#i decided to just write stuff without consulting

[luveline]

hi lovely, was wondering if you would be able to write any hotch x bombshell!reader ? maybe before they got together or any scenario/prompt you feel like!

take care of yourself and have a great day!!💝💝

The problem with Aaron Hotchner is that he’s too lovely for his own good. He might not think of himself that way. Not many, if any, of the office would agree. Morgan thinks Hotch is a hard-ass and Elle likes him in her way, but she rolls her eyes when he gets snippy, and Spencer… well, you think you and Spencer are probably on the same page. 

Hotch is kind, and a good man, and if he looks handsome when he’s frustrated that’s just how nature intended it to be. 

“Stop it.” 

“No.” 

“Stop.” Hotch levels you with a look over his computer. You’re surprised he knows how to use it, considering the semi-permanent callus on the pointer finger of his right hand. You must’ve watched him pen a thousand case files, consults and forms in a love letter to the old ways. 

He types slowly, but you’ve decided to keep your comment about it to yourself. “You’re looking at me like you know something I don’t,” he says. 

“Maybe I do.” 

“I’m sure you do. Stop bragging.” 

You lean on your elbow on the desk. He’s got a file open in front of him he’s transcribing for the sake of security. It details a case from a few months ago, and each line of the investigation is printed in Hotch’s neat script, lilting to the left over time. He frowns as he turns a page and realises it’s practically margin to margin with detail.

You want to offer to do it for him, but he’ll say no. You want to slide your foot up the leg of his slacks to see if he’ll blush as he did last Friday when you’d done the same thing, Gideon in the doorway none the wiser and somehow disapproving regardless. 

And Hotch, he’d laughed like a kid when the door closed, not turned on in the slightest but endeared by the guts it took you to try. Then he’d sort of enticed you around the desk somehow —you don’t remember the before of it, only slinking to his side with your heels tumbled on their sides under the desk still, his palms wide and open as you settled on a wooden corner. 

“I’m pretty good on the computer.” 

“I know,” Hotch says. “I authorised your computing and communications technology seminar myself.” 

“I was good at it before the mandatory company training garbage,” you say without heat, wondering how you might entice him over your side of the desk. Flirting aloud doesn’t work. Neither does footsie, and besides, what fun is that for you? But he’d looked at you in this strange way, none of his commanding sternness about him. A smile lingered on his lips; he can’t have known he was smiling at all, or it wouldn’t have shown. He’d left something honest there for you to see. 

Maybe it’s in your best interest to let down your own walls for a minute, too. 

“I could help,” you say. “Perhaps not from the same file, but I can get the laptop and start on the Maryland stuff. If you like.”

He looks at you steadily over the computer. His eyes seem lighter, the suspicious set to his mouth oddly close to smiling. “What do you want?” he teased quietly. 

“Nothing. Just figured it would make your life easier.”

“When have you ever made my life easier?” 

Your smile slips before you can stop it. Immediately, Hotch isn’t smiling either. The, “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, honey,” almost doesn’t reach you, over that sharp second of hurt. 

“It’s fine.” You plaster on a smile again to save him the trouble. “I know you didn’t.” 

“No, really. I didn’t mean that.”

“Hotch,” you say, thumbing over his name slowly, “I know. We were teasing.” 

“Flirting,” he corrects. 

Your smile is real, then. “Flirting?” you ask. “That’s rather forward. Flirting might imply we like one another enough to, oh, I don’t know, help each other with our overflowing workloads?” 

He looks at you, all dark and him, steady, strong, all the stupid things that draw you in. You’re not just in it for his arms, however tightly corded they might seem when he’s pulling off his tie after a long day. “You do more than enough for me just sitting there,” he says, holding your gaze with a careful casualness that has your heart tripping in your chest. “Can you do that for me?” 

“Do what? Just sit here looking pretty?” 

His shoe touches your ankle. “Exactly,” he says quietly. “Just sit there exactly as you are. I promise I don’t need anything else from you.” 

Warmed from the inside out, you sit back in your chair. Grinning like a fool. “Why didn’t you just say that?” you ask. Any chance at sounding casual is lost when your voice comes out gossamer thin. 

He looks you over appraisingly. “See?” he says, turning back to his case file. “Thank you, honey. You’re a big help.” 

You swing one leg over the other to get comfortable, crossing your arms over your stomach smugly. “I know.” 

[daisywords]

I personally know there are multiple types of editing but I've never seen anyone explain it in a way that actually made me understand what the types of editing actually were (yeah cool that you say {}editing is different from []editing but *how*). So if you wanna explain, feel free to.

Your handy-dandy guide to different types of editing

disclaimer: writers, you can literally edit however works for you. these distinction can be useful to your process, or just if you're looking to hire an editor. Not all editors make distinctions in this way; there are various ways of dividing. But no matter what vocabulary you use, it's best practice to start with broad, big-picture stuff and move towards narrower issues. Some editors do all levels of editing, while some specialize.

Developmental Editing (Is it a good story?)

Developmental editing has to do with the content. For a novel, that means working on the bones of the story. The plot. The pacing. The characters. Do their motivations make sense? Can the reader understand why things are happening? Does the story drag in places, or seem to brush past important elements? Do all of the subplots get resolved? etc. etc. (At this stage an editor is mostly going to be offering suggestions, pointing out issues, and throwing out potential solutions. Beta readers can also be very helpful at this stage to get a reader's perspective on the story beats and characters.)

Line Editing (is it well written?)

Sometimes called substantive editing, line editing is zooming in a little bit more to focus on scenes, paragraphs and sentences. Once we've decided that a scene is going to stay, lets look at the mechanics of how it plays out. Does the scene start to early or too late? Does the writing style communicate the emotions we want the reader to feel? Does the dialogue match the characters' voices? do any of the sentences sound awkward or ugly? Is the movement being bogged down by too much purple prose anywhere, or is there not enough detail? (This can get pretty subjective, so it's important that the writer and the editor are on the same page with taste, style goals, etc.)

Copy Editing (is is correct?)

Copy editing is all about the details. Think grammar and punctuation. Do the sentences make sense? are they grammatically correct? Is the dialogue punctuated correctly? Any misspellings? Should this be hyphenated? Should this be capitalized? Should we use a numeral, or write out the number? etc etc. A significant part of copy editing is matching everything to a style manual (like Chicago or AP) a house style guide (individualized preferences from a publisher, for example), and a project's own internal style sheet (are the character's names spelled the same every time? if we used "leaped" in chapter 4, we shouldn't use "leapt" in chapter 7) Copy editing is still subjective, but less so than the earlier levels, so a copyeditor will be more likely to just go in and make a bunch of (tracked!) changes without consulting the author for everything.

Bonus: Proofreading (did the copyeditor catch everything? are there typos? formatting issues? have any errors been introduced?)

Lots of people say editing when they really mean proofreading. Proofreading is the absolute last thing to get done. It's the one last pass just before something is published. It's important, but as you can see, there's a whole lot more to editing than just checking for typos.

[qqueenofhades]

Regarding "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956", would you say you were consciously reading it with an eye to reviewing its technical merits, ie reliable sources, and analysing them well, or was it more reading for pleasure - or indeed, are the two one and the same? Or is it something completely different to any of those?

