#things i'm reading

[nkjemisin]

"All too often in the past, science fiction writers made things easy for themselves by portraying a white, middle-class, male-dominated universe, even attributing white, middle-class, male values to their 'alien' races. I'm not comfortable writing about such a universe, behaving as though it represented the one true way." -Octavia Butler

#octavia butler #octavia butler: the last interview #melville house publishing #things I'm reading #might end up quoting a lot of this #the more things (don't) change... sigh

[jojotier]

What if I read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and became the most insufferable motherfucker for a bit would you hate me

#sam's thinkin again #things i'm reading #things i've read #my dirk strider narration is gonna fuck So Hard #also: this philosophy shit is Easy

[batrogers]

14! also 20!

14. The one thing you see in fics all the time

See, I'm very very good at curating my feed so I just don't read fics I don't like. So I'm not sure I can really answer this. The last fanfic I was reading was Confidential which at worst has some weird formatting issues but that's just AO3 sometimes LOL

Maaaybe I wish there was more build up to the talks about gender and sexuality but sometimes its nice to just get into it, too. But honestly I haven't read a fic that really gets a "Choose Violence" response from me in a while so I'll deign to bow out of this one LOL.

20. Part of Canon you found tedious of boring

*Coughs*The Kings*Coughs*

Just...... full-stop. The way canon handles the monarchy half the time. Please. My crops are dying. I need the tea. The compost tea. Where's my rotten underbelly we got to see in Ocarina of Time, I beg you.

#asked and answered #Zelda headcanons #things I'm reading #excessively slowly #but I'm reading it

[heavensickness]

...do i really have to bang your heads together to make you two make up. bc i will

#they are both like hmm this person is my reason to keep going and we have an inexpicable bond. i wonder what is this feeling #i love yoo #things i'm reading #stalkyoo

[aestheticcommons]

Things I'm reading...

It's been a while since I put anything on here, but I've been off visiting family. So because they aren't really close by, I've had a lot of time to read. So I just finished.

(Sweat and Soap ) by  Kintetsu Yamada, 山田金鉄

This is a really sweet series. Depending on where you are you might have a really racing cover. The short version is she's an accountant at a soap company, and he's a fragrance/soap designer. She has a condition that makes her sweat a lot more than average (but not smell, this is an important part of the journey between the two), and because of his super duper sensitive nose, he can kinda see her feelings by her scent. The first volume is by far the strangest, but afterward it because the issues of two people navigating trauma, societal expectations, gender roles, jealousy, and general relationship stuff. If I'm giving any warning, I would say read volume 9 and 10 together because it's pretty heavy.

#things I'm reading #sweat and soap #manga

[beaft]

google help me

#be shh now #i'm reading needful things and sometimes i come to a sentence that's just like. indescribable. mr king why have you done this.

[lazylittledragon]

made a sticker for anyone to slap onto their work if they need to

#ramble #i've only interacted with tiktok via osmosis #but something is eating their brain matter and it makes me sad #it's fine if you only want to read light things (all power to you) but don't whine at me because i write about bad people sometimes #i'm so tired

[aphel1on]

i have such a love for characters who descend into madness or villainy out of deep, deep empathy. characters who fundamentally cannot cope with the cruel realities they find themselves in and blow up about it in spectacular fashion. fallen angel type characters with tears of outrage in their eyes. characters who break before they bend, and break so badly they splatter blood all over their noble ideals. every variation on it gets me so good

#getou suguru #kaneki ken #abyss twin #i know there are others who im not thinking of rn #feel free to reblog with more examples #aphelion.txt #tropes #WAIT I REMEMBERED MORE #jaina proudmoore #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #phosphophyllite #i just spent like half an hour trying to find this on tv tropes but it must be. Too specific of a thing i have in mind bc #I just kept finding similar and related but too broad categories #despair event horizon. fallen hero. well intentioned extremist. etc etc etc #like specifically i'm talking about when the character's EMPATHY is the CRUX of the problem. sosooo crunchyjuicytasty #edit: #also just know that i am reading every tag on this post #and enthusiastically scribbling down the names i dont recognizr #so i can check out their series later #edit 2 wow this post blew up 🫡 godspeed fellow villain likers #the amount of people tagging this as 'me lmao' is concerning to me #wwx #how did i fucking forget this was also yllz era wwx

