so fun to write but the lunar markets especially. getting to write them as a normal couple shopping for sex toys was so so so fun, i remember being so exhausted writing this chapter but i loved it so much i just had to finish it.

short story break but i was up until 2 am writing this chapter, it was halfway done and i was supposed to be up at 7 to drive my grandma six hours to visit my aunt for a week. i texted her at 2 and said i was going to bed and i'd see her in the morning, she texted back and said she couldnt sleep so we just got in the car and went. when we got to my aunts i finished the chapter and then passed out lmao, editing it took ages bc i kept falling asleep

#3 : Chapter 3 - reading the smitten paladin

the entire scene where she's trying to not think about din while reading her porn book is always gonna be an all timer for me

(bonus: the epilouge has been very special to me. getting to write a happy ending for these characters that i have put through so much has been extremely healing for me)

thank you @darthbeebles !! <3

Were there any scenes you wrote/wanted to write but had to cut for some reason? I’d love some deleted scenes if you have any <3

so so so many. i will cover most in the little what if thing later this week but the biggest one was a masquerade ball.

i so badly wanted a scene where she was dancing at the ball and there's a masked man who asks for a dance with dark hair and a mask that only covers his eyes and GAH im making myself angry just thinking about it because i just couldn't make it work

i tried it on so many levels, but at the end of the day the climax of the story didn't work if she knew what he looked like. the identity swap twist didn't work as smoothly and after several attempts to work it in i had to scrap it

thank you @raintheegg my beloved for sending this in!!!!

What is your favorite characteristic about bsk!din?

very easily his devotion.

it makes him easy to write bc he has one character goal and it to keep reader as safe and happy as he can manage. it also helped me add in the vague religious themes because he really is just that in love with her right from the start

hi anon !!! thank you for sending this in!!

You don’t have to draw it out if you don’t want, but I’d love to see your vision for inside their closet in BKS!!! It feels like such an important space that I want to understand it exactly how you meant to portray it — 1000 rounds of applause for your writing, it was an incredible journey you took us on 🥲🥲

thank you so so much <3

i wanted to build distinct set pieces in the world, the closet, the nook, the cabin, etc. and the closet was based on my own closet!! i used to sleep in there with all of my pillows and blankets, i have some pics, i don't have any good ones because it's been a few years but these are the ones i found!!

thank you my sweet anon!!

what was the hardest chapter to write?

very easily chapter 26.

i had a very specific vision for it that i'd been working on for months and i wanted it to go over well. the rule i use with plot twists is that it either needs to not be guessed before it happens or it needs to executed in a pleasing enough way that if you did guess it you don't care or you feel accomplished. i couldn't be more proud of how it turned out

thank you anon for the ask !

why is kodo’s fav color blue

i thought about this one again and i did remember that i needed it to be an eye color so it ended up being between grey and blue and i went with blue!!

thank you anon who is definitely not @torizle-blog1

why are you so sexy and hilarious and perfect and awesome

years of practice.

#lincolndjarin #fic : best kept secret

[skunkes]

You probably get this asked a lot but do you have any particular things you keep in mind when writing in your journal? I started recently and it's been great but I find that Only recapping my day gets to be a bit tedious (esp when I don't go outside much lol) so I was curious what you do to keep motivated with it ! Ur sticker layouts are always so cutes btw I'm very inspired by them ^_^💖

Yeah! I mainly journal for Memory Keeping as i have a weird obsession with wanting to keep track of anything/everything, so i just think of what future cheye would want to know, instead of just recapping day.

Makes me really sad bc in college all i had energy to write was like "ate x went to class went to mailroom went to class 2 had x for dinner 1 am now goodnight" and its like. What about. The whole rest of it!! What did u do who did you talk to when was it that you saw a raccoon irl for the first time!!! Were you stressing over assignments?? Which and why!!! I have 0 tangible, meaningful, memories of what happened now. Just sterile clinical ones. :(

I do track things consistently like my rating for the day, the time i woke up and the time i go to bed, what i ate, if i cried, along wit other personal stats (i like the numbers!). Sometimes I also dont Do anything in a day so i just focus on other things, like taking the opportunity to write about feelings a little bit, so future cheye Knows the state of mind i was in on a given day, or maybe talk about how I bought something and am excited to wear/use it

Not much happened today so I wrote about and included how my dad described the plot of to, and showed me, some scenes of The Untouchables 1987 today because a song always reminds him of that movie...

yesterday I wrote about how my sister and I are planning on trying some pillsbury cocoa rolls on thursday, since we couldn't today, and that I am Excited.

