cat-the-dragon

[cat-the-dragon]

Died and came back with the knowledges of what eldritch horrors from beyond are like. Is now afraid of sugar... Yes sugar. Won't explain why.

died and came back tired. died and came back exhausted. died and came back with manic energy. died and came back with malingering unease. died and came back twitchy. so many possibilities

[cat-the-dragon]

Oh you give author comment?? You give author little kudos on their fic?? LOVE FOR READER!! LOVE FOR READER FOR ONE MILLION YEARS!!

[cat-the-dragon]

And the other fanart! Sakurama's gift!

Sakurama III illustrations

so, I drew Tobi's masterpiece

Just started on Krita, so I'm going to blame everything wrong with it on the program, if you don't mind

[cat-the-dragon]

Sakurama III illustrations

so, I drew Tobi's masterpiece

Just started on Krita, so I'm going to blame everything wrong with it on the program, if you don't mind

[cat-the-dragon]

tweet

Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.

[cat-the-dragon]

So a free tool called GLAZE has been developed that allows artists to cloak their artwork so it can't be mimicked by AI art tools.

AI art bros are big mad about it.

[cat-the-dragon]

My therapist just told me my problem is that I need to write more fanfiction.

[cat-the-dragon]

Ok so at this point I've had two people roll up to me in manual wheelchairs, well, one of them was somebody pushing somebody who was nonverbal at the time, but it still counts. They asked me why I had zip ties around my tires.

It's winter where I'm living and we have really bad snow. And the snow plow people are really bad at their jobs probably because there aren't snow plow people who clean sidewalks. As a solution I got to thinking about how I could increase the traction on my wheels. And the most redneck thing I could think of was taking a bunch of zip ties and tying them around my wheels. They last surprisingly long, and work surprisingly well. It's basically the same premise as chains for your tires during the winter.

I chose to space them out pretty evenly so there's about one for every spoke. You could probably do more or less depending on how many you want and how much traction you get but I wouldn't go more than three per spoke. I realize that it's a bit later in the winter, and I probably should have made a post about this sooner, but I came up with it about a week ago. So please share this, even if you're not disabled, because there are tons of people I know who are stuck in their houses because they can't get around in the snow. A pack of zip ties costs about $5, which compared to $200 knobby snow tires is a big save, and if you want to invest you could get colored zip ties.

[cat-the-dragon]

that ‘pakige?’ post but me, a couple hours after posting a fic, like ‘comints?’

[cat-the-dragon]

-33:

When I was born, my death counter said thirty-three.

Thirty three. It could be worse. Some baby's death counter says two years. Or six. Or nineteen.

Thirty three is not so bad.

My parents had me at twenty-eight and thirty-two. They both had fifty seven years left to live. They had thought, when they first met, that it was so romantic that they shared a death year. They would be there for one-another all the way to the end.

And I would die twenty-four years before them.

I have to hand it to them. They tried their best. They tried.

-28:

When I was five, my little sister was born. Her death counter said ninety-two. And I was just old enough to understand why my father shed tears of relief when mom showed him the infant's wrist.

My little sister would outlive them.

Unlike me.

And still, they cared. At best they could.

-27:

Yet they still tried to keep my little sister a little distant from me. Spare them the pain of losing me when she was only twenty-eight by preventing her getting too attached to me to start with.

But little Lea didn't understand yet. And with my bracer hiding my death counter, she didn't even know to ask. Lea loved me, despite, or maybe because of my parents' efforts to spare her from me.

Wearing a bracer to school was not uncommon. But... Well. It was more the mark of the unfortunate. Why hide your death-count when it said eighty or ninety? No. You hid it when it was on the shorter side.

And children do not yet understand tact, or respect conventions.

If you wore a bracer, you would be asked to remove it. Show your own death-count. And those who refused risked bullying. There was no winning this.

Either you refused to remove your bracer, and you had refused to share a secret and become friends. Or you did remove it, and the knowledge of your death count would forever tint your relationships.

-25:

I made friend with another short-lived kid.

It was eye opening, in a way. My new friend would die twenty years old. Thirteen years before me. He appreciated me, my willingness to still associate with him.

And I got all of my parent's furtive sad looks at my covered wrist by looking at him. One day I would lose my best friend.

And like an hypocrite, I refused to make any more short-lived friends. The exact same thing I disliked being subjected to.

My parents might have it right, associating with someone with the same death year as them. It cut down to pity and anticipated grief.

-18:

As years passed, my counter ticked down. Feeling more and more present.

Lea finally understood that I would leave her, and she started to drift away.

-16:

My best friend and I got a bit distant. I decided not to bother with higher studies. Why invest so much of my limited time in something that wouldn't give me return?