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

#every time someones like ''AI will replace u" im like. u will have to fucking KILL ME #there is no replacement here bc i am not filling a position. i am just writing #and the writing is what i need to be doing #writeblr #this probably doesn't make sense bc its sooo frustrating i rarely speak it the way i want to #edited for the typo wrote it and then was late to a meeting lol #i love u people who mention my typos genuinely bc i don't always catch them!!!! :) it is doing me a genuine favor!!! #my friend says i should tell you ''thank you beta editors'' but i don't know what that means #i made her promise it isn't a wolf fanfiction thing. so if it IS a wolf thing she is DEAD to me (just kidding i love her) #hey PS PS PS ??? if ur reading this thinking what it's saying is ''i am financially capable of losing this'' ur reading it wrong #i write for free. i always have. i have worked 5-7 jobs at once to make ends meet. #i did not grow up with access or money. i did not grow up with connections or like some kind of excuse #i grew up and worked my fucking ASS OFF. and i STILL!!! wrote!!! on the side!!! because i didn't know how not to!!! #i do not write for money!!!! i write because i fuckken NEED TO #i could be in the fucking desert i could be in the fuckken tundra i could be in total darkness #and i would still be writing pretentious angsty poetry about it #im not in any way saying it's a good thing. i'm not in any way implying that they're NOT tryna kill us #i'm saying. you could take away our jobs and we could go hungry and we could suffer #and from that suffering (if i know us) we'd still fuckin make art. #i would LOVE to be able to make money doing this! i never have been able to. but i don't NEED to. i will find a way to make my life work #even if it means being miserable #but i will not give up this thing. for the whole world.

[iknowitwontwork]

#i'm bored #anyway i started mine at this site called harrypotterfanfic.net smth smth #i discovered it while i was reading the 5th book i believe #and i searched james and lily potter smth smth and i stumbled upon a fanfic #and i was like 'holy shit this is so omg—' #truly the best thing to happen to me frfr #polls

[fonulyn]

since I've seen it talked about in several places recently:

if you are going to do a whump- or kink- or ANY-tober or other similar challenges please please please don't post them as one fic with 31 chapters unless it actually is one coherent fic. if they're 31 completely separate fics or ficlets then please just make a collection for them or just post them as separate fics. it doesn't matter if they're only 100 words or if you think they're too small or insignificant to post alone, they're not.

and why this?

because if you post all 31 of them in one fic the tagging is absolutely useless. if I look for things to read on ao3 I'm gonna look at the tags, and if the tags include something that's a dealbreaker for me, i won't even click on the fic. I might not even SEE the fic because I've filtered out the nope-tag! so I'm gonna lose out on reading 30 perfectly nice fics because of one fic that my nope-tag applied to.

ao3 is about archiving. it's about clear tagging and being informative. there is nothing informative about it if the tags in the fic apply to random chapters while others have nothing to do with it. it makes so much more sense to have each work as an individual fic with its own individual tags and warnings, so readers can make informed choices.

of course, you do you. I can't police what other people decide to do. but personally, I find it incredibly frustrating to weed through 31 chapters to find the ones I actually want to read. so I don't. I automatically scroll past all works posted like that. and I know some others do, too.

there is absolutely no shame in posting short things on ao3. there is no minimum word count. no one is going to look at you funny if you post a small ficlet on its own, I promise. it's just going to make some readers very happy when they can actually find the things they want to read.

so, please. at least consider the upsides of posting each work as their own fic.

signed, one very frustrated fandom grandma.

#ao3 #fanfic #fandom #I'm not trying to dictate what others do #so if you still wanna keep posting #completely unrelated works as chapters of one thing #then go for it #i'm not your mom #but please at least consider the alternative #and how much easier it'll be for people to #both find it and to make informed choices #of what they want to read

[nkjemisin]

"I've agreed to do an anthology with another writer. It's supposed to be an anthology about and by Black people. He sent me six stories... but... they were not stories about Black people. Except for one, they were all stories about racism. I wrote back to him... racism is only one facet or aspect of the Black experience. A lot of white writers (and some Black writers) see it as the totality of Black existence. What I want to do is to pull in some good Black writers who will write about Black people and not just how terrible it is to be hated."