I don't know, its small things that I feel I'd appreciate in the future even if they seem silly or pointless right now...(and also good for keeping track of personal growth, as Im hoping I at one point get to pinpoint where my complaints about Not Wanting to Drive fade away from the entries. Ykwim?)

ITS KIND OF LIKE THAT ONE POST ON HERE...like "if you see this tag one delight from your day no matter how small". You ""force"" yourself to come up with something to pad the entry with, and I think it's small things like that that will be really telling of your time here, in the future ^_^ time capsule of the old you

like. Did you see something insanely funny? Did your best friend say something weird... Did the internet platforms you browse all rally over a war criminal dying... Is it still rainy and chilly like it was yesterday? Are you excited for your birthday even if its many months away... What series did you start rewatching? Did u get scared by a shadow while walking your dog...idk! Anything, everything

#anonymous #skunk mail #long post #and none of these things have to be super detailed either! #like i have a separate journal for Feelings Theses. feelings in my main one are just like ''man i feel #like ass about everything again. cried a lot.'' #i thingk its also like. idk i dont like to bother my friends so i don't have anyone to share stuff wit but myself #so i write it in there ..ykwim...like im feeling happy today i saw something cool i really want ice cream! #<- shit i wouldnt say to a friend or stuff id post to my priv account as the thought came to me that nobody wld care abt either

[quinloki]

"I think that's a great fic idea" good news, it is, or something very similar. Inspiration is very clearly taken from @/turtletaubwrites series Numbers Game. The reader is a financial advisor who worked for Buggy, who then ends up under Croc and Mihawk because Buggy gets in trouble for ignoring her advice and fucking up the financials. Not trying to start anything, I don't think it's stealing to riff on smth but people should maybe be a bit more up front abt where they take inspiration from. At least give the OG a shout out lol

This is one of those things where there’s not an easy cut and dry answer I can give you or agree with, and I’m going to do my best to lay out why that is.

Is it possible the idea came from the person you’re referencing, but looking at the interactions for the first chapter I don’t see Alexa anywhere, not in the likes or comments.

I don’t even see anyone I follow in there either - which is to say that fandoms are HUGE and we don’t actually all know one another. (And that’s not to say there isn’t overlap in moots, just not with that particular story.)

Now, it’s possible there’s proof somewhere, but my point is that it is statistically just as possible that it’s just a similar idea. I wrote Quicksand’s reader as being a good office worker and coordinator - they weren’t specifically the accountant, but that could also be where the idea came from.

Reader being a competent and useful person makes sense when you’re talking about the Cross Guild. Neither Crocodile nor Mihawk are particularly patient people, and Buggy is enough frustration/comedic relief on his own.

If I shouted out to everyone who had inspired every part of what I write I’d hit tumblr’s post character limit before I got to the story itself. There’s a balance in there somewhere but it can honestly be case by case.

Despite your claim of not trying to start something it very much feels like you are, and while I appreciate you wanting to see credit given where it’s due, inspiration is so interwoven and complex, it’s hard to say exactly where an idea comes from for someone. So I’m going to assume that the vibes are unintentional - I’m sure you very much mean well. (If clarification is needed I’m not experiencing any negative emotions as I say this. I’m worried the vibes are there, but I will believe they were not meant.)

Heck, I had a story idea for a Eustass kid story I was (still am) excited about and when I shared it with my friends someone mentioned it was similar to something Mombat on Wattpad had wrote. And they’re right! The setup of the reader was similar - but I didn’t scrap the story idea because the story itself is going to be different.

And I know it is gonna be different, cause I had read that story by Mombat with my own eyes! And honestly it’s very likely where the inspiration sparked, even though I didn’t consciously make the connection until someone said something.

But there’s bound to be a lot of similar ideas in a singular fandom, because we’re all working with the same source material.

Now, I appreciate the intent, cause we all wanna look out for one another and such, but calling out possible sources of inspiration is maybe a bit much. Though I will say if there’s a dozen points of commonality, then it’s probably worth the mention.

here’s a bit of food for thought - Eustass Kid calling the reader Mouse is something I’m fairly well known for, and it wasn’t even my idea - and the friend I picked it up from had picked it up from someone else. Kaku calls reader Filly in most my one-shots but that’s from another friend. Penguin and Shachi calling reader lil’ Shoal was all my idea, but also I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else thought it up too.

