#which i guess should mean I'm a decent writer

[hazshit-hotel-hater]

The way substance abuse has been handled on the show thus far genuinely upsets me and reeks of writers who either 1.) don't understand the subject matter they're presenting and haven't done even the bare minimum to research it or, worse, 2.) simply don't care.

Apologies for the slight rant incoming, your comment about how it has been mostly "handled" off-screen got me going because that's 100% true and in that truth is such a missed opportunity for the show. The way it has been handled winds up feeling incredibly shallow and juvenile at the end of the day, especially for a piece of media that is attempting to present itself as "adult" and navigate multiple incredibly sensitive topics. I'll try not to get into my own personal experiences and will speak broadly, but the show uses substance abuse more as a cheap character flaw to poke fun at or something to magically handwave away when it is inconvenient, rather than the life-altering, debilitating illness that it is.

Nothing about Angel's use is ever meaningfully explored. It's so (apparently) unimportant to his arc and development that one rude comment from Husk (a character who ALSO has a problem with gambling and alcohol that is never addressed) is all it takes for him to suddenly "resist temptation" and be shown as "recovered" (unless I'm misremembering). Or was he suddenly going to counseling off-screen too and its just another thing that will be told to us rather than shown? And how does Charlie even handle that at the Hotel (I'd be really interested in this as a moment for her character to have to grow/change too)? Does she even understand substance abuse and the many unaddressed systemic factors that can influence it? Or is the entire recovery process just shame based (because that works so well /s) combined with some more corny trust exercises? Why is this incredibly serious topic relegated to the background as if it's unimportant?

Recovery is hard. It is emotional and exhausting. Withdrawal (depending on what you're coming off of) can sometimes mean excruciating, unimaginable pain and in some cases people literally die. It is not a funny "ha-ha I take drugs because I'm chaotic and wild" quirk to be adored or glorified and it definitely should not be presented as something that can be wrapped up in a month or two off-screen without any development whatsoever. That's just insulting.

When you approach a topic like substance abuse and recovery, I personally feel you need to take in all sides of it. All the missteps that come with it (two steps forward one step back - mistakes are expected and okay), the self-loathing, the guilt and shame, the joy, the sense of freedom, the loss, and the best part of all: the incredibly difficult but liberating journey that is rebuilding your life and learning to love yourself and your body again, once you've chosen to be free and to live life.

Mad props to anyone who has ever battled this disease. You are strong, you are worth it and you are valued. Lol I am so sorry for going off here but I so appreciate you calling out the lack of exploration on this topic in the show. I guess I didn't even realize how annoyed and upset it was making me feel (praying this is coherent...).

This was absolutely coherent don’t worry!! Im really glad to see other people talking about this. I myself have not struggled with drug addiction but I have struggled with other kinds and as someone that studies a bunch of medical junk, I’d say I’m decently knowledgeable.

I’m mainly going to focus on Angel for this since he’s the main character I write for, but I assure you other characters addictions are also handled in my rewrite.

During the actual canon show, we don’t see Angel actually abusing substances that often; there’s a few times, most notably in episode 4, but from the rest of the show onward we hardly see anything. Yes in episode 6 they mentioned relapsing, which, mind you, was done horribly, but I digress. They touch on relapsing; Angel relapses, and then… what..??? What happened from that? I don’t feel upset or second hand guilt of any kind from this scene because we haven’t seen Angel’s attempts to stay sobre and off drugs.

His name is fucking Angel Dust. You don’t, I dunno, think that’d entail a higher dependency on drugs? Why do you think he named himself that?

About his name before anything else, the show has so much potential later on to talk about Angel picking out his drag name and why he chose that specifically. So much potential to explore how he views drugs and himself. He sees them as an escape and something “fun” to take his mind off of his actual life. When you die in a fucking coma and wake up in hell as a spider you’re going to want an escape. You will want to ignore reality. I am fully convinced Angel picked his name once he started performing because thats what he needed at the time. He needs to be like that to survive in hell. Angel is an incredibly mentally ill, troubled, traumatised, and unstable person, and being surrounded by so much intense negative influence only amplifies his current problems. I don’t mean to drag Vox in here but in my last redesign post I mentioned how very mildly bad people can become even worse people in hell because of the environment and this is no different for Angel. He’s been surrounded by crime and drugs his entire life and unable to live comfortably because of his sexuality. He has very likely been struggling with substances since he was a teen. Possibly even younger. He is not going to suddenly get over his addiction because of something like this. It could pave the way to him looking into dealing with it, but things like this can take years. I don’t remember when my addiction started; I’ve been clean for 2 1/2 years now I think, but the amount of relapsing and anguish I experienced while working towards that isn’t something that can be done in a few days or months. I still struggle with feeling like I deserve to say I’m recovering.

I’m hoping they tactfully handle this as they should, but my hopes are low. It’s okay to show a character relapsing. It’s okay to show a character feeling guilty. What matters is that the struggle is there to signify they’re trying. For a character with a song called “Addict” you really don’t see much of it. Drug and alcohol addiction is not a silly thing to just twiddle your fingers with and be like “well I guess thats over!” It’s incredibly insensitive to do so.

Whenever I write about Angel’s struggles with addictions, I focus on how small they can feel until you realise what’s actually happening. Just me talking about my rewrite again, but to get my ideas out here: Angel smokes often. He smokes at the studio when he’s stressed, he smokes at the hotel when he’s stressed, he smokes at in alleyways when he’s bored, there’s almost no location he won’t, but sometimes he tries to smoke less. His lungs aren’t the same as humans and technically he has 2 pairs of lungs, but smoking causes him to cough. This is painful in general and especially painful for Angel since he has barbs going down the back of his throat. Imagine choking on sandpaper, kind of like that. It’s painful, he doesn’t like the sound, Fat Nuggets REALLY doesn’t like the sound, and it’s an overall inconvenience, so he tries to stop smoking as much. Periods like this usually go fine for him until the stress returns or he starts to feel the withdrawal. Withdrawal from any sort of addiction is terrible, and in Angel’s case, just from not smoking it worsens his mental state further. He becomes irritable and stressed and that stress leads to wanting to smoke again to calm down. He may resist a few times and those times should be praised, but he gives in eventually. One cigarette to calm down becomes two, then three, and before he can process himself getting carried away, the entire pack is gone. It’s things like this that make addiction horrible. It’s something that deeply scared me when I was struggling. When I was struggling I was still in the mindset of “I can stop when I want to” and then being so suddenly hit in the face with the realisation that I’m not longer in control of this is terrifying. I could not stop when I wanted to. There were even points where I didn’t want to stop. Even just getting the smallest glimpse of this in an incredibly serious manner with Angel Dust would surprise me. To think the bar is this low on a show that seemingly prides itself on tackling such sensitive topics like you said is appalling. Your show shouldn’t have to be told how to write itself.

#hazbin hotel #raimble #hazbin critical #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel critical #angel dust #hazbin angel dust #hazbin angel #angel dust hazbin #anti vivziepop #tw drugs #cw drugs #tw addiction #cw addiction #tw relapse #cw relapse #tw relapse mention #cw relapse mention #tw substance abuse #cw substance abuse

[avelera]

I wonder, because I genuinely don't know, if there's a correlation between age and writers who consider a romance where the main couple shares a kiss to be the resolution of the romance rather than the beginning of it?

I feel like it's a younger perspective to think that a couple pining for one another, dancing around one another, and then finally confessing their feelings to each other, and maybe kissing or having sex represents the arc of a romance.

Whereas, at least for me, and full disclosure I'm in my 30s, cis, bisexual, married, and with a decent number of partners before that, a kiss and a declaration of love really just means the two of you can start negotiating what it means to share your lives together, what portion of your lives you're going to share, whether this is temporary or ride-or-die, or whether you have baggage to navigate, whether you love each other but don't like each other or vice versa.

And of course, most importantly for epic romances and genre fiction that deals less with mundane romantic concerns: just because you've declared your love for one another, doesn't mean you'll be able to keep it. In a story with action or adventure, one of you could die, or you could get separated, or be pulled in different directions by fate, just as an example. And maybe this just shows my age, but I've always found stories where established lovers lose one another ten times more emotionally impactful than potential lovers who were still pining for each other but never made it official "losing" what they never really had.

This all comes to mind because occasionally on my romance or smut-centric fics I'll get a comment by people surprised the couple got together so quickly, or worried because oh no, the big kiss happened in the middle of the story, so what's going to happen between here and the end? And I adore these comments for what they show me of the mindset of the readers (something the author can only ever guess at) but I also find it overall curious just how often, when I'm writing mature, often middle-aged or more (like, immortal) characters that people are surprised that these two adults kissed and yet that there's still more of the story to tell.