I read it for a couple reasons, first being that I am currently focusing on Eastern European history, politics, and international relations in the new degree, and second that it is something I am genuinely interested in both on its own behalf and for present-day resonances. So I am reading it as a trained historian but also because I am interested in the subject and want to learn more, so it's not like I'm just confirming stuff that I already know. On which, a few quick points on how to read like a historian:

I admire Anne Applebaum's stuff a lot, and it has earned external acclaim: for example her previous book Gulag won the Pulitzer Prize. This is a good indication that an author has legitimate credentials and strong research about the topic at hand, and that it has been recognized by multiple international experts and prize bodies. Obviously, not every book needs to have won the Pulitzer to prove its usefulness, but it does mean that it comes from a historian who has received thorough and positive peer review on the highest level. I also recommend her book Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine.

Next, she is upfront about how she approached her sources, where she found them, and the language and access logistics. She is based in Warsaw, speaks Polish and Russian, and was able to directly translate sources in those languages; for Iron Curtain, she names her research assistants/translators in Hungarian and German and which archives they were working in. She notes that it took six years to write the book because of the necessity of consulting these far-flung document archives in different places; she has also conducted some in-person interviews. There is an extensive bibliography and direction for future reading. As well, despite the complexity of her subject, she is a very clear and easy-to-follow writer; someone who was approaching the book and knew relatively little about the regions or the major research questions would be able to follow along. I have recently read several history books where I was interested in the topic and wanted to follow along, but the writing was unnecessarily murky, unclear, or convoluted, and which made it difficult to keep up, even in those books written and published by a popular press.

Next, while she obviously wants to explore the problems of these societies and the phenomenon of totalitarian government in detail, she attempts to present both perspectives: both why these societies were initially attractive, the social and political factors of destroyed postwar Europe that enabled their implementation, and what ordinary people thought and experienced in response. While she is very clear that this was a Soviet effort based in Moscow and based on Stalinist principles, she also underlines that it was not just a situation of one-way agency where totalitarian principles were being unilaterally imposed on a hapless population without any local collaboration or support. She explores the reasons why local East German/Polish/Hungarian authorities decided to cooperate (or not cooperate) with the occupying authoritarian power, how people in each of those places did the same, and the fact that the totalitarian project was indeed made possible largely because of this collaboration (and when the collaboration was revoked, it instantly ran into major difficulties). That is an important lesson for the present day when we are looking at those organizations, corporations, and individuals that have already pre-emptively offered their support to a fascist government, and are acting in happy accordance with it.

As such, in short-ish summary, there are several ways to read a popular-press history book: for the analysis of technical/historical skills, to consider how the narrative is presented and the conclusions that are drawn, the bibliography and resources that are offered, simply because I am interested in the topic and want to learn more, and because it has important lessons for the present day. So yes.

[softantlers]

i think there is something to be said about lottie and nats class differences and how it bleeds into their respective roles in the group. (i haven’t decided on how yet LOL - maybe around how lotties family relying on symbolic control over emotional labour shapes her position as leader or impacts how she interprets the wilderness. whereas nat relies on pragmatism and material service as in her home life survival was the closest proxy for affection) (i really don’t know if my thoughts are translating well into writing😭sorry)

no absolutely, absolutely, and your thoughts are translating very well!

i wrote this post about leadership styles that kinda addresses the class stuff:

basically i just explored the fact that nat is oriented toward fairness and honoring group dynamics (to a point) while lottie is a loose canon. i think this is because nat grew up under active abuse from her dad & passive abuse from her mom, and also without the material resources to exert control over other people. so she tends to show care by humanizing people, never treating them as disposable (& i think this is especially the case with misty) because she knows the pain of being written off and treated like she's beneath others.

on the other hand, lottie grew up with a controlling father and money as an asset. so i think she misinterprets care as paternalism and making decisions over people "in their best interests" without consulting the group at large.

but honestly, i'm really fucking with what you say about emotional labor vs pragmatism. maybe emotional labor is how lottie herself feels cared for since there was a total absence of that growing up. she had everything, so to speak, but her dad's heart. on the other hand, natalie literally grew up without. so she views care as providing & making sure the others are living as comfortably as possible?

good food, anon. please feel free to share more thoughts if you have them!

[doumadono]

I don’t know if this counts as an emergency request, feel free if to ignore/delete this if it isn’t or if you don’t want to write it

but I’m just so angry right now that I feel like crying.

my mom passed away last march and her best friend is managing her trust. My or my siblings can’t since we’re all underage. She’s been selling and giving away things that belonged to my mom without even consulting us first. She first sold the house she’d been living in for the past 8 yrs (my parents are divorced so we’ve been living with my dad) that we were wanting to buy. She tried selling my mom’s antique Barbie collection that is INCREDIBLY sentimental to us. And she might be trying to sell her freaking wedding dress and ring. (I’m sorry if this is ranting, I’m trying not to)

could I request a Kirishima or Giyuu x reader who would be going through similar things? Just basically a bunch of angry tears

(Again, please ignore this if you do not want to do this.)

A/N: I'm so angry to hear about the difficult situation you're facing. Losing a loved one is challenging, and dealing with the management of their belongings adds another layer of complexity. It's completely understandable that you're upset and frustrated. In such cases, it might be helpful to seek legal advice. Given your age, you might want to consult with a guardian or someone you trust to explore options for managing your mom's trust more responsibly. Documenting your sentimental attachment to specific items could also be beneficial. If you need a listening ear, don't hesitate to message me. I trust that these small headcanons will manage to elicit the slightest hint of a smile on your face

EMERGENCY REQS MASTERLIST

Kirishima

Kirishima would be the epitome of emotional support. He might not fully understand the intricacies of your situation, but his empathy shines through.

Kirishima's anger isn't just about the items; it's about protecting your feelings and memories. He firmly believes in standing up for what's right, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. "Your mom's stuff means a lot to you, right? I can't stand the thought of someone messing with that."

He suggests a proactive approach, perhaps talking to the trust manager, explaining your emotions, and trying to find a compromise.

Kirishima would spend time with you, engaging in activities that could help ease your mind – maybe a training session or a casual outing.

Kirishima would certainly surprise you with a small gift – a custom-made keychain representing your mom's hobbies or a necklace with a pendant with her picture inside. "I thought this could be a little reminder of the good times. Whenever you look at it, you'll remember her smile."

The setting sun cast a warm glow over the city as you sat with Kirishima on a quiet rooftop. The distant sound of traffic filled the air, but for now, it was just the two of you. Kirishima, sensing your distress, suggested spending some time away from the chaos.

The gentle breeze rustled Kirishima's spiky hair as he spoke, "I get it, you know? Losing something important... it sucks. When my aunt got laid off, we had to sell a lot of stuff. I remember feeling so powerless. But your situation, it's awful. It's so fucking unfair."

He glanced at you, his red eyes softened with empathy. "But we're not powerless now. We can do whatever it takes. We ca meet her and tell her how much these things mean to you. We can contact the authorities to accuse her of adverse management of property. There must be something we can do. Whatever you decide, I'm with you."

As the sun dipped below the horizon, Kirishima handed you a small, carefully wrapped package. "I thought this might help. A little something to keep your spirits up."

Opening it, you found a silver necklece with a pendant with a tiny picture of your mom inside. Kirishima smiled sadly, "Whenever you look at it, please remember the good times. We'll face this head-on, together."