Now, my long and exhausting reply aside, I do want to thank you for putting turtleaub on my radar. Her writing looks wonderful and I love how organized the blog and posts are. I am delighted to have something new to read even if my to read list is painfully long already. And there’s a possibility of making a new friend somewhere in there too \o/

#quin answers #anon asks #this got longer than I meant #and I’m behind on making breakfast xD #things are complex though #almost always #those knee jerk reactions can be rough #stay kind out there #the key phrase in your ask that made me nervous was #Very Clearly #it’s a strong assumption to come in with #and then say you’re not trying to start anything ^^;

[mareenavee]

Fic Authors Self Rec!

Tagged by the indominable @kookaburra1701! Rules:

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love!

I love this. OKAY LET'S GO. Tell me about how proud you are of your work, friends. You've come so far <3

Tagging: @paraparadigm, @polypolymorph, @changelingsandothernonsense, @thana-topsy, @dirty-bosmer, @thequeenofthewinter, @gilgamish, @archangelsunited, @throughtrialbyfire, @expended-sleeper, @ladytanithia and YOU yes if you see this, talk kindly about your writing journey and TAG ME BACK <3

Below the cut because I do be ramblin' (: They're not really in any particular order, I just love them all for different reasons.

1) If We Knew Anything At All

This one was a hell ship prompted by a list that Topsy shared with a bunch of us and I had a brainwyrm, then ended up crying while I wrote the end of it. Quite possibly one of my favorite ever pieces. This one is both the inevitable end to my fic universe and something completely outside time. How did I manage this? Via Sheogorath's voicing. I don't think it gets more unreliable than that.

2) Metempsychosis

A very dear friend and fantastic teammate I met through Skywind sent me this prompt and it gave me such an excellent challenge not only to flex on weird god voice stuff again, but also to bust out some spoken word poetry tricks. I did end up recording myself reading this one too and it felt like old times. I loved all the layers of references I shoved into 1,000 words. It is also my first Morrowfic. And also one that reminded me what I am capable of even more strongly than some of my other projects did. 🥰

3) Serpens Caput

This one is newer, yes BUT OH MY GODS what a flex it was. ANOTHER Morrowfic but it's set in Ceth's fic universe featuring not only major character death but the mindset of a villain in his final moments. And we get to see Danger!Josh through his eyes. It was WEIRD. WEIRD WEIRD but so much fun. I don't think I've yelled so much about a fic whilst writing before. Ceth threw me this prompt, but I don't think was expecting this to end up...being this way (: Borrowed the description of Teldryn and Nerevar from her universe and just RAN WITH IT.

4) Little Dragon

This was written as part of my cute, happy LDB!Athis polycule AU where nothing is quite as horrifically messy as my main fic universe. It is a different kind of catharsis to write, often fun and humorous and a flex in that direction, since I didn't know what i was capable of—I always write pining and heartbreak lol. This came about as part of a fic writer's duel with AU (judged by Poly) which was honestly one of the coolest fandom experiences I've ever been in. It has become its own thing now with multiple other stories and I've been in yet another fandom duel since then. So it's all cute fuzzy feelings and happy memories and I love it to bits.

and last but certainly not least:

5) The World on Our Shoulders

My longfic which throws characters into extremely tough situations, handles horribly difficult themes and topics, shows people being messy and still finds ways to show it all with grace. It's what got me out of my multi-year writing slump and truly, truly brought me back to myself. So yes maybe some of the characters have some of my irl nonsense. Some scenes are far too relatable and it's a little scary sometimes how horrible that is, but it's a different kind of Catharsis. I love also the support its gotten so far for its specific type of storytelling structure as well as all the weird details that sprawl into other stories (Like my honorable mention written for Para, Recurse) and sequels and spin offs. It's been a great joy to be writing this and it's continued to inspire me. From draft one, which I wrote in challenge mode, posting every day this last February to now, where I am mid-ground-up-edit, I love this project to bits and will do all I can to see it through to the end. I see how much I can accomplish in this project. I see what can be done with common tropes and themes and even Fic in general. It's unalienated labor that I do for the sheer hell of it because I can and it's mine and I don't have to follow The Rules. There's something beautiful about that. It's one reason I get up at the crack of dawn every day -- to write for the sake of writing. Out of spite sometimes for all the ways the world tries to crush this kind of self expression out of us. This is my gem of a project. And I am proud of it and how far I've come since I started it. (:

So now it's your turn, if you got this far. Why do you write? How have your favorite fics you've written changed your perspective on the craft so far?

