#oh oh and Recursion I've got to read that too

[randomlywanderingmoth]

FANSERVANT: Caster of Blessings

(picture created in picrew)

SERVANT CLASS: "Are- are you seriously asking that? Go back up the header and read that again." ALTERNATIVE NAMES: Kat. "Kat for the English speakers. Phonetically sounds like Cat. Yes I'm human, these are just a funny blessing." Neko-chan. "Neko-chan for the Japanese speakers, cuz Neko means Cat, heheh." Emma. "Wait, how the heck do you know that? I mean- it IS my name, and I don't mind you using it, but… that's the name of my Pseudo half… I mean, I guess if you're referring to the very normal human me, then that's fine I guess?"

TRUE NAME: "- woah woah woah hold on a hot minute here, I was gonna do a whole song and dance! Lemme have this!" True Name information presently sealed. "Thank you, dossier."

===

"Anyway, let's rip the band-aid off now, I'm a Pseudo-Servant. To make an extraordinarily long story short, I was a Master in a Grail War, and Caster was my Servant. A whole buncha buncha stuff happened, and I ended up inheriting her Saint Graph. Obviously, I didn't have the cat-ears or cat-tail prior to inheriting my Saint Graph. Don't worry about them too much."

"Oh- oh right, I should give a long-form description of what my deal is. Anyway, I'm the Caster of Blessings. I was gonna be cagey and tell you to call me Kat, but since the dossier blew my cover yeah you can call me Emma. I'm a hedge mage- was a hedge mage- that got tangled up in a Grail War. I ended up summoning the original Caster of Blessings, the one that wouldn't have been a Pseudo-Servant. We bonded, as people do, and I learned that she… didn't exactly like being the Caster of Blessings. It almost didn't matter, except that it turned out I was also compatible to hold that Saint Graph."

"Anyway, at one point… well, my memories are a jumble. I blame either the Throne or the Kaleidoscope, maybe both, but either she gave it to me after taking a fatal wound to let me keep being in the Grail War because she found my wish beautiful, or I took a fatal wound and she sacrificed her life to infuse me with her Saint Graph so I could survive, or I ended up waking up to my own potential as a Mage and we won the Grail and her half of the wishes on the Grail was to let go of her Saint Graph and it peeled off her and stuck to me… I'm rambling, sorry. Presumably, every path in the Kaleidoscope that lead to me becoming the Pseudo-Servant holding her Saint Graph merged, hence my jumbled memories. Presumably there's also memories in there of me being the Caster of Blessings that I summoned, but I'm thankful to be deprived of those memories in this summoning- I don't need that existential recursive headache, please and thanks."

"As the bearer of her Saint Graph, I incidentally also inherited her memories. And, lemme tell ya, I get why she wanted to leave. How many years, decades, centuries, millennia, do you think you could spend, trying to help people? How long can you work, in- I was gonna say in a Sisyphean effort, but even Sisyphus would object to this. I remembered all of it. All the effort, to try to help Humanity. To fix the mess I made- er, she made. Erm- disregard that."

"Anyway, as the Caster of Blessings, her job was as the name implies. To travel the world, to impart blessings unto humanity. To help fix the problems of the people, then to flee when they learned those problems were, on some level, her fault in the first place. Before you ask, no, her legend will never make mention of any of this, I wouldn't be saying it all if I thought it would."

"Anyway, she traveled, as you do, blessed people, as she could, and learned that… well, it's remarkably difficult to permanently quash the darker natures of humanity. She would say impossible, but I've a pedantic mindset to say it technically isn't impossible. But anyway. To give humans wealth is to invite greed, to give them talent is to rouse envy. Attempting to reconcile conflict only planted grudges to incite further outrage. Perhaps none of those in the moment, but given time, good things seem reluctant to ever last. The apple will always find its way to rot in the end."

"Eventually, she gave up. Because of course she did. Because you can say that, after seeing every attempt to help people crumble and fail, you would still keep trying, but immortality does not typically include immortal determination and willpower. Those are still very mortal, and, trust me, after thousands of years your resolve would also falter."

"One day, though, she met someone. Or, someone met her… the memories are difficult here. That someone didn't want to be remembered, if I had to guess- but anyway. They suggested a simple idea to her. The living person can retire, and her ever unending self-appointed task can be left to her memories. Engrave her existence on the Throne of Heroes."

