#though i literally think the problem just solved itself while i was writing these tags so like. never stop posting

[abyssaldyke]

The fawn is fucking fawning today lads and also screaming screaming screaming

[irisintheafterglow]

heyy hope you're doing well (iykyk).

You know me lol...i got an idea for a fic but my exams are going on and i can't write it myself...like... that scene where gojo is panting? everyone relates it to well....but for me, i always feel a little hurt. i just wanna hug him and let him lean his weight on me as he catches his breath while i caresses his head cuz LOOK AT HIM! HE'S EXHAUSTED! MY MAN DESERVES A BREAK!!

Anyways so that's what i was thinking lol....a fic where (for the sake of my sanity) he gets a break and leans on the reader on the floor while catching his breath as the reader holds him close... it's okay if you can't do it though i just hope we all recover from the trauma that we call jujutsu kaisen. amen 🙏 😭

the stakes are high, the water's rough, but this love is ours

wc: 0.44k

cw/tags: swearing, angst if you squint real hard, pet names (baby, angel), just loving satoru things

note: you're literally so right i think all my problems would be solved if i could just hold him for a second and let him breathe because GEGE WHEN I FUCKING CATCH YOU- anyways hope you like this, it's just a drabble because i felt like getting straight to the point without exposition oops. enjoy!

likes, reblogs, and replies are always appreciated <;3 gege you will pay for my therapy

Your back collides with cold, grimey tile as you slide onto the floor in the corner of the subway stop. You stopped counting the number of Curses you’d exorcized a long time ago, but you knew it was a large enough number to have your body physically depleted. Your eyes shut from sheer exhaustion as you continue to steady your rapid breathing and you sense him collapse on the floor next to you. You don’t open your eyes, even when his forehead falls onto your shoulder and you can feel his heavy exhales through your clothes. Somewhere in the dim fluorescent lights, his right hand grabs your left, holding it tightly as he grounds himself in your presence. 

“Fuck, I’m so fucking tired,” he mutters against your body. Like clockwork, your fight-or-flight response starts to recede now that he’s here. You’re always safe when he’s here. “I’m so, so tired.”

“I know, baby. I know.” 

“Are you okay? Are you safe?”

“I’m safe, ‘toru. Even more so now that you’re here. Just rest.” The familiar feeling of Infinity extending itself to envelop you sends goosebumps on your skin; it was like his technique knew to cover you from sheer instinct after doing it so many times. Whether he knows it or not, he slowly starts to completely slump against you and you let him, wrapping your arms around his shoulders while his head fits snugly under your chin. His body continues to melt into you when you rub his back without him asking and sighing when your fingers comb through his hair. If Nanami or Yaga saw you two curled up on the dirty floor, neglecting your duties of slaying Curses, they’d have a field day. But, as of now, the only people in the green-tinted underground were you and Satoru. 

“We gotta get back out there,” he groans and you tighten your grip on his shoulders ever so slightly to pull him back to you. You didn’t want him to go yet, and it seemed like he didn’t want to, either. The universe allowed Satoru very limited moments to catch his breath and you damn sure weren’t going to let him rush into danger again so quickly. 

“Give yourself a few more seconds to just breathe, please. No one’s gonna hurt us right now,” you murmur into his hair. “I won’t let them.” He huffs out half a laugh at the irony, at your promise to protect the one who’s supposed to be guarding everyone else.

“Thank you, angel. Just give me a little longer and I’ll get up.”

“Take all the time you need; I’ll stay here forever if you need me.”

if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee on my ko-fi! you can also check out my full masterlist here :)

[centrally-unplanned]

(I didn't wanna tag you since you just moved! Settle in, get off tumblr ^_^) But yeah the AI definition thing is gonna haunt us forever, since we have been using AI in animation for literally decades. These are definitely about using the "generative AI" new StableDiffusion+++ style models to generate lets say "solo content", since I think that is what differentiates them - it has to in some way shape or form generate sans-human something recognizable as art itself, even if it must be polished, since on average other tools in the past were more like efficiency generators for human artists. Which as I mentioned in the post is still not a great definition masking a ton of mixed methods, but we wont ever fix this so...

But hopefully you can draw a distinction between this and the "invisible AI" since yeah as you mention that has been around for a long time. My go-to has always been AI Inbetweening tools which you note - which pro animators don't use for anime but a lot of things aren't top level anime. You see it in things like web content, commercials, I have seen video game studios use it, etc. And I myself try hard to make a point of saying - indie gaming studios or w/e are industry, they are not some special "other" category that doesn't count for progress. These kid of things don't shock and wow but if you make a product 50% cheaper for a group of 6 people with 100k in seed funding to do, you can radically expand output in niches you often don't even notice.

....but anyway ^^

The poster for the film above is from Annecy! They are gonna be showing that film, so you are gonna get your taste of AI movie. Well, if you watch it, won't blame you if you don't lol

And yeah I think you definitely hit the main point - I agree a ton of the AI stuff like seen in that section of Vulvine Reine d'Extase (which fucks btw, femdom Belladonna of Sadness) or more fully the Any Color You Like music video entry that got controversy a bit ago are just genre pieces, they are "AI aesthetic" which sure like psychedelia people will call back to every so often but only as its own reference, not as a replacement of anything.

And while things like Animate Everything show promise, the very imprecision of the commands balloons out the corrections needed to make intent match vision, this is a really hard problem to solve. That is what the motion capture is trying to do, replace text prompt with visual prompt, but that loops us back up to above.

Sora though yeah is crazy, we don't have enough access to it but I think that has potential. Controllability is still the elephant in the room but I am going to be very curious how its attempts at industrial application will look.

(Thank you for the write-up! Trust me, you being graphic artist puts you more ahead of the curve than I will ever be on these things. I am just not a true tech guy, gave up that fight a long time ago)

I don't think there is anything wrong with making a movie using motion capture & AI generation tools, I just don't know if that really qualifies as the first "AI" movie? Obviously it a buzzword, so there is no right answer here, but its not like we haven't been algorithmically generating "animations" from constructed 3D models built on motion capture footage for many years now. I guess I would need to see more production details to see if this in any way a new idea versus just an iterative step on old methods. (though ofc everything almost always is the latter)

Also I am not a hater (normally), this looks like ass of course but a lot of things look like ass. It reminds me of early Youtube, Red vs Blue type stuff ya know? People with no budget and a lot of ideas making a story "work" for them the best they can with the tools at hand. I play ugly RPGMaker games all the time, if its a niche product you align the economics with the niche.

But if you are gonna do that:

Why tell the most anondyne, paint-by-numbers survival horror story you can find? What is the point, this story already exists. I get it is a proof concept kind of thing but come on, prove a valuable concept.

[resinatingbeauty]

Everything You Need To Know About UV Resin

I thought I would make this post because of how much Amazon pesters me to answer questions regarding UV resin and I know many of you were able to learn and benefit from my other craft posts which focused more on epoxy. Today I'm going to cover all the things I have learned using UV resin, which is something I use almost exclusively for many of the items you see in my Etsy shop.

What is UV resin?

UV resins are photochemicals that react to different wavelengths of UV (sunlight) to cure. This allows for a much shorter cure time and longer work time than epoxy resin, as UV resin will not begin to cure / harden until it is exposed to UV light. In the photos above, you can see the two main types/brands of UV resin I typically use for the creation of my projects, Solarez and Limino, both of which can be purchased on Amazon (Solarez has its own website, but shipping is not free though Amazon only has some of their products). While Solarez is known for surfboard creation and repair, boat repair, etc. It is one of the few UV resins that can be used to create larger projects such as these Fairy Garden Jars you see below.

Normally, however, UV resin is used for smaller projects - jewelry, coating, small casts, and the like. It is practically the same chemical combo found in UV nail polish. These chemicals may be triggered to harden using the same UV lamps one would see at a nail salon, though not all UV lamps or torches cover the full spectrum of UV wavelengths as sunlight (more on this later). I rely on UV resin for the creation of my popular rune sets, as they require more detail and time to fully create than the 30-45 minute work time one typically has with epoxy. Below are some examples of items I have in the shop made primarily with UV resin.

UV resins are typically non toxic and are not harmful to the environment when cured or uncured. The resin itself shares similar properties to epoxy but can have a much lower viscosity in general, making it more ideal for casting and coating than doming. UV resin does give off an odor when curing (Solarez is the WORST even when not curing), much more so than epoxy.

Pros & Cons of UV resin

Pros:

No mixing. UV resins are ready to go from the bottle.

Longer work time, shorter cure time. Great for making multiple projects at once or highly detailed, smaller projects. UV resin fully cures in approx 5 mins in full sunlight.

Great for clear casts and adding a glossy finish to any project.

Bonds to metal, wood, plastic, etc. Making it great for quick fixes.

Most are self degassing and self leveling.

Easier to handle. No component mixing means you can't possibly ruin your project from the get go.

Accepts most Inclusions / pigments one would use with epoxy

Waterproof when cured.

Cons:

Expensive. UV resin will average $65+ (for 1000g) USD for the equivalent of a 32oz epoxy combo for $20+. Solarez is on the cheaper side, but harder to work with.

Fickle. UV resin will produce bubbles that don't want to surface, must be used in very thin layers, prone to shrinkage, and cannot cure if using opaque or dense Inclusions or pigments.

Can only be used with clear silicone molds. Plastic molds tend to adhere / melt to UV resin. Solarez may be used with an MEKP catalyst to get around this, but not foolproof.

May only be used for small projects.

Must purchase UV lamp / torch to cure, but some only cure with certain wavelengths or sunlight itself. Can over cure and become brittle or undercure and be tacky.

Even clear but detailed molds may not cure correctly.

So, you may notice there are more cons than there are pros when it comes to UV resin. This is absolutely true- for cost effectiveness alone, unless you are looking to mass produce something or need more potability / work time for your project (as I do), I recommend avoiding UV resin and going with epoxy which will usually even yield better overall results.

If you DO decide to try UV resin or have tried UV resin, you may run into a few problems initially that will cause you to trash projects and become frustrated. Never curing resin is a popular complaint, this next portion of this post is entirely dedicated to troubleshooting UV resin in order to better help you achieve the results you are looking for.

Using & Troubleshooting

There are many different brands of UV Resin available. Save for Solarez, the ones that come in the big or small tubes like the Limino resin shown (I've used brands Miraclekoo, Decoroom, DIY, Let's Resin, Solarez, SooKoo, and Limino) are pretty much the same product selling for around the same price per milligram / fluid oz. They all have about the same viscosity and will generally yield the same results and have the same average cure time.

Note: Solarez is more of a polyester based resin or can be acrylic based depending on which of their products you purchase. It has a very strong odor and is more liquid than these others. It is also fairly cheaper (Almost half the price) and can be purchased in larger quantities. Unfortunately, even though the price tag is enticing, I really don't recommend it. It is very fickle with the UV wavelengths used to cure it. If you are trying to do any indoor project using a UV torch or lamp, you are going to want to even then drop an extra $20-$60 on a multi spectrum UV lamp to cure your project. You will find that you have to intermittently expose the resin to light or it gets an orange peel/puckered texture- sometimes the light will even literally burn right through your project. It can even burn or damage your mold, as Solarez gets very hot when curing even though it is formulated to not get as hot or combust when using UV light to cure, which is something, I guess.

However, Solarez can be used with an MEKP catalyst, allowing you to dual cure it using sunlight / UV light. This allows Solarez to be used with opaque pigments and can be used for larger projects. The catalyst was not initially included with the resin, but the manufacturer began including it for some reason. The ratio is 6 drops of MEKP mixed into 1 fluid ounce of Solarez. 6:1. With the MEKP catalyst, your project will fully cure in 30 mins (using sunlight or UV light to help it along) but it is prone to becoming overheated, still requiring small layers to be cured one at a time to avoid combustion.

If you're going to try UV resin, I recommend trying any of the brands above, save for Solarez. Grab a 50-120g bottle to try and see if you like it. I recommend beginning making something simple like a pendant or earrings using a clear silicone mold or open back bezel. Mica pigments and most alcohol inks will work with UV resin the same way they work with epoxy and UV resin also creates a super clear glossy finish that may be used to gloss and spruce up cured epoxy projects.

So you took the dive and purchased your UV resin? You've got problems? Yea, tell me about it.

•My Project is Super Tacky! What do?

This is common and will vary from product to product, but usually isn't the product. So before you go flaming the foreign manufacturer who doesn't understand you anyway, ask yourself the following and try these methods to solve the inevitable tacky problem:

How long did you cure? The average cure time shown on the bottle is just that, an average. This doesn't mean that your project will cure in five minutes under your UV lamp. Not all UV lamps are made equal. For starters, check the packaging, but most UV resins require your lamp to be 36w+, so write that off immediately. If your lamp is producing less wattage, than it's not going to cure your UV resin. If you're using a lamp that is 36w+ or your UV resin claims to cure under 36w, then take a look at your lamp itself. Most nail salon UV lamps are either table shaped or dome/cave shaped. If you're using a table shaped lamp on a 3D mold / project, the light is unable to penetrate the sides and back of the mold. This style lamp will only work to cure projects in open back bezels or free hand, flat coatings. If using a dome shaped lamp then the majority of the UV light is found at the back of the lamp. If you have your project at the front or sides, it is unable to be fully penetrated by UV light at all angles.

Try turning your project,curing it for a minimum of 5 minutes on each side. Using finger cots, remove your project and let it cure free form. It shouldn't be so tacky that it sticks to your work area at this point, but if it is, then there is only one solution:

Let it cure in actual sunlight for 10-20 minutes, turning it so that every angle sees light. Typically, your UV lamp doesn't offer the same UV light wavelengths as pure sunlight, and you can buy new lamps or torches to test, but sunlight is free.

If your project is still tacky after all these measures, you've tried adding a new layer of clear resin to it and allowing it to cure in sunlight.

If this doesn't work, think about your Inclusions, your glitter, your pigments etc. If your project is nearly opaque, then you'll need to tone it down if you're going to use UV resin.

If NOTHING else, your product may indeed be a dud or became contaminated in some way. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to get in touch with the manufacturer, but if you order your product from Amazon, they'll more than likely allow you to return it.

My project is all bubbly? What do?

Bubbles are always a problem, whether you're using UV resin or epoxy. Little tiny bubbles always form, especially around the edges of the mold or embedded within details in the design. Don't forget, you have infinite work time with UV resin. This means that you have as long as you want to work out the bubbles.

Use a toothpick to pop tiny bubbles at the bottom of the mold or dislodge them to bring to the surface. Be careful though because you don't want to leave little scratches on your mold or puncture it.