#AskMareena #Fic Authors Self Rec #The World on Our Shoulders #Dragonborn and Far-Star Marked #skyrim #skyrim fic #Nyenna #LDB/Athis #LDB/Teldryn #LDB/Teldryn Sero #Nerevarine Teldryn Sero #Nerevarine Teldryn #Nerevarine #elder scrolls #tes #tesblr #fanficblr

[yeats-infection]

hey gen!! i’d love to hear about what you’re currently working on writing wise, if you feel like sharing anything about your projects. i’ve been feeling a foggy kind of inspiration lately which has proven to be both exciting and indecipherable so far; any general thoughts / epiphanies regarding The Craft would be very welcome too. happy friday!

thank you for asking! so first off i am not a person whose advice on the Craft you should listen to, lol. i have never been very good at being organized or diligent about writing. i tend to get very excited from time to time and bang something out in a way that honestly surprises even me, and then retreat into low down despair when i do not have The Muse. this is probably not a good or healthy approach to anything, lol! much of this year was sort of a creative downtime for me and honestly i focused a lot of that into climbing. i am really glad that i have climbing as an outlet for a lot of stress and anxiety... it's something i find it much easier to be diligent about, and an interesting place to be creative and reckon with emotions and learn to handle fear and self-doubt and the human nature of yourself and others. rock climbing is definitely Not For Everybody but it has increasingly helped me understand that outdoor and/or athletic hobbies can truly enrich the lives of most people on earth and it's worth trying to find one if you don't already have one!

i think sometimes about this interview i read once with aldous harding where she said that for her the process of writing a particular song was being very still and holding seeds in your hand and waiting for a deer to approach you. because i haven't had a lot of creative energy lately i am being very gentle and still and allowing whatever wants to come up to my hand to happen which is why i now find myself writing something insane (60s music rpf...) but also why that insane thing is actually happening and feels good... this is all to say that i think this strategy can help with that foggy inspiration sometimes -- just allow whatever wants to come get the seeds out of your hand to come get the seeds out of your hand -- i know exactly that feeling and find it so interesting, for me it's almost a kind of anxiety that something is coming and you might get it or you might miss it!

when i finish this story (likely before the end of the year) i am going to try to write a short novel that my friend kate requested, a comedy of errors about various characters in a climbing club reckoning with various real estate wars and climate change. i owe her everything so i have to try! we'll see...

[a-wolf-at-the-door]

I've been thinking about the No-Thing. Obviously, in the process of unbecoming a No-Thing, it stopped being. Despite no longer being, it does still exist, otherwise it wouldn't be able to know that it is a No-Thing.

In that case, if one would be able to step into the Void and survive, how would they perceive the No-Thing? Would it be a visible No-Thing? Would it be a feeling? A sound? In what perceivable way does the No-Thing exist? Not necessarily for the human perception systems. We are quite limited in those.

OR is the No-Thing's perception of itself so skewed with suffering and change that it no longer perceives itself as a thing that IS? Could it be that the No-Thing still is, but can't conceive the notion of its being?

I miss Rose :( she was in far less pain than the No-Thing.

Hope your week is going well, and that your weekend gets you very well-rested.

First off thanks for your well wishes and I hope your week is going well too!

I’m so glad you’re thinking about this, I have spent many hours wondering about exactly this question. I have four answers for your one question. They take the form of bad news, good news, a twist, and a promise. The twist is an essay tbh, get ready for a long read!

The bad news: I don’t have a satisfying answer to what the No-Thing is and how the No-Thing would hypothetically be perceived. This is partly because it’s a counterfactual hypothetical: the No-Thing isn’t. Is. There isn’t anyone else doing the perceiving, and if anyone else were to enter the Void they’d be either killed or No-Thing-ified too, excepting those with a Void ship, but my understanding was that part of the way the Void ship worked was by preventing external perception anyway… The other reasons I don’t have a satisfying answer: answering might involve a little bit of spoiler-ing that I don’t want to do, and also, though I pretend otherwise, I can’t entirely wrap my head around the concept of unbeing either! I’m trying to convey not only that which cannot be conveyed but also that which cannot be comprehended, and to get across the truly incomprehensible I can’t cheat and comprehend it!