Tomioka

Giyuu is more reserved, but his empathy is strong. He might not express his anger openly, but his actions speak volumes.

He listens patiently as you vent your frustration, understanding the depth of your emotions.

Giyuu doesn't express his anger openly but conveys deep empathy through his calm demeanor. "I can't fathom your pain, but I'm here for you. We'll find a way together."

Giyuu suggests a more subtle approach, like writing a heartfelt letter to the trust manager, explaining the importance of these items. "Words have power. Sometimes, they can be more impactful than actions."

He may take you to a serene location, like a quiet lake or a peaceful garden, providing a calm environment to discuss your feelings.

Giyuu, with his calm demeanor, took you to a serene lakeside retreat. The peaceful setting was a balm for your troubled soul, and together, you reflected on your mother's memories.

Underneath the canopy of cherry blossoms, you and Giyuu sat in silence, the gentle rustling of leaves and the distant hum of the lake providing a soothing backdrop. Giyuu listened attentively as you shared stories about your mother, each memory a delicate thread binding you to her.

"You have a beautiful way of expressing your love for her," Giyuu spoke softly, his gaze reflecting a mixture of understanding and empathy. "Let the water carries your sorrows away. Feel free to let it all out, darling."

As the sun dipped low, painting the sky in hues of orange and pink, Giyuu suggested writing your thoughts on paper, symbolically letting them float away on the lake. The letter, carefully crafted, held the essence of your emotions, a silent plea for understanding.

"You've been strong through this. Your words will find their way to her heart," Giyuu assured, stroking your nape slowly.

[seventeenlovesthree]

Digimon Writing Challenge - Mix and Match: Mimi + Piyomon + Reliability

[Yamato] [Takeru] [Hikari] [Sora] [Taichi] [Koushirou] [Mimi] [Jyou]

Summary: After fighting with Koushirou and being unable to console Meiko, Mimi feels like nobody is really relying on her. Especially Sora, who seems to handle things so much better than she does. Piyomon has her own opinion on that though.

Word count: 593

Mimi hadn’t been this frustrated in a long, long time. Not even when she had been alone in the US for several years had she felt as… Lonely as she did right now.

The last time she had disagreed with Koushirou that heavily must have been around six years ago. She still couldn’t control the surge of anger rising in her chest when she remembered how vehemently he had disregarded her point of view. How could he have ignored Meiko’s feelings so blatantly, how had he not been able to even try to understand that Mimi had to act, to fight by herself?!

Furthermore – Meiko had not let her console her any further either, but had run away instead. Of course Mimi could relate to the urge to hide from the noise and the fighting, but… It was still stinging to not be able to help.

Not only that – Sora had looked at her with those worried eyes before… And yet, she had turned to talk to Koushirou and Meiko, trying to reason with the former and to comfort the latter. All that by herself, without consulting her as well…

“It’s like none of them even considers to rely on me for once…”, Mimi growled, leaning her forehead against the cool window in front of her. She had decided to stay back with the other Digimon in the hallway leading to Koushirou’s office while Sora was trying to handle the situation. Meanwhile, Taichi and the others had gone to grab something to eat for them.

“I bet she’s angry at me too… She’s always handling all this stuff with grace and I…”

“I don’t think so!”, Piyomon chirped next to her all of the sudden and the other Digimon turned to look at her in surprise.

“What…?”

“I don’t think Sora is mad at you. I believe she just wanted to give you a moment to breathe. She’s just like that, you know?”

“I do… I do know that… But still… Why couldn’t we have done this together? Is she not trusting me?!”

“Mimi…”, Palmon tried carefully, but Piyomon was, once again, faster:

“She does trust you! And because she knows you so well, she knows that you have your heart at the right spot! I think it’s not a bad thing to speak your mind on the spot, you know? Sora is thinking about her words before speaking them a lot, but… Sometimes, she takes too long to act because of that. So… I believe it’s helpful in one situation, but not in the other!”

“Mh…”

Mimi had always admired Sora, but never once had she wished that she could be like her. They were both different and that was perfectly fine. Always had been. And yet…

“She knows she can rely on you! You have so much energy and your cheerful ways bring everyone together all the time! Just… Right now you need to rely on Sora to handle it in her way too.”

Looking at the small pink bird in this very moment made Mimi realize how much she reminded her of Sora. These kind, caring eyes that had nothing but patience for her. Maybe she had really needed a moment to breathe and think straight again. Maybe it was good to consider other methods every now and then as well after all.

“Thank you”, Mimi whispered with teary eyes as she sank to the ground, leaving Piyomon room to jump into her arms for a soft hug. “I swear I’ll become someone for her to rely on one day too…!”

[mcchipisfried]

I'm watching Hannibal for the first time and I'm not gonna lie I had my doubts. (Currently on Seaon 2 Episode 11)

(ALSO SPOLIERS BELOW though I think I'm the last person on tumblr who HASN'T seen Hannibal)

My forefathers forgive me, I had doubts. So so many doubts. I wanted to go into this show decimating everyone's reasoning that Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham would work as a couple (romantic or otherwise). I wanted to be fed a story about murder, deception, manipulation, betrayal, and maybe even a little but of cannibalism. And don't get me wrong I have gotten this, but I've also been fed a romantic comedy.

I went into this show not wanting to find reasons to want these two together, I wanted to think "Oh the people of tumblr probably pieced a bunch of subtext together and I probably will as well but it'll hardly be anything that I could write about to my friends who haven't seen the show"

I was so fucking wrong.

Really it should have been the moment where Alana and Hannibal were having a ✨️moment✨️ while Will and Margot were also having a ✨️moment✨️ so the way the whole scene played was very. Well. Not what you would expect from a guy that should have every reason to shoot Hannibal on sight. The fucking framing and cinematography got me to send a 3 minute long vm at 2 am to my friend who really doesn't care about Hannibal.

Or maybe it should have been every single time tweddle dee and tweddle dum are even remotely alone together and decide to start eye fucking each other while also making death threats.

But no what got me was when Alana described what was done to Freddie Lounds' body the second time around as a demonstration of a courtship (best way I can phrase it without just explaining the plot that led us here)

Really, its such a small moment.

But the way the two idiots are standing there looking at each other and Alana shouldn't have been as funny as it was nor should it have instantly reminded me of an early 2000's movie where the couple is secretly dating because they just can't help it and some third party, maybe even one the main couples friends discovers them while trying to NOT make it a Big Deal™ because they are in public except y'know, this is happening over the body that Person A burned to a crisp and sent rolling in a wheelchair while Person B got said body after the funeral and made it into an effigy.

Anyways TLDR: I thought the Hannibal x Will stuff was all very insignificant subtext but actually it was just text and it was screaming. I would also like to thank my film, cinematography, scriptwriting, lighting, and storytelling college classes because as it turns out you did do something for me. You made me realize that whatever is happening between Hannibal and Will is not platonic and I will be consulting AO3 to further expand my understanding of these characters as soon as I finish watching the show.

Also yes I know at some point someone says Hannibal is in love with Will. But now I'm starting to believe that.