Use a torch to pop bubbles on the surface. A grill lighter, regular lighter, or whatever will do the trick. Make sure you hold the flame a good inch or so away from the surface. It will catch fire and your mold possibly will too. Do so carefully! I run the torch across the top layer every time I add something to the resin to remove any bubbles it gives off. This also works for epoxy.

Blow on it. Some people claim the heat of your breath will pop surface bubbles, but I have had no success with this method.

Warm your resin. Stick your UV resin in a plastic bag or something air tight. Allow some water to heat to near boiling on the stove before pouring it over your resin bottle in a bowl or basin. Do not stick your resin in the microwave or oven or anything crazy.

Stir slowly. Stir inclusions like glitter and pigments slowly, scraping the sides and bottom. This will prevent air bubbles kicking up into your mix and oxygen being introduced into your pour.

Try pigments. For some weird reason (most likely due to changes in viscosity), resin projects with pigments, glitter, and the like have less tendency toward bubbling than clear casts.

Are your bubbles huge? This may be because your pouring super thick layers of resin and all sides have not cured properly. Your layers should only be 1mm thickness maximum when using UV resin.

My project has come out warped, not even, has divots , etc.

If you are curing your layers quickly, your project is heating. When you add more resin over top of this hot resin in a hot mold, this will not only cause more bubbles but also lend to shrinkage. Allow your project to cool to room temp and have some downtime between curing. This will also protect your molds that will become damaged from overuse / overheating and cooling.

With Solarez, this is key to having a beautiful project at the end of the day. Even though it is formulated to not overheat if exposed to sunlight, Solarez will get this orange peel like texture on the surface layer if overexposed.

Yes, there is such thing as overcuring as well, and it will make your project brittle and even flakey, but this is normally not the biggest complaint with UV resin.

So why even buy UV resin?

UV resin has its perks. In a pinch, it makes for a clear, glossy finish that will cure / harden quickly in the sun or with a UV lamp that one would be waiting 24-48 hours for with epoxy. It can be used to repair epoxy projects and fill small divots as well as the ability to bond to pretty much anything makes it useful to have around. It is convenient to use due to the fact that you don't have to mix it, it is easy to pour and compatible with most inclusions. It is also ideal for its extended work time as it will not cure until exposed to UV light. This allows you to create highly detailed clear cast jewelry and other projects you wouldn't be able to assemble and detail before epoxy would begin to cure.

I hope this helps everyone who is having trouble with UV resins or those who have considered using UV resin as an alternative to epoxy. If you have any other questions you would like answered or are someone adept with UV resin that would like to share, please do so! Good luck!

~Samantha

Owner/ Designer/Creator blursedbaubles.etsy.com

[lavenderek]

i have a thought to express, feel free to scroll past.

i’m gonna discuss rape and sexual abuse in this post. it’s also long because i don’t really have a conclusion, it’s just some thoughts. 

so i was looking into that reality show that facilitated shane dawson’s horrible movie “not cool” and i stumbled across a reddit thread posted by someone who was a fan of his as a preteen. the OP alleged that shane’s content contributed to them developing some serious issues including body dysmorphia and the normalization of sexual behavior involving children. 

some of the comments were in support and agreement, but a large amount of them were like, “where were your parents? it’s not shane’s job to police what you see online. it’s not his fault you were too young for his content.” 

now, shane was well aware from the jump that his fans were mostly kids and teens - he talked about it multiple times - but that’s not what this post is about. this post is about that particular argument, which does not sit well with me.

it reminded me of a couple years ago when i made a very critical post about c*ptive prince. 

pause: i want to make it crystal clear that i am not drawing a comparison between people who like cp and shane dawson. i’m not mad anymore, so i am not making this post making a value judgment on cp or fans of it, positive or negative. 

specifically, i was really bothered by the way cp content was posted and shared with no mention of or reference to the actual material. people were calling it a queer romance. it was a little-known series by a little-known author, so there were no synopses anywhere online, only the summary you’d see on the back of the book. so people would seek out cp thinking it was a romance and be blindsided by the fact that, spoilers, the story is set in a fantasy world where child rape is a major tenet of society. the scenes are explicit, detailed, and many. it’s not a thing that happens once or twice and is a major plot point, it’s a thing that happens multiple times in every chapter and is just kind of a thing that’s going on. if you’ve ever read twilight, i would compare the presence of rape in cp to the presence of rain in twilight.

like, that’s how often it happened, that’s how it was treated. sometimes with indifference, sometimes with a negative opinion, sometimes it caused problems, bella talks about it every two pages. it is a very rapey series. 

and people like, did not want to discuss this. they were like, “the characters decide the rape is bad in the end. and that’s not even what the story is about, it just happens in the story. i don’t know what to tell you.” like... people were not receptive to any kind of conversation about this topic lmfao, it was very touchy. they wanted to acknowledge that rape itself is bad, and then they wanted the subject closed. 

now, why is this a problem? i read the books. there were parts i enjoyed, and there were parts i didn’t enjoy. i’m not gonna reread them, but i’m still game to talk about it. ultimately i wanted to be able to talk about books with a friend of mine, and while i was like, “yikes, this is a lot of rape, was not expecting the volume of rape,” it didn’t occur to me this would be a pervasive issue at all until a different friend of mine happened upon it. this other friend was a rape survivor, and i happened to know she would find this content very upsetting. when she said she was thinking of buying the book, i was like, “halt, you know what happens in it, right?” 

nope! she didn’t. she saw cute fanart and a ficlet on her dash, somebody told her it was a queer romance. nowhere was there any indicator in summaries online or the posts she was seeing that the book would describe a person being drugged and sexually abused. she was pretty relieved that i’d warned her and shaken that that’s what happens in the books lmao. she would never have guessed. the cp fandom was made up of people who loved the main pairing, and they’d talk about them being in love and draw them being in love, and it felt like everybody was just acting like the rape wasn’t even present in the books lmao. 

pause: i didn’t go in the tags. this is not representative of the fandom as a whole. this is just my and my friend’s experience of it as passive internetgoers.

people got uncomfortable and a little defensive if i brought it up. they’d agree to tag for cp, but if you don’t know what cp is about, that isn’t helpful information. like that post that’s like, “waterboarding at guantanamo bay sounds like a lot of fun if you don’t know what either of those things are” lmao. if you don’t know what cp is about, tagging for it just tells you what it’s called. and it very clearly ruined everyone’s fun if i talked about this. 

so that’s what i was mad about, i was mad that i felt as though there was no recourse here, and i was mad because i felt like the cp fandom was the emperor’s new clothes. nobody was acting like it even existed and everybody got uncomfortable if i brought it up, like, i legitimately wondered at some point if i had somehow accidentally read a kinky rewrite of it, that the real version did not have rape in it and nobody knew what i was talking about. i felt like i was going crazy and i got shitty in the middle of the night one time, and wrote that post. 

i ultimately deleted it, so i do not remember how it was worded; but i do recall that it was a venting post, it was not intended to reach a wider audience. i was not trying to convince anyone in that moment, i was just talking shit. so i can bet that it probably came across as very judgmental and unkind. 

i made a bunch of people very angry with that post. somebody got thousands of notes by reblogging with an impassioned smackdown saying basically what those redditors were saying about shane - it’s not their job to police what people see online. it’s not their fault you were unprepared for cp. 

i do not think this is a nuanced enough argument because i do not think it acknowledges that not all content is created equal. 

i even got an anon ask in good faith saying, well, a huge trigger for me is body horror, and people will draw or reblog stuff with body horror in it, and i can’t hold that against them. 

and like, no, you can’t, but body horror is not the same as rape or child sexual abuse. body horror isn’t the same as sex trafficking. right? like those things aren’t comparable in the way that i think the anon was wanting them to be. they were saying that both of these are common triggers that people would want tagged and be unable to move past in media, you know? and i get that, i got what they were saying. 

kind of like that cartoonist who wrote a spooky horror comic a while ago and somebody sent them an ask being like, “that was really scary, you usually post fun comics, this was damaging, unfollowed :/” like obviously a stranger’s fear of spooky things is not something he should be expected to take on on his own blog lmao. i am deeply afraid of ghosts, by the way. 

but according to rainn.org, 1 in 5 women experience rape in their lifetime. 1 in 5 women are not frightened by literal ghosts in their lifetime. 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys aren’t body horrored. body horror and ghosts aren’t used on a global scale as tools to control and abuse people and they do not have the same connotations of shame, degradation, and control. the things are not the same. 

i don’t have an easy answer. i can’t wave my magic wand and make people not enjoy the rape erotica, nor was that my goal in the first place. i wasn’t clutching my pearls like, “how dare you! do not draw this art! think of the children!” and i don’t know how else i would have solved the problem, aside from having a weird disclaimer under your art of two dudes cuddling that says “warning, these dudes are from a book that’s got several thousand words of explicit rape in it, and i know that, you’re not the only one seeing that,” like that’s a lot and i get it. 

i don’t have an easy answer because there isn’t one. i felt like “well, that’s not my problem” was an easy answer. 

as i get older, the more responsibility i have as an adult online to maintain boundaries between me and minors, for example. i am not responsible for their internet experience and they can’t get mad at me for cussing or writing about gay werewolves on my blog, but i do have to be mindful of that context if i’m interacting with someone online. that’s where the complexity comes in. you can’t wash your hands of the context of the things you say and do online. 

just how to solve these problems, i did not know then and i do not know now. i guess we take it on a case by case basis. 

if you’re curious about shane dawson and his horrible movie, by the way, this guy did a few funny videos about the horrible movie and this guy did a not funny but comprehensive breakdown of shane and his career. 

and i tried to tint my eyebrows for the first time the other day, i have red hair and my eyebrows are darker than my hair for some reason, so i tried to use an eyebrow tint to lift my brows just like, a shade, so be closer to my hair? but in doing this i discovered that my eyebrows are a mixture of red and brown? 

so the red hairs lifted to a sunny orange, and the brown hairs stayed brown. so my eyebrows are fully like, calico right now. boom, orange juice, that’s life

[bakugouscentedcaramel]

Ah yes, the time has come.

It's time to get your pen and paper because class is in session!

There's plenty of things I could talk about and I pretty much covered the basics down below, but I'm more than willing to help y'all out with anything specific!

I have to preface that I'm not an English major by any means nor do I have any experience writing professionally, the things listed below are purely based on my opinions and submissions I have received.

Writing is forever a learning process, there really isn't a right way of writing but there are definitely some things that will hinder your readers. Here is a list that I compiled both with my own experiences as well as some user submitted issues when it comes to reading works:

•Big blocks of text

° Typos/wrong word usage

•Using the same words

°Too spaced out/not indented where needed

• Dialogue runs into normal sentences

° Speakers/POVs change without notice

• Inconsistencies, either in general or story inconsistencies

°Lack of description/Too much description

• Bland/Artificial actions/dialogue

° Misuse of punctuation/lack thereof

• Capitalization errors

° Long winded sentences

• Using italics for actions

° Confusing formating

• Changing in Tenses

° Using wrong tags/falsely advertising (ex. Reader x Blank should have Y/N, not an OC/Authors name)

• Author notes/comics/pictures in middle of fic

° "~This is a transition~"

• Forcing a character to be OOC for sake of story

° Filler characters

• Not sticking to a specific genre/jumpy moods

Now don't be intimidated by this list! Some of these are pretty self explanatory so I won't go into a few of them. There are plenty of ways to avoid these and in some cases it is perfectly fine to use any of the above. 

Let's start off with the basics!

Sentence structure is the backbone of writing, but it's a very flexible rule. Obviously you have your subject, verb, object and whatnot, but the true art lies in word choice and length.

When it comes to sentences, size does matter. If your sentences are too short they will seem choppy and unfinished, whereas if they are long they will seem winded and unnatural. The biggest tool you can use to find out if a sentence is too short/long is by reading it aloud! If you run out of breath it's too long but if you finish abruptly it's too short.

Word choice is my favorite weapon to work with, I could describe a blue jay as a normal bird or as a mythical animal just by picking the right words!

"The blue jay flew across the field while it sang it's melody."

Or

"A creature with wings made of clouds swooped across the field whilst roaring out a devilish tune."

Word choice can easily convey tone/feeling so it's definitely an important element to writing! If you ever have trouble finding that perfect word try googling for synonyms! Also this website might help you find that one word that you just can't think of!

Grammar is also a very important part of writing. Using the right words and punctuation can be difficult sometimes but there are some easy fixes!

Spelling is an easy fix, if you forgot/don't know how to spell a word consulting a dictionary or Google is a surefire way of solving your problem. You can even find synonyms if you feel like you've used a word too much. 

Punctuation on the other can be a big more difficult, however. 

Here's a couple of sentences that helped me learn basic punctuation:

A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink then leaves. Commas are a means of sewing two sentences together to form a compound sentence. These are mainly used to list out things and to add fluidity to your works so they don't sound as choppy.

A question mark walks into a bar? Question marks are pretty self explanatory. They either raise a question or form uncertainty.

Two quotation marks "walk" into a bar. Quotations are used for both dialogue and metaphors. I personally love using them for sarcasm!

A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink. This one is a tougher one that I personally never learned from any of my classes. A gerund is basically a word that can act as a verb or a noun which would be "drinking". An infinitive is the base of a verb, in this case it's "drink".

The bar was walked into by a passive voice. A passive voice is when you emphasize the action and object of a sentence rather than the subject. You can find that a passive voice tends to use past tense where as an active voice uses present/future tense.

Three intransitives walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave. An intransitive verb is an action verb, expressing a doable activity like arrive, go, lie, sneeze, sit, die, etc.

Some other things that I commonly see are the wrong usages of words. For example:

They: a group of individuals/pronoun "Yeah, they said he'd be here thirty minutes ago."

Their: a possessive pronoun "Leave their stuff alone!'

There: location "What's that over there?"

Then: event/action "Val went to the mall then skittered to the park."

Your: possessive "Your self esteem is lower than the Mariana's Trench!"

You're: a conjunctive "you are"

Affect: caused by actions "The fallen french fry really affected Val's mood."

Effect: caused by events "Climate change has a negative effect on my Cheerios."

Peaked: a summit "Val has peaked at 10:19pm"

Piqued: stimulate interest/curiosity "You have piqued Val's interest by mentioning food."

Do time: "Val is fixin' to do time if she keeps slacking."

Due time: "Val will come with hydration in due time."

Per say: not a thing

Per se: by/in itself "She didn't write this late at night, per se…"

There are different tools you can use to spice up your writings, from metaphors to innuendos, all the way to zeugmas! Let's go over the basic definitions of these bad boys.

Metaphor: a figure of speech that is not literally applicable. "The darkness surrounded us like a shroud." Obviously the darkness can't physically shroud anyone.