Because all I can think is, oh honey, they've kissed, which means I can now put them through the absolute wringer of what they will do to keep this love they've found :3

(Edit: I should clarify, I also love pining, slow burn, and get-together stories! Those are absolutely a valid and core part of the romance genre. I guess I just find it surprising when it seems readers only expect romance to be slow burn, or to be completed with a kiss.)

#maggie's writing progress #maggie rambles #writing #arranged marriage au dreamling #also happened in PTBS and lay your troubles down #idk I also think if a character has been married or had other relationships and lovers #it's almost emotionally dishonest to think they'd be SO hesitant to engage in a relationship #UNLESS they've got good reasons like friendship or trauma or separation to consider

[chireikiden]

Do you think there's any reason for Hecatia being one of the strongest characters in the series? Someone from a religion that isn't believed in anymore being powerful, doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the series. If someone from a dead religion showed up in Touhou, the first question should be how they're even still alive.

I'm sure you could reverse-engineer some headcanon excuses, but my personal guess is that rather than any particular in-universe justification, once ZUN decided that he wanted to have a powerful, "independent" Hell goddess (outside the Ministry's hierarchy), it wasn't a long leap - if a leap at all - to "Okay, so let's make her more powerful than the Ministry".

I mean, I don't know what led him to go for specifically Hecate/Hecatia in the first place, so we don't really have any first principles to start from.

She didn't have to be especially powerful just to be an independent Hell goddess; could've just been someone from the middle or bottom of the pecking order. But the story of LoLK is about her and Junko clowning on the Moon, so the tone is pretty different depending on whether she's super powerful or some scrappy underdog (and DDC had just come out). I'm sure that like any other writer, a lot of the time ZUN just does things because the end result is what he wants, rather than every step following naturally from the previous one. Or hecc, maybe the only Greek goddess in the series just had some exotic prestige in his eyes that Japanese gods don't, I don't know.

If you really get into some weird... comparative mythology, you could make a decent argument for Hecate the pre-Olympian titan-killer (cherrypicking the best of all versions, as one does) to be more powerful than most of the gods we see in Touhou, but cross-mythological power level debates are probably even less fruitful than Touhou ones. The very question of characters that in human belief predate humanity and how they might come into being "retroactively", and what that actually means for their backstories or power levels, is a whole swamp I'm not gonna wade into. (This may include some Lunarians, but it's hard to say which - humans just kinda appear unannounced in Japanese mythology. In the Kojiki, they already seem to exist by the time of Izanami's death.)

Somehow the matter of fading faith and belief has never come up in relation to any characters outside Earth and Gensokyo, that I can remember. I can easily imagine that the afterlife itself and maybe the oni there still have enough belief in the present day for it to not be a problem, or that ZUN as the writer simply has other things to talk about whenever those characters appear. But whether the otherworlders are actually protected somehow or ZUN just doesn't bring it up, faith or lack thereof has never seemed relevant there on a meta level.

#ask #anonymous #hecatia lapislazuli #general disc.

[firenati0n]

8 and 17 xoxo MJ/kiwiana-writes

hellooo :)

8. Is there a story idea in your mental vault that you’ve never been brave enough to try writing? Is this the year? Can you tell us about it?

funny you ask this because i was just thinking about this lmaooo I want to write the firstprince x rom com cinematic universe. this is my legacy fr.

I wasn't brave enough to start proposal au until you literally told me to do it one day and i was like "okay if mj says i should then i guess i gotta?" so now that's being written. chap 1 done and ppl say it's decent sooooo I'm writing more fjalksdjflka. which btw i am forever in your debt for being so supportive and uplifting. i wouldn't be writing without you fr so jot that down <3 i am president of the mj fan club everyone else SCRAM!

currently have docs for these lol (very sandra bullock heavy!)

the proposal (being written, this is the full spectrum of human emotion)

while you were sleeping (i think about this daily)

the lake house (Alex and Henry writing letters to each other across timelines? Hoping they can meet? YEARNING? PINING? LONGING?)

miss congeniality (alex is sandra bullock henry is his partner)

leap year (alex is amy adams henry is matthew goode)

the wedding date (dermot mulroney my beloved. alex would play him, the escort hehehe henry hires him to accompany him to phillip's wedding)

notting hill (alex the actor henry the bookstore owner duh)

how to lose a guy in 10 days (henry the writer alex the marketing guy)

the half of it (being written, this is queerano de bergerac)

i also have a bunch of random wip docs (really takin a page outta your book mj haha):

abbott elementary au (alex as janine henry as gregory omg??)

chuck au (this is all because of @user-anakin)(alex is chuck henry is sarah eeeeep)

a henry focused songfic based on "Home" by Daughtry lol where i explore how “I'm going home to the place where I belong” changes meaning throughout Henry's life and it's pretty angsty lol not my usual wheelhouse (@hgejfmw-hgejhsf for u hehe)

worm fic 2: electric boogaloo where alex and henry go on their first date and the worms are working OVERTIME

17. Do you typically answer all comments/reviews individually? Do you plan to change the way you interact with your readers this year?

i crave comments because i love community and interaction and am a whore for validation as a deeply insecure and new writer so I always try to talk to people 1:1 and interact with all tags / reblogs and such. this won't change because i love y'all and am obsessed with you so. I want to know everything about you all. in fact, I will probably become MORE annoying! so there!

xoxo roop

send me a fanfic ask for the new year :)

#asks #answered #kiwiana-writes #youtastelike-sunlight #fics #rwrb #rwrb fics #if anyone has any suggestions i am all ears

[bleachbleachbleach]

2/24 - 3/2/2024

For the last couple months, I've been working my way through Pravesh Bhardwaj's favorite short stories of 2023, and not enjoying a lot of them. Maybe Bhardwaj and I just have different taste, but I kept thinking to myself, "so what? why did we just spend this time with these characters?" or, alternately, grating at the "reveals," because I kept receiving them as weirdly trite. Trite in ways that I guess I don't associate with contemporary fiction. Like, ohhh he killed the friend for drugs! or She was in a mental hospital! Like, what is this, an episode of Law and Order?

But there is also a voice inside me that's like, I think you're reading these uncharitably, because these writers aren't stupid and don't seem like the type to condescend to the sensational and probably aren't actually doing that. Maybe it's YOUR brain failing to read for nuance. And in the case of "spending time with these characters," I was like, what am I wanting, exactly? A plot? A thesis? The former doesn't sound like me; I almost never read anything for the plot. As for theses, maybe?? But it's not like I wanted some heavy-handed symbol or Meaning-Laden Scene to come bursting through the door like the Kool-Aid Man. I like reading things that are just studies of a character's life. "People sitting around" is my favorite genre. I still felt like I kept coming up short after reading them, though, like, is that it? Is there no meaning to this? (Am I blind to the meaning? Am I blinding myself because I'm imposing some rigid set of expectations or "shoulds" onto things instead of reading openly and with some semblance of intelligence?)

I thought maybe I just don't want a short story right now, and need something longer. I really enjoyed the novella Make it Black by Andre Dubus III, which really is just a lady sitting with people and driving around. But even then, toward the end I felt like the meaning got a little too pointed, even though I've been grumbling this whole time about the ~meaning of it all not being pointed enough.

But then I was like, oh, lmao, you know what all of this actually sounds like? I'M PROBABLY JUST DEPRESSED AND BURNT OUT. (Cue realization hitting as though these things haven't been true for years, albeit manifested in ways other than these very specific ruminations on short stories.)

Writing-wise, I can only hope that what I am writing is also secretly good, like those short stories probably are. I didn't write very much this week, though I read the aforementioned Make it Black, and Chapters 86-88 of Bleach. I did write for a couple hours yesterday, which was a decent enough time. I found myself wanting to write a lot this week, and then not doing it. In addition to my generally just being a wet husk of a person, this week has been acutely sad. My sister had to put her dog to sleep on Sunday, so this week I've spent most of my free time energy being sporadically weepy about that and trying to send my sister long-distance love. It's one of those things where I was like, god, I really want to write, because I want to process this grief through fanfic. But after going to job-work and doing the laborious work of Being Sad, I was just like, I am too exhausted to do anything else, I barely did THOSE things.

I was struggling to remember what, exactly, I wrote yesterday--because it continues to be drop-in scenes in the Hisagi chapter--but it looks like it was some overwrought Hisagi thoughts about Matsumoto I'll probably delete, some Hitsugaya paragraphs that took 19 years to write apiece, some jinzen lore, and this exchange between Hisagi and Rukia:

“We’re not going anywhere. No one’s going anywhere. Just rest,” Hisagi says. How he manages to make the truth sound so unconvincing is beyond him. There’s an unbridled terror in her eyes that Hisagi does not know how to handle. The 4th makes it look so easy.

Kuchiki locks onto Hisagi. Maybe she can see his terror, too. He watches as hers closes itself behind an impassive mask, eyes hardening into dark stones. She, too, makes it look easy, though the green tinge to her cheeks and the new beads of sweat at her brow, already weeping down her temples, betray her.