[pocketmania]

umm, hi! first time anon here, and also first time requester, i've been reading a lot though, i fucking love blogs like this ❤

splatoon 🎨🔫hurt/comfort, sfw (but it can be suggestive...) acht (or any other idol, but my brain keeps swinging back to acht) x human! reader? i'm a sucker for existential comfort like that, (and it's so incredibly hard to settle on a character since all of them have a unique perspective or attitude one could use as a lens for that kind of thing, aughhhh 💥💥💥) everything loved and known to you is dead and forgotten, but something just as, if not more, worthy of that love and memory can be found in it's place i'm trying to write stuff in that vein myself and i don't see enough of it...

Aaa hi! Thank you for consulting me to write for you!

I'm gonna go with Acht on this one (again, this marks my 4th time writing about them) since they seem to be familiar with existential dread lol

I'm also sorry if this is bad or not what you wanted! As you can see, I'm not the best at writing lol (at least not without making it too long)

Now onto the thingy

‎‧₊˚✧[ Alternan Survivor ]✧˚₊‧

(🎨🔫🤬❤️‍🩹) - splatoon comfort

‧₊˚ ⋅ 𓐐𓎩 ‧₊˚ ⋅

- - - - - - -

"WHAT ARE YOU?!" You screeched, holding out your hand in case of an attack and backing into a corner, absolutely helpless.

Okay, time to back up. 'How did you get here?' You woke up from some sort of capsule in a dark, damp room. You managed to exit the room but were, unfortunately, met with an equally dark and damp corridor. All the doors, save one, were locked. You opened the door, closed it behind you, and began to rummage around, hoping that there was something to help you understand what was going on.

All there was was a bed, a DJ turntable, a minifridge, a desk with a laptop on a composing software, and some other stuff. You decided to check the desk first since it seemed the most useful. You were rummaging around in it, but you nothi-

Click.

You heard the door open and immediately snapped your head around to find who opened it. It was this.. green, octopus humanoid. Its tentacles were red and blue, but most of them were covered by its headphone-hat combo. It had mirror shades, knee-high boots, and a black tank-top dress. Its fingertips were also red.

You were mortified at the.. thing before you, and you screamed at the top of your lungs. You somehow tripped on your own feet, knocking a bunch of things off the desk on your way down. You scooted to a corner, your heart in your mouth.

The creature pulled up its shades, revealing yellow eyes. Yellow eyes that looked sad and tired. Yellow eyes that looked concerned. It held out its hands to show that it posed no threat to you, but you were still incredibly nervous.

And that's how you got to where you were now. The thing attempted to speak to you, but it was nothing but gibberish to your ears. You squinted, trying to make out any words that would make any sort of sense to you. It still didn't.

The octopus-humanoid realized that you couldn't understand it, so it went over to its laptop and began to type something out. It cautiously brought it over and crouched so you could see it better.

Some sort of article was pulled up, but, of course, you couldn't read the writing. However, a specific picture stuck out to you.

A photo. A photo of many human bones found underground. Next to a rocket.

Suddenly, everything made sense. The capsule, being underground, the creature standing before you.

Humans were dead.

Memories suddenly came flooding back to you; Alterna, Judd, the sentient Telephone. You put yourself into that capsule somewhere far away from Alterna as you didn't trust the younger scientists and their ambition. The rocket launch everyone had been talking about must have failed. You didn't know how long you had been asleep, but the article answered that for you.

Twelve thousand years. It was impossible. Well, it obviously wasn't since you were sitting there right now when you should've died twelve thousand years ago.

You looked (and felt) defeated. You held your head in your hands, and you began to sob violently. You couldn't understand anyone.. you didn't know where you were.. your entire kind.. ceased to exist..

The thing crouched beside you and rose a hand to pat your back. You found it oddly comforting, despite not knowing whatever was comforting you was. After about ten, maybe fifteen minutes, your sobbing slowed. You sat in disbelief.

The creature spoke to you again. You still didn't know what it was saying, but you could tell it felt bad for you. Then, it stood up and held out a hand. A hand for you to take, for you to rely on, for you to trust.

You hesitated. All of this was happening so fast in such little time. But.. the creature didn't seem to pose a threat. It helped you understand and even comforted you (to some extent).

You took its hand and stood up.

Everything was still over your head, especially the new life that had emerged while you were asleep. But you could trust that this.. person.. would help you. "Thank you," you said, sniffling and rubbing your eyes. They smiled.

They, at least, seemed to understand your thankfulness.

- - - - - - -

‧₊˚ ⋅ 𓐐𓎩 ‧₊˚ ⋅

[themirokai]

i was wondering if i could please hear about your process and how you got to be in environmental law?

i'm not anywhere with my work life yet, but i'd like to be somewhere political or legal and something with environmental/trade policy. i'm just not sure the direction to go and the one lawyer i knew irl is dead

Hi there! Thanks so much for the ask! I wrote the answer to what made me want to be a lawyer over here and that covers the first part of how I got into environmental law. Here are some other relevant parts of my process, hopefully without being overly discursive.

- Went to a law school with a very good public interest loan repayment assistance program. Kept me financially solvent and current on my loan payments while I was a low-paid government employee.

- Went to law school in a city where I could intern and law clerk at environmental organizations during law school. Clerked at a federal government agency all through my 2nd year. Worked at a well-known environmental ngo between my 2nd and 3rd year.

- Will spare you the part about the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on my career(I graduated in 2009).

- Clerked for a state trial court judge. Decided I never ever wanted to litigate.

- Judge got me an interview with the local public works department which, by sheer incredible luck, needed to hire someone to do environmental law. They hired baby lawyer me to be in-house and brought on a serious law firm as outside counsel. I learned so damn much from that firm’s partner who was our main lawyer.

- Was in-house counsel for the public works department for 7ish years. Learned a lot about water utilities and other stuff.

- Had a baby. Decided I did not want to go back to my job at the end of my maternity leave. There’s a lot more there but we’ll leave it at that.

- Started a one-woman law and consulting firm. Used the very many contacts I had made while working for the city to get clients. Made very very little money.

- By sheer incredible luck, one of my best clients, a small environmental restoration firm, had their general counsel decide to quit right as I was reaching a crisis point about how little money I was making. Got hired as general counsel.

- Learned a fuckton of real estate law and how to write really good contracts.

- Still miss the freedom and independence of running my own shop, but the steady paycheck is worth it.

The biggest developments in my career were partially down to luck. Most of the rest was from talking to people and making connections and striving to be the kind of person who people are happy to hear from when I call them up and genuinely want to help me when I ask for help. The reason I was in position to take advantage of those lucky breaks was the relationships I had with people.

I can’t tell from your ask if you’re in school and looking for your next step or already in the workforce and I’m happy to chat via DM if you’d like. But what I will tell you, regardless of where you are, is that environmental law/advocacy/policy is a massive field that can mean a ton of different things. My best advice is to keep an open mind and go after what’s available even if it’s not exactly what you thought you’d be doing. Never in a million years when I was working at NGOs in college and law school did I think I’d be doing water and wastewater utility law. But it was super interesting and gave me a phenomenal start to my career.

I used to tell students who wanted to do environmental stuff to try to work for the government early in your career because it gives you good perspective on all sides of the issues. That is maybe still my advice if you can get into a state or local government that gives a crap about the environment, but obviously this isn’t the time to be looking for environmental jobs with the feds.