Innuendo: a sentence with a hidden meaning "Is that a gator in your pants or are you just happy to see me~" 

Zeugma: a sentence containing words that can be used literally and figuratively, like a love child of the two above. "Val and her coupon expired last week." This implies that not only did my Colgate coupon expire, but I died as well.

Paragraphs are a necessity when it comes to writing. Big blocks of text are an eyestrain to readers and it's easy to lose your place, even if it's only 150 words. It's always best to use Tab or at least 5 spaces when indenting. A paragraph should only be 5-7 sentences long, this is so it's not just multiple blocks of text

When to add a new paragraph:

° A new person comes in

• New idea/context

° Setting changes

• New person is speaking

° Time changes

• The "camera" moves

° Tone shifts

• 5-7 sentences has been reached

Paragraphs help you organize your work in a way and they make it easier for your readers' eyes!

POVs are also very important. First person and third person are by far the most common ones so I'll only touch on these two. It's very important to write a story in one strict POV as to not confuse the readers. You can however jump perspectives like Heroes of Olmpyus by Rick Rodian, as long as the ready can easily tell who is telling the story.

First person is a story that is told from first-hand experience. It's the same as if I told y'all the story on how I almost chopped off my thumb in woodshop class back in middle school. First person tends to use a lot of I's and my's

Third person is a story that is told from a narrators' point of view. Such as "Once upon a time" type of stories. I's and my's should only be used in dialogue

Dialogue is probably one of the most important features of any fic/story. Dialogue can push plots forward as well as add life to a character. Here's a simple exchanged:

"Hiya 'Splodey," Val chirped.

Katuski smirked, "M'dumbass."

Dialogue should always come with a pair of quotation marks. Commas and periods generally go inside the quotation marks whereas dashes, colons, and semicolons almost always go outside the quotation marks. Question marks and exclamation marks however can go either inside or outside, it goes by a case by case basis. Always indent whenever a different speaker is talking, running quotes into each other is a no-go because it causes confusion and eyestrain.

You have to be wary of using simple dialogue exchanges though, if they seem off try saying them out loud! Dialogue is one of my favorite things to write because you can weave personality into them, not to mention you can always hear people talking to get a better idea on how to write dialogue.

For example, I have a southern dialect, meaning I sound different than someone from the north! I use words like "y'all", "fixin'", "finna", "ain't" and have a different vocabulary than that of my northern friends. This means that the characters you're portraying should have their own way of speaking! This will not only add flavor to your dialogue but it also adds to their personalities/backgrounds.

Describing things can be just as valuable as dialogue, but it is a bit more complex. Sure we've all heard of the "show, don't tell" rule. Which is a good rule to follow, however too much showing is just as bad as telling. Again, reading out your work is a great way to tell if you're focusing too much on one thing. Another thing to keep in mind is importance, such as do we really need to know that the grass outside was bluegrass? Which in certain situations it would be! For example:

The grass around the disheveled house was brown and straw-like, with the exception of a ring of grass. Bluegrass. Which wasn't even native to this location.

This paints a pretty good spooky picture in the readers' mind and even adds the element suspense by the implied uncertainty.

I've only covered a small portion of writing so if y'all have any questions or need any help feel free to slide into my DMs or send in an ask! I love getting questions about writing and I'm always willing to help a fellow writer!

[grasscorpse]

The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List: Chapter 3

*From Ynntranslations

The next day, when they had finished cleaning up after lunch, Isabella and Leslie met in the music room. “Is this the song you were talking about, Leslie?”

Isabella reached into the bookshelf and took out one of the old books of sheet music lined up there.

“Yeah.”

Leslie took the sheet music from her. He brought a music stand over, and set the score on top of it.

“It’s actually arranged for piano, so I’m not sure how playing it on a violin will work out…”

He carried one of the cases containing musical instruments over to the table, set it on top, and opened the lid. Inside, it held an old but well-maintained violin. 

Leslie removed the violin, the glossy brown surface reflecting the light, and set it against his shoulder, resting his chin against it.

Positioning the bow, he tried playing the first note.

A gentle sound echoed inside the music room.

Leslie gave a small sigh and glanced over at Isabella. He then took a deep breath, trying to dispel his anxiety, and began to play.

A calm melody filled the music room.

Isabella sat in a nearby chair and listened to his performance, clearly enjoying herself.

Dropping his gaze to the strings that he was sliding the bow over, Leslie followed the notes. The gentle music strangely reminded Isabella of Leslie’s singing voice, even though the song and sounds were so different.

When Leslie was finished, Isabella applauded.

“What a beautiful song!”

“Yeah, I love this one… But it’s so difficult. I’ve been practicing it for so long, but I still can’t play it perfectly.”

“Really? It sounded fine to me, though?”

She had thought that his performance just now had fulfilled the first item on his list. Isabella tilted her head quizzically.

“No, that wasn’t good enough. See where it gets complicated, right here? I always mess that up.”

Bow still in his hand, Leslie pointed at the score, making a face. Beside him, Isabella peered at the score, but she couldn’t understand anything other than that there was a string of notes that were connected to each other.

“Hmm.” Isabella thought for a bit, then raised her head away from the sheet music.

“I’ve got it. Why don’t you write down a copy of the part that’s giving you trouble, and then practice that by itself?”

Leslie’s eyes widened when he heard Isabella’s advice, and she smiled back at him.

“I don’t know much about music, but I can help you try to figure out what you can do to stop making mistakes.”

Leslie had honestly wondered if he was boring Isabella by making her come with him to practice, but Isabella had turned around and tried to help him in her own way. Leslie smiled.

“Thank you…”

Leslie played the part that he wasn’t good at over and over, then at the end, he played the entire song from the start one more time.

“Aww, you almost had it!”

By that point, Isabella had also figured out the part Leslie was having trouble with. Inwardly, Leslie marveled at how quickly Isabella could figure out literally anything.

Leslie put down the violin, and muttered, “To be honest, I do even worse when there’s someone watching, because I get nervous…”

“Oh? I didn’t know.”

Isabella pointed to the door and asked if he wanted her to go outside, but Leslie hurriedly waved his hands in denial.

“No! That’s not it… I meant, even though that’s usually true, I can play better if you’re here when I’m practicing,” Leslie said, averting his eyes.

Isabella looked puzzled for a moment, then said, “I’m glad,” with a smile of relief.

“Hey, can you play this one, too?”

“Huh?

When he heard the song that Isabella hummed, he couldn’t help laughing. It was the one he had composed, and Isabella was humming as a substitute for a title.

“Okay…”

Leslie picked the violin back up and positioned it, then began playing the melody while Isabella sang along. Partway through, Leslie decided to go with a different arrangement and increased the tempo a bit. Isabella laughed aloud at how cheerful it suddenly sounded.

“Okay, I need to get back to practicing, now.”

Leslie reviewed the section of the music that he hadn’t been able to play. Isabella glanced at the clock hung in the music room. Their free time only lasted until 5 pm.

“Hey, Leslie, why don’t you save the violin for tomorrow, and go ahead and move on to the next thing on your list?”

Before Leslie himself could remember which one that was, Isabella provided the answer. “‘Get a full score on my tests!’”

Isabella and Leslie sat side-by-side at a large table in the library.

“So when they ask for the surface area in this kind of problem, first you have to use , and that will give you object A’s…”

“Could… could you repeat that?”

With the notebook containing his homework open in front of him, Leslie was clutching his head trying to follow Isabella’s fast-moving explanation. She was kind enough to teach him how to do the parts he didn’t understand, but her explanations were so complicated that he could barely understand anything she was saying.

With a sigh, Leslie did a faceplant into his open notebook.

“There’s no way I can get a perfect score on the test tomorrow…”

“That’s not true! Once you’ve learned how to solve a problem, you just have to apply that,” Isabella told him—which was easy for her to say, as the one teaching him. Leslie wanted to say that it might be easy for her to do, but he resisted the urge.

“Hey, Isabella, Leslie, come play with us!”

“Soon we won’t get to play with Leslie anymore!”

A group of the younger children had come into the library, and were now standing on their toes and peering over the edge of the table. After noticing that the two had disappeared during their free time, the group had searched for them the whole time. Isabella and Leslie glanced at one another.

He hadn’t made any progress in his studies, but they couldn’t just say no to their little brothers and sisters. Leslie nodded, forcing a slight smile, and Isabella announced in a loud voice, “In that case, let’s try the next one, ‘be the last one left when we play tag’!”

Their little brothers and sisters cheered as Isabella stood up.

“W-wait for me, Isabella!”

Isabella and the others had immediately dashed out of the library, leaving Leslie to hurriedly gather his notebooks and papers and run after them with his arms full.

The child chosen to be “it” began counting, the sound of his voice echoing through the woods.

“This way, Leslie!”

Leslie was already breathing heavily. “Isabella, wait.”

Nimbly leaping over obstacles like rocks and bushes, Isabella made swift progress running into the depths of the forest. Leslie tried to follow her, but even a little bit of running left him out of breath. It took everything he had just to keep her in sight, and since he was looking straight ahead, he kept stumbling over rocks and tree roots.

Isabella glanced behind her, and when Leslie caught up to her, she pointed up and said, “Hurry and climb it before he gets here.”

“What?!”

Isabella was pointing to an enormous tree, thick with branches. Leslie was gasping for breath, doubled over, and he looked up at the tree and shook his head.

“I can’t climb a tree that tall!”

As Leslie tried to tell her that it was impossible, a look of sudden inspiration lit Isabella’s face.

“Then this is your chance to do number 5 on the list! ‘Learn to climb trees’!”

“What?”

“This way, we can take care of number 3, ‘be the last one left when we play tag,’ and number 5, ‘tree climbing,’ at the same time! Ooh, and I bet we can do number 8, too, if we keep going through the woods! That’s three at once!”

Isabella’s face shone as she spoke, certain that she had the perfect idea, and Leslie was struck speechless.

Isabella thought about things the same way that she played chess, always thinking about how to accomplish as many things as possible with a single move. Listening to her, she made it sound like it might really be possible for him to do everything on the list before leaving the House.

Unfortunately, whether her plans were good was an entirely different question from whether Leslie would realistically have any chance of carrying them out.

“I can’t reach.”

“It’s okay, just let go with one hand and try reaching over here.”

Isabella, atop a branch, extended her hand to him. Leslie was hanging onto a branch for dear life, kicking his feet uselessly in the air, unable to find a foothold.

“I don’t… think I can… AAHH!”

Leslie fell from the tree with a thud. Fortunately (or unfortunately), he hadn’t made it very far up the tree, so he wasn’t in danger of being hurt.

“Oww…”

“Leslie, what are you doing?”

Their little brother who was “it” emerged from a nearby thicket, having heard the noise, and he looked with astonishment at Leslie lying on the ground.

“Got you!”

“Ugh…”

Leslie slumped his shoulders at having been caught so easily by his little brother.

In the branches above, Isabella folded her arms and began considering her next move in this “chess game.”

“Number 4, ‘read all the books in the library’.”

“No, Isabella, there’s no way I can do that!” Leslie cried, looking at the mountain of books that Isabella had just dumped in front of him with a heavy thunk.

Leslie had been doing homework and studying on his bed before lights-out, when Isabella came in with as many books as she could possibly hold. Leslie’s eyes widened. After Isabella set the books down, she seated herself on the edge of his bed.

“Don’t worry! I’ll read them, too.”

“I’m… not sure that counts…”

Leslie took one of the books and opened it, but he wasn’t sure that he could finish reading even the one. It was a thick, difficult book titled “Mechanical Engineering and Human History.” Who would read a book like that in the first place?

He had only put that item on his list because he thought that if he could increase his base of knowledge, he might be able to become as smart as Isabella. As his eyes followed the words on the page, he scratched his cheek. He liked reading well enough, but when reading difficult books, it took him a long time to figure out each part.

“Isabella, it’s time for lights out.”

“Okay.”

Isabella was sitting on the edge of the bed, absorbed in reading the book on her lap. Even when replying to him, she never ceased turning the pages. Her speed left him wondering how she could possibly read that much in an instant, but she just kept turning the pages one after another.

One by one, their other siblings in the room fell asleep. Leslie could hear the sound of them breathing in their sleep.

Since they had to turn out the light in the room, he fetched a lamp, and the two of them furtively read by its light. Even so, they wouldn’t be able to keep doing this until Mama came to check on them.

“Hey, Isabella, you need to go back to your room.” Leslie said, worried, but Isabella, concentrating on her reading, never lifted her face.

The faint sound of footsteps emanated from the hallway.

“Isabella? Are you listening to me?”

“Leslie, pretend you’re asleep.”

“Huh?”

Isabella suddenly got up from the bed, where she had been sitting, and lay face-down on the floor, clutching her book. Leslie tried to ask her what she was doing, but in that instant, the door to the room opened.

Mama, who had come to make sure that they had the lights off, frowned at Leslie, who was obviously still awake.

“What are you doing, Leslie? Hurry up and go to sleep.”

“Y-yes, Mama.”

Leslie hurriedly shut his book and dived under the covers.

Geez, Isabella… If you knew Mama was coming, you could have told me.

His face half-hidden by the covers, Leslie watched Mama turn around to leave. Number 7 on his list popped into his head. “Get Mama to praise me for something other than music”—forget getting praise, he’d gotten a scolding instead.

After the door to the room closed and the sound of footsteps grew distant, Isabella stood up.

“Is Mama gone?”

“She is, but… you really need to go back now, Isabella.”

Isabella gave a small sigh, and set down the book she had just begun reading. Pushing her braid back behind her, she grumbled to herself, “I only got through ten books…” Leslie realized that beside her was an entire stack of books that she had finished.

Leslie glanced down at his first book, sitting on his lap, and sighed.

“Isabella… I don’t think I’m going to be able to do any of them,” Leslie said in a quiet voice, so as not to awaken the other children. Putting down the book, he opened up the notebook, which he had beside him.

“I just can’t do it.”

He had worked so hard for so long, by himself, in secret.

He had thought that maybe, if he could do all the things on his list, he would be able to change, to become someone different, but before he knew it, lost in his dreams, the day when he would leave the House had been set.

When he had been sorting through his things the day before, Leslie had already given up on trying to fulfill the items on his list. He was out of time, and it was over now, he thought.

But in a way he had never imagined happening, Isabella decided to help him out.

I never thought I’d end up working on the list with Isabella.

He had wanted to quit, thinking of it as an impossible challenge, but every time he did, he remembered Isabella smiling and saying “Why not? This is the last time you’ll be here.” That was the reason he had decided to work as hard as he could at in in the two days left until his departure.

He thought that maybe it could be possible, if he could tackle it with Isabella.

But the result was a disaster.

“Come on, you knew it would be that way from the start,” Leslie thought, slumping. Even if Isabella helped, that wouldn’t suddenly make him more capable.