“The thing I did with the hell butterfly. That’s what you’re feeling. It should help. It will help.” Hisagi tries to sound as reassuring as possible.

Kuchiki looks less than reassured, though more put out by the notion than terrified by it. So there’s that.

"In the Living World, Kurosaki Isshin is a human doctor. But I also saw him successfully operate on a dog once," Kuchiki informs him. “He was very good at it. Even so, I don’t know that I would expect a dog doctor to operate on a human.”

It’s unclear whether the statement is encouragement or insult, but Hisagi has published enough Kuchiki poetry to know that it is likely intended as both.

“Akon handled the actual surgery,” Hisagi offers.

This Kuchiki cannot be won over. “Perhaps it would suffice if it were Ichigo. If Ichigo needed the operation, I mean. He’s very good at that.”

“At... being a dog?”

“At enduring what he’s given.”

#stories for the sea

[trashpandacraft]

With regards to modern coal tar dye: is the production of it safe for the factory workers? What about the environment, in terms of waste water and petroleum processing, etc? Just curious.

i think this is a really good question, and one that deserves an answer. it's also not a question that i can answer comprehensively.

i want to be up front here that—again—i'm not a chemist or a scientist. i'm just a guy on the internet who is super interested in food processing, food history, and dye. in real life, i'm mostly an editor and sometimes a writer and researcher. because of my specific life, i'm arguably more comfortable reading government regulations and material safety data sheets than most people are, but i have no expertise here. if someone does have that expertise and feel that i'm misrepresenting things in this post, they should please 100% correct me.

but so: is the production of modern coal tar dye safe the factory workers? the first and biggest problem with this question is that these dyes are made in a lot of factories. there are a ton of chemical manufacturers out there, and many of them make food dyes. for the dyes to by approved, they have to be batch tested to meet quality parameters, so we can be pretty sure that the end products are all approximately the same. does that mean that the working conditions in the factory are good? no, it doesn't. i assume that working conditions vary as much from one chemical manufacturer to another as they do between other factories. as far as i'm aware, there's no way for an end consumer to tell what factory made the dye they're eating or putting in their hair or whatever.

i'm guessing that's not what you meant by safety, though, and you're asking more about the petroleum-specific aspects. and again, honestly, i don't know this about dye specifically. however, we as a global society are incredibly dependent on petroleum products—and there are a lot of them. (more on that in a sec.) but petroleum is used in so, so many things. it's used in asphalt and aspirin, dish soap and deodorant, mascara and mineral oil, plastic and paint, toothpaste and tires. it's what we make plastic from. it's genuinely almost impossible to overstate how many things in our lives are created with petroleum products. but we don't think of most of those things as threatening or toxic, and we often don't really worry that the materials themselves are going to be hazardous to the workers who are making them.

i don't know enough about the specific bits of petroleum used to say which, if any, of these products are more or less hazardous to the people making them. hopefully none of them are; probably some of them are. given how incredibly broad the overarching category of 'made at least in part from petroleum' is, though, i'm going to guess that dyes, specifically, are at least not hugely better or worse than the other things on that list.

part of why i'm comfortable saying that is because most of these dyes have actually been around for quite a long time! by the 1930s, six of the seven coal-tar dyes currently in use in the united states were already being made and regulated by the fda. (source) so we've had at least a hundred years of these specific dyes, which is generally plenty of time to realise if they're going to give everyone who works with them cancer. a hundred years of non-controversial production and usage is, in my opinion, a pretty decent safety assessment.

but let's back up some more. we know that they're ok for the end consumers, and we know that they're probably ok for the people who are making products with them. but 'petroleum' is kind of a weird word that encompasses a lot of things, ranging from crude oil fresh out of the ground all the way on down to some of the products that are made with it. mineral oil is petroleum. gasoline is petroleum. but they don't come out of the ground like that.

here's another place where my knowledge falls apart a little. my understanding is that crude oil is split into different parts through a process called fractional distillation. the oil is heated until it vapourises, and then components of the vapour condense at different temperatures and are split out like that. i have to reiterate: this is my very baby-level understanding of it. i've fact-checked myself and it seems that at an incredibly basic level, this is correct, but feel free to google 'fractional distillation' or 'fractionation' to read about it yourself.

i have no idea how bad this process actually is for the environment, and there are—obviously—strong incentives for corporations to conceal this. there's also a human urge to blame things on 'that new plant'. i used to live by a cracker plant, which both fractionates and processes the ethane created by the fractionation process. i had neighbours who worked there and seemed happy enough about it. i also had neighbours who swore up and down that it's the sole cause of pollution in that area, that the smells and air quality are terrible. (worth noting that because of the nature of this kind of plant, i can't differentiate between 'pollution etc that is directly related to fractionation' and 'pollution etc that is from the cracking process', though my understanding of the matter is that the latter is a bigger problem than the former.)

having lived there, i know full well that the plant wasn't the sole reason for the bad smells and air quality—there were other, different plants that definitely helped. did the cracker plant make it worse? in my opinion, yeah, it did. but did it have to make things worse? was it worse in part because of lax regulations and regulatory enforcement? was it worse in part because the company was given waivers and legally permitted to release pollution over the normal legal limit? (this part i know—it was.)

could regulations negate any pollution from the plant? i have no idea; i honestly don't know enough about the process to say. could stronger regulations (and stronger enforcement of the regulations, and not giving companies regulatory waivers because they ask nice) make that plant pollute a lot less? it could. is there the political will to do that? certainly not where i was living, but possibly in other places.

so the plants aren't great, but they could be made better, at least. i'm not aware of any unique health and safety concerns for workers at those plants, assuming that things are up to code and they're wearing appropriate ppe, but my source here is a couple guys i know who worked at one. would someone who's studied chemicals say differently? i don't know.

that's a little ambiguous! how safe is it for the workers? safe enough that the factories exist and are able to be in compliance with the health and safety requirements of many countries. could they be safer? probably. are they meaningfully less safe than working in factories that create other types of chemical? i don't have enough data to say for sure, and i don't really know how to get it, either.

ok we're almost done, but let's back up one more step. coal-tar dyes were originally made from coal, and are now mostly made from petroleum. but coal and petroleum have to be extracted, so what about the people who are extracting them?

and here we're into a whole different kind of difficult topic. how safe is mining? how safe is working on an oil rig? not very. they're both industries that are notorious for being ruthlessly profit-focused, no matter what the human cost of that is. they both have high mortality rates, and depending on what list you're looking at, they're consistently considered very dangerous.

but a lot of people take those jobs anyway, either because they're the best option on offer or because they hope the payoff will be worth it. i have an uncle who's worked his whole life in the mines and has the physical damage to show for it. his son turned eighteen and went over to the same mine to see if he could get a job. (he did, eventually.) i don't especially like this uncle or this cousin, but they're not stupid men. they looked at their options and figured this was the best one. i've known people who worked on offshore oil rigs, people who chose that job on purpose, who felt that it was worth the tradeoffs and risk. and maybe for them it was! i wish no one was making the choice of 'is the increased risk of death worth the increased rate of pay', but i wish a lot of things.

how safe is resource extraction for people who don't work in it directly? again, i think that most of us will agree that it's not very safe. fracking isn't good! our horrifying single-minded reliance on extracted resources is slowly killing us all! i don't think anyone's ever shouted for joy because the local mining company bought all that forest outside of town and they're gonna raze it. no one's thought that it would just be really cool to have an oil well in the back pasture just for the aesthetic value.

on the other hand, what's the alternative right now? i don't mean in an ideal future where we've done sensible things like converted everything to renewable fuel sources—what's the alternative right now? short of some sort of global cataclysm, i don't think there is a viable alternative right now. i think that a lot of very smart people are working very hard to create alternatives; i think that a lot of very wealthy oil executives are working very hard to make sure that those alternatives will fail before most of us ever hear so much as a whisper about them.

so ultimately, are coal-tar dyes safe? yes and no! yes in the sense that consuming them isn't going to hurt you. yes in the sense that i can't find any particular reason to think that they're riskier to make than any other product being made. yes in the sense that their production is in compliance with governmental health and safety regulations. and also no in the sense that resource extraction is inherently damaging to the land, water, and people of the world. no in the sense that it's not environmentally sustainable.

this is a really long answer to say, essentially, 'it's complicated'. but also: it's complicated. the closer to the consumer end of the chain you get, the safer things generally become. farming is more dangerous than cooking is more dangerous than eating; using hair dye is less dangerous than making hair dye is less dangerous than extracting the resources from which the hair dye will be made.

i don't know if this answers your question. it's a hard thing to wrestle with, for me. how safe does something have to be for it to be safe enough? where's the cutoff? is there anything where enough is known about the entire supply chain that we can accurately say that nothing and no one is harmed by its production?

honestly, probably not, at least right now, and i don't really think that it's mentally healthy for us as individuals to dwell on that for too long. the world is imperfect, and we make the best choices we can with the information we can get. in the specific instance of coal-tar dyes, i think we can probably say that they're not causing an unusual amount of harm, or more harm than most products do, and that's probably about as good as it'll get.