"… she had the tiniest sliver of resolve left, and it was enough to do this final deed. To leave her task to a Saint Graph. But the Ghost Liner who held that Saint Graph, for a time, was her. Her memories, given form. Still uncontent. Still left to meekly tend the ever-turning nature of humanity."

"And then she was summoned to a silly Grail War by a silly girl with silly aspirations that were barely alive. And that silly girl wanted… so many things. And the Caster of Blessings had one more blessing that she hadn't ever given before, not in this way."

"And so, the original Caster of Blessings took her final retirement, and her erstwhile Master was stepped up to the line. The Pseudo-Servant, Caster of Blessings. That's me."

PARAMETERS:

Strength: E+ "… what's with that look? I'm a Caster. Base STR is what you get." Endurance: D+ "Wow, even as a Caster I have better than base Endurance. Neat." Agility: C+ "I know I have cat motifs going on but I am also a Caster. Be glad you got this." Mana: A+ "Don't be fooled, I can actually blow through my mana supply in a real hurry if I mismanage it." Luck: B- "My luck is actually pretty okay. That malus? I have a faint-but-constant urge to Test My Luck, and you don't need a bad luck streak to get screwed over, you just need one really bad hit." Noble Phantasm: EX "Okay so we can get back to this if I ever I pull out my True Name but even without it, the Noble Phantasm that I DO make regular use of is also still EX rank. It's pretty buckwild."

SKILLS:

"Now, disclaimer, I'm not giving you the proper names of my Skills. Those are sealed up along with my True Name. Don't worry, you'll still get an idea of my deal from the listed."

Item Construction (B+ Rank): "My primary Magecraft allows me to command, manipulate, and reinforce thread and fabric essentially at will. You'd be surprised how strong and durable cotton yarn is when reinforced by such high level Magecraft. It's a point of note, I can't just use straight fabric like shirts or jackets, but if I can unravel the yarn from like a scarf, I always have a weapon. And yes, the stuff I make is quantifiably powerful. Cool magic swords and axes, suits of armor? As long as I have enough thread, sure. The original Caster of Blessings was a lot more deft with this, but I'm capable enough in my own right."

Territory Creation (A- Rank): "I'm also able to delineate and define a 'home' territory, making it my Workshop- and it's a pretty ridiculously powerful Workshop at that, Temple-grade. The only issue, aside from the ritual to delineate that Temple, is that I can only denote one 'home' at a time. Make a new one? Old one stops being a Temple. Pretty sure there's some mythology somewhere about cats being protectors of homes. That's my excuse for now, anyway."

Presence Concealment (B+ Rank): "Ever seen a cat get sneaky? Yeah, I can do that pretty good. What's funny is, even if I get into a fight, if I just put a bit of mana into maintaining my concealment, I don't lose ranks after entering combat like standard Presence Concealment! Ever tried fighting someone your mind refuses to stick to? It's buckwild."

Golden Rule (C Rank): "Ah, erm… quick come up with something- right, y'know those Japanese lucky cats? Maneki-Neko? Sure, this is totally based on that. Anyway, it's not that I have cash, it's that I have, let's say, a remarkable talent for falling into wealth as needed."

Natural Body (A Rank): "Neat, huh? I get pluses to my STR, END, and AGI stats cuz of this, and my body is way more fit than it was when I was alive! Bonus, hostile effects that would negatively impact those stats don't work unless they can bypass this skill! No half measures were taken in the creation of the Caster of Blessings, and that sure as heck is reflected in this skill!"

Clairvoyance (A- Rank): "A byproduct of my Noble Phantasm, my eyes can even theoretically perceive the future if I try! The, uh, the minus is because… I'll take the blame on this, pretty sure original Caster never had this problem, but I'm not as good at controlling it. I can restrain it, and I can use Mystic Eye Killers on it to basically turn it off so it isn't quite so distracting, but… I'll be honest, I give full props to all the Servants who can use a skill like this on the fly, no problem. Clairvoyance is not nearly the free win that I used to think it was."

Divinity (B Rank): "Oh if I didn't have this it'd be real freakin' funny when I started passing around blessings like candy. The only reason I'm not A Rank is because my Saint Graph doesn't make it to god level, and both the original and I take serious umbrage with that. I mean, after everything she's done, hasn't she earned the right to return to- ah, sorry, nearly spilled the beans there, eheheh."