Even after spending an entire day working at it, he hadn’t accomplished a single one.

“… And it’s not like I could do anything about a shooting star, either.”

Even aside from that one, he had very little hope for any of them. Doing all of them would be utterly impossible. Isabella leaned over toward Leslie, who had his face lowered.

“There’s still time, right? It’s too soon to give up.”

Isabella had wasted no time trying to cheer him up, and he smiled back at her—a smile full of self-loathing and loneliness.

“You’re incredible, Isabella… You can keep going and never give up, no matter what happens.”

Shadows from the lamp, turned down low, fell on Leslie’s face.

Leslie looked down at the list he had written.

“I wonder if my new father and mother will be disappointed when a useless guy like me shows up to be their foster child,” he whispered.

It had been weighing on his mind the whole time.

Leslie closed the notebook, and listlessly placed his hand on the cover.

“I’m think going to ask Mama tomorrow… if I can decline to go to that foster family.”

This was how Leslie had felt ever since hearing that they had found a foster family for him.

Even though there were other children who deserved it more than him.

Leslie looked at Isabella sitting right in front of him.

He wondered what he would do if, when he met his “parents” for the first time, they said “I don’t want a kid like this.” Maybe, even if they didn’t say anything, they would be disappointed and think “I wish we’d gotten a different kid.” His anxieties had done nothing but grow since the moment he was told about the foster family.

That was why fear had won out over hope regarding his new life that would begin soon.

Everyone would eventually leave the House. He had always known that his time would come, too, but once everything had been decided, he found himself frightened of going to live with a new family.

He wanted to stay in the House, now and forever.

He wanted to live here always, with Isabella, and Mama, and his siblings.

Which wasn’t to say that Leslie didn’t also long to see the outside world. It must be overflowing with so much music that they didn’t have in the House. He wanted to listen to an orchestra. He wanted to try playing music he didn’t already know.

He wanted as many people as possible to hear the music he had composed.

He had sometimes dreamed of the outside world like that, but Leslie continued to feel that, as long as he could be with Isabella in the House, he didn’t really want to go be with a new family.

If he left for the outside and a new family, they would be split up, and they would no longer be able to spend time together like this.

Laughing and talking about nothing in particular, struggling to keep up with her wild and unpredictable behavior, being encouraged by her kind words.

Singing together.

Just thinking about it made him feel so lonely he couldn’t stand it.

Leslie sighed. Isabella had silently listened to him, and he was about to tell her to go back to her room, for real this time. At that moment, Isabella, her head hung, opened her mouth and spoke.

“How can you say that, Leslie?”

“What…?”

Leslie started in surprise at the look Isabella was shooting him.

She was furious. The face that was always smiling so happily at him was now, in the lamplight, harsher than he’d ever seen. Shocked, Leslie found himself unable to say anything.

Isabella fixed her intense gaze on Leslie.

“They said they wanted you for a foster child. They chose you. Not me, or any other child in the House. So how can you say that?!” Isabella said, and pursed her lips.

“I-I’m sorry, Isabella… I didn’t mean—”

Flustered, Leslie voiced an apology and tried to reach out to her, but Isabella avoided it, too fast for him.

“… Forget it, Leslie. I don’t care anymore.”

Isabella spit out the words and ran from the room. The door shut, cutting Leslie off as he tried to call out to her.

Mama, who was there to inspect the rooms, was standing in front of the door to her room, but Isabella walked toward the room anyway.

On seeing Isabella appear from behind her, Mama slid her pocket watch back into her pocket.

“Isabella, where were you? It’s time for lights out.”

“I’m sorry, Mama.”

Walking around her, Isabella crawled into her own bed. For a little while, Mama watched her, but finally she said, “Good night, Isabella” and closed the door.

Now that the lights in the room were off, the faint blue light of the stars shone in through the window.

All around her, Isabella could hear the quiet breathing of her siblings who had already fallen asleep.

Her face buried in her pillow, the words she had spoken only a short time ago came back to her, and she felt a pain deep in her chest.

“…”

Why did I say that?

This was the first time she’d ever had a fight with Leslie.

She wrapped herself in the cool sheets, and her mind slowly calmed down from its overemotional state. The things she had said suddenly seemed so thoughtless and embarrassing.

It’s not Leslie’s fault…

“It’s mine.”

Isabella bit her lip.

When she had heard Leslie say that he wanted to turn down his foster family, her darker emotions had come surging out, and she hadn’t been able to hold them back.

Every time Isabella saw off another sibling, older or younger, she would always think to herself, deep down, “They didn’t pick me this time, either.”

Of course, she kept it to herself, and even within her own mind, she tried to extinguish those thoughts. They were all her precious, irreplaceable siblings. How could she not be happy for them when they could have a new life with a new family on the outside? She knew she should be happy for them.

But as other children kept being chosen, Isabella began to experience the first twinges of unease and a sense of inferiority.

She thought that there must be some reason she wasn’t being chosen, something lacking in her.

So she poured all her effort into improving at her studies and everything else. She was always a top scorer, volunteered to do chores, and even looked after the younger children. Isabella knew that Mama held her in high regard.

Yet no matter how hard she tried, other kids were always chosen.

If anything, it seemed like her siblings with lower scores were more likely to be chosen for foster families.

Isabella sighed, tossing and turning in her bed. She realized that her hair was still braided, and used her fingers to undo it. She laid her head back on the pillow, but she didn’t feel like she could sleep.

Leslie was so kind and gentle, and she had hurt him.

His face, struck speechless when he heard what she had said, appeared in her mind. It was the first time Leslie had made that kind of face because of her.

What do I do if Leslie hates me…?

Tears began to well up in her eyes, but Isabella held them back. She castigated herself, asking why, of all times, she had done this when they only had one day left—tomorrow—together.

Leslie’s song began to play in her mind, as she lay unable to sleep.

“…”

Isabella tried singing it, in a small voice, and gradually, a feeling of warmth filled her heart. Isabella kept on singing, in a voice so soft that only she could hear.

This song sounds like a lullaby.

Just listening to it made her feel at peace, and the worry and sadness she had felt until them vanished like smoke.

Leslie would leave the House tomorrow night.

Tomorrow would be the last day she could spend with Leslie.

I need to apologize him, and get him to forgive me…

As she thought about that, Isabella slipped into a deep sleep.

[wodrueckts]

Druck S3 and “abhauen”

abhauen [coll.] - to run away, to flee, to bolt

Alright, so this post is not going to talk about anything new or revolutionary or reveal anything mindblowing that no one thought of before, I mean we all know that “abhauen” - or running away - is a big theme in season 3 of DRUCK.

But last night I was lying awake because I couldn’t sleep and thought about S3 - you know, as you do - and it hit me just how consistent and prevalent this motif of “abhauen” is, for both David and Matteo. And it is probably all really obvious stuff, but I still felt like just writing down my thoughts in a more or less structured and coherent way.

(Warning: This is just a very long, rambling rehash of things everyone already knows so only read this if you’re very bored lol)

So, it all starts with the title of the first episode, “Einfach abhauen”, referencing the first conversation Matteo and David have, where Matteo says that if he could make a wish it would be that - just run away and get out of there. And it’s a relatable sentiment, I mean who hasn’t wished to just run away from their current life and problems at some point, and it is one that is echoed by David, the exact reasons for which we’re gonna find out later. But for me it hadn’t quite clicked before just how relevant this running away theme actually is for Matteo. Sure, I knew Matteo was sad and felt stuck in his life, so it makes sense that he would want to get away, but in the end “running away” was more David’s thing. But actually Matteo is doing quite a bit of running himself, it might just not always be quite as literal as David’s running away. 

For starters, before the season even officially begins, Matteo runs away from home. Things with his mom become too much for him, so he moves out, setting him on a path of rather evading difficult situations than meeting them head first (I’m not blaming him for this one though.)

Then at the beginning of the first epiosode we have a few more moments of him “running away”, in a sense. When he gets away from Sara at the party or when he dodges the police by saying that Photoship Markus is the one who lives there instead of him and hides the weed in Amira’s bag, or when he runs away from the playfully/jokingly homoerotic moment between Hans and Jonas in his bed.

And then he meets David, or rather just sees him at first, and I would argue - though I might definitely be reaching here - that Matteo’s persistence in trying to get to know him was also in a way him trying to run away from his current life.

I was always kind of wondering what exactly it was that made Matteo instantly so interested in David. Like sure, he’s mysterious and attractive but I personally don’t really believe in love at first sight (at least when it’s literally just a sight) and while something like “soulmate energy” or whatever is a cute concept, I usually prefer something a little less esoteric and more down to earth (at least in ‘realistic’ stories.) 

So, I think, one of the reasons Matteo was so interested in David right away was because David was new. Matteo felt stuck in his life, in his routines and in the image and expectations that everyone had of him, of what he’s like. But here is this cool, mysterious, attractive new guy, who has no idea who Matteo is, who has no preconceived notions of what Matteo is like. And while I don’t really think that this was a conscious thought process that Matteo had, I think the idea that he could basically start from scratch with David was alluring. With David there are no expectations of what Matteo should be like, he can just act how he wants or feels in that moment without having to worry about acting in a way that is congruent with the image David already has of him. 

And that must be very freeing, so it is understandable that Matteo would go after that but in doing so he is also running away from the rest of his life, trying to leave all those bothersome things behind instead of dealing with them and making his whole life more comfortable. 

Rather, he is constructing some kind of bubble with David that he can escape to, a bubble where he doesn’t have a girlfriend and doesn’t have friends who think he’s straight. And David is doing the same.

David already went through what Matteo is going through, but in a more extreme way. David literally ran away from a situation and an environment where his whole identity, his whole being, was actively and deliberatly disrespected, misrepresented and taken apart (unlike Matteo’s case where the dissonance between what people think and expect of him and what he really is/feels like is more due to obliviousness on the part of Matteo’s surroundings and Matteo actively hiding parts of himself) so all he wants is to start over. And being at a new school gives him the opportunity of a fresh start but insead of really using it to build a new life with new people, he tries to keep his head down and to not be noticed because he’s still afraid that what happened at his old school might repeat itself, so he contents himself with being by himself and not making any connections, living this fantasy of being a loner vampire who needs to stay away from the rest of society. That is, until he meets Matteo. Which puts him in quite a predicament, because he WANTS to get closer to Matteo but at the same time he’s so afraid of it, which leads to some pretty confusing hot-and-cold behavior and almost every interaction between David and Matteo ends with David running away in some way (the only times I can remember of the top of my head where he doesn’t bolt at some point is after the almost kiss - but here we have no idea how they actually parted ways so he might have just fled after they were interrupted and when Matteo invites him to the party. Oh, and also after his coming out because while he leaves I wouldn’t call it running away.) 

But even though he keeps running away from Matteo and his own feelings for him, he also keeps running towards him and into the bubble they’ve both created, escaping and running away from all the things he’s too afraid to confront and just letting himself be in the moment with Matteo. In the bubble it doesn’t matter that at some point David needs to tell Matteo that he’s trans if he wants to continue being with him, because that’s future talk. All that matters in the bubble is the here and now. But the problem with that bubble is also that it isn’t real. It’s this fake little fantasy world that they run away to, a bit of escapeism (@evakuality (sorry for the tag and forcing you to read this shlock lol) talked a bit about fakeness being a motif when David and Matteo are together (among other things) in this post and I think it kind of illustrates how David and Matteo are basically running away from reality when they’re together.)

This running away from reality is also underlined by how often they literally run away when they’re together. First they ditch the Abi prank meeting leading to their first conversation. Then they run away from the ticket inspector which leads to them hanging out outside of school for the first time. Right before their first kiss they run away from Sara and Leonie and the party preparations, Matteo literally asking “Hast du Bock abzuhauen?”, and after the kiss, when reality comes crashing in in the form of a security guard they are once again running, after which they spend a weekend hiding in Matteo’s room.

 And all of this running away is actually working out alright, up until Matteo makes the first step towards trying to bring this thing between him and David more into reality by breaking up with Sara (in a pretty cowardly and trying to run from the confrontation kind of way but still), at which point the bubble pops. 

David isn’t ready yet to face reality, isn’t ready yet to take the steps necessary to make this thing between them something real. So, what does he do? He runs away again and tries to burn the bridges behind him. 

And obviously Matteo doesn’t take it well, locking himself into his room, fleeing into a weed-induced haze trying to escape his feelings and pushing away his friends. 

However, things start to look up once he stops running away and starts confronting his issues. He talks to his friends and ‘confronts’ them with who he really is. He 'confronts’ Sara and the mess he made of their situation and apologizes. He even in a way ‘confronts’ his difficult emotions about church and religion and by extensions his mother which later on allows him reconnect with her. 

And even though he’s never actually run away from David, he confronts him, too, with his text, giving David the chance to try to stop running as well. 

However, it’s still difficult for David and he almost runs away again when it becomes clear that this is it, this is the moment where he needs to face his fear and be honest with Matteo. He only stops himself when Matteo literally asks him if he’s gonna run away again. So, he stays and and is real with Matteo, giving them the chance to become a real thing. 

But then something terrible happens and all of David’s fears become reality and David is running again, fleeing both literally, by going to a different city, and more figuratively by delving back into his fantasy of being a lone vampire, ready to sever ALL connections he has to other people, even to his sister. 

Fortunately however, Matteo does’t let him do that. He finds him and basically tells him to stop running. And even when David suggests that they could run away together, offering to make Matteo part of his little fantasy world, he refuses, because Matteo has learned his lesson. He knows now that running away doesn’t solve anything, that it only makes things worse in the long run. So instead he offers to stay with him if only he stops running, tells him that they can face the difficult parts together and that there are even more people who have his back. 

So, finally, David stops running and is rewarded for it with all the things he used to deny himself before, like love and genuine connection to people. 

TL;DR Both Matteo and David needed to stop running away from things to be happy. 

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Biting Off More Than You Can Chew; part 3

Summary: Rus has his answers, there’s just one more person he needs to talk to and he’s a hell of an asshole. This surprises no one.

Tags: heatfic, dubious consent, NSFW, frenemies to lovers, mates, first time, more if I think of them

PLEASE READ THE TAGS: This is a Heat story, so there are going to be issues of consent. I don’t do partner rape, nope, but hey, I want to be straight with y’all. I like heatfics personally, but I understand how they can be troubling for some people. So there it is.

There is still no explicit sex in this chapter. There will be eventually. There is a little violence.

Also on AO3

Read Chapter 1

Read Chapter 2

~~*~~

Underfell was fucking dangerous but Rus knew his way to Red’s sentry station in Snowdin. It was a mirror-version of his own world, a left turn instead of a right, and while miscalculating a shortcut could have consequences, he wasn’t worried about that right now. At least ending up halfway in a tree would solve a few problems.