The good news: You get to decide how to imagine it! Each reader probably has a different understanding of what it must be like for the No-Thing in the Void. Our imagination of unbeing is informed by our individual experiences of being, of embodiment, of identity. I know I move through the world of being very differently than many in my circles, partly due to big Identity Labels™ (cis woman, queer, short, thin, young, white, Latina, neurodivergent, etc. and oops! Now you know a lot more about me!) and partly due to non-Identity Label™ experiences, traumatic and restorative and neutral alike.

The twist: I lied a little, or told a half-truth. Definitely true thing: I believe that stories are always collaborations between writer and reader. Writers provide the scaffolding and readers fill it in and make it particular. We can try all we like to evoke a certain experience, but everyone brings their own background and experiences and lens to the story, so no two people ever really read the same story. And so with that, I think it’s the author’s responsibility to let go. The words on the page are published and the rest of the work is up to the reader to determine and decipher however they may.

But.

I am feeling a little irresponsible.

So I’m gonna tell you more about what inspired the way I write the Void. This isn’t technically a direct answer, nor is it meant to be the sole interpretation of the Void. If you don’t like it, you can always ignore it! Anything I say about these fics is pretty much “fan interpretation” unless it’s in the body of the fic. Here, I’m not really the all-knowing author, I’m just someone who gets to read ahead before everyone else. (because I wrote it lol)

So. How and why do I write the Void (and the No-Thing) the way I do?

The easy answer would be to point to some literary influences. I drew on some elements from DW canon. I love The Magnus Archives podcast and The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater (who is just generally a huge influence on my writing style, I adore her and her work). I consume a lot of speculative fiction and poetry and interesting science writing.

But the real deep-rooted influence of my imagining of the Void is rooted in my mental health challenges. I want to first couch this by saying I’m in a really good place right now and have been for a while. I’ve done a LOT of therapy and I’m on the right medications and I’m making a ton of progress taking care of myself, but I have at points in my life suffered from intense depression, anxiety, and complex trauma. I also have ADHD (but I don’t like saying I “suffer from” that one because it’s so intrinsic to who I am). I’m about to talk about these mental health things in a bit more depth so if you’re not comfy reading about them skip ahead to the promise!

Ok.

I have always struggled with embodiment. Not so much with my specific body—I have a lot of privilege as a thin cis woman and I want to acknowledge that—but with the idea of being in a body to begin with. I blame some of that on the Catholic Church teaching me that the body and all its earthly desires are bad things, and some of it on growing up surrounded by people with a lot of internalized fatphobia, and some of it on growing up intellectually gifted in a society that has a bedrock belief in Cartesian dualism (mind and body are separate, mind is superior to body, mind is pure and godly and must be cultivated, body is impure and animalistic and must be controlled/repressed). My thoughts have always been so fast (thanks ADHD) that I often felt like my body was a limitation.

I have long been very antagonistic towards embodiment and am only recently (past few years) beginning to truly unpack and heal from that. For a very long time the narrative in my head was like this: I am a mind and my mind is clever and creative and quick and capable of so much. My body is an inconvenience. Taking care of it takes time away from the extraordinary things my mind can do. Why does my body betray me by needing sleep, needing food and water, needing bathroom breaks and tooth-brushing and medicine and moisturizer? Why can’t I write as fast as I think? Why can’t I just be a cloud of disembodied thought?

A lot of egotism, a lot of shame. The two often go hand in hand.

These thoughts go back as far as I can remember. I learned to type really fast because I have memories of being a toddler watching my mom typing away and being jealous because handwriting was too slow for me to get my stories out.

I was also a pretty morbid kid. Like seriously, I would read the obituaries in the newspaper and search specifically for young deaths. I don’t know where this came from—I have been very lucky and have still not lost many people close to me, and at that time I hadn’t really lost anyone close to me at all. But I thought a lot about death.

I wasn’t a very good Catholic. I scored highly in religion class because I scored highly in almost every class, and I could believe that Jesus had really existed and done all that stuff the Bible said, but my faith broke down when I thought about death. Hell was terrifying. Purgatory was still beyond my comprehension. My real issue was with Heaven. It sounded interminably boring.

Before anything else, I am and have always been a writer. And as a writer I know that plot relies on conflict. So a reality where everything is perfect all the time and everyone is happy and nothing bad ever happens? Couldn’t get behind it.

As I started losing my faith, my thoughts turned more towards oblivion. (Cue early-2010s TFiOS-era poetic depression). The idea of winking out into nothing terrified me, consumed my thoughts, kept me up at night. What would death be like? Nothing. And what would Nothing be like?