-13:

My schoolday best friend died. At twenty, just as predicted. A car crash, like statistics dictated it would be. He wasn't even driving, having decided it too risky. The car found him while he was walking on a sidewalk. And I had thirteen more years to live.

-11:

I did try to date. It never quite worked. At some point along the dating, you were expected to remove your bracer. Share the secret. And, much like school, either you didn't, and you weren't deemed invested enough, or you did, and your partner found an excuse to ditch you.

-9:

I joined an association for the shorter lived.

It was a bit dis-humanizing, how they tried to match you with someone who would die in the same year as you. I wasn't just my death counter, after all.

But the sweet old lady I was paired up with was a delight.

-8:

My parents kept in contact. Doggedly, possibly out of shame for having chosen to spare themselves pain in picking each-other. Lea didn't.

After a while, me and Gertrude, my dear sweet old lady, got a third same death friend. His name was Mark and he was thirteen. Gertrude seethed at fate when she first met him. How would she live to seventy and Mark to twenty-one?

Mark had been signed up by his parents. They hoped that being matched with same death friends would curb his budding delinquent tendencies. I got him. Why not, after all? Why not make the most of time he had? He woudn't die yet, after all.

-7:

Mark stopped seeing us. Then he got caught by the police. Two years of prison. It was a tragedy in itself.

I stopped wearing my bracer to hide my death counter.

We got another friend instead. Hesper was fifty. She was staying away from her grandchildren. She didn't want them to miss her when she died.

It was Hesper who got the idea.

Why not adopt a short-lived child? All together? Pool their economies to buy a small farm make some sort of haven so we can ensure a sort lived child don't have to be reminded of their death count with every rejection.

I like the idea. Gertrude too.

We're starting the procedures.

-6:

His name is Michael. Like the angel. A bit on the nose, but why not, after all? He's two, and he has five more years to live. We picked a child who would die before us. On purpose. He won't have to mourn us. He will be happy to his very last moment.

We obtained a derogation from school for him. He does not need to learn how to live on his own. Gertrude spoils him endlessly. We all do.

-5:

The short-lived child care center contacted us. They want us to take on another child with the same death year as Micheal. She's older than usual for them, her mom just died from cancer. Her father never was in the picture. A one night-stand that refused to stick around for a woman and child that he would outlive.

Kara is eight, and bitter to the core. We do our best for her. She loves Micheal with all her heart, and that's encouraging.

Mark is getting out of prison soon. He accepted our offer to come fetch him and clear him a bed until he gets his feet under him.

-4:

Mark is staying with us now. He doesn't want to go live at his parents'. And he found a purpose in caring for the kids.

The center for the care of short-lived children attributed us a stipend and gave us two more children. We expended the farmhouse so we'd have enough space for everyone.

Hesper is contacting various groups in the short-lived people association, she wants to will the farm to another group who might raise more children there.

0:

All of our children have died. It was... It was horribly hard. Seeing the other ones stand at the funerals, fully expecting to be next.

Maybe we shouldn't have opted to ask for the right to bury ours on the property. The graveyard is not the best place for condemned children to spend their last few months.

It probably isn't the best place for us either. Seeing how Mark comitted suicide in there.

Gertrude will die from her heart, it's become obvious. And Hesper has come down with an horrible pneumonia.

As for me... I don't know yet. Maybe I'll decide to go see my family one last time and die of a plane crash. Then again, plane crashes as a cause of death has decreased almost to zero since companies have started asking the zero-years to say so, and grounded all the plane with a majority of zeroes for thorough revisions.

Though then again, that prediction method got very unreliable. After all, if the plane will stay grounded, then when will people die? They were meant to, after all. But retiring any pilot when they reach one year did yield results.

I do have regrets, but... It wasn't so bad a life, after all. For all that the specter of my own death shadowed me all along.

everybody’s always on writing prompts like “what if there was a world where everyone had a timer ticking down to their death… but you met someone whose timer said infinity!” or “what if everyone had their cause of death tattooed across their forehead… but you met someone whose forehead said THE CREATURE!” Enough -

enough. stop with the shock value. there is no need to insert THE CREATURE; the benign concept of such a world is horrifying enough. not even in urgency, but just in banal, everyday interaction. imagine you meet someone and their timer says two years. not tomorrow, not urgently soon, but two years. enough to do quite a lot. they could fall in love in that time - could they get engaged? have a baby? you might otherwise get to know them, befriend them, but perhaps you opt not to, make a conscious choice not to invest in your own grief. what balancing act would every individual person have to participate in - I have ten years, is that long enough to be a good mother to children? is that long enough to secure a caretaker for my own mother? my wife will die a few months before me. my newborn’s timer reads nineteen years.

and cause of death. you interview for a job and emblazoned across the healthy, smiling face of the HR lady is MALNUTRITION. your country is prospering, safe, but every person you meet on the street from the babies to the old women read BOMB. BOMB. what kind of havoc would fate wreak on the world? what about the loss of privacy? how would that shape our notions of hope? idk man I think a lot of those ancient poems were right, and the fates are monsters. I’m interested by the framing of these ideas as trite horror tales when the premises themselves are so much more disturbing if simply taken to their logical ends

[cat-the-dragon]

I have one kink and it's not a good idea.