That said, he didn’t want to step out into the middle of some kind of territorial dispute or road rage, or whatever the fuck it was that made the denizens of Underfell so damn dust-thirsty. His shortcut left him in a nearby copse of trees, looking out from around one of them warily.

There was nothing in sight but more snow and trees, and the sentry station itself. In other words safe-ish, a relative term in Underfell.

The sentry station was even more haphazard than the one in Underswap, made from moldering boards, snow dripping from every eve. And Red was slouched in a rickety chair, eyes closed, with his feet propped up and a slender cigar smoldering between his fingers.

Snow crunched beneath his sneakers as Rus walked over, his feet sinking into the drifts until he got to the road. It was almost insulting that Red didn’t even open his eye, only took a slow puff from the cigar. “you look like a fucking target in that sweatshirt, honey bun. shoulda taken a cue from paps and doctored it up with a little sharpie ‘cause you may as well write yourself up an advertisement for free xp.”

Rus ignored that, the implied insult. He wasn’t a fighter and he knew it, had never wanted to be a guard or a warrior, had never needed to be. He was who he was, and that wasn’t something this asshole could simply abuse.

“you son of a bitch,” Rus ground out. His magic was running hot, untouched by the chilly air, his vision shading into searing orange.

“what?” Red finally looked at him, his sockets slitting open to reveal lazy crimson eye lights. He couldn’t quite manage innocence, Rus had never expected that of him, but he’d let himself be fooled by appearances once. He’d known who Red was, how the denizens of Underfell were, and yeah, Red resembled his brother, but he wasn’t like Blue he was like…

(me)

…an asshole. He really should have known it was Edge who mirrored Blue, the same as Papyrus. The protector, the guardian with an impeachable code of honor. He was clear of the blinders now and what Rus was getting from Red was that he had fucked both him and his own brother over. Literally.

 “do not try that shit with me,” Rus snarled. It still hurt, to think someone with his brother’s face had used him like this. “you knew! there’s no fucking way you didn’t!”

“figured it out did ya.” Red stuck his cigar between his teeth and gestured imperiously for Rus to lean in. Reluctantly, he did and Red tugged down his collar. He winced as Red prodded the bite mark roughly. "got you good, didn’t he.”

Rus shook him away, standing up straight and demanded, “why me?”

It gained him a lazy shrug, Red taking a long draw off his cigar and his words came with a stream of smoke. “there’s no one else, really. can’t trust anyone in underfell, they’d use it against him before the come was even dry. can’t exactly help him myself, even if i wanted to. heats won't mark too close a relative. they smell like dirty fucking socks or spoiled meat, it’s kinda a turn off.”

He tapped ash into the snow, scattering gray, “sans and papyrus, they seem to be too close, they don't work. something about you and the blueberry, though. whatever jumble your universe has going for it, you're different enough to twig to it. noticed it during my last heat.” Red grinned slowly. “bet you remember it.”

He did, Rus realized. At movie night a few months back, Sans and Papyrus had both been complaining about a rank smell all night and had finally left early. Rus had figured that the damn dog had hidden something that was rotting merrily away somewhere in the house, but he and Blue had never found it, hadn’t even been able to smell it. They’d been puzzled by Sans and Papyrus’s complaint and by the next movie night, it had been gone.

“yeah, you remember,” Red said softly. “that’s when i figured out your ‘verses don’t get ‘em. and that was just the pre-show, you weren’t even catching the sweet side yet, the stink comes early so family has time to clear out. gotta tell ya, this is his first heat, they’re always the worst. he was gonna tough it out, but i’ve seen how that can end.” He shook his head, “i can’t risk it, not my bro. so it had to be you.”

Rus really wished he could shove away that niggling feeling of calculated understanding. What would he have done if it had been his brother, what wouldn’t he do…still. “you could have asked!”

“coulda,” Red agreed amicably, “but i didn’t have many ideas if you said no, and then you would have had advance warning. nah, my way worked fine,” His grin turned sly, his sockets half-closed as he tipped a look at Rus. “you should be thankin’ me. figured you were experienced enough to handle it. i coulda picked your brother.”

Any faint sympathy in his soul went cold and the sharp heat of his anger turned to icy fury, "you fucking—"

He didn’t even think, reaching out with blue magic and flinging Red out of his chair into the snow. For a moment, Red blinked up at the sky, wheezing, before he rolled over onto his hands and knees. Slowly, he climbed to his feet, dusting snow off his jacket. His grin bordered on feral, sharp and glistening. “you get that one for free.”

“don’t you even talk about my brother!” Rus shouted, past caring if anyone heard and came to investigate. He sent a wave of jagged bones at Red, watching furiously as he lazily sidestepped it, and impending danger didn’t register until he saw the flare of crimson in Red’s eye socket.

By then it was too late, snow was cold beneath him and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, strangling on blue magic that wasn’t merely pinning him down, it was holding him completely, to the point he couldn’t even suck in air. Panicked, Rus struggled, uselessly, his vision blurring, darkening, until it let up enough for him to gasp, gagging on magic. He was still pinned down, but he could breathe again. Some cold, efficient part of Rus noted that it was a remarkably effective attack; couldn’t summon your own magic if you were focused on suffocating.

That infuriating little bastard strolled over to stand next to Rus, his hands in his pockets. Aside from the sharp glow in his left socket there wasn’t even a hint of strain. His grin was cold, calculating, and Rus swallowed down a touch of real fear.

“said you got one freebie, didn’t I, you don’t get to double dip. i could take you back there right now, you know,” Red said idly, nudging at him with the toe of his shoe. “tie you up pretty as a present. i’m betting my bro doesn’t have a whole lot of ‘no’ left in him.”

The pressure tightened again, until Rus strangled out a cry, then it let up entirely, allowed him to roll gasping to his side. “don’t think i need to though. you and i are a lot alike and—"

“we are nothing alike!” Rus spat, struggling to his feet. His clothes were soaked through from snow that had melted beneath him from the heat of their magic, sagging heavily on his bones and his ribs ached from being compressed.

Red only picked up his cigar, grimacing as it drooped soggily. He tossed it aside, muttered irritably, then snapped at Rus, “yeah, you can spout that party line all you want but we both know better. i know you, a little of me is you, you shit, and i know there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for your bro. and i can’t help but think there’s a few things you might be willing to do for mine.”

“you…you…” The cold was creeping in now, fucking hell, and Rus couldn’t tell if it was the chill or his own fury making him stammer.

“besides, you can quit pretending like you’re some kind of screaming fucking virgin anytime now,” Red grinned, but his eye lights were pitiless. He slouched back into his chair, propping his boots back up. “i hear things, even in your ‘verse. you’ve flapped your knees for half of underswap, what’s one more?”

It made him wince and Rus glared at Red furiously, “that was my choice, it doesn’t mean you can set me up as a whore for your brother! if you have a problem with me fucking around, you can stuff it up your sanctimonious cockhole, you psychotic piece of shit bastard.”

“’course it was your choice,” Red said agreeably, “and so is this.” He rolled back to his feet, stalking over and poked Rus in the sternum, his sharp fingertip digging through the thick material of his sweatshirt. “you’re right, that what you wanna hear? i set you up and you can go ahead and be pissed at me. you can hate me all you fucking want. i deserve it. the real question is, are you gonna let my bro die because of it?"

Rus looked away.

“you—” he stopped, grinding his teeth. There wasn’t an insult he could think of that would convey the purity of his anger right now. He doubted he needed one, Red knew exactly what he was thinking, all of it was visible in his smirk. He turned on heel and marched away and moments before he shortcutted away, he heard Red call out, his gravelly voice sweetly cheerful.

“have fun, honey!”

He stepped out of the shortcut into the machine room, the worse place to be with the way he felt. He wanted to break something, feel it shatter, he wanted to scream.

“i’m going to kill him,” Rus ground out, knew it for the lie it was before it ever left his mouth. He wasn’t, he couldn’t. Even if he had a chance to beat Red in a fight, he couldn’t hurt anyone who looked so much like his little brother. He laughed, then, sinking down to the floor, muffling it with his hands, and hating the hysterical edge to it, but he couldn’t stop.

“looks like i’m fucked,” he giggled, laughing until he felt tears sliding down his cheek bones. He wiped them away roughly and shook himself.

Enough self-pity bullshit. Red was right about one thing, at least; this wasn’t Edge’s fault, and if Red had bothered to ask, if he’d actually sat down and told Rus what was going on, he probably would’ve said yes, anyway. Oh, he’d have blustered and fussed about it, he knew himself well enough for that. But…yeah. It wasn’t in him to let anyone suffer, not even Edge. Undyne had said he was going to hurt himself or someone else, and Rus was guessing it would be soon.

“it’s your choice,” he muttered to himself, fingering the mark on his collarbone. It itched, dry marrow flaking beneath his fingertips. “your choice, so fucking make it.” He nodded a little and made his way over to the machine.

If they were going to do this, he had a few things to take care of first.

 tbc

Read the Next Chapter

[mortaljin]

BTS Fanfiction Recommendations!

These are some of my very, very favorite fics (like the ones I go and message the authors about). I follow hundreds of blogs so it’s hard to keep up with which fics I’ve read (I stopped tagging them at some point?) so there are probably dozens more. All I will say is that if a writer is tagged here, the rest of their writing is well worth looking at too.

Thank you, Writers, for everything you do. 

SERIES

Seokjin

Stigma; @eris0330 [COMPLETED]

(Seokjin x reader, text au)

As part of Jin’s lifestyle, he is meant to be walking in his father’s footsteps. Even before being born, the LV CEO had big plans. Jin will do everything to please his father’s wishes of finding a partner, and take over the company. But it’s not for the company’s sake, it’s for the secrets that lies within the family business. 

Eros; @kpopfanfictrash

(Seokjin x Reader)

In the futuristic world of Europa, Queen Venetia rules her land an iron fist. None are more feared than the Akeran, an alien race Earth fought eons ago, who bear a remarkable similarity to the angels of lore. When you find yourself at odds with the Queen, it seems there’s no safe place on Earth for you to hide. Nowhere but with your mysterious rescuer, and even he may be more trouble than he’s worth.

Yoongi

A Wish Out of Water; @jimlingss [COMPLETED]

(Yoongi x Reader)

A genie could solve all your problems. Though you wouldn’t even know exactly what to ask for - money, a warmer house, a better job, a better life? But Min Yoongi is no ordinary genie. He’s here to make your life a living hell. Too bad it was hell to begin with.

Suga Daddy; @drquinzelharleen

(Yoongi x Reader)

Yoongi gives you an offer you can’t refuse.

Inheritance; @rbuns [COMPLETED]

(Yoongi x Reader)

After your grandmother passed she left everything to you. Her house, her fortune, and apparently… her cat? The grumpy male hybrid you encounter at her house is anything but the tame housecat you’d expected to find. Fulfilling your grandmother’s last request to look after him becomes a lot harder when he seems to be avoiding you, and your dissatisfied relatives start stirring up trouble.

Di Piano e Forte; @justoneday-namjoonii

(Yoongi x Reader)

Piano; A keyboard of cypress, played with soft and loud. Was it the ivory and onyx keys that let you escape from your reality…Or was it the man with sable hair and ivory skin.

Hoseok

Heartbeat; @joonbird

(Hoseok x reader)

You’ve always stayed far away from the Kingsnakes, the coldblooded gang that runs the dark heart of your city. That is until your life collides with the intriguing and dangerous Jung Hoseok.

Transference; @jeonjagiya [COMPLETED]

(Hoseok x Reader)

During a routine visit to the local bakery, you stumble upon an intriguing business card and figure, what the hell.

Written On Our Veins; @army-author

(Hoseok x Reader)

You and Hoseok are sick of spending the holidays soulmate-less while your friends enjoy Christmas as couples… tired of waiting for fate to make a move, you decide to take matters into your own hands.

Namjoon

Amor Fati; @sugaroons

(Namjoon x Reader)

you’re still settling into your life back at university when you meet kim namjoon. he’s so perfect—sweet, awkward, and exactly your type, especially in bed—that you know there has to be a catch.

Jimin

I’ll Never Be Her; @anon-luv

(Jimin x Reader)

You loved him with all your heart, but he could only give you half of his.

Little Bear; @b-angst-tan

(Jimin x Reader)

You’ve always wanted a hybrid. Not truly being able to afford one makes it seem impossible that you’d have one anytime soon. Until the opportunity presents itself as if by miracle. 

Taehyung

Crimson; @idolxreader

(Taehyung x Reader)

Kim Taehyung disrupts your day-to-day life to make a deal with you.

Sugar daddy au.

Jungkook

Wanted; @rbuns [COMPLETED]

(Jungkook x Reader)

You were a deserter, a renegade, a wanted “criminal”. It was never in your plans to crash land on that planet, and it most certainly wasn’t in your plans to fall in love with it’s handsome ruler.  

Blackjack; @kpopfanfictrash

(Jungkook x Reader)

Bangtan is one of the most vicious mafias on the west coast. Only six members are known by name though, with a mysterious seventh member dubbed only as ‘the shadow.’ When you become indebted to the worst of the worst – how, exactly can you find a way out?

OT7

Tales of Greyria; @cutaepatootie [COMPLETED]

(Jungkook/Taehyung/Jimin/Hoseok/Yoongi x reader pairings)

Five stories that took place during the great times of a kingdom named Greyria, telling us about its glory and its downfall.  How it all started with a red rose, and ended with a burning fire. 

I just finished this and guys. Just go read it.

The Lonely Hearts Club; @cinnaminsvga [COMPLETED]

(?? x Reader)

social media au where y/n and yoongi are mutuals but they’re constantly at each other’s throats for reasons unknown (aka emotional constipation)

Call Me Mistress; @jeonjagiya

(ot7 x OC, not a poly au.)

A collection of stories recounting the titillating work of the dome known only as the Mistress.

Note: This was originally written as a reader insert and recently changed to an OC. It is still so worth reading, and I can guarantee you guys will have seen the Mistress as an OC anyways!

Working Man Bangtan; @jeonjagiya (I love all her stuff too)

(OT7 x Reader, not a poly au.)

A collection of stories where the leading man has a working class occupation.

Golden Goddess; @angel-ofcolordeactivated20180104

(?? x Reader)

You were stolen, swept away in the depths of the night by Park Jimin, the cruel king of the fairies. He’s always seen you as a prize– as something to play with rather than a person, and now he’s finally got his hands on you. He’s captured you, taken you off to a different world and stripped away any inch of your former self. Will you ever manage to escape his grip?

Tales From The Land of Fae; @fireheart-namjoon

(OT7 x Reader, not a poly au.)

A compilation of tales from the four courts of fae: Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring.