I hope this is somewhat what you were looking for when you sent your ask! Like I said I’m happy to chat via dm or answer more asks. Mentoring and giving advice is seriously one of my favorite things at this point in my career/life.

Thanks again for the ask!

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

I think the best argument against "He didnt have a choice" ( i think this is why choice is rhysands favorite word 🥴) is you're right, he didn't. The AUTHOR did. Sjm had a choice and still she went for the worst and more illogical one. She still decides to put the women in her series under awful situations without further consequences. I really dislike phrases like "my characters wanted me to write them that way" or "my characters lead the story". Im always yes this is a romantic way to see the writing process but ill never forget this author who said "my characters do whatever the hell I want them to do".

hi anon!!!! (sorry this is a super old anon that i actually finished writing a while ago sorry nonny💙. can’t think of anything to say so im just posting old stuff in my drafts today 🫶🏾)

i agree! its a problem on multiple different levels. for one, sjm often relies on telling the audience what we should get out of a scene, instead of what allowing us to form our own takeaways. its a very hand-holding type of storytelling; in consequence, the 'evidence' being derived is often contradictory to actual events. like the story can argue that "change is slow," and thats why illyria and the con persist, but that statement is consistently proven to be incorrect.

lets look at how invalid the idea of 'change is slow is'

in one year - feyre is able to become high lady, effectively creating an entirely new governing system, in which, a high lord can give a person absolute power of the court (remember - what feyre and rhysand say is 'law'). there is no process, no objection, or any fear of reprimand. rhys doesn't even have to consult his second-in-command. not only that - but feyre is also allowed power over the court of nightmares, which politically, is supposedly an entirely different governing state. again - keir and devlon are not consulted about this.

it took six months to produce to first illyrian female warrior to complete the rite in history. in the span of six months - emerie completes the rite. thats more illyrian women than rhys, az, and cass's entire 300-400 year reign.

it takes feyre less than a month to completely cause an entire court to fall - yet regimes such as tam's father, beron, and amarantha somehow persisted as long as they despite them being canonically worse rulers. even - and i mean even - if tamlin was the worst leader to have ever walked this earth, it would still take more than three to four weeks. and factoring in that this is a population of immortal, canonically 'slow-to-change' individuals.......

like - how slow can the change actually be? how can the book possibly explain how such drastic changes happen from book to book but not in 400 years? how come there have been no illyrian women in the army or in the rite if cassian and rhys have earnestly been working with the females in illyria? even the few moments we see them at illyria, they still seem to be at a rudimentary level; there's no established female training areas, no veteran trainees, no consequences for breaking the law in regards to the females...there's nothing that suggests any actual measures have been taken.

that's just one example of 'canon' statements acting in contradiction the previously established pieces of information. more - its a consistent pattern of contradiction in regards to certain characters. its their natural characterization acting against the forced narrative voice.

and this makes it problem on mulitiple fronts.

and even more, off the point you made about the women in her stories - i think there needs to be a larger conversation had about the patterns of female violence in these books; specifically the role that female violence plays in establishing sexual tension and relationships in general. or...the amount of times the female protagonist has to undergo some extreme form of humiliation at the behest of future love interest; there's an utter lack of this with the men.

sjm is a very intentional author - these problems exist because of how intentional she is as a writer. i know exactly the function of each scene, exactly what emotion the she wants me to feel. this is not because these characters are written well, but because we are often just told it. feyre can 'express' disdain for rhysand'a actions, but she often undermines her own inner thoughts about the issue. feyre’s inner thoughts are often abuse apologist 101 and in retrospect it’s kind of painful the way she consistently makes excuses for rhys, even when it’s her well-being being threatened and undermined. and that’s honestly bc sjm’s narrative voice supersedes the natural characterization of her characters. sjm doesn’t know how to organically create conflict between characters she actually likes bc she doesn’t know how to write conflict. it’s a consistent pattern in her series and it’s why all the villains suck and all battles ultimately fall flat.

but the problem becomes a bit broader (i.e. this is a larger issue in publishing and literary crit). some of the arguments that i see often, and that i referenced in my last post are these:

"why read this this book if you don't like the characters?" "why continue to read the book if you don't like it?" "this is a book about fairy porn - why are you analyzing it." "i read for fun." (this is not a bad statement, but it becomes troublesome in the context i will explain)

the commonality between these statements is that they are avoidant. often, they are employed when people can't explain away the amounting problems in the series, so they avoid the conversation.

because for one, you should never (and I means NEVER) say that a piece of literature should not be analyzed. or that fantasy negates interrogation into harmful themes. that’s just anti intellectual nonsense. second, if we’re arguing about real world issues bc of the book; of if your argument is that tamlin is abusive bc he did abusive things, then you literally can’t make this argument. the whole point of moving from tam is bc he was…abusive. abuse is not a fantasy. regardless of what the author intends, if a character is abusive or does absuive things, we should be looking at that.

look…if you are defending rhys using the logic the book establishes please have it. but the moment you implicate real-world values into this story, you’ve got to see it to the end. the same goes for the series as a whole: the second maf decided to integrate a ‘domestic violence plot lines’ specifically referring to behaviors as ‘red flags’ it immediately kind of gave up the kind of distance the fantasy romance genre usually gives to such issues.

[autumnwoodsdreamer]

Got a new favourite way to remedy the Ahsoka show!

(I’m putting this under a cut so if you enjoyed the show, you can just scroll on in peace)

I’ve tried a bunch of different methods (like pretending that’s not Sabine, just someone who happens to look sorta like her and has her name to it’s all an alternate dimension to World Between Worlds shenanigans to just outright ignoring the show’s existence altogether and holding onto the animated show as the only lore that matters).

And yes, okay, none of this terribly matters in real life, it is just a show, I have touched much grass recently, but there’s so much I like in the Star Wars Universe, enough that it keeps me wanting to make art and write fics and explore the characters and the worlds and the stories, but sometimes, in order to enjoy the parts I like, I find I have to come with ways to deal with the parts that aren’t so great. Ignoring them works to a degree, but when it’s constantly popping up, affecting the rest of the story, and you can’t read a single Wookiepedia article without being brutally reminded that, yup, this is canon now and there’s nothing you can do about it, I find I have to get creative. So I’m just having a bit of fun here, don’t mind me.

Okay, disclaimer all aside, my new favourite method is to accept it as canon, but! It’s a show in-universe.

It’s an “inspired by true events” type of series produced by some company in Corellia or Coruscant (somewhere very, very far away from Lothal). They decided, after the war, to make a film about the suddenly popular rebels and latched onto the Ghost Crew, because, hey! They had two Jedi on their team!

But there are some details you obviously couldn’t get from whispers on the street, like Ahsoka being alive or Jacen’s very existence. So where, oh where did they get all those bits of insider information?

From our loveable sell-out, Hondo Ohnaka, of course.

(He just contributed a few details and skipped away some credits richer, he didn’t see the final script because Hondo Ohnaka may be a pirate but he would never approve of such character assasination of his friends!)