#dye #this ended up being ten billion words long and i'm so sorry #but this is genuinely a moral question that's almost impossible to answer #but also one that i've spent a lot of time thinking about #just by virtue of where i've lived and stuff like that #i honestly think that the hardest thing about trying to make the world better is that you have to keep living in it while things improve #smartest raccoon i know

[raeynbowboi]

I'm Starting to Get Tired of Getting Invested in Big Mouth

I want to start by making it clear that I do not hate Big Mouth. I like it fine. There were moments in season 6 that I liked. But there is a fundamental problem with the show's writing: almost nothing ever sticks. Things that seem like they should have a lasting impact are swept under the rug and forgotten. Remember how last season Charles Lu cheated on Gina with Jay and did nothing with that? The writers clearly don't because it's never addressed. Or how bout Jesse's crush on Ali? Guess they forgot that too. Hell, Sonja was Jesse's love bug and we got nothing about that being an issue for Jesse? Which is why I don't buy Marty making up with Barbara. Next season, they'll be right back to default, just like how Andrew dropped Sensitive Andy between seasons quietly and reset to default. Or what about Jesse moving? Nick and Andrew not being friends anymore? Remember when Jesse and Matthew were best friends? Leah's relationship with Val? (Who was also reset to standard Billzarian this season.) Speaking of which, Jay cum-bending the house clean and having a healthy evening with his family, marking the beginning of growth for the Billzarians? What a surprise, a hard reset returned his family to an abusive, dysfunctional default. And when characters don't get hard reset, they get tossed aside. Remember when Gina was important? How about Lars? Devin and Devon haven't done anything in two seasons. I don't recall much of Coach Steve, Caleb, the Johnson Twins, Lump, Ali, barely any Duke. none of them. You'll notice that they stopped pretending we cared about the new principal who was doing the Masked Singer teaser. I'm frustrated with how Andrew left things with Bernie, that was a poor way to handle that. Aiden got put out of our misery, only for Matthew to throw Jay away for complete bullshit reasons. Jay was better off and beginning to become well-adjusted. They were looking like a real couple. And Matthew threw that all away so quickly? He just needs to be less judgy of Jay's magic hobby and less bossy. Do that, and their relationship is fine. Probably one of the healthiest in the show. He got Jay over the pillows. We cannot gloss over what a big step that is. Only for it to be thrown back in our faces a couple episodes later. And Nick has pretty much had the same exact 'stop acting like a spoiled rotten bastard' since at least season 4. Early Nick was arrogant and entitled, but it wasn't the only thing the writers did with him. I think the problem is that there's too many characters fighting for attention in the main cast, and then they added Missy's new boyfriend on top of all that. If you're not going to give Matthew a decent relationship, at least let him go through non-gay-specific experiences. There's no reason he shouldn't deal with peer pressure, body positivity, or social media addiction like other characters. Otherwise, drop him back down from main cast to supporting side character so that the main characters actually get the screen time they need. And Lola too. Time and again, I think they're going to make significant changes and get excited for the future, only for the writers to backpedal and retcon the cliffhanger that hooked my interest. And I'm tired of pretending like the cliffhanger drama is going to actually mean anything.

#big mouth #big mouth 6 #season 6 #human resources #jay x matthew

[shanie-the-komania-toyaddict]

Hiii sorry to do this through an ask but I just read your unfinished samijey fic and wanted to tell you how just how much it moved me. The ache is real. And I'm craving for more. Thank you for sharing it. (I'm only saying this as a compliment when I say I wish you finished it) 😊

PS. I'm actually a HUGE fan of your other fics (zowens and steenerico) I honestly don't even have the words to describe how I feel, about the way you write, them in particular. It's just beyond...I dont even know. You have me so enthralled. each. and. every. time. 😌 and I appreciate you so much for the way you write and share it with us. So thank you and hope you continue doing it as something you enjoy 🥰

*sniffle* 

You know, you guys say the sweetest things.   You also make it really hard to hate my own writing. 

Honestly, I didn’t even fully proofread this before I posted it. I spell checked it, that’s it. It pretty much went straight from the cast-aside word doc into that post. 

So to hear so many people say they loved this... 

You know, this wasn’t even the only idea for a Samijey fic I had. I had two other ideas. One was to be called something about “Sleeping Arrangements” and was a story of how, during the Bloodline, Jey kept finding increasingly improbable reasons for Sami to share a mattress with him, hoping that Sami would eventually get a damn clue. Sami would have, but it took all the way until the Tribal Court for it to happen. 

The other was called “Blowing Kisses” and was about how during the Bloodline, Jey, BEING JEY, thinks kisses are dumb and doesn’t want to be kissed by Sami. So Sami makes a compromise. Every time he wants to kiss Jey, he whistles beside Jey’s ear. And it drives Jey nuts at first, but eventually he grows to love it.    And then, one night on Raw, right after Jey walked away from Jimmy to embrace Sami, Sami is shocked when, suddenly, Jey is whistling in HIS ear.......... 

Anyway, neither of those stories got past the idea page. This one mostly got written. I sort of got consumed by the Generico!verse and everything else just... stopped. 

And as for the other fic... I keep telling people, constantly, I just wanna make people feel. Emotions are the most important things in the world and as someone who struggles to feel them sometimes, if I can find something, a picture, a gifset, an artwork, a story, that makes me FEEL... I just wanna give that to other people. 

My two biggest goals in my writing. 

Make people feel.  And, on occasion, make them THINK. 

So I guess, if even this half-finished Samijey fic can make people feel, then it’s another mission accomplished, even if it didn’t get completed. 

Thank you so much for your kind words, you and everyone. You know, my old middle school teachers always told me I needed to be a writer. And I wrote my first story at age 7 or so... which at this point is... a very long time ago. So really, like my friend says, “I should hope I’m at least decent at a skill I’ve spent 30 years cultivating!”  

But you know, interesting thing? I can’t do math for shit. Not that that’s important, but I literally have a math deficiency thing. It’s like I got all the words and none of the numbers. So if you see something in a fanfic and you’re like “Hang on, the numbers don’t add up there” it’s because I can use spell check and grammar check all I want, they won’t fix the fact that I can’t do basic math.    Anyway, thank you again for your kind words. They mean so much to me and give me the motivation to keep going.    Thank you thank you thank you.  💖💖💖 

#ask #Thank you so much #All of you

[if-confessions]

As a writer and a reader, who has been around this community for the last three years, it has been crazy seeing the change in the if fandom as a community.

It used to be a positive environment for supporting independent game creators, but there is so much negativity against IF writers now. the readers are pushy, critical and demanding, expect games to cater to their exact preferences or be customisable to the point it might as well be a 'fill in the blanks' game instead of a narrative. IF writers are antagonistic towards each other, resentful of other creators success. There is a trend that when games/demos are successful, the authors become the target of attacks that seem to be looking for any excuse to take them down, and punish them for their popularity. The result is that a lot of games that are in the alpha stage / completed no longer use tumblr at all, which is a shame, because it was a unique opportunity for readers to engage and support an indie game creator.

I think the IF fandom really needs to do some soul searching on the type of environment it has created for indie game development / IF writing.

[I am assuming Anon meant the Tumblr/CoG scene of IF, as this is not a sentiment/trend shared by the overall IF community. Other scenes of IF don't care or even reject customisation "expected" here (doesn't mean they don't have their issues either).]

LOL, Anon. I was having an eerily similar conversation about the customisation the other day.

Communities do change overtime. As older members leave (because they don't enjoy the Thing-tm anymore, they don't have time for it, they don't like where the community is moving, they've been rejected by the community, etc...) and newer members arrive, the dynamics adapts to the current members. Sometimes it is for the better (more positive contacts, barring less-desirable members creating conflict from staying, etc...), sometimes it's for the worse (like in your message, attracting more problematic members or enabling the worst in people).

An issue with Tumblr that other communities may not have is how "decentralised" and lawless it is. Some groups may have guidelines/rules for interactions (resource blogs/authors asks rules), but you can't control all the members like you could in a Forum, for example. There is no Code of Conduct that limits what is and isn't acceptable (aside from the very board Tumblr CoC and even a lot of shitty things can be posted). There is no mods that can take down a post that will sent the community aflame (unless it is Staff bc the post was against their ToC/CoC). There is no consequences against bandwagon hate/harassment (even with the block button). So you end up with... well, this...

It would be nice if there was a bit more unity in the community, but that would require many people changing their behaviour and essentially stop being complete asswipes. And they are not the kind to stop shitting on others...