Note: This is the masterlist of all the related aus. The Winter Court is the main series of this story line.

Sweeter than sweet; @gimmesumsuga

(Jimin x Reader primarily, smut involving multiple other members)

You would have never expected someone like Park Jimin to notice you;  he's handsome, seductive, and totally out of your league.  Oh, and a vampire.  You're enthralled by him from the moment you meet, addicted to his kiss and his bite, willing to do anything to be by his side - even if it costs you your freedom... and your life. 

The 7 Society; multiple authors

(OT7 x Reader, not a poly au.)

Inside the grounds of the University, rumor has it there exists a secret society. One which thrives underground, comprised of seven individuals; each of whom is only to be revealed upon the hour of their death. The Society is enigmatic, seductive and wealthy beyond belief. There is only one rule, which must by strictly adhered to.

Don’t tell.

Soul Meiteu; @bang-tan-bitch

(OT7 x Reader, literally just fluff?? <3)

Your night at a concert turns into a dream come true experience. All you have to do, is take his hand.

Trust Nobody; @softjeon

(Taehyung x Reader, OT7 x Reader)

The first thing someone should know about you is that you’re an escort. Yes, you have fucked for money. One day your boss made you an offer you couldn’t say no to. One year - seven boys. One rule: never fall in love.

Endgame; @oppamansae

(?? x Reader)

In chess, winning is everything – unfortunately, it is never easy. Y/N knew that as soon as she was ordered to assassinate the ruler of Seoul’s wealthiest mob empire, Park Jimin. The real question was: would she be able to survive this twisted game, all while keeping her identity a secret?

Bound; multiple authors [COMPLETED]

(OT7 x Reader, not a poly au.)

In a world where marriage isn’t by choice and love isn’t an option – will you ever find happiness? Or just continue to search? 

Too Sweet; @justoneday-namjoonii

(OT7 x Reader, not a poly au (?),)

-Vampire!au BTS

ONE SHOTS

Seokjin

Long Live The King; @remembeo

(Seokjin x Reader)

Long live the King, and may he reign forever more. 

Currents; @bread-jinie

(Seokjin x Reader)

Jin thinks he’s loved you since the moment he saw you, back when you were teenagers; Jin knows he’s been in love with you, the soul burning kind of love, since he saw you on your wedding day. He doesn’t mind that you don’t reciprocate on his level, he’s just happy to show you he cares. Until one day, he simply can’t anymore. Until one day, you realize you need to show him you care, too. 

Golden Boy; @kpopfanfictrash

(Seokjin x Reader)

The golden boy of the porn industry, prettier than half his female co-stars. Will sue if you pull his hair. Always bothering his neighbors with pizza delivery.

Note: This is multi-author series. Masterlist here.

Yoongi

Lost Stars; @taegih

(Yoongi x Reader)

-Enemies to lovers au

Smoke; @army-author

(Yoongi x Reader)

You have full moon eyes, and Yoongi wants to cheat the system.

Petrichor; @donewithjeon

(Yoongi x Reader)

You weren’t exactly sure when Min Yoongi had come into town.

Blackthorn Manor; @kpopfanfictrash

(Yoongi x Reader)

After becoming the assistant of professional recluse Min Yoongi, you begin to notice strange things. Noises which shouldn’t take place, shadows which shouldn’t move like they do. You’re almost convinced that you’re crazy - until something happens, something unbelievable to make you realize you’re not.

Hoseok

The First Eclipse; @rbuns

(Hoseok x Reader)

Hoseok reminisces on your earlier times together.

Namjoon

I’m so sorry omg I rarely read any Namjoon stuff omg.

Jimin

20 Things (and counting) I Hades About You; @readyplayerhobi

(Jimin x Reader)

Park Jimin, also known as DJ Plouton, one of the hottest DJ’s on the planet. Arrogant, sarcastic and incredibly attractive; you’d appreciate him more if you weren’t convinced he’d be the death of you on a daily basis. But apparently that wouldn’t matter either, because what’s a bit of death to the God of the Underworld?

Note: I think this author is doing a greek god au oneshot for each boy!

Taehyung

Fireflies; @sugaxjpg

(Taehyung x Reader)

“There’s no hope for people like us, sweetheart. We’re destined to fall in love a thousand times, and have our hearts broken in each one of them. We might as well be miserable together.”

Danse Macabre; @sugaxjpg

(Taehyung x Reader)

-Vampire au

Shelter; @btssmutgalore

(Taehyung x Reader)

Taehyung’s always been a best friend, which is why you think he’s the right person to ask for help when it comes to relationships.

Sacrilege; @writingseoul

(Taehyung x Reader)

You're a sacrifice to Taehyung, the Sun God

Jungkook

Back Home To You; @kthartics

(Jungkook x Reader)

Four years after graduating from med school, and ten after a mutual break up with your high school sweetheart, he comes knocking on your window battered and bruised only for you to find out he’s quit the military and in exchange for the title of Korea’s top mercenary but to you, he’s just a boyfriend you got together with again.

Lust and Love; @bbfairy

(Jungkook x Reader)

Your family forces you to marry a man named Park Jimin in order to gain a profit from their affluence. While preparing for the Park’s arrival, your father hires a butler in the estate. Gradually, you fall for him. You become infatuated with his presence, unwilling to accept the marriage and Park Jimin.

Plans for Wedding Bands; @guksheart

(Jungkook x Reader)

I’ve been meaning to propose to you for ages and i have set up the perfect plan but as we’re driving to the restaurant this tiny little cat on the side of the road that you’re determind to save shows up and now everything is ruined oh god what am i gonna do❜

The Wedding Planners; @gukyi

(Jungkook x Reader + some side yoonseok)

jeon jungkook is three things: cocky, terrible, and your worst enemy. then your best friend hoseok gets engaged to the love of his life, and suddenly jeon jungkook is four things: cocky, terrible, your worst enemy, and the man you will be spending the next seven months with in order to plan your best friend’s wedding. and then, as if your life couldn’t get any shittier, you make the poor decision of sleeping with him on the first day of the job.

A/N: I really hope I linked these properly lol. Let me know if there are any problems!

[impertfectedchoices]

I Promise - PT.3

Prompt: In a Heartbeat Ship: James X MC POV: (Point of View): James Word Count: 1,653 Tags:

@hhiggs | @destinio1 | @marryjanewaston

Artist Comment: Holaaaaa, So, pardon the, AGAIN, long break. Life’s been kicking my WHO-LE existence 😭.

This one, unintentionally, is going to be a really emotional part. This wasn’t my original plan, but it just… kind of happened. The past two months have been pretty hectic, and I’m really trying my best, But when you go through bs, it seems like you’re alone. A quote I’m gonna be using in this pretty much sums up what I’m going through. And I feel like it fits in this fic too well. So, I hope this comes across well. While writing this part, I actually cried, like, semi-broke down 😭. This hits a real personal note to me, and I hope you guys understand it. So, FAIR WARNING! I’m trying my best to not look at the situation, but how I’m going to get out of it. And your “now” won’t be your “future.” Anyone can come out of a crappy situation and thrive. You just gotta go through the storm. And all that sappy stuff, lel. 💕

PS, This, as well, was on a whim. No planning, drafting, or prethinking about plot before I write…. just gonna try to spot all the spelling errors this time 😂

le’Enjoy!

•

8:01pm

It’s feeling like elephants are sitting on my chest, since getting back to the car. I’ve never, necessarily, had problems with my breathing being under control. But sitting here; watching the car lights from main road dance across my windshield, I find that I’m constantly reminding myself to take breaths. The more I force myself, it seems, my breathing gets more shallow. I’m repeatedly feeling on the inside, each attempt to grasp at anything stable. I’ve always been able to zone out, and let my mind center on my sane points. But, as of recent, there’s nothing to feel. Numbness has replaced any form of joy to my life, leaving me a drained form of myself.

From the library, past… past MC’s house, to the highway that took me a few miles away from Hartfeld.

Familiar roads allowed for the holes to appear slowly into the wall I temporarily built up, within a 30 minute time span. I parked, went inside and felt the anxiety creep its way back in. My mind tried to put itself back together, but seemed conflicted with the storm’s leftover mess that wasn’t letting up. Every time I attempted to collect my emotions, regain what stability I believed consumed my existence, something happens to throw my progress out the window to clean, discard, and replace. One fall after the next.

My hands were still, wrapped around the wheel. Never leaves, but tightens every so often. I could feel myself tense up, veins more visible, and the white peaking through from the grip I’d had. I needed to focus on something, Anything.

There’s like… maybe over 30 cars in the parking lot.

40?

Just turned red…

Counted off 5 cars turning right at the light.

…now 6,

7?

Yea, 7.

Turned green.

White… Toyota

Um, think it’s a Camry.

The left side’s light always seems to last lo-

• knock, knock •

Now, just realizing the knocking happening next to me, I’d subconsciously whipped away any traces of emotion left on my face to greet who it’d been. To my surprise, I was greeted back with a less then stable face bundled up in her jacket. Unlocking the door, Abbie walked to the passengers side. I opened the door for her, as she climbed in, with semi-urgency. “W-wow, it’s a lot colder than I thought I’d be today.” She said with a bit of a stuttery smile. It had been getting colder since fall started creeping in, but the temperature rarely came to mind, with everything else taking up room. I tried my best to disguise any strain that I’d been feeling earlier, to save face. “Yeah, falls been catching up on us.” mentioning with a halfhearted smile. As I began fiddling with the knobs; turning switches to adjust the heat, she cleared her throat before she began breaking the silence again, “James,”

Looking back up, her face, almost immediately tensed up. Actually looking at her, you could tell she’d been worn out. She looked as if she’d been crying, and her eyes grew puffier the more seconds passed by. Abbie seemed very resilient at times. But in this moment; just like everyone else, I was stunned to see her so weakened. “Abbie. MC’s going to be oka-“ “Don’t lie,” The cracking in her voice was low, but audible enough to ring throughout my head. “James, ?Kaitlyn and Zack told me everything. I went to meet up with everyone, got inside and… and everyone was just, falling apart. Chis pulled Tyler to the side. And I’ve, I’ve never seen him look so broken. Zach couldn’t even look me in the eyes, and Kaitlyn could barely get enough words out without breaking down mid sentence…” The more she spoke, the more the reality of the situation sunk back into me. “…They told me you left, and that’s not like you. So I had to find you.” She’d been turned directly to me, eyes swelling. Looking down at my steering wheel, my hands at some point fell back into position. Feeling myself tense up, still forcing myself to control my breathing enough to speak, “I just, it was hard for me to stay in there for much lon-“

“JAMES, THAT DOESN’T MATTER!” Wide-eyed, My eyes darted back up to her. Her face had gotten a hint redder than normal, and her expression was drenched with frustration, annoyance, worry, and concern. She had been trying to do what everyone felt was impossible; break through the walls I built up when placed in these circumstances. I understood what she was trying to get accomplished, but of all moments, now wasn’t the time. “Abbie,” Attempting to bite back any amount of sternness in my voices, I continued, “… I know how your feeling right now, this isn’t easy on me either. But the last thing we need to be doing is losing it on each other.” It seemed like everything I was saying, though, was just fueling the fire. “What an excuse. So is this your way of ‘solving the situation?’ Running off and hiding in your car?” “No, but staying in there isn’t going to make it any better.” “So, what is staying locked up in here is proving? All I see is someone running away from their problems!”

I could feel every ounce of me radiate irritation. It was getting harder to swallow it. “So do you truly believe I don’t care about MC? Really?” “If you did, you’d be in that room waiting for her! You already took her for granted before, and to think I thought better of you James. I had high hopes, but she’s given you way too many chances for you to get your act together… and you just SIT HERE! You may have had a lot on you plate, but she’s literally given every chance to fix her schedule to make time for you. And all she can get is a few texts, Time you give her for newspaper club meetings? You literally stand her up to work on some dumb paper when you knew she’d been sick. And no apology? Nothing?”

I’d still been staring at the steering wheel as she spoke. The more she yelled, the tighter my grip had gotten. What she didn’t understand was that this was literally killing every inch of my being inside. It felt like I was falling in this hole; ever since Vasquez passed, plummeting. Im just ready to hit the bottom, look at the distance I have to climb, and start climbing, but there isn’t a bottom. I just keep falling. It never ends. This constant torment doesn’t seem to have an end. And I just want it to be over. Everything emotion warped around in my head together; anger, fustration, sadness, guilt, irritability, brokenhearted-ness, fear, heartache, pain. It all reeked in my body, consuming me as all I could hear in my head was yelling. Abbie’s voice faded out, and all I could here was my subconscious talking: It’s your fault, you should’ve been there, you did this, where were you, she needed you, you weren’t there, your no good for her, she’s wasting her time, your taking her for granted, she deserves better, let her go…

“God James, I would thought you’d learn better from everything you put her through. Even with Vasq-“

BEEEEEEEEP!

“BE QUIET!!!!!”

I slammed my fist into the wheel instinctively. I needed the voices to stop, the agony to stop, I just needed to be able to hear thoughts that were my own. She jumped, looking shocked towards me. She didn’t expect such a response from me.

“Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, it’s not true… it’s not true. I care… I care, I swear.” I’d kept repeating this to myself, extensively tight clutch on the steering wheel, hunched over it.

“I care, I swear I care about her… I love her so much, God. Please, make her okay, i swear I’ll do better I care I care I care She means the world to me she does I need her”

I kept repeating it, over and over again. I needed what I believed to overpower what was going on in my head. But I didn’t have the strength to keep up the facade. They were right, it was my fault. She’s been so stressed because of me. I didn’t deserve her, I should have been a better partner, a better friend, a better boyfriend… I didn’t notice Abbie grab me from my stance and held me. She had been the one consoling me this time around. The hold I had over my emotions just gave out. It felt as if me as a person broke, shattered for the first time, as I was left to face my emotions, instead of disguise them.

“I’m so sorry, MC. I’m so fucking sorry, I’m sor-ry I’m so- I’m so-rryyyy.” I couldn’t hold it in anymore. Dropping my face into my hands, my heart wrenched and I dissolved in myself. Shaking, all I could do was replay what she’d told me, making my soul call out for her more;

”I’m fine James, it’s just a small cold. Nothing I… *sniff* can’t handle!”

”I’ll be okay James, I promise.”

”Geez, so mushy.”

”… but I love you too, my darling.”

•LAST •NEXT

[merryfae]

Yall mind if I rant: The Sequel Nobody Wanted

The newest comic got me to question my stance on Korra/sami yet again (the dashes here exist to keep it out of the tags, just in case that’s still a problem). The short version of this is that my stance really hasn’t changed. (Also, just a headsup, I haven’t read my old anti k/s post in a long time, but it’s probably full of logical fallacies and the lot, so…what I’m getting at here is please don’t judge me based on what I’ve written in the past). 