It explains why Sabine is so wildly out of character, why her Mandalorian skills and heritage are for the most part erased (because they couldn’t be bothered to hire a Mandalorian consultant), why she’s suddenly wanting/training to become a Jedi (because Jedi are becoming quite popular thanks to all the stories of Luke Skywalker), why all the Force stuff is just downright weird and she can use the Force at all, why she doesn’t seem to know how to wield a lightsaber despite her training with THE Kanan Jarrus (because the writers didn’t know she had any training with him, didn’t even know about the Darksaber stuff), why she spent a decade doing pretty much nothing when Rebels Sabine would’ve continued in the fight against the Empire AND protected Lothal, why she doesn’t have a jetpack (wasn’t in the budget) and why Clan Wren is just written off as dying in the Purge but it’s never touched further on (they didn’t want to go too far with the Purge stuff because, again, they didn’t have a Mandalorian consultant).

It’s why Zeb never shows up (the Lasats are all out in Wild Space; they couldn’t find any locally to portray him and their proposal of shaving a Wookie and dyeing him purple was deemed insensitive by the studio execs).

It’s why Hera doesn’t act like the Hera we saw in Rebels. It’s why Ahsoka is nothing like the more hopeful, more helpful Rebels Ahsoka (and why her lekku and montrals are so teeny-tiny). It’s why Thrawn is such a pale reflection of any other version of Thrawn.

And a little further with this, it’s fun to think of how the more true-to-Rebels versions of the characters would react to the show.

Sabine couldn’t watch anything after the Ezra reunion because it’s a nice lie, imagining him safe somewhere in another galaxy, living amongst cute turtle aliens, but she’s still searching for him in her reality and she doesn’t even know if he’s still alive. (And she can’t stomach the second-hand guilt she’s feeling at the whole endangering the entire galaxy for a mere chance to see him again thing—she would never do that; she knows he would not want her to do that for him).

Hera is the only one who has watched it entirely (partly so she can tell the others what to expect because of course people are gonna talk about it).

Ahsoka refuses to watch it (mostly for the Clone Wars flashback scenes—she does not need to relive that, and she’s made her peace with Anakin’s betrayal; she doesn’t want to see the weirdly forgiven version the show purportedly portrays).

Chopper is impressed they got a droid that looks so much like him (he’s a very old model), but he insists that had he been there in those situations, people would be getting shocked left, right and centre.

TL;DR: The Ahsoka show is a show in the Star Wars universe (and just that).

[bomberqueen17]

quick turnaround

The first chicken processing day is this coming tuesday. so we got back into town around 7pm last night, and I immediately put a load of laundry in.

This is mostly me wittering about chores and medical stuff, so, cut for boring, LOL.

it's cold and rainy here so I hung last night's laundry up on drying racks in the guest room, so mostly it is dry this morning-- delicates, so they didn't need to dry in the sun really-- and now this morning i've put in a second load and it's already on drying racks and some is on the line, it's not raining but it's cloudy so it'll dry slow, but like, trousers and t-shirts do better on the line than on racks. Yes I do own a dryer-- a gas dryer actually-- but it beats the fuck out of my clothes and I don't like to use it if I can in any way avoid it. (Mostly I use it to tumble towels and dress shirts for fifteen minutes, and then I hang them out once they're steaming and hot, and they dry without wrinkles that way. Yes I'm on the OCD spectrum, yes it mostly manifests about laundry. Hilariously, my farm BIL is also on the OCD spectrum, farther along it toward where it's actually a problem [mine is SO mild I don't claim it as a disorder at all, i just have things i Care About for Reasons], and has done tons of work on himself and tries to mask it, but once I understood that about him I understood that most of our lil workplace quarrels were our compulsions clashing, so I started making more concerted efforts to decide when to bow to his compulsions and when to advocate for mine, which in many cases are informed by superior knowledge as I've worked in food service more than him. I bow to him more on cleaning now because he does have prior janitorial experience. Unless I can prove he's wrong, LOL.)

I went off Ritalin mostly while on vacation-- I took it the morning I went fabric shopping because I thought it might help me actually make decisions, and that went well so maybe it worked. But that means I have extra pills, so I'm going to try to today take a morning and midday dose, while I have So Much To Do to prepare for the coming couple of weeks, and see if that plus the structure of this massive to-do list help me get anywhere. I just feel like if I can have this data before my next $300 3-minute psych consult I'll make more progress. Ritalin is better than Adderall (less brutal comedown, less getting "stuck")-- I *think*, but it's hard to tell. Vyvanse was also very hard to evaluate, is the problem, because that one I never did have any spare pills so I could never try an effective dose.

I do get it, i do get not giving me high doses when I'm so unsupervised, but-- for all of the medications, the first couple of days were weird and I had trouble hydrating and I was jittery and stuff, but it went away so quickly, I would have been fine with "take half dose two days, then ramp up to effective dose and see how it works" type directions, instead of "take what we know absolutely will be too little for you for two weeks and then come back and try to guess whether it helped", which has just meant I don't really have much data to on on here.

But. I've spent almost forty years needing this kind of medication and not able to access it at all, so I'm reminding myself that this is very rapid progress really.

So I figure I'll do a double dose today, a single tomorrow while I'm driving (maybe I will take that sole dose at midday, since driving is easy and boring but then I have work I need to get done all afternoon), and then I'll try either single or double dosing for the week of farm work until I can get my next appointment, depending how many pills I have. I want to be consistent but lol. It's not in my nature and it's not in my circumstances, so it can be a goal.

I also should write down what I realized about my sciatic nerve. I was joking that my knee caught a haunting in New Orleans somehow. Because it went from being a classic sciatic nerve pain situation-- starting in hip, through back of leg, ending at back of knee-- and wound up just being this horrible pinching pain right inside my knee, like not in the joint but somehow manifesting in a dimension extending from the back of my patella into Hell somehow-- and it was keeping me awake both when trying to nap during the day and also at night when trying to sleep. So I gave up on sleeping and sat on the couch to bitch about it in the complaints channel on the Discord where I'm mostly at home (it was a witcher server and over the last two or three years has mutated into just this ragtag group of us bitching about unrelated things and occasionally dumping fanworks on each other, sometimes about unrelated media)--

but here I'm gonna let you in on a secret, which is that complaining works sometimes. What? Yes. So in order to elicit maximal sympathy from my pocket friends by describing the problem really well (they're very good pocket friends, and many of them know things so describing stuff well sometimes means they have good advice, but even if not, I take satisfaction in communicating well, so I at least feel better about having done that), I really started paying attention to the pain, and I realized that what was happening was that it was sort of slowly throbbing on a cycle. I always knew where it was, but then it would get painful enough that I felt I had to move and change position, and it would stay at that level of pain for three or four seconds, and then taper off until I only just was aware of it, and then it would repeat-- and it was on a thirteen-to-fifteen-second cycle, and this is the crucial thing, it was unaffected by movement. I had been tossing and turning because what would happen was that it hurt badly enough that I felt I had to move it, and I would move and the pain would ease, and I would try to settle into a position, and then the pain would come back, and my half-asleep exhausted self thought that it was something I was doing. So it meant I was constantly moving, which meant I could not sleep. I had finally gotten out of bed and was alternating stretching and pacing, which seemed to be helping but then it was coming back, and the pacing sure as fuck wasn't helping me sleep, and I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, until finally I stood still and timed it, and then moved and timed it, and realized it was the same.