NOBLE PHANTASM:

Fatal Curiosity: Mystic Eyes of Observation

"Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. That's the whole phrase, by the way. Bet you've only heard the first half, heheh."

"Anyway, my eyes are capable of completely deconstructing the information presented to it in nearly any situation. A single glance and I can fully discern anything about anyone. Presence Concealment, True Name Concealment, Illusions, and similar effects basically mean nothing to me. I can read off nearly everything about any Servant or similar hostile in a matter of seconds. True Name, Parameters, Favorite Ice Cream Flavor, Skills, Fears and Weaknesses, Noble Phantasms, so on and so forth. It's a matter of seconds and not instantly because I need a bit to process and filter out the junk data from the tasty stuff, but the more mana I pump into it the faster the processing goes. At full power, yeah, it's basically instant."

"Speaking of stuff I can process instantly, the moment I see any sort of hostile action- an attack, a directed curse, a trap, or so on, my Mystic Eyes will instantly process and provide autonomous countermeasures. Oh, and bonus? If it's Magecraft, my Eyes will reverse-engineer it basically automatically. As in, if I see Magecraft used, I can use it too. Sadly, I can't take the information from previous summonings, and it's only the information of my Pseudo-Servant self, so I don't have all of humanity's Magecraft at my fingertips, but it's still a whole lotta lot to work with."

"Oh- that all does take a bit of a toll on mana, but even at rest my Eyes are constantly processing information- just at a slower rate than near-instant. At rest I could tell you the weak spots in the local construction or geography, I could autonomously counter minor Magecraft, I can even read minds. Or- rather, I have to. The Eyes never fully power down. It's… rather distracting at times, so I wear the glasses to turn it off when it's not needed."

"No secrets, no deceptions, nothing may be hidden from my eyes. Let us bear witness, together, to what happens next- FATAL CURIOSITY."

[mareenavee]

Fic Authors Self Rec!

Tagged by the indominable @kookaburra1701! Rules:

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

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

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

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

1) If We Knew Anything At All

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

2) Metempsychosis

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

3) Serpens Caput

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

4) Little Dragon

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

and last but certainly not least:

5) The World on Our Shoulders

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

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

[empty-pizza]

thoughts on harrow the ninth chapter seven

you know, there's something i was gonna mention but forgot to.

it's very possible that the entire situation harrow got herself into has more to do with gideon than it does with harrow. like harrow? she's just a necromancer. a really good one, born out of a great sacrifice, but that's what she is. gideon though? gideon was that weird fucking baby that was either immune to poison gas, or immune to dying. and harrow went and did a ritual that required gideon to die. maybe things got fucky, soul-wise, and that's what kicked this whole thing off.

anyway wtf does it mean that harrow is using theorems

oh god's name is john. i've definitely heard people talk about john from locked tomb before. but i remember like, nothing people said about him.

this is a problematic chapter for me to not fully understand what's happening, because harrow just saw a toddler with red hair. i guess a simple way of conceptualizing this timeline (if it is a timeline) is that this is the one where gideon did die as a baby would. i was probably supposed to figure that out earlier when it mentioned that, but honestly, i couldn't remember whether gideon or harrow was older. (what if it's some really meme shit where harrow has to go back into the timeline to save gideon from the poison and then this creates the original timeline we read the book in? probably not because that makes no sense with how harrow like, is clearly mentally fucked up at the moment by the lack of gideon. but it could be a recursive loop of timelines creating each other or something.)

it seems like the whole situation harrow is in here has to do with the number of kids sacrificed for her, but the exact mechanics are unclear.

so, this book has kept me engaged with the mystery setup, but as i get further into it, i do really hope the plot starts properly. harrow is absurdly passive so far and i need her to get herself together just so she can start engaging with some of the mystery that's been set up here. harrow was interesting for her extreme drive in book 1, and while contrast is good, it doesn't need too much of it.

[10moonymhrivertam]

❤️ What is your favorite line that you’ve written in a fic?

💕 What is your favorite fic that you’ve written?

😎 What fics do you prefer on a scale of canon compliant to wildly original?

❤️ What is your favorite line that you’ve written in a fic?