I remember when I loved LOK. Book 1, I was able to look past the flaws, because the tension, characters, and atmosphere was so good. Book 2, the flaws became harder to overlook, but the Avatar Wan episode was definitely an experience. Book 3 was an entirely solid outing, though I missed some of that original atmosphere from Book 1. And then Book 4. I was so excited for the finale, because Book 4, despite its flaws, had been pretty great. But through the majority of the finale I was thinking to myself, “is that it?” Like, don’t get me wrong, there were some good fight scenes between Korra and Kuvira, and Mako’s sacrifice was pretty powerful, but most of it was underwhelming. It felt less like a wrap up of the show, and more like a wrap up of that season. Nothing from past seasons really tied together with the exception of the spirit portal. Plot elements from past seasons that could have been integrated into the show were dropped altogether. I don’t know. It was disappointing. 

So I was already in a bad mood, and the entire ending with Korra//sami kind of killed it even more for me. Because representation is important, no doubt. I push for it a lot myself. But not when it impedes the storytelling. The storytelling of LOK? Didn’t warrant it. This is coming from someone who, at the start of Book 3, loved the idea of Korra/sami. Their interaction in the car? Adorable. Asami sparring with Korra? Great. But there was nothing in future episodes to build up to a romantic conclusion. There was a scene where Korra blushed when receiving a complement from Asami. That’s the only scene between Korra and Asami that implied romantic intent. That and Mako’s whole, “What is with you two???” thing when they all go out for lunch, but goodness, if that wasn’t the most forced, inconsequential conflict I’ve seen in this series. I mean, if you have to tell the audience that there’s something going on between these characters instead of showing us, maybe there’s a reason a portion of your audience didn’t latch on to your intent. 

The problem with every scene where Asami and Korra interact (aside from the fact that they don’t bond over internal, character-building struggles, and instead just solve external problems together) is that most scenes are just Asami supporting Korra emotionally. Which, okay, for another character, that could imply romance. However, Asami’s character is already naturally caring and nurturing. She was already a character who was entirely supportive of the rest of the cast, so it’s no stretch of the imagination by any means to view her supporting Korra with tea or her offering intimate support when Korra is devastated in the Book 3 finale as inherently platonic. And, given that she was a support figure already, Korra sending her letters that the others “wouldn’t understand” can likewise read as platonic. This would be different if a character like, say, Opal interacted with Korra in similar ways after her introduction, a character who did not exist to offer unconditional support to our main leads already throughout the show, and whom Korra alternatively exhibits support for in Book 3 (or maybe I just really like their air bending scene together. I don’t know. Don’t hold me to that one). And that covers basically all of Korra and Asami’s interactions – Asami offering Korra support, and Korra accepting (usually) that support. That is, aside from those short (very short) but sweet moments at the beginning of Book 3. Plus, Book 4 takes place after a years-long gap as well, so the fact that we’re only shown them interacting once outside of the finale in Book 4 really speaks volumes. Which is not to mention that, aside from that last scene they have together, they hardly interact in the finale at all. I wanted to like this ship. I really, really did. But not when the writing didn’t add up. 

And then there’s the fact that Bryke’s claims that Korra/sami was intended from the beginning are obviously false. I mean, they’re on record saying that after Book 2, relationship drama had come to an end, and they were ready to focus on friendship. If I remember correctly, the voice actors had to be called back in after the finale had already been finished in order to include that last scene with Korra and Asami. It was literally last minute. 

It certainly doesn’t help that I dislike basically every ship in LOK. I never liked B/opal either. I didn’t like M/asmi, and Ma/korra didn’t have the best development itself. Honestly, I don’t think Bryke are good at writing romance period. But I’m angrier about Korra/sami, because not only is it a relationship involving the show’s main character, but it’s the central focus of the scene that ended the entire show. Say what you want about Kat/aang, but at least that ship was planned and introduced beyond minimal amounts of subtext from day one. It was a consistent part of the story. And alternatively, if LOK had ended with Ma/korra like it did in Book 1, I wouldn’t be necessarily pleased with it, but at least there was a textual history there between the two. 

And I hear the arguments about how Bryke couldn’t include textual evidence of Korra/sami because it was a ship between two women. Okay, point taken. I mean, they did admit that they didn’t even bother asking Nick until last minute, but I digress. But jeez, you could at least develop their relationship a bit, couldn’t you? Again, the only conflicts these two face together are external ones. Korra and Asami fight a gang. Asami carries Korra away from danger while Mako and Bolin fight off baddies. Korra and Asami escape/crash/rebuild an airship. In none of these scenes together do they have any meaningful interactions. Maybe you could count Korra grinning at Asami for two seconds while they rebuild the airship. Maybe. But they don’t bond over anything or talk about anything except what’s happening to them at the hands of outside forces (or essentially, what’s relevant to the plot). Hence why Asami’s offer of unconditional support of Korra in the Book 3 finale rings a little hollow. It’s just Asami doing what she’s been doing the whole time, albeit with a more emotional framing. 

And all this could all lead me to explaining why I didn’t like the conclusion of Korra’s character arc, or why I didn’t like how Asami was essentially a plot device until Book 3, and even then, she wasn’t given any real development. (In fact, I’m actually kind of bitter that the show didn’t write Asami better. Her entire character basically revolved around A) the love triangle nonsense or B) her father/company). But if I were to go in depth with that, it’d take another thousand or so words, and I’m amazed I even had the drive to write this whole thing in the first place. In short, the show really is a mess. 

Now, I’m only writing all this because I’ve seen panels from the comic. The first few panels I saw, I figured I shouldn’t judge too harshly. I didn’t see enough of the actual comic to draw a conclusion. But with the new ones out, it’s safe to say that the comic seems relatively out of character for both Korra and Asami. Seriously, maybe one sentence in there sounded like it could come from Korra. I implore you all to switch the dialogue and pretend Korra is saying Asami’s lines, and Asami is saying Korra’s. Do you feel the character-charged dialogue? Me neither. And anywho, I’m a bit frustrated people are hailing Korra/sami as the epitome of representation when it’s really…not. It’s hard seeing Korra develop into a nearly unrecognizable character for me, because she was the saving grace of the show from day one. 

Korra/sami isn’t the only ship that’s frustrated me like this. I downright despise several forced ships in fictional media, especially when it’s detrimental to a character’s development. I didn’t like J/ashi from Samurai Jack. Krist/anna or Kristoff/anna or whatever the heck it’s called from Frozen was pretty awful. Several Marvel movies (of which I am a fan) have awful romance subplots (Sta/ron and Bruce/nat are the biggest offenders). At the end of the day, Korra/sami isn’t the biggest offender. It does offer quality bi representation between two WOC. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it. Go ahead and enjoy your ooc comics folks. Who knows. Maybe it’ll actually be good. 

[sikoko]

The Stack Overflow Age

Hi, everyone! A lot of stuff has happened since I was writing all those blog posts about Aeron chairs 18 years ago. Some of those blog posts are old enough to go to college.

And, also: Stack Overflow will be ten years old soon! Wow! So I thought it would be cool to get the old band back together for a little reunion tour over the next few weeks. I want to catch you all up on some stuff but mostly I want to tell the story of Stack Overflow in a not-completely-disorganized way. With some perspective, it’s clearer now what we did right and what we messed up, so I’ll try to cover the good and the bad over a series of blog posts.

And, also: we’re just a few weeks away from launching Stack Overflow Teams, the biggest upgrade to Stack Overflow ever, so that’s going to be really cool. I’ll get to that in a future blog post!

Today is chapter one. I want to talk a little bit about what it was like for developers before Stack Overflow, the problem that Stack Overflow tried to solve, and early origins.

In the early days of the Internet, before the Web, there was a system called Usenet which created primitive online discussion forums. When programmers had problems with their code, they could ask a question on a Usenet forum. (They were technically called newsgroups, not forums (even though they had nothing to do with news. (You couldn’t even get news on Usenet.)))

As soon as the world wide web became a thing, Usenet was immediately technically obsolete. We programmers started asking about our problems on various web-based forums, of which there were thousands.

One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. The first version of Experts Exchange was not successful financially. Apparently they went bankrupt in 2001. Eventually new owners bought the assets and resurrected the site with a clever business model: charging money to read answers.

This actually fixed the business, which started making money, but it caused some problems.

The first problem was that programmers with problems would search on Google, not on Experts Exchange. And Google only knows about free, open websites, not websites that you have to pay to access. So EE did a bamboozle: when the Google Robot came by, they showed it the full question and its answers. But when regular people went to the same page, they saw the answers were scrambled, with instructions to pay (I think it was about $250 a year) to see the results. Most programmers couldn’t be bothered.

The second problem was that EE let you get a free membership if you answered a certain number of questions. As it turned out, the people who were most desperate for free memberships were not exactly the best programmers in the world, and they wrote low quality answers to questions just to get those free memberships. And the quality of answers on the site went down.

For a long time (at least five years, I think) programmers would constantly come across EE in the Google search results, try to click on them, discover that it was a pay site, grumble, and just go back to Google and try to find an answer for free.

And I kept thinking, how hard is it to run a discussion forum on the Internet? For fudge sake, I had written one in Visual Basic in a weekend. (Not kidding, actually. Yeah I know that I am always saying “I could do that in a weekend in Visual Basic” when developers tell me some feature is going to take a year. This is why). So I was confident that it was only a matter of time before one of the 9,000,000 smart programmers in the world decided to route around this EE damage and make a free forum.

You know what? Nobody ever did. I kept waiting.

Another thing I wrote in a weekend (well, to be precise: a fortnight (shut up, I’m telling this lie)) was a job listing board for this blog. And in the first month of running that job board I think we sold about $90,000 of job listings. Huzzah! And then I thought, wow, if we smashed these ideas together—replace Experts Exchange with a free site, and pay for it with job listings—we could undo the damage to the internet and let developers get work done again.

I kept thinking “Man, this is so obvious, somebody is going to do it.”

And they never did.

And I went to one of the programmers at Fog Creek, and explained my idea, and he was like “yeah yeah sounds like a great idea, but I really like working on FogBugz.”

And more time went by.

And eventually, early in 2008, a developer/blogger named Jeff Atwood called me up, and said, “Hey Joel, I’m thinking of quitting my day job to be a Pro Blogger; you’re a blogger: what do you think?”

And I said, “Jeff, I’ve got a better idea” and I told him about the idea to combine the job listings with the Q&A site for developers, and, it took more than a weekend, but eventually I convinced him. We started talking about all the ways our Q&A site would be amazing. Jeff started working on the code in April 2008, recruited two other programmers to join him (Geoff and Jarrod, who are still here), and the three of them heroically launched what became Stack Overflow in September 2008.

    And thus began the Stack Overflow Age.

Stack Overflow was better because it was free, but it had a ton of other “innovations” (which I put in quotes because we stole them from other Internet pioneers) which made it a much, much better site for getting answers to programming questions.

We wanted the whole thing to be a fun game, with incentives to answer questions, so we had a reputation system. The more you answer, the more reputation you earn. The reputation idea had been seen before on sites like Slashdot and Reddit.

As you earn reputation, you also earn moderation privileges on the site. So the site actually moderates itself, which is pretty cool.

Instead of putting all the Java programmers in one little forum and all the C++ programmers in another, we dumped everyone together and just let them tag their questions. This idea was stolen from flickr (remember flickr?) who, I think, stole it from del.icio.us (now gone)—who knows, anyway, the point is, tags were the new hotness and made Stack Overflow work great.

Most importantly, we realized that each question is asked by one person but the answers are seen by thousands of people who found it through a search. So we decided to optimize everything to be useful for the thousands, not the individual. We literally have 1000 visitors for every person who asks a question. That’s why we sort the answers by votes. It’s also why we optimize for questions and answers that will be helpful to other people, later.

Interestingly, when Jeff and I started Stack Overflow, we didn’t really care if it was a business and we didn’t need it to be a big profitable success. We created it because the internet sucked for programmers and we needed to make it better. We thought the job listings would pay the bills, and we’d fix the internet, and that was all we cared about and it’s what motivated us to work so hard.

Of course, it turned out a lot bigger than we thought it would. The company today has 250 employees, is profitable, and has made it possible for millions of people to learn how to code and to deal with the new, super-complicated world of APIs and frameworks that we live in. But we just wanted to fix the internet.

I have met a lot of people who started businesses because they wanted to start a business. Paul Graham calls this “Playing House.” And they didn’t really care what the business did; they just wanted to “be entrepreneurs.” Which is weird, because being an entrepreneur really sucks. It’s really hard to get through all the extraordinary difficulty, pain, and stress of starting a company if you’re not super, super motivated to solve a problem for the world.

The entrepreneurs who succeed do so because it is incredibly important to them a thing exist in the world, and it does not exist, so they work like crazy until it does. When we started Stack Overflow we didn’t expect it to be a big business; we just wanted there to be someplace where developers could get help to daily problems, while showing off how smart they were helping other developers.

Ok, that’s chapter one. I’ve got a lot more to talk about. In the next installment, I’ll talk more about how Stack Overflow’s light dusting of gamification made it really take off.

Source: https://ift.tt/2uPEZRc

[jmtapio]

Hi, everyone! A lot of stuff has happened since I was writing all those blog posts about Aeron chairs 18 years ago. Some of those blog posts are old enough to go to college.

And, also: Stack Overflow will be ten years old soon! Wow! So I thought it would be cool to get the old band back together for a little reunion tour over the next few weeks. I want to catch you all up on some stuff but mostly I want to tell the story of Stack Overflow in a not-completely-disorganized way. With some perspective, it’s clearer now what we did right and what we messed up, so I’ll try to cover the good and the bad over a series of blog posts.

And, also: we’re just a few weeks away from launching Stack Overflow Teams, the biggest upgrade to Stack Overflow ever, so that’s going to be really cool. I’ll get to that in a future blog post!

Today is chapter one. I want to talk a little bit about what it was like for developers before Stack Overflow, the problem that Stack Overflow tried to solve, and early origins.

In the early days of the Internet, before the Web, there was a system called Usenet which created primitive online discussion forums. When programmers had problems with their code, they could ask a question on a Usenet forum. (They were technically called newsgroups, not forums (even though they had nothing to do with news. (You couldn’t even get news on Usenet.)))

As soon as the world wide web became a thing, Usenet was immediately technically obsolete. We programmers started asking about our problems on various web-based forums, of which there were thousands.

One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. The first version of Experts Exchange was not successful financially. Apparently they went bankrupt in 2001. Eventually new owners bought the assets and resurrected the site with a clever business model: charging money to read answers.