Realizing that it was happening regardless of movement made me able to hold still while it hurt most acutely, and then sure enough it faded away. And once I knew that moving wouldn't help, I could ride out the urge to move. And once I wasn't constantly trying to find a comfortable position, I could rest. And once I was resting, I could fall asleep. Because this is the annoying thing-- the pain wasn't that bad, even. It's not the agony it has been in the past. I could move through it, easily. It was just too much to hold still through, until I realized that was what I needed to be doing.

So anyway-- traveling home it was mostly fine, it does not like standing in lines, and mostly i sat as much as possible, which isn't good for me long-term but i know over the next couple of weeks i will be doing a shitton of walking and standing so. we'll figure out tactics then.

so along with the ritalin i will be working out my ideal regimens of ibuprofen, aleve, and weed, LOL. Routine! I can make a routine. I can hinge my routine off other people's, which is what works well for me at the farm, and i can see if i can master the art of the amphetamines and maybe get some of my shit done.

Unfortunately all I want to do this week is sew, I watched all of the tourists and locals in NOLA and looked at what they were wearing and now know exactly what I want to make.

and i don't have time to do any of it. but. if i think about it and make concrete plans, i already own much of the fabric and most of the patterns i need. so i can do this. But I'll post separately about the Fashion Lewks I want to do, LOL.

I won't see my physical therapist again until like maybe early June. I counted it out and I've been doing physical therapy for about sixteen weeks at this point. My sister graduated from her physical therapy program and is out on her own now, having hugely improved. I can tell the bad hip is much improved but not healed-- sitting on the plane yesterday someone walked by and bumped my knee and it absolutely did make the cartilage flap go "pop" so that's not healed, but it hurt a lot less than that sort of thing used to. At the last appointment I had, the PT said I should just keep doing the exercises as my circumstances allow, and if they're too easy just increase reps etc., and we'd re-evaluate when I finally saw her again, because obviously I've had all these underlying cascading problems that can only be slowly solved by getting slowly stronger, so who knows.

I don't have concrete goals for that but I would really just. Like to be not-disabled, mostly. Every person has limits, every person is going to have to sit down sometimes, every person is going to have to think hard and make choices about what they do with their bodies-- it's just part of getting into your mid-forties, really-- so I can't just set my goal as being able to do whatever whenever. But I would like to be able to walk for longer distances, I would like to be able to wait in a line without paying for it for days, I would like to just generally be in better shape. So I guess I'll try to work toward that.

idk. and sometime in july my doctor wants me to re-test my fasting blood glucose because the only thing she cares about of my health is that i'm fat and she thinks putting me on metformin will make me not-fat. you'd think she'd have had some interest in diagnosing the pain that was making me unable to exercise but that was not on her radar i guess.

anyway. that's what i'm going to do to get me to june. it's all farm time for the rest of the month and i'm going to do physical therapy and take meth. we'll see how that goes.

[voidmountain]

@piratedllama I can but you’re not going to like it!

Void’s guide to getting a job in conservation

My story

My educational credentials: BAs in philosophy and creative writing from a big cheap state school, and a PhD in English literature with a specialization in environmental humanities from a small private R1. Couple years as an adjunct professor.

I trained my entire life to be a literature professor. It’s all I ever wanted. By the time I was finishing my doctorate, I had a very limiting belief that I was either over- or underqualified for any job outside academia. I was wrong.

By the time I made the decision to leave academia, I had published 2.5 peer reviewed academic articles and several magazine pieces. I also had about 5ish years of part-time communications consulting under my belt from helping run the writing center at my institution. I got a part-time social media/SEO management gig, and then used a grant to fund a comms internship at a local environmental nonprofit. Then I straight up just applied to jobs at conservation orgs on LinkedIn at a rate or 5 per week for about 6 months. I was looking for jobs in communications and education. Landed a couple interviews then got a position as a comms manager. My islander heritage ended up being relevant too bc I have a cultural insight into the regions where the org works. I’ve worked here for about a year, mostly wfh desk stuff, but I like to tag along to projects so I can take pics/do interviews/help with fieldwork/coordinate community meetings & info sessions. I still have a publishing career on the side, with 2 new articles out and a book manuscript in the works.

I do not recommend doing it this way lol.

What I would do instead

Conservation orgs have room for people with all kinds of backgrounds and expertise. If your goal is to have a job similar to mine, get lots of writing and science communication experience. Be able to show that you’ve built impactful campaigns and learn your way around SEO and communications terminology. Start with internships/social media, try and get some experience working with journalists, and have a nice portfolio of campaigns (easy way to start is an awareness campaign for a particular policy or science issue). Other creative experience is a plus (photography/graphic design/web design/UI).

Fieldwork is not that hard to get into. You can get field experience as an undergrad by working in research labs or volunteering. From there, lots of conservation orgs in your area are probably looking for volunteers or part-time workers to do field monitoring. TBH you don’t really need a degree to get into fieldwork, but the ceiling is kind of low without one. With a BS you can work your way up through an org probably to a manager level position where you could lead a field team but not direct a program. Generally, without a MS or PhD, you won’t be designing programs—just carrying them out, which can be really rewarding. You can also make lateral moves towards things like project management—coordinating supplies, transportation, methods, and problem-solving stuff.

Other ways to get into the field: orgs often contract out conservation tech companies to carry out specialized operations, like aerial monitoring and bait distribution. Getting a license for like a heavy-lift drone, an ROV, or boat stuff can also get you in the thick of it.

If you want to design and direct conservation programs, unfortunately you probably need to go to grad school. I can write up a separate post about how to decide whether to pursue an advanced degree if people are interested, but my general advice is Never Enroll In A Masters Program. Either do it as a 4+1 with your undergrad or go straight for the PhD. That’s where you’ll get experience designing your own experiments and contributing to the sum of conservation knowledge.

Extremely important caveat

You do not have to do any of these things in any particular order. It’s totally cool to work in the field for a couple years before going back for the PhD. You also do not need to link your education to your job (god knows I didn’t). My side hobbies of wildlife photography and scuba diving made me a great candidate for the job I eventually got, and they didn’t have anything to do with my degree or original career path. There’s also a million other jobs that conservation orgs have that don’t involve having a science background at all—HR, finance, admin, philanthropy, consulting, & policy analysis are huge parts of this. So are other jobs that aren’t *within* conservation at all, like journalism & social organizing.

A lot of folks I meet out here in the conservation world are on their third or fourth careers. It’s very, very normal to switch it up, try many things, land somewhere, leave, and pick up somewhere else.

All this to say: the world is really, really big. Don’t feel pressured to take the shortest most linear possible path. There are a million ways to have a good life.

[snapdragonling]

2, 12, 14 and 19 for ozy, cian and imbris?

u spoil me!! | oc creation questions

2. Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind?

ozy — once I'd decided to play a character involved with the Owl i definitely took them into consideration as I was developing Ozy! that's my weird ominous god 🧡 i took the King into account as well, given how deeply his autocratic rule dictated (and "justified") Ozy's priorities. i also thought about the existing party composition as i was choosing a class since i wanted to role fill (i obviously didn't know about Dai's multiclass at that point but THANK GOD tbh because can you imagine if we didn't have paladin on paladin violence? a sadder universe)

cian — i was heavily influenced by the Dreamer stuff and the Anders/Justice relationship in DA2, although funnily enough I wasn't actually thinking about Justice directly at the time, I was thinking about a Dragon Age AU i'd made for Middy years ago where she was carrying a Spirit of Hope around 😭 two degrees of separation.

imbris — nope, i'm pretty sure he was born entirely from wanting to play a genasi and a rogue!