Y'know what, I think I do actually have a standing answer to this! Although now I don't know whether to be concerned or not cuz it's an old line XD But I posted an unfinished (as in, bracketed author's notes still in the text kind of unfinished) fic specifically so as not to lose the line, so I shall slap it in here.

Ah. Turns out it works best as a set of lines, but it was still the first thing that popped into my head, so here goes:

CW: Non-Graphic Animal Death

Carlos was counting the lab mice, suspicious that the bonsai they lived next to may have picked up some carnivorous tendencies. [...] Carlos lost count of his mice. His hands hovered over the cage, frozen. What had Cecil just said? Miss Frizzle? Aunt Valerie ? It refused to process. Carlos turned away from the cage to grab his phone, missing as the bonsai unfurled a branch and snagged a mouse by its tail and dragged it, shrieking, into its thick leaves.

END CW

💕 What is your favorite fic that you’ve written?

Oh, gosh, there are a few contenders. I could say the first one I remembered making, because I got to hand it to Mary Pope Osbourne before I knew giving authors fic was Bad. And I really don't remember much about the contents of it, just that it was handwritten and I did a little cover for it.

Of my modern fic, I think I'll pick two, due to them being the fics I've shown the most commitment to.

Face to Unfamiliar Face, recursive fic of @tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors's Love and Other Fairy Tales. I think about it a lot because I'd like to do more work on it. Alas, every time I go into it thinking that this time I will post it to AO3, I start sketching out major structural edits and get scared of the workload and let the poor thing keep languishing. I should just carry it over directly and then redux it later, just for the purpose of archiving it. Maybe I'll do that today. (Thank you in advance if so, Willow 💜)

And The Princess's Son (Ba, Ba), a Witcher fic where Jaskier is Renfri's kid. It haunts me constantly. I think as-posted, it's finished and satisfying from a reader's perspective, but from my Author's Vision it's unfinished, so the haunting continues. Alas, the redux keeps stalling out in the first few chapters. And then I don't want to just skip forward to get it started with because I feel like I can better build up the Lilit stuff so it's not such a Deus Ex Machina, even if I don't think I've changed all that much about the mechanics of her whole Thing. 😭

😎 What fics do you prefer on a scale of canon compliant to wildly original?

I think solidly in the middle as a reader? I know I lightly avoid 'modern AU' tags in AtLA and Witcher and stuff, but not strenuously. I like plenty of Sanders Sides fic where they're proper people and not just figments in the mindscape. But I think I also prefer to read when it's not super rooted in canon, either? Fleshed out side characters and Everybody Lives, Nobody Dies for the win, baby!!!

Now as a writer...

One of my provided filter-able tags is canon divergence XD I still like to keep things pretty rooted in canon, though. I like having a scaffolding to build around. Going too far into original territory tends to make everything feel a little too wobbly.

I think the most original I get is smashing together fandoms that don't necessarily make sense based on tiny details. (Or details that aren't there. Ben Wishaw and Colin Morgan are just. Connected in my brain for some reason and so I have Once And Future...Spy?!)

[mentalisttraceur-incomplete]

Maybe I just still don't Get It, maybe I'm just chronically/systematically doing something wrong, but I can't remember a single time in the last five years that an IDE just worked out-of-the-box with all the expected magic.

Every time I say "okay, okay, fine, I'm so tired of manually fiddling with all the language integration stuff and looking things up myself, I'll try an IDE, I want the intelligent auto-suggestions and little informative pop-ups and 'go to the definition' without having to do any setup, just give me the stuff", it just. Isn't what I expected. The automagic isn't there, or at least it isn't auto.

Trying to do some Zig development in a large unfamiliar codebase. I install VSCode. Again. Maybe this time will be different. Zig Language extension: installed. WSL extension: installed. Code, opened. Zig Language extension: wants to be installed again, inside WSL this time. Zig Language extension: installed.

I open the Zig file I'm interested in.

It asks me where Zig is. Personally, I'd maybe code it to explicitly tell the user "I found `/usr/local/bin/zig`, you want to use that?" somewhere in the pop-up, but it doesn't bother. Okay, fine, whatever. In the absence of that info, on the WSL side, I just click the specify path button to be sure and type it in (for some reason, it saves this information in my default Windows-side config, not the for-WSL config, despite having both - I manually fix it in the settings GUI once I find this later).