I'm pretty sure that a lot of those issue could be solved if people:

stopped being a dick in someome's dms/asks (should be a given, but damn are anons wild sometimes) <- like +75% of the issues would be gone with just this

would be respectful when sending messages/commenting (not making request, being pushy, etc...)

stopped following authors/projects not making them happy (that's a vicious cycle, easy to start hating on them...)

didn't put their problems and frustrations on strangers on the internet*

went outside to touch some grass (or take a break from Tumblr, it will do wonders!)

*This does not apply to the confession booth btw.. I'm talking reg accounts here. This applies to everyone, btw. You'd think this would be common knowledge to be decent to one another... but I guess not.

As a side note, to remind everyone that:

you do not have to have an open inbox if you don't want to

you do not have to have your dms open either

you do not have to allow anonymous messages

you do not have to answer every messages you receive or reply to every comment you get

you can trash any message you do not feel comfortable answering

you can delete comments/replies you do not feel comfortable with

(creator) you do not have to include every request readers make

you can block/unfollow users for any reason (or no reason)

you can block/report hateful anonymous messages

you can restrict reblogs/replies

you can change your mind at any time about accepting a kind of asks (like the NSFW ones)

you do not have to be on Tumblr every free moment you have

you do not have to interact with every post crossing your dashboard

Having boundaries is good, setting and voicing those boundaries is better, enforcing those boundaries is extra important.

Until then...

🤷

Now making a fill-in the blank IF would be a fun idea...

[old comments in tags: be the change you want to see i guess im just trying to stay silly here /]

Under the cut, some more rambling and wild assumptions about how we got here.

===> Increased entitlement in the community

Note: this is a generalisation. Not every reader is entitled, not every request is outrageous, and not every author is a pushover. We are talking about visible trends.

There's no denying that it has had quite the impact on the community and how games are set. Gone(-kinda) are the days with completely unique characters with a unique voice and its set path, hail the rule of customisation that inevitably becomes too overwhelming for any creator to keep track and complete the story. Is the "CoG expectations" the culprit, there? With the CoG to Tumblr exodus, yaknow...

But it must have started from somewhere to have those vocal entitled readers hounding creators for all this stuff, they can't have appeared out of nowhere! Twine games from the 2010s were not chokefull of customisation...

Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if it all started with some minor request for customisation, which was accepted by the author, which may have made other readers realise they too could have requests or expect the same kind of customisation in other project, and this snowballed into... *wave at the mess*, creating a vicious cycle of base customisation expectations (which are getting insane...), shunning pieces who do not fit those expectations, and still having more special requests*. *Honestly, the authors could just accept those request but as like paid content. Oh, you want more that will definitely fuck my whole timeline of planned work? Tip me like 100$ and I will...

At the same time, and this is an observation that has been accentuated with the kinds of asks I've gotten here, some authors have not helped the situation either. With people almost begging for interactions and notes or just to please the readers because they are interested in that stilly little project (or the pressure from blowing up, or before the idea is set in stone), some authors will seriously bend over and backwards for those requests, even if it means forgoing the OG plans altogether because it doesn't fit with the promised request.

Readers feels more empowered to ask -> there is a pressure to cater to readers to get interactions or the request has become part of the base expectations -> request is accepted, but author might feels resentful -> readers feels more entitled to ask -> etc...

or

Readers feel more empowered to ask -> the author refuses -> readers put pressure on the author because another one accepted it or iT Is cOmMon KnOwLeDge -> author feels resentful towards the community...

Which is kind of related to point number 2...

===> Numbers go up and Jealousy

Note about this point: I am not talking about the want to be seen by other people, to feel like your message has been heard, to have your presence acknowledged. That's what we are kinda all doing by putting our stuff out there.

Every time I get an ask about someone worrying that to do have enough traction on their project or get zero interactions and they have lost all their motivations or are resentful to newer projects blowing up*, I honestly struggle to see a positive future for this scene. It seems like everything is about notes and reblogs and how many followers you have and how many ratings you can get and how many asks you get and etc... *see the no demo discussion

What is supposed to be a hobby for 99% of us is turning into some ugly race to have the highest number of *wave again at things*, by tanking other creators rating average, manipulating your followers to boost your own, creating rumours about a project/author, sending hate anons, creating dumb drama, stealing/plagiarising whole ass games, etc... Just to be at the top and have the biggest number. Numbers, I feel like I need to point out, means absolutely nothing outside of this website (or even this scene of IF). I really don't understand this dumb race...

And it is so frustrating to see, because we should be hyping each other up, discussing each others fav games, being excited to see another voice join and create stuff. It's not like we have to all be the best of friends and blind ourselves from any misgivings. No, we should still be able to criticise constructively or call out bad behaviour. But the whole envy and jealousy* oozing from the community is really... bleh. *doesn't mean you can't be jealous/envious of someone else, I know I am. Just use those feelings creatively, not to put down yourself or others.

Same with the whole notes/interaction thing. Outside affirmation is great, it really is, and boy does it gives a nice boost to the ego and the energy levels to continue when you get some (especially when the other person is gushing about your project). But basing all your motivation to create on outside approval will lead to a lot of pressure to perform when you get it, despair and disappointment when you don't, and resentment when you see other get more.

===> Parting notes

Ugh... I spent too long on this shit. I'm going for a walk before I get more sad. Then, I'm coming back to play my friend's game and create something weird.

#confession time #if-confessions #dark side of if #follower behaviour #inbox boundaries #undecided tag

[colorfuldream]

Rare Miraculous post but YouTube is a cesspit of Adrien stans and I cannot stand it anymore

Like I was watching a video that aimed at analyzing the show as a whole and I got hit with a whole rant about how "Chat didn't know Ladybug's boundaries", "being persistent is a good thing (even if she said no)", "she's "flirting" with him so she's asking for him to keep hitting on her" (even though she's friendly and made it clear she wasn't into him), "he even had a whole new cute relationship" (he cheated on Kagami all the while and was using her to try to get over Ladybug but I guess it's cute)

Just because he's depressed and sheltered doesn't give him the right to do any of that and he should damn well know his behavior wasn't okay. Ffs, Kuro Neko isn't a cute episode, it's Adrien throwing yet ANOTHER temper tantrum and had a whole cheating allegory when... She was trying to rely on people to fight a literal terrorist? It's every problem with Chat Noir compiled in one episode.

Oh and don't get me started on the double standards between Marinette and Adrien. He can't be the butt of the joke (despite Chat being the "jokester") and him sacrificing himself almost every fight is the writers hating him (lmao) and not a part of his character (even though it aligns with everything we know about him and has consequences, namely Ladybug relying on other heroes who will be useful in a fight). But Marinette's (unfunny) gags are 100% serious and indicating of her character. The over-the-top teenage girl in love antics (common in old shojos which were the inspiration even though they do suck) are her being a crazy stalker. (And to be fair to her, it's more of a weird celebrity crush). (Also the person claimed that one of her friends should intervene which is true but they also claimed they were bystanders when her friends have actively encouraged her to pursue Adrien, pushed them together even when Marinette was trying to move on, and generally participated in her bullshit. Have we watched the same show?!) Marinette being friendly with people she meet and her classmates? Mary Sue, the show is forcing everyone to love her... Even though it's normal friendliness between people and her classmates hate her at the drop of a hat. Of course, Adrien staying friends with Chloé even after he's witnessed her bullying anyone in her sight is because he was isolated and attached to her and not him showing he was passive and naive to the point of stupidity (to be fair again, it would be good flaws especially with how he can't lead/take charge and how sheltered he is if only the show had decent writing). And so on, and so on.

I mean... I'm not calling it internalized misogyny but... Come on.

At first, I was going to keep listening but around the end of the Adrien section, I just couldn't. Who actually writes down something along the lines of "she was touching him, smiling at him, retorting with one liners so she was reciprocating to his advances", read it out, edit footage over it and not realize how victim-blamy it is??

I'm not saying Marinette doesn't have flaws of course. But holy shit. I just want someone who can see both characters for what they are: old problematic tropes that shouldn't be in shows anymore. And while the writing hates both just as much, it has a trend of hating teenage girls and Marinette suffers so much bullshit it's obvious the writers have a bias against her. (+It's obvious from Astruc's Twitter that he loves Adrien and he's stated that Adrien has no flaws while the show revolves around Marinette's mistakes which explains why she's blames for everything even when it's not her fault!)