This actually fixed the business, which started making money, but it caused some problems.

The first problem was that programmers with problems would search on Google, not on Experts Exchange. And Google only knows about free, open websites, not websites that you have to pay to access. So EE did a bamboozle: when the Google Robot came by, they showed it the full question and its answers. But when regular people went to the same page, they saw the answers were scrambled, with instructions to pay (I think it was about $250 a year) to see the results. Most programmers couldn’t be bothered.

The second problem was that EE let you get a free membership if you answered a certain number of questions. As it turned out, the people who were most desperate for free memberships were not exactly the best programmers in the world, and they wrote low quality answers to questions just to get those free memberships. And the quality of answers on the site went down.

For a long time (at least five years, I think) programmers would constantly come across EE in the Google search results, try to click on them, discover that it was a pay site, grumble, and just go back to Google and try to find an answer for free.

And I kept thinking, how hard is it to run a discussion forum on the Internet? For fudge sake, I had written one in Visual Basic in a weekend. (Not kidding, actually. Yeah I know that I am always saying “I could do that in a weekend in Visual Basic” when developers tell me some feature is going to take a year. This is why). So I was confident that it was only a matter of time before one of the 9,000,000 smart programmers in the world decided to route around this EE damage and make a free forum.

You know what? Nobody ever did. I kept waiting.

Another thing I wrote in a weekend (well, to be precise: a fortnight (shut up, I’m telling this lie)) was a job listing board for this blog. And in the first month of running that job board I think we sold about $90,000 of job listings. Huzzah! And then I thought, wow, if we smashed these ideas together—replace Experts Exchange with a free site, and pay for it with job listings—we could undo the damage to the internet and let developers get work done again.

I kept thinking “Man, this is so obvious, somebody is going to do it.”

And they never did.

And I went to one of the programmers at Fog Creek, and explained my idea, and he was like “yeah yeah sounds like a great idea, but I really like working on FogBugz.”

And more time went by.

And eventually, early in 2008, a developer/blogger named Jeff Atwood called me up, and said, “Hey Joel, I’m thinking of quitting my day job to be a Pro Blogger; you’re a blogger: what do you think?”

And I said, “Jeff, I’ve got a better idea” and I told him about the idea to combine the job listings with the Q&A site for developers, and, it took more than a weekend, but eventually I convinced him. We started talking about all the ways our Q&A site would be amazing. Jeff started working on the code in April 2008, recruited two other programmers to join him (Geoff and Jarrod, who are still here), and the three of them heroically launched what became Stack Overflow in September 2008.

    And thus began the Stack Overflow Age.

Stack Overflow was better because it was free, but it had a ton of other “innovations” (which I put in quotes because we stole them from other Internet pioneers) which made it a much, much better site for getting answers to programming questions.

We wanted the whole thing to be a fun game, with incentives to answer questions, so we had a reputation system. The more you answer, the more reputation you earn. The reputation idea had been seen before on sites like Slashdot and Reddit.

As you earn reputation, you also earn moderation privileges on the site. So the site actually moderates itself, which is pretty cool.

Instead of putting all the Java programmers in one little forum and all the C++ programmers in another, we dumped everyone together and just let them tag their questions. This idea was stolen from flickr (remember flickr?) who, I think, stole it from del.icio.us (now gone)—who knows, anyway, the point is, tags were the new hotness and made Stack Overflow work great.

Most importantly, we realized that each question is asked by one person but the answers are seen by thousands of people who found it through a search. So we decided to optimize everything to be useful for the thousands, not the individual. We literally have 1000 visitors for every person who asks a question. That’s why we sort the answers by votes. It’s also why we optimize for questions and answers that will be helpful to other people, later.

Interestingly, when Jeff and I started Stack Overflow, we didn’t really care if it was a business and we didn’t need it to be a big profitable success. We created it because the internet sucked for programmers and we needed to make it better. We thought the job listings would pay the bills, and we’d fix the internet, and that was all we cared about and it’s what motivated us to work so hard.

Of course, it turned out a lot bigger than we thought it would. The company today has 250 employees, is profitable, and has made it possible for millions of people to learn how to code and to deal with the new, super-complicated world of APIs and frameworks that we live in. But we just wanted to fix the internet.

I have met a lot of people who started businesses because they wanted to start a business. Paul Graham calls this “Playing House.” And they didn’t really care what the business did; they just wanted to “be entrepreneurs.” Which is weird, because being an entrepreneur really sucks. It’s really hard to get through all the extraordinary difficulty, pain, and stress of starting a company if you’re not super, super motivated to solve a problem for the world.

The entrepreneurs who succeed do so because it is incredibly important to them a thing exist in the world, and it does not exist, so they work like crazy until it does. When we started Stack Overflow we didn’t expect it to be a big business; we just wanted there to be someplace where developers could get help to daily problems, while showing off how smart they were helping other developers.

Ok, that’s chapter one. I’ve got a lot more to talk about. In the next installment, I’ll talk more about how Stack Overflow’s light dusting of gamification made it really take off.

via Joel on Software

[psychotherapyconsultants]

Even Facebook Doesn’t Understand Facebook’s Algorithms

After all the hand-wringing that came from the “fake news” spectacle courtesy of Facebook’s news feed — the thing you see when you log into Facebook from your phone or laptop — one thing has become abundantly clear. Even Facebook doesn’t understand Facebook.

And that’s the problem with relying on an algorithmic artificial intelligence (AI) that has been built (or more accurately, pieced together) over the years by hundreds of different developers and programmers.

This all became clear to me over the past few days as I mulled over the things I learned at the latest HealtheVoices 2017 conference, and reading an excellent article about Facebook by Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times Magazine.

At the conference, a Facebook representative faced a somewhat frustrated (and at times, nearly hostile) questioning crowd about why the stuff they wrote as health activists and advocates seemed rarely to surface on other people’s Facebook news feeds. The only way it seemed to get engagement, said people in the audience that day, was to purchase it through Facebook (via a paid-for mechanism called “boosting” a post).

The Facebook representative had no answer to give to these questions about why seemingly high-quality, good content isn’t being surfaced in their news feed. Yet every single participant I spoke to — passionate, engaged health advocates — saw it as a problem with Facebook. But even Facebook couldn’t explain how to fix it.

And it’s no wonder. The Times Magazine article shed light on to the “why” behind it. The Facebook news feed algorithm sorts though, on average, 2,000 pieces of possible content every time a person loads Facebook for the first time and on every refresh.

There are so many variables that go into that complex, dark, and proprietary sorting algorithm that not even Facebook can answer why something will or will not show in someone’s news feed. It’s very much the same kind of pain webmasters have long felt in dealing with Google and their search indexing algorithm.

The fact that the algorithm can easily be bypassed by simply purchasing access to people’s news feed is no surprise — and a large part of the reason Facebook is making so much money year after year. Even the poorest-quality content can buy its way on to your supposedly-personalized news feed.

News Feed: Still a Work in Progress

You’d think that after so many years of hard work, attention, developer’s hours, and research into this algorithm, it would get some basic things right. But two recent anecdotes show me how much farther Facebook’s lauded AI still has yet to go.

The first is the concert meme that took hold of Facebook’s news feed in late April 2017. In this particular meme, participants list 10 concerts they’ve attended in their lifetime, but one of them is fake. It’s up to the person’s friends to spot the fake concert they have not attended, and comment on it.

My initial thought when I first saw this pop up was, “Who cares?” because, frankly, I don’t care what concerts my friends have seen. If I was engaged in an actual conversation with my friends about the topic of “concerts we’ve seen,” it could potentially be cool. But as a conversation starter, I found it non-sensical because it is out-of-the-blue — socially connected to nothing. So I hit “Hide this post” from the first one I saw on my news feed.

Did that help stop the influx of this meme onto my news feed over the next few days? Not one iota. I saw no less than a dozen such questions in the next two days flood my feed (even after clicking on “Hide this post” on at least two more too). All of which was of zero interest to me. So much for Facebook’s AI working.

The second is Bloom County. I’m a huge fan and rejoiced when Berkeley Breathed started drawing again. I look forward to each day when a new comic of his shows up in my feed. Yet mysteriously, Facebook has no clue about this. It stopped showing me his comics a few weeks ago, even though I studiously clicked on most of them in order to read them more easily in their enlarged form.

How could so many clicks result in a “not interested, stop showing this to this user” tag? Facebook couldn’t answer this question if it wanted to, because it has no idea how its news feed algorithm actually works — or doesn’t work — for individual users. This would be funny if it wasn’t such a big deal. According to the Pew Research Center, more than half of Americans get their news from Facebook.

Feedback Forms that Give Little Feedback to Users

Facebook claims it can assess (and work to fix) a lot of problems if users just used their feedback forms more often. But there’s a reason users hate to give Facebook feedback — their feedback system just sucks.

Facebook’s feedback forms give users very little feedback of its own, and instead values leading users down an array of, “Here’s how to fix this yourself, idiot” questions that clearly seem always to suggest that most of the problems you come across are yours to fix — not Facebook’s. There’s no human at the end of those forms, and no human response that you’ll ever receive. This is the very definition of inhuman. Ironic for a company that sees itself “building a global community” connecting everyone more socially. How can a company do this while eschewing any human contact with its users?1

AI is So Complex, Humans Need to Help

Many developers tell themselves that AI can likely solve any human problem, if given enough variables, datasets, and tweaking. But what Facebook has clearly shown is that whatever it’s doing to help solve its news feed problem, its AI is not working well for many, many people.

Nobody feels like Facebook is even listening. As I noted earlier, health advocates and activists I spoke with at the conference said they are not being heard. Social media companies like Facebook don’t seem to care. And on a closed Facebook group for news publishers, I hear the frustration daily on how many respected news organizations are having their in-depth, investigative journalism articles languish on Facebook without paid-for boosting. Meanwhile, a breezy “5 Amazing, Quick, and Easy Ways to a Summer Tan” throwaway article gets more hits than Trump’s Google searches for “How do I fix…” queries.

Parting Shots on Today’s AI

Apple’s lauded Siri is often held up as a useful example of AI that works in today’s modern world. But as I was writing this article, I said, “Hey Siri, tell Nancy that I love her.”

Siri, in her infinite wisdom got the recipient of the message correct (luckily, since I know only one Nancy). But the text she sent was, “I love her.” Siri obviously had no understanding of the actual meaning of my sentence, and instead used rudimentary filters to figure out I wanted to send a text to a person in my contacts with the literal message, “I love her.”

This is the level of AI we’re working with today across big technology companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple — somewhat useful, but frustratingly uneven in its quality and implementation.

I really hope that Facebook figures this out, because every day I find myself using it less and less as it increasingly becomes less and less relevant to my actual interests and daily life. I may be in the minority today, but I suspect that will change if Facebook doesn’t resolve these problems of relevancy and interest soon.

Footnotes:

This is one of the reasons Facebook presenters at conferences often get pelted with so many questions — its the sole human contact most of us has ever had with this technology giant.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/05/02/even-facebook-doesnt-understand-facebooks-algorithms/

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING HN

But in fact the data was almost certainly safer in our hands than theirs. What happens in that shower? All they had to do was play hardball with licensees and copy more innovative products reasonably promptly. But there is also huge source of implicit tags that they ignore: the text within web links. This is about cities, not countries. We spent three months building a version 1, solve the core problem. The record skips at that point. Instead of asking what problem should I solve? He was doing something quite different from what they expected? Don't be evil so eagerly was not so much that Lisp has a strange role in my pantheon of heroes: he's the one I reproach myself with. There may be tasks that we solve now by writing programs and which in a hundred years.

When people applying to medical school ask her for advice, she wants to shake them and yell Don't do it! As anyone who has read any amount of nerdiness if someone was truly smart. And that's fine. So if you're a startup competing with a big company. Most founders who get contacted by corp dev already know what the basic human reaction to a piece of paper saying they didn't own our software; and six months later that he has no idea how dangerous they are. Facebook have all been obsessed with hiring the best programmers have limitations. Most investors know this m. Which means if you want to create a new variable s. It's hard to imagine how that town felt about the Steelers. What do you wish there was?

Even if you're designing something for the most part, is that there's so little room for those who worry about these trends, because they don't have any current running through them. What you notice in the Forbes 400 has decreased from 1. And probably for the same reason their joinery always has. To achieve wisdom one must cut away all the debris that fills one's head on emergence from childhood, leaving only the important stuff. How can you get anything, but by the bid but by the end of California Ave in Palo Alto, the original motivation for HN was to test a new programming language. And yet he seems pretty commanding, doesn't he? Fathers tended to adopt the attitude of benevolent kings bestowing largesse, and mothers that of harried bureaucrats, giving in to pressure. You'll find more interesting things by looking at structural evidence, and structurally philosophy is young; it's still reeling from the unexpected breakdown of words. I can remember when it was that small merchants were our target market, and 5000 was our best guess at its size. On closer acquaintance they turn out to be. What do they have to stop and think about that.

I was so ignorant that learning almost anything meant learning new things. The term dark ages is presently out of fashion as too judgemental the period wasn't dark; it was just a temporary aberration. But in a competitive market, even a differential of two or three articles on individual people's sites rather than to magazine articles or news stories. The argument against this approach usually hinges on security: if access is easier for writers too, it's not enough for a CEO to have someone smart he can ask What would Steve do? In fact that is probably the optimal state of affairs if you could know in advance. Nearly all programmers would rather spend their time more like everyone else too. You may even want to think about the value of a startup—indeed, almost its raison d'etre. Now, when coding, I try to think of another.

But any application can be interesting to build. And a lot of different cafes, but there will be a while before any American city can bring itself to do that. But the importance of thinking this way, because there's an infrastructure that prevents such a staircase from being built. No cofounder Not having a cofounder is a real problem. But I took so many CS classes that most CS majors thought I was one of the things that surprises founders most about fundraising is how long it will take you through everything you need to be a professional. But by that time were brown with dirt. What matters, though, if I've misled people here, I'm not including domain-specific little languages.

Like prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. That's why I write them. If you can make as good a case for it as they can in each one. But their tastes can't be quite mainstream either, because they tend to repel you. They're tricked by misplaced ambition. Those in the print media. Just don't wait. Startups are so hard that it's a good idea to use famous rich people as examples, because the only potential acquirer is Microsoft, and I think he knew it.

Notes

For example, being offered large bribes by Spain to make more money was to realize that species weren't, because to translate this program into C they literally had to bounce back. Bill Yerazunis. How much more analytical style of thinking. G.

Though in a limited way, be forthright with investors. There were lots of type II startups, but if you tell them everything.

Several people have responded to this talk, so buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs. They're so selective that they will come at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, they can be huge.

But that doesn't mean the Bay Area, Boston, or a blog that tried to motivate them.