(Meanwhile, outside of WSL, I ask it to just install Zig for me, since on the Windows side there's no existing setup that I care about not messing up. It errors out, opaquely - barely a sentence of error message, something along the lines of not being able to read undefined from stdin. Nice.)

Okay, so on the WSL side, I have zig, I have zls, they're both in PATH, I've also explicitly told WSL about their absolute paths, it Just Works now, right?

Well. I get colors. And don't get me wrong, colors are nice. And these particular colors seem fine. You got your blue for keywords, parentheses change color with each nesting level, it's all pretty standard stuff.

But where's... oh I don't know, type inference? The auto-complete candidate list is some global default list. It doesn't matter if I try to autocomplete the list of attributes on a string, or an int, Ctrl+Space gives me the same list.

I right-click an identifier. Click "Go to Definition". No definition found. I have the file with the definition open in another tab. I found it with a simple recursive grep. I basically don't even know Zig. It's got a language-specific language server. But what are you gonna do? I try not to be too hard on it. Put on a supportive face. I'm sure the IDE is doing its best.

You might be thinking, maybe restarting VSCode will help? After all, it just learned all these new things, like the path to ZLE, maybe after a little nap and a fresh start it will do the magic.

I already restarted VSCode.

That's how I got "Go to Definition" context menus to appear at all.

I just... I hear people saying that VSCode is really good. How? Where? Where are you hiding this VSCode? How did we get so many people to coordinate efforts to accomplish this scale of practical joke, where the main download link on the official webpage leads to this and yet everyone says it's really nice.

I want to believe it's better for mainstream languages, but... okay, yes, I seem to remember it Just Working for TypeScript. A few years ago I tried it for Golang and I had all the same problems.

One of my friends gave up on his hand-tailed Neovim for VSCode.

For about a year, I had paid for a JetBrains subscription. I didn't get around to taking advantage of it much. It seemed slightly better. The amount of Just Works was higher.

[max1461]

This is also I'm pretty sure how everything else works too. Like when you read about mid-level bureaucrats in the Soviet Union getting their projects approved by learning to "speak Bolshevik" and sell the project as Really Communist. Maybe that's slightly different but it's at least in the same ballpark of thing; presumably some organizations are better at sticking to a consistent set of principles while others are more amenable to salesmanship, but I think most are fairly amenable to salesmanship. Or like all the weird shit that's come out of social justice academia, where you just try to sound the most "radical" (for a very particular notion of "radical") and that impresses other people embedded in that same ideological milieu and earns you status and whatnot. Uh, like the thing this tweet is parodying.

Oh, right! I think this is related to the whole "things you can do with words other than convey propositions" thing. Like obviously these people are in a literal sense making claims about the world, but I think the content of those claims (in these sorts of cases) are a lot less important than what the claim does for you socially. Like no one is really evaluating these statements for whether or not they "agree", they're just thinking in terms of: to what degree does this statement signal loyalty to me/my faction? To what degree does it signal loyalty to the other faction? How compelling is this claim rhetorically (if "very compelling", this could be an avenue for me to accrue social gains for myself by adopting/aligning with it).

Oh! I've got a good analogy. It's like the stock market, I think. Nominally the value of stock is related to the fundamentals of the company. And fundamentals do certainly matter at the end of the day. But at the same time, most of the trades are in the secondary market and most of the value is a function of predicted-value-to-others in a recursive, some might say deeply incestuous way. The marketplace of ideas, like the actual market, can stay irrational for a long, long time, especially when some local pocket is isolated from the practical consequences of their ideas (which, to them, are just words in a local word game) in any meaningful way. So you can get really far and make a lot of money (social status, actual money, etc.) for yourself on the back of compelling rhetoric, strong knowledge of the discursive terrain, and bullshit, and as long as you know when to pull back you can make off very well. And it doesn't so much matter what's actually true.