#octavia butler: the last interview #things I'm reading #the more things (don't) change

[jojotier]

there's something utterly fascinating in watching white cismen try to explain the "new phenomenon" of groups other than themselves being into things. and by fascinating I mean frustrating like hell

like the intro to "The Writing Dead: Talking Terror With TV's Top Horror Writers" has on page 2 the following quote about horror media:

"In a genre that has traditionally appealed to young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, what has finally convinced so many others- particularly women and older audiences- to watch? To see horror as something more than blood and guts?"

and you know right out the gate that this guy is out of touch as a motherfucker, because like. even if you take into account the fact that this book appeared in 2015 and likely had been written in the previous years, if you're not white and cismale, you'll know that there's been plenty of horror that's appealed to a bunch of people since forever!

the twilight zone's still resonating with people! supernatural (derogatory) might not be completely horror per se, but just look at the fanbase there! even outside the realm of tv, horror podcasts were being revolutionized literally by queer people! and that's not even getting into the indie horror game scene!

but to this guy, the uptick in more diverse viewership of horror tv is an anomaly meant to be explained vaguely by the 'intimacy of television' or streaming services or 'fandoms, maybe?' and like sure, maybe these are right in their ways, but it's still just one part of the deal. and the thing that really gets me is that the acknowledgement of horror viewership being noticeably more diverse is kinda glossed over in favor of how the magic touch is in the nature of television itself or the Talent of those writing horror shows.

and like to be very fair. I just read the intro. in the actual interviews, the folks interviewed could defs bring attention to the fact that horror is compelling to groups who aren't that very narrow demographic of young white man not just bc we like being scared, but because horror is meant to reflect the fears of our times and, therefore, with more diverse representation people are able to see their Own Fears reflected

But of 13 interviewees, only 2 are men of color and 3 are white women. the remaining 8 are white men. so I'm not exactly holding my breath here

#horror #things i'm reading #and like take what i'm saying with a grain of salt #i am white myself #i'm puerto rican but still white #but whenever i do research into craft or history or what have you i'm constantly needing to get double the research #because in academia there is a white side and there is a black side #so if i ever want to get the full picture i have to actively fill in the gaps bc white people! refuse! to think beyond the surface level!!! #and like i dont mind doing extra research. i would rather hear about historically black events from black sources #and even more preferrably from primary black sources #but it'd be nice if there were Other White People Acknowledging that there were experiences other than their own #posts that remind me to look up whether jordan peele's got any books on craft #oyinkan braithwaite also

[zosanbrainrot]

first part of my WCI Zoro AU comic!

sorry Sanji not only am I late for your birthday but also all you get is pain shdjjd

01 02

I really wanna draw a happy birthdayboy Sanji all smiley and wobbly 💗💗💗 but cant sketch anything new rn and cleaning the comic is much easier, no thoughts, head empty

Anyway, ramble time

I don't have much experience with making comics, the żabka AU one being the one I roughed out first, but it was much less complicated. I dont recall making a serious comic effort before that... I now have a newfound admiration for drawing fight scenes, found it extremely hard lmao Generally I keep second guessing myself, always thinking I should have added more panels to make what's happening more clear, not sure if the flow of it is right. Even though I already moved onto cleaning I still keep making changes to the sketched out panels that were supposed to be final lol I also second guess the plot I'd planned, maybe I didn't think this characterization through enough? What if people dislike it?

But! If I keep tweaking and overthinking it I'll end up never posting it and I don't want that. And if I focus on other people's judgement I won't find joy in making art and I don't want that either.

So here's to sharing art! Regardless of mistakes and doubts 💗

#the read more feature was a mistake bcs of it I can never shut up #I think about art and process of creartion a lot #most important thing is I'm feeling ok with this comic again #I succumbed to the doubts thats why I made a detour with the żabka one #zosan #wci zoro au #zoro #sanji #my art #luffy #nami #roronoa zoro #black leg sanji #vinsmoke sanji #cat burglar nami #monkey d. luffy #one piece #one piece fanart #whole cake arc #whole cake island #tw blood

[heavensickness]

new favorite yuuichi face

#worst highschooler in the world!!! i love him #yuuichi katagiri #tomodachi game #spoilers #? #things i'm reading

[cattnipt]

Fucked up looking dog you got there

#hello I was supposed to read svsss with a friend as a lighthearted peek into danmei #and now my entire life is ruined by these guys #I haven't finished the whole thing and I'm only on vol 3 #so if I got these two wrong my deepest apologies #I don't know what I'm doing #I'm having a lot of fun though :) #this scene was cool even though literally none of how I drew it happened #svsss #scum villain's self saving system #bingqiu #shen qingqiu #luo binghe #catt art