12. What have you found to be most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: writing, drawing, edits, etc.)?

ozy — his mindset/POV is so insane and i often struggle to nail it down in writing. it's a lot easier post-campaign now that his emotions aren't obscured by quite as many layers of repression, but he's still just a weird guy with a really complicated way of processing things. he's also fucking difficult to draw and i especially struggle with muscular people but that's the bed i made so i have to lie in it 😩

cian — i keep having really grand ideas for cian art that i just do not have the energy for right now!! there's a comic i want to draw but we KNOW how i feel about comics!! maybe eventually.....ough.

imbris — when i'm writing him i always struggle to find the right balance between "loud indignant English guy" and "not annoying to read". it's slightly easier now that i've aged him up, but i simply can't read a bunch of my older writing at this point, jesus christ.

14. If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be?

ozy — 1.) when in doubt he's usually dry and self-deprecating. 2.) he's still unlearning his old way of seeing the world/himself, it's gonna take a long time, and he's not gonna be graceful about any of it.

cian — 1.) he will literally always try the gentle way first but he's a doctor so he knows that sometimes you need to be brusque. 2.) he's trying really really really hard to keep a meltdown at bay rn.

imbris — 1.) the confidence is sometimes completely real but often pure bluster. 2.) he's loud and squawky but sooooo squishy inside.

19. What is your favorite fact about your OC?

ozy — Kallux tucked Ozy's hair behind his ear in the Abyss and Ozy simply did not process it. surface thoughts were just [static sounds]. he was not in the right mental state to realise what the subtext was, or why it made his brain kick down several gears, or why his endorphins did??? something??? meanwhile his nervous system was rattling the bars of its cage and his subconscious was gearing up for Dramatic Acts of Devotion without consulting Ozy at all.

cian — the way everyone thought his mentor was gonna be a nice chill dude because Cian's such a nice chill dude 😊 Cian's relationship with Athras is so complicated and delicious to me it really is.

imbris — he does so much better in AUs where he has a creative outlet and i think it's so endearing. get this guy a microphone or dance classes so he can stop jumping off buildings and running from the cops. crazy what friends + one (1) hobby will do for you.

[deafaq]

Hello i wish you all a beautiful day.

i have a question about name signs related to writing. You sayd that writers can mention them but don't describe them. Could you ellaborate on that? Does this mean that we can mention that a character has one but not even say what it means and just writing the characters writen name in the place where the signing character would use the sign name?

If its not arbitrary could you say what it means and not describe how its signed? since sign names usualy relate to someone looks, personality, quirks and it could be insight into how the character who gave the sign name sees them. Or should i find a sensitivity reader if i want to do this?

Lastly nicknames. Can i have my deaf character using them for people like a hearing person would if i also write his dialog using the proper name of other characters and imply that he uses a name sign for the proper name? For example calling one of the characters Blue sometimes because they have very distinct blue eyes, usualy wears clothes with blue tones and undertones and they have a less than cheery personality but mostly refer to him to others by his proper name. Or does this and the concept of nicknames in general are too similar to a sign name in concept to be used without consulting with a deaf person first?

Hello,

your character can have a sign name... if you collaborate with a Deaf person who gives them one.

Look, the problem is, hearing writers usually have absolutely wrong idea about how name signs look and work. Writing down a name sign in letters is very difficult. They are, most of the time, not signs you can pick from dictionary - so you cannot go "characters name sign is FLOWER". Name signs are usually created as new signs specifically for the person and while they usually do include some elements of existing signs, they are entirely new.

A Deaf couple decided that they wanted their child to have an sign name on her birth certificate and it was written down as "UbOtDDstarL". Do you know what that means? Would it tell anything to your readers? Can you recreate it based on this? I think the answer to all of this is "probably not". (Unless you studied linguistics of sign language).

If you wanted to "just" describe the name sign, it would still be difficult. I have a friend whose name sign would be... "Left palm out in front, facing from the body, fingers up in the 5 spread position, right palm in tightened 5, palm towards the ground, going slashing motion across the left palm repeatedly". And it means roughly smth like "Wild, constantly breaking boundaries". But the sign itself *isn't* how WILD is signed in our sign language, its a new sign created for her.

I mean, you can use name signs, I cant barge into your room and stop you from writing them. I am just largely irritated bcs its something OURS and its fun for Deaf community and symbol of belonging. And most hearing people see it as sort of... quirky new name thing. The names are often puns and/or sometimes mean and that just doesn't translate properly to spoken language, bcs you cant translate it 1:1. And they rarely are deep meaningful stuff - its usually based on persons looks or their character traits, but like... them always being late. Them talking too big and spreading their hands. Them having really fucking huge forehead.

Look, if its a minor part of your writing, just use nicknames. You can say he calls his friend Paul "Blue" in sign language or whatever.

If you are writing something heavily featuring deafness, you should get a sensitivity reader.

Mod T

[pistachi0art]

omg imagine reblogging my post 3 times?? 🥰 to not even give yourself a good defense, d’awww 🤭

But in all realness why even bother replying at this point? You say you don’t care/that it’s over only to then rant and post about how much people hate you. And what’s even funnier is you also pulling out the minority card with every 5 posts because you HAVE to make it clear, in a community full of ppl who also are probably like you in that regard, that you are apparently the “underdog” who’s being attacked by the “mean antis”!

And to then say that i’m the one being irresponsible for informing my friends/mutuals about your degenerate ass behavior is also really funny, because I wouldn’t have even made the callout in the first place had you just kept your illegal sexual fantasies to yourself! And don’t even try dragging the A03 filters into this bc hey! Guess what dipshit, some people just want to look at the recent fics without having to go through the hassle of trying to filter out every single gross thing you decided to tag! And next to that sometimes people want to look at darker fics without having to read about traumatic events! simple as that.

Not only that people here just sometimes don’t want to check every account bio to make sure that whoever’s post they liked/reblogged isn’t a creep! you keep making points that seem to fly over your head, but you said it yourself, my fan base has minors in it! What if they saw a post, like your recent drawing, and just went and liked it. I know for a fact your ass isn’t going through every single account to make sure that whoever interacted isn’t a minor/anti.

(Also nice job screenshotting every satirical hate comment! Aw what, they said something mean/negative? don’t worry AGAIN you said it yourself, it’s not real so it doesn’t matter! Psst guess what? Tumblr too has a fascinating filter called the delete button! Maybe you could use that and ignore the “haters”!)

It’s clear you must have a very strong humiliation kink. No shame to that but I’m sure you can find healthier options! Oo here’s a good idea! Maybe write about that instead of children!

Better yet go to a mental health consultant and get evaluated! I’m sure they’ll have plenty to say about how this isn’t healthy in any aspect for you, nor is posting about it online!

(Btw did you know that most medical mental health professionals say that your behavior is more likely to be a trauma response from an event within your childhood? Fascinating stuff right? isn’t great to know that your potentially kicking up a whole new wave of people who could potentially become pedophiles because you’re attempting to normalize it? Fun!)

anywho, nice talk! If you really didn’t care you’d block me and move on 💖