I feel like the nazis were on some whole other shit in a way that is rarely acknowledged. Like. On a fundamental level mass murder is actually not that weird. But why were they doing touring shows of degenerate art. What was up with those pseudo Archeological expeditions. They had a whole other thing going on. The Italians weren't doing that! The Japanese weren't doing that! I mean. I think. Maybe they were and I'm revealing my ignorance. But then it's a learning opportunity

[blackwell-academys-airdrop]

okay NOW I've got to finish reading Purity through a Prism

[vintageandroid]

I'm not the same kind of sex educator (like...not a "real"/trained one) but I'm an adult blogger (link to my blog, 18+ please, for context) who focuses on kink, a-spectrum sexuality, and trans stuff, and I've been asked to write introductory articles for sex toy websites, which makes me sex educator-adjacent, I guess?

My background was not in sex--I actually have an English degree from an evangelical college so, if anything, the actual opposite. I used to read a lot of other blogs, especially sex toy review blogs, and was active in online kink communities, and wound up deciding to write about my relationship because I didn't see us reflected in any of the stuff I read. Others seem to like what I write I guess because I've got a lot more readers than I used to.

I now do that, and specifically write sex toy reviews, and personal anecdotes, and essays, and other stuff on my blog, and do other sexy writing on the side. I make most of my money from affiliate sales of sex toys. (It's still not much money, but it's money.)

Obviously, doing something like FicSex does and pursuing an actual degree in it is an awesome idea, and what I do is quite different from what they do, but it seemed worth mentioning.

Note also that it can also be hard to break into blogging! (Some of my "colleagues" are switching to Insta, YouTube, or TikTok at least in part, but this is hard too because adult content gets blocked or demonetized a lot.) I'm fortunate that I'm not relying exclusively on my own income to survive because I would starve; I was a homemaker before I started blogging so it's more "added income" than anything, though it helps a lot.

But there are lots of options if sex positivity and advocacy is something you want as a career or a monetized hobby or something; it's definitely gonna look different though.

Other sex education/advocacy-related careers I've seen:

Independent sex toy makers: (off the top of my head: FunkIt Toys makes beautiful silicone creations and Kenton, the creator, also does regular charity sales for sex work advocacy); but there are tons of independent sex toy makers, some of whom are surprisingly not sex positive or inclusive but many of whom are!

Comic creators: (Oh Joy Sex Toy by Erika Moen and Boo It's Sex by Danielle Corsetto and Monica Gallagher)

Sex toy store employees: A lot of bloggers I know also work retail at feminist/queer-friendly sex toy stores and LOVE using their knowledge to help people find stuff and to open dialogue. Some also use it as a starting point to host workshops and stuff. Obviously the pandemic has put a damper on a lot of this.

Sex toy store founder: It can be difficult to start a store (and there are awesome stores to compete with; I have a list of faves on my site) but who knows, you might have a business degree collecting dust just waiting for the opportunity...

Erotica writer: Oh look we're getting RECURSIVE talking about writing sex on FicSex's post...but seriously, every time someone publishes inclusive, actually sex-positive, well-written erotica, for profit or otherwise, the world is a shinier and happier place. Reese Morrison is one of my faves, and I'm working on a book review for @natalieironside's latest when I'm done with my current blogging hiatus.

not a fic related question so feel free to ignore it if you're not up for answering, but how do you find a career/qualifications in sex education? it's something i really care about and want to be more involved in but it seems like such a broad topic and i have no idea where to start!

So, I went to grad school for it.

I knew that I wanted to be a sex educator when I was soon out of high school (before that I planned to be an opera singer, sooooo). I got a BA in Psych, and then went to Widener University for their M.Ed. in Human Sexuality program. It's pretty rad, and one of the few programs in the US that focuses on Human Sexuality!

Mine isn't the only path, though. There are people who begin with nursing / medical studies and focus on sexual health, and people who get degrees in public health, and people who are social workers or gender/sexuality students... there are a lot of paths to sex education, and a lot of ways to use it!

I'm a sex educator, but I'm also a sexual behavior specialist for learners with intellectual disabilities, and an LGBTQ educator and advocate for a non-profit (most sex educators have several jobs, lolsob). I know people who went through my program that work at abortion clinics scheduling patients, or teaching sexuality to HS students, or are sex therapists, or working with medical systems, or doing HIV prevention work... there are a lot of things that our societies need with regard to sexuality education.

(unfortunately, it's tough to find people to pay for that expertise, bc sexuality is so verboten, but that's why we all have so many side hustles)

If you're considering a career as a sex educator, ummmmm give me a message and I can look up options in your area, or give you suggestions?