#ondina's text posts! #text #miraculous ladybug #miraculous salt #miraculous #are those the proper tags? #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste

[paellegere]

final thoughts: supernatural season 11

all right let's do this wretched thing

i don't even know where to begin. i'm trying to weigh it against season 6 as my least favorite season, but it's difficult. season 6 was bad because it was scattered, poorly written, poorly paced, and terribly executed. but season 11... i just really hated it conceptually. it was really hard to get over the hump and ride this whole darkness thing out—there's always a limit to suspension of disbelief, and i think when you're dabbling with real-world mythologies that limit is lower than usual.

now i think there were ways they could have executed this intelligently. like my comment a few days ago about how adding this The Darkness(tm) to the story recreates judeo-christian mythology into a form closer to proto-indo-european mythology, i think if the writers had known about the PIE creation myth and actually used that to inform their writing, they could have done something really cool, and at the same time maybe return to its "all mythologies are equal" roots instead of... whatever the fuck kinda christian supremacy propaganda they were selling this season.

not to go on a tangent, but say they cast god as manus and amara as yemo, they could have actually made a statement about the interconnectedness of (IE) religions and made the story less christianity-centric through that acknowledgment of non-abrahamic religions. i mean that's the root of all these religions in the first place. i mean the leviathan is tiamat, genesis is fix-it fic of the enuma elish, etc etc you already have the PIE influences in the old testament. the roots are there they just had to be aware of them and use them creatively.

so that's deeply disappointing. they were so close and instead of making something really cool, all they did was push some agenda that the judeo-christian god is the ultimate god and yknow i really can't respect that, especially after all the work kripke era did to dismantle that bias. it feels disrespectful to the original show and i'm not very happy with it at all.

i could go on and on about this in particular because i have so many thoughts about how it could have been handled better and more respectfully, but i'll stop there because that's the gist of my argument and ideas. outside of this i guess the seasonal plot was decent? it's hard to really gauge my opinion on it because i really just did not like this season conceptually, and my thoughts are skewed against it as a result. up to now i've at least been interested in the ideas they were putting forth, and my issues have been with the technical aspects of writing. this is... a doozy.

i'll critique the amara/dean thing. because actually this is my kink. or one of them. or an aspect of it. whatever. so i should like it. the whole "i'm being forced to love someone i don't or wouldn't otherwise" is LITERALLY my kink. i go nuts over this. but um. yeah it really did nothing for me. the blank stares and nonexistent affections between them did absolutely nothing to sell me on this bond between them. actually i liked amara's side of things a lot better, i thought she really put her at least 75% of her pussy into seducing dean, and i liked the innocence with which she approached him, like it was a given that he loved her as much as she loved him. that was good. i liked that.

dean on the other hand? really did not sell this. idk if it was jensen's acting or the writing itself or what, but i felt absolutely nothing from his end. not even a hint of his internal struggle, no fight or even desire, just total absence of anything. like he turned into a wooden board whenever she was around. really disappointing actually!! because it was such a gimme to get me to like this. i'm literally hardwired to go nuts over this exact type of plot at its worst or cheesiest or most poorly executed, and they still fumbled it hard. no chemistry, no struggle, no tension, nothing. disappointing!!! i feel like i got left high and dry here.

also after the incestuous high seasons 7-10 left me with, i gotta say s11 really flopped on the brotherfucking. there was stuff here and there, but they had so many opportunities that they completely passed up on. if you're going to have sam exclaim in his fit of magic-induced despair "you were going to choose amara over me" then idk man could you give me SOMETHING to lead up to it? obviously you can get it from context clues. the qareen episode has the ending scene too. but outside of that? really not a lot of substance there. where's sam's anguish? his despair? he's about to lose his brother, the man he married in a church and then cured of demon-ness and destroyed the entire world for, to some fucking lady, and he acts so impassive over it the whole time except like. twice? okay. i don't think it would have been so disappointing if the past four seasons hadn't been about sam and dean getting married and divorced and remarried and redivorced over and over again. it went from 100 to like. 30. sooooo quick and i felt that. i felt that.

now you could have fixed THAT by paralleling amara with sam instead of chuck (????seriously????) and having dean's central emotional conflict be about choosing amara or sam (sam being a metaphor for the world, life, creation, etc). keep the tension high by making it be a front-and-center decision dean has to make. he wants to choose sam, but it's hard because his soul wants amara and he doesn't have a say in the matter. she's bewitched him and sam is fighting to take him back and dean is clinging to sam while also reaching out to amara and it's messy and painful and sam has to watch his brother be torn out of his grasp. it would be a perfect way to continue the conflicts set up by the previous seasons, it would have made the plot stronger, and it would have fixed probably all of my gripes about the dean/amara stuff i just complained about because there would have been some externalization of this struggle instead of forcing the audience to watch dean stand woodenly in place for several minutes at a time while amara monologues at him.

like come on.

okay. i'm trying to tally up the episodes i actually liked in this season so let's see. baby was good, very creative and i respect that and what it was trying to do a lot. idk if i'd say i liked thin lizzie, but i appreciated the fact that the show returned to the roots of what soullessness means as established in season 6 through len. it felt kind of insane that every soulless person turned into a volatile killing machine when we had 11 full episodes of soulless sam showing us exactly what removing a soul is supposed to do to someone. it also might be one of the first times, if not the first time? that this show has acknowledged its insane lore retcons and tried to reconcile it with current lore. so i'll give it a gold star for effort. plush was good, as always i'm a big donna fan; into the mystic was inoffensive. i LOVED don't you forget about me because i will always be jody's #1 stan forever. love hurts had the extremely psychosexual samdean moment at the end BUT it also embodies everything i hated about the amara/dean romance so that's a hard pass for me sorry. the chitters was good—had a lot of good psychosexual samdean as the emotional core of the episode and there was that insane conversation between jesse and sam in the car that drove me bonkers. definitely my fave of the whole season, probably.

so 6 episodes? yeah okay. that sounds about right for the amount of agony i was in while watching this season. checks out. okay. (clutches my head miserably)

the finale dragged on for too long. i can't even blame it because it pretty much needed all four of those episodes and i don't even think they were particularly badly written, but four episodes is a lot of episodes to tie up the season. i also think i'm biased against this because i just really did not fucking like this season, oh my god. every second longer i spent on the plot was kind of agonizing actually.

and all the brothers stuff at the end just did not make up for what the season put me through. it felt... idk not flimsy, but in comparison to what the season gave us, neither of them seemed like very active participants in any of this and so the emotional moments just didn't hit for me. i can see the development on sam's end from "i would destroy the world for you" to "ok maybe i shouldn't have done that; i'll let you die now" but i don't really agree with it given that there are still 4 seasons left in this show. if they start getting healthy about their relationship now, there isn't going to be any intrigue left, no tension left to propel them forward into unending codependency and enmeshment. "we have to change" except they can't because the narrative requires them to be psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent because this is a show about their relationship. you have 4 seasons leading up to sam's total and complete dependency on dean only for him to become normal about him within a single season? not only does it not work like that, but it shouldn't work like that. the show has done nothing but reward them for choosing their codependency (emotionally, that is; whatever happens to the world is not their problem tbh) over everything else. to pull an about-face that hard and not even have sam break down sobbing when he thinks dean is dead is just.

well it's just.

i'm just saying. if your entire reason for living, the only thing that matters to you in the entire universe, just fucking obliterated himself, i don't think you'd be fully functional and just a tad bit sad over it. sam got half his soul ripped out of him (they are soulmates after all) and he's fine? he can walk on his own, hold a conversation, barely even cry? after all that? after dean became the foundation of his reality, after he almost killed himself because he thought dean didn't love him The Most, after he tried to make a deal with the devil to bring dean back to life, after he caused the apocalypse 2.0 because dean was a bit cranky? so he just says "this is a problem and we have to change" and it's all fixed now? ok.

i'm not saying it's 100% bad (though i certainly don't like it, and this is definitely not the reason i'm watching this show lol), but it just doesn't feel coherent with the story so far, and it doesn't have enough support for it either, especially with 4 more seasons ahead. again: if they get healthy and normal about each other now, then what in the hell are these last 4 seasons even going to be about? it really kills my motivation to keep going, i'm not gonna lie.

i didn't mean to go off on that tangent. anyway i think i'm going to be petty about this and say it's my least favorite season so far. because at least season 6 had good ideas and its issues were almost entirely with its piss-poor execution. this? just felt insulting if i can be quite honest. i worked myself up writing this but i feel more confident in my evaluation of it. from the centering of judeo-christian mythology over all others, to the lack of focus on sam and dean's relationship and their spontaneous borderline-normalcy about each other, to the total flop of what should have been the easiest goddamn plot to sell to my kinky ass, i just thoroughly did not like this season. good fucking riddance.

i'm going to read some wincest fic. wincest writers always give me what i want 💖 i'll pick a show to watch during my detox later, i haven't really thought about it since i was so focused on finishing this season before my birthday (and thank god for that too, if i'd had to watch this then i would have been miserable). anyway that's all i'll stop complaining now :)

#liveblogging: supernatural #this is like 90% complaining i'm so sorry #it wasn't supposed to be but then. well. #anyway i'm done now :) #4 seasons left! #.txt #spn reviews

[strbymacaroon]

Het there, what made people notice your stories? cuz whenever i post like my story, noone notices it loll

I'm going to be so honest, I really don't know. 😭 The only series I was writing for was my Eren Yeager Spider-Man book, and that honestly didn't get that much attention. Also, I'm not really noticed either, I would say I'm still a decently small fanfic writer. However, I think I have a more dedicated following to my recent story, "Silent Love." I would also guess this is how you found my account. 😚

But, I can try to pass you some advice.