So you see, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about unbeing. And I’ve spent an awful lot of time ignoring the realities of my being, dissociating from my body because I felt limited by it, ashamed of it, detached from it, betrayed by it. (In reality, I was the one doing the betraying.)

Writing Rose/the No-Thing in the Void has been an exercise in paying attention to my being. Trying to capture absence means I have to better understand presence. And it’s made me a hell of a lot more aware of reality.

Because depression lies to you and tells you that you are nothing, that you know nothing, that you feel nothing. Anxiety lies to you and tells you that you are everything everywhere all at once, that you know and can predict every possible outcome, that you are hyperaware of all that’s happening. The No-Thing is both of these and more and less. Like depression, the Void robs Rose of identity, memory, connection, but also like depression, it does so imperfectly. She is not unsalvageable because no one is ever unsalvageable. Like anxiety, the Void gives her a hyperawareness and detachment, a series of images she can’t quite connect and comprehend, an inner monologue she cannot silence. But also like anxiety, it doesn’t actually bring anything into clear focus or control.

Rose’s journey back towards embodiment is coming, and I’m really excited to write it. Partly for her, and a lot for me. It’s going to mirror some of the lessons I’ve learned as I get more comfortable with the fact that being human means being embodied, that I am on the same team as my body, that it sends messages to me and I choose to listen or ignore them, that it never betrays me but that I can choose whether or not to betray it. Her return will also show more of Bad Wolf as a disability. (Disclaimer: I don’t generally disclose the specifics but I have a few conditions that can be classed as disabilities, though they are the sort that can be managed thanks to modern medicine, my parents’ health insurance [thanks Obama!], and a lot of luck and privilege, so with the exception of rogue flare-ups, they don’t usually have disabling effects on my day-to-day life.)

The promise: Rose will return. Can I promise she’ll be in less pain? No. But can I promise she’ll come back and grapple with her new challenges and do it all with characteristic aplomb? Yes.

Ok that’s all! Hope you enjoyed the essay that didn’t really answer your question lol, now go forth and imagine!

#ask lia #spoilers for my fic lol #tw mental health #tw mental illness #tw anxiety #tw depression #tw body issues #oops I wrote an essay #tw religious trauma

[ughgoaway]

7, 11, 13, 17

-⎕

omg hi bff <3

7. What does a WIP look like to you? (do you take notes? is anything color-coded? do you have a preferred font?)

a wip to me is usually an idea scribbled into a Google doc when I'm feeling inspired! most of the time, they come from DM's between me and my mutuals, but sometimes I just get random thoughts from a particular picture. once I've got the base idea, I'll do plot bullet points of every aspect I wanna include, eg.,

meet at coffee shop.

have a conversation about kinks.

and as I go through and write the fic, I'll highlight the bullet point once I've covered it! I'll do research if I don't know enough about an aspect of the fic (eg. children's milestones for teacher au), but otherwise, I just make shit up, lol . no colour coding or font preferences, I really do just wing it 99% of the time.

11. Share a snippet from something you're working on!

omg I thought I didn't have any more snippets, but I found one DEEEEEEP in the Google docs from something titled "sad car angst" so take from that what you will i suppose??

13. What's something someone said about your writing that stuck with you?

simultaneously, so many things and nothing?? like I remember how words made me feel, but not the specific phrasing (I do have memory issues, so I will use that as an excuse...)

But I remember the very first ask I got from bff anon made me cry because no one had been that nice about my writing before. It was crazy. now I am blessed and have SO MANY absolute sweethearts who chat to me regularly, but that ask was the first time I remember feeling so honoured that someone liked something i wrote <3

17. Do you have a least favourite work of yours?

oh god. all of them. I haven't gone back to read my "I hate matty healy" series as I fear I would crumble and die of cringe. recently, I absolutely hated how porn star au chapter 2 came out, but I fear that was just me having read it too many times. I haven't gone back to it yet with fresh eyes, but maybe I will? anyway, I struggle to feel good about any of my work, so all of them are my favs and least favs at the same time <3

ask me a question if you want :)

#loving all the questions #apparently i am egotistical bc talking about my work is fun #my wip process is; unhinged thought- scream into google doc- abandon for 4 months- come back and write 5k- abandon again- then finish #pretty foolproof ik #anon! #⎕ anon #chatty asks! #cute little ask game!