What I've noticed, is Tumblr is more of a horny space, people don't really want to be reading long-looonngggg fics here. That's why you can see many drabbles that are a few sentences long blow up. It's a quick dopamine hit, and most people want to read about smut. (Nothing wrong with that!) Tumblr is a form of social media, which means there are popular 'trends,' and tags people are going to be fed by the algorithm. Make sure you're tagging your work! And, if you don't know what to tag, look at creaters who make similar things to you, and glance at their tags.

However, Ao3 is more of a reading for the plot, place. (Still has people preferring smut over anything, tho! Again, not a bad thing.) But, this is where people can see the most recent posts, or what they specifically search for what they want to read. And, most importantly, it's an archive, not a form of social media. There's no algorithm.

You can be writing for a small fandom. You can be writing for a not so popular character, and so on.

But, I think you should just write what you want to write. Try not to think to much about the numbers, or interactions, it can become unhealthy and obsessive. If you want to write about something small and unknown, go ahead! Believe me, writing is supposed to be fun! But, if you're worried about interactions, it can become overwhelming.

But, I'm sure I would adore your writing! Keep it up, nonny! I'm sure you're going to find your right audience soon!

#angelanswers✨⭐️🌸 #Sorry #I'm so bed at advice #but #i hoped this helped just a small bit

[mdhwrites]

Do you think the writers made Amity "perfect" by accident? Not perfect but decent enough, I was thinking maybe that's why they didn't put much focus on Willow and Gus because they don't know how to? Or were just unaware of the fandom's interest in these characters and thought we don't care

They put more focus on Hunter tho, but he's all over the place.

Maybe it's because Amity was written with a end goal/end result in mind, to be paired with Luz so they knew how to start her characterisation and arc? I guess (also why she gets nothing after that's done)

With Gus and Willow it's like they were written to be nothing besides background characters, first intent before fandom pressure

Hunter is basically Amity if she had like, more end goals or more arcs in mind but you don't know which one to chose, (looks like they tried to write them all in). It's like the opposite of Willow and Gus but with the same result, not knowing what to do with them.

Somehow she's solid enough to still attract attention even by doing trivial stuff. Still indulging even if it's just her being clumsy or rambling about a student council. It's a charisma that I don't see in others characters (except Lilith and Boscha but that's a personal thing for me not general)

It took me a couple reads to understand what you meant by perfect to realize you meant as far as narrative potential goes and in that regard...

She's not perfect. She goes well with the high concept fantasy idea as someone who has directly profited from Belos and conforms to his system and the school ideas because... Obvious reasons quite frankly but one half of this is never acknowledged. Not only that but she doesn't fit well with wacky hi-jinks because she'd always need a purpose behind her actions (at least in Season 1). She's effectively too logical so forcing her into a situation can be awkward.

As for if it were intentional, I don't entirely think so. Dana had an interview recently that illuminated how much the romantic interests in the show for Luz and Eda were explicitly for the sake of being romantic interests. That one was because they wanted an old flame for Eda and the other was so they could quickly get a casual, gay relationship in before anyone could stop them. That's me closely quoting the brief interview.

And Amity's potential, and then waste of it, reflects the role of being made to allow for a fast, LGBT relationship. So much of her angst and 'problems' are things that contrast with Luz in a way that, if you don't actually care about them, can be bulldozed through with enough meaning to give a plus one to their relationship each time more of Amity is fixed. They are also all setup in ways that fit well to Luz's talents or by the basic premise of 'friendship and kindness are good'.

This is also why so much of it is discarded and sheered off so quickly. Why things like Willow are pushed away so quickly for the sake of the romance because while S1 was a bit more subtle about it, there's still the line in S2 of "I do stupid things around you." Which... Would ring more true if she felt like she did illogical things before Looking Glass but she really doesn't. Maybe a touch distracted but there's always a rhyme and a reason behind what she did until that episode.

In that sense, Lumity could be said to be rushed actually. Not that I think it is but there's a case to be had that realistically, if we were to treat Amity as a more full character, it should have taken longer. There should have been more in the way. Amity 'acting silly' shouldn't have been the only fear she had about them getting together.

Which I'm going to genuinely plug Rich Witch here. A large part of why Rich Witch was made was that while I explore a LOT of Amity's potential in The Power of Love, my story started between seasons, it still started with them only one step away from getting together. Worries like what being friends with Luz meant, what ditching her friends meant to her parents, and somewhat to them, etc. like that were harder to cover in that story.

So I wanted a clean slate. If Amity actually had a reason to be against Luz, what does it take to get them together? How bad of a friend was Amity before Luz came around? How much of this was self inflicted and how much of it was outside forces? And how did the process of getting close go if the story were more focused on the romance and Amity?

Those were essentially the fundamental questions that led to me making Rich Witch which I do wish to continue someday. Just... Well, Amazon did its own platform dirty and made failure pretty much the fate of all but the already wealthy and influential and that has done bad things to me about it. *sigh*

Sorry I mostly focused on the beginning of the ask btw. Hunter got more attention because he's plot relevant, Gus and Willow lost attention because quite frankly they're just there to help facilitate Hexide things and thus Amity so once Amity was a bigger deal, they were shoved to the side (until then used to help Hunter's character). And Amity is pretty, nice and has a very good VA so her having a lot of charisma with the show, which will pause for ten seconds to just spend time making her look good (when she picks up random abomination goo in Special 2) so it's not surprising she has more charisma than other characters. She was the favorite for a reason and few will abandon their favorites quickly.

#Amity #TOH #The Owl House

[froizetta]

3, 10, and 15 for the ask!

3) What’s something you learned about yourself as a writer?

I've definitely learned a lot about how I craft a story. A surprising amount of my creative process involves waiting for random flashes of inspiration for plot outlines or how specific scenes should go, writing it down, then frustratedly not being able to write anything half-decent again until I'm doing the dishes days later and suddenly get another eureka moment. I'm not sure to what extent that's a normal writer thing lol, but it's definitely not something I've felt before in any of my other creative endeavours!

10) What fic made you feel the happiest to work on?

This is honestly a toughie, but probably Padam Padam. First off, silly, horny nonsense is very much my comfort zone as a writer. But the real reason is a little more meta, I guess? I first decided to post my writing and become more active on tumblr in the hopes of making DC friends. My first friend in the fandom saw that I'd reblogged the (very fun!!) post that Padam Padam was based on and suggested I actually write it. Because of that, it felt like I was writing it in part FOR someone else, which is something I hadn't done before. That added a nice, warm-and-fuzzy layer to it all!

15) Rec a fic you wrote or posted in 2023

Lol well ALL of my fics were posted in 2023 so really I have my whole catalogue to choose from... An Honest Conversation feels like the obvious choice, but fuck it, I'll be obvious. That one was definitely a big, intense passion project, intended as a love letter to the ship that had so captured my heart. It means a lot to me that so many people have read and enjoyed it so far!

#ask game #my fic #asks #thanks larry! hopefully the answers are interesting :)

[lorei-writes]

Hello lovely Lorei!

For the emoji asks... 🤡 and 🌞 and 🤗 please!

Hello!

Ahhh, I swear, you really are one of the sweetest people around, haha. Thanks for dropping by!

🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

Not necessarily laugh, but maybe smile a little bit?

“How can you even find anything in here? Where do you keep your needles, I need to…” “Up your ass, my lord,” you blurted out, bloodlust emanating from your body. “Right next to the thimble.”

Warlords & MC that finally snaps

Chair legs scratched against the floor with a high screech, Ieyasu standing up abruptly, anger sizzling inside of him as he grabbed Masamune by the tail. He held the dragon up in front of his face, green eyes squinting before he poked the creature. He shook Masamune from side to side, much to his friend’s disapproval, squawks of protest taking over the air. “Ieyasu! That’s excessive!” Mai opposed. As if coming back to his senses, Ieyasu opened his hand, letting the reptile fall into her lap. With a sigh, he sat back in his chair, the piece of furniture grunting heavily as he did so. “I guess you can always fuck a lizard,” he grumbled.

The Dragon of Yss, Chapter XI: Vibrant Smoke

The thing of the past is that, in plenty aspects, it is nothing like the present, and as such it should not be measured against the same principles. A decent man, an indecent man – if you allow several centuries to pass, then he is first and foremost a dead man… Unless, for some reason, he is standing in your bathroom, safe, sound, and very, very breathing. Not that you’re complaining, of course! It is infinitely better for your spouse to be alive, even at the price of higher utility bills. (At least most would agree with that, supposedly).

Spots & Stripes

I better stop before the list gets too long, so let me leave it off with a mystery quote:

"Yes, of course, my lord. And asshole. A bastard. Son of a bitch! Who does such things!”

>:)

🌞 Do you have a preferred time of day to write?

Yes. Between 8pm and 4am... Which is nooot very good...

🤗 What advice would you give to new fanfic writers that are just getting started?

I was honestly pondering over it for a while. After all, there's lots of advice that could be given, but plenty of it is not that useful or downright harmful... The best I could come up with at the moment is:

1.Just write, whether it's "good" or "bad". 1.a If you have a beta-reader and they tear you down each time, do not work with them.

Arguably, point 1. is fairly useless, but allow me to elaborate. They're both fairly tightly woven, and by themselves, I'm not sure whether they mean much.

You see, as it happens, I have beta-ed for multiple people by now, and plenty of them were beginners. Some of them have never written any fiction before, and I was the one to encourage them to try. As such, they were fairly vulnerable at the moment, and I thought it is a fairly natural assumption to make that you should be very gentle with such people. However, it apepars I was wrong...

Beta's work is to point out errors and things that could be improved upon, with the ultimate goal of making the project the best it could be at the moment. In my opinion it is worthwile to keep the writer writing too, though. I know of writers who beta-ed of others and were nearly sadistic in how they delivered their critique. It ultimately only discouraged the begginer. Listen, they may have more experience, but if they're in a mentor-like position in relation to you, they should use it to guide you. Beginners are not a fodder for displays of your own ability.

Another thing about working with a beta is that the erorrs they may be pointing out could be just perceived errors. Each writer has their own voice. It consists of habits, preferred phrasings, etc. and well, those take time to build up. You will need to make mistakes along the way to know what suits you... And you cannot do that if somebody consistently tears you down and tells you to be mini-them.

Now, I'm not saying that suggested changes of such nature would not be an improvement to the work itself. However, I'm of the mindset that it's better to let others develop at their own pace, even if it may make my work as a beta a bit lousy. (I suppose it may be a bit more of a teacher approach, rather than a beta-reader one -- although, when working with somebody much less experienced than you, those are fairly connected, aren't they?)

Honestly, even if it may take longer, and even if it may be a convoluted journey, you can improve without a beta-reader or mentor figure of any kind. Just keep on writing, you will get there eventually -- but you will never make it if you get discouraged and stop, even if your few first works were "perfect".

To add some more things, briefly this time:

You can set boundaries wtih your beta-reader.

You can ignore advice, even if it comes from more experienced people.

Treat imperfections more so like fingerprints rather than something to be absolutely disposed of as fast as possible. Dealing with them at your own pace may help you develop your own voice.

You probably want to abide by more codified rules, though (e.g. dialogue notation). They generally just make it easier to read your work.

Writing FanFic is a hobby. Not a job. Don't turn it into a chore.

Aaand of course, I went on a rant.

Fanfic Writer Emoji Asks

#answered #scorchieart #lorei spoke #ask game

[onewomancitadel]

You know what, I only made one pithy post about this a year and a half or more ago so

I'll make a post breaking down my official position on that one H/bomberguy video criticising R/WBY:

Chiefly, I believe his style of narrative analysis (or lack thereof) is fundamentally broken. He doesn't really have any coherent drive except narrative literalism (and cynicism) and having forcibly sat through his videos he's never really been good at articulating why stories should work as they do, he just says so (and almost always in a way inappropriate to the story's setting). It's really effective for the platform he works on, because there's a false authority assigned to YouTubers and the positions they take on topics without due justification that a rando on Reddit or Tumblr couldn't get away with (particularly on fandom topics - where we're usually otherwise equal - what do you think of when you hear Alt Shift X? I think Alt Shift X can be pretty decent, but we know he has a certain credit in the A/SOIAF fandom that other fandom writers don't - and he always cites his sources and especially his Tumblr ones, so it's not something that the author can totally control). He just says that things don't make sense and I guess I have to believe him.

A corollary of what the platform engenders is that he's provocative. This can be effective for his political content but in my eyes he seems to enjoy dunking on other men more than actually substantially supporting a feminist cause, and I think his interest in criticising narrative comes from a similar dark place. I just don't buy his bullshit sorry. This is really more of a personal point but it's worth mentioning for my own bias against his criticism because I think he's an intellectual charlatan. I don't care how much money he donated to charity, I'm talking about his Internet personality (I don't know who he is as a person).

He claims in the R/WBY video that he's always respected Monty Oum (but character assassinates the writers) yet there are forum posts on SomethingAwful documenting his disgust for Monty and anime fans, and the fans who see themselves in Monty (who was self-made), implying that the enjoyment of R/WBY comes from a place self-insertion and wish fulfilment. I think it's important to establish that he could have changed his position on Monty in making the video, but he does specifically claim to always have had held an admiration and I think that's disingenuous at best. He clearly has a bone to pick with R/WBY and its ostensibly embarrassing and self-involved fanbase and it shows in his analysis. That's why he's interested in implying that the writers of the show are perverts sexually attracted to their female characters. Most damningly his classic move of pitting Monty and the writers against each other was pioneered by R/WBY fans who rejected the direction of the show after his passing and so grew the hatewatching fanbase which (similarly) gained traction on YouTube. To weaponise a glory of the auteur who had an untimely death in order to demonise a show you don't like is actually beyond pathetic.

I don't believe this was necessary to criticise R/WBY but this is why I feel he's ultimately disingenous in his analysis of R/WBY. I also think that if you believe a work to be a product of sexual perversion, you probably can't take the narrative all that seriously; it's two hours of thankless work, really. This is what I mean about lacking a sensible narrative lense, because he doesn't really have one. If the narrative is unserious, then you treat it unseriously; if you want to treat perversion seriously, then you don't beat-by-beat try to intuit magical fairytale worldbuilding according to your irresponsibly applied analysis. The tone of a work needs consideration.

The character assassination (because that's what it is) of the writers implicating them as sexual perverts, writing R/WBY from a place of sexual perversion, is enough for me to seriously question his intentions, particularly given the way he framed the information (with you to draw your own conclusions about, say, Miles saying Yang is the hot one, or dresses provocatively, when she is seventeen). I think it's seriously irresponsible to use supposed feminist ends to bolster your own poor argumentation and it's just too revealing of the frailty of his position and his overall channel aims. It's telling that he left out the fact that the writers have a definite position on sexist anime tropes, which is that of rejecting them, one example being they specifically eliminate any chance of your regular disgusting 'panty shot'. I don't know the writers myself, but I'm not trying to evaluate their personality, I'm trying to evaluate their work, which I feel successfully remixes regressive gender tropes in ways that work in the story and the 'male gaze' is largely absent. Let's not get into the Heroine's Journey. Nevertheless, precious little is eroticised in R/WBY (and even when it is, it tends to be subverted e.g. 'pervy uncle' Qrow who makes up his stories about women).

The paucity of this offense regarding R/WBY - something that is partly up to an individual to decide regarding the gender regression, or lack thereof - is quite telling about the rest of his argumentation. I couldn't tell you what H/bomberguy dislikes about R/WBY except that he thinks its fans are stupid and he doesn't like mythic storytelling or his favourite anime being referenced by the anime he doesn't like in a way he doesn't like either.

So if there's no cohesion to his analysis, how can I possibly address it? It seems that we simply have irreconcilable differences in approach to narrative. The fact that I've not seen his subsequent sequel (if he ever made it) about the rest of the show really limits the discussion too, since the first three volumes establish the foundation of the show (and to be honest my favourite volumes are V4-V8, which transform the setting).

I wrote this post out because I have mutuals who've never seen R/WBY but probably know H/bomberguy made a video on it, and for other R/WBY fans who wondered how I handled that criticism - since I am overall a relatively well-documented apologist for the show.

I get that H/bomberguy has a reputation as being a Lefty-ish YouTuber who was one of those who popularised the scathing, several-hour long critiques of popular media. I think that this is an embarrassing genre overall and done well by few, and is responsible for fandom discourse predicated upon ego, provocation, and clickbait; further, the length just implies an inability to convey an effective point overall, and makes it impossible to write a succinct rebuttal. I am thankfully saved by the fact H/bomberguy cannot narratively intuit his way out of a paperbag.

Finally, I think that those in Star Wars Prequel Trilogy glass houses shouldn't throw stones at geeky R/WBY fans. Unless you defend the PT from a monomythic perspective - which he does not do - I can't take your opinion on anything sincerely.

#I just felt like writing this out sorrey #I'm just a Tumblrina don't mind me #stirring the pot #truly