[cat-the-dragon]

I have made vow to myself that if anyone compliments my hair I'll answer "thanks, I grew them myself"

This whole thread is cool and wholesome.

[cat-the-dragon]

Redditors crashed the website with donations over $25k and 0 wishes left. via /r/MadeMeSmile

Click here and follow to get more daily positivity on your dash!

[cat-the-dragon]

You know if I was a full time weaver I would stand ominously over people

[cat-the-dragon]

[cat-the-dragon]

I once commented with a real-world correction detail on a spiderman fic. About how you didn't exhale while activating the inhalator, but instead breathed the inhalator's puff in, because that's how the medicine gets inside the lungs to do it's work. But then again, that's not a plot-changing detail, and the author went back to change that one line. That is more likely to be welcomed, because, as said above, it doesn't require changing the entire story.

Also, if the author is not asthmatic and you are, they can accept that you know this subject better than them.

Politeness is never optional, though! no 'hey, you're wrong!' and more 'so I noticed that... And in my experience it doesn't work this way? I don't know, though, it might be different in that one particular situation...'

Hello!

How do you leave a good comment on a work when you notice a large error? Or a small error,m I get so nervous to leave a comment nowadays because not many people have clear statements regarding criticism. So, I'm hesitant to point out anything out/ leave a comment that's anything but positive.

I remember a few months ago, on a BNHA work, I corrected the timeline of canon events that author got wrong (because the WIP seemed to be going down that route of "canon adjacent" work that spawn from a canonical event). The author had a message beneath the chapters that "all comments were welcomed," so I thought it was okay to leave the type of comment I did. But I dealt with several aggressive messages from the author and the author's friends about needless critique and how rude I came off as afterwards (I apologized,but I still got messages for a while).

The whole thing freaked me out a bit because I hate any semblance of confrontation ,so now I'm nervous about commenting any work- even those with explicit statements on criticism (welcome ,not welcomed,etc). I leave kudos and such ,but sometimes I debate over whether or not the author needs my comment about their typos. I try to sandwich a critique between two compliments like everyone says,but then I end up with a paragraph-length comment, and I worry about coming off too strongly.

I'm rambling,sorry.

Is there a guide to good comments for criticism in fanworks? Besides not giving criticism when criticism would not be welcomed??

Thank you for your time.

First of all, I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience. I'm sure that was awful for you, and I totally understand why it would freak you out.

When it comes to correcting things in fanfic, there are a lot of things to take into account.

Why does correcting the error matter to you?

How well do you know the author?

How long would it take to make the correction?

There are others, but these are the bigger "buckets" I see most of them fitting into.

If the error matters to you because you get annoyed when you see typos, for example, then that's more of a "you" problem. You can download the fic and edit out the typos and then when you reread it, you won't have to worry about them.

If the error matters to you because you'd be embarrassed if you had posted a fic and there were typos in it, that's also kind of a "you" problem. If the author feels the same way, they'll likely have an author's note indicating that they want to be notified. Otherwise, they're likely resigned to the idea that typos will happen, and if they reread their work themselves, they'll edit them out if and when they catch them.

If the error matters to you because it's non-canonical, this one is more of a wait and see. Maybe the author made the error by accident, but it very well could be on purpose. Perhaps that small change is relevant to the overall plot they're developing. Maybe it's just a thing that they personally hate in canon and have decided that they don't want to include for that reason. Maybe it's a genuine error that they'd be horrified to notice later. There's no way to know.

And that last one is where we come to the second item above. If you know the author well, you can message them and have a chat and bring it up there. I'd recommend just starting out by talking about the story as a whole and what their plan is for it. As I said, maybe what you see as an error is actually a conscious choice that they've made for the story that they want to tell. During that conversation, you'll be able to figure out whether it's actually an error and whether they'd want it pointed out or not.

If you don't know the author well, you could point an error like that out in a comment but then you need to think about the third factor.

Typos take seconds to change. Plot points take hours, days, weeks, or longer. Asking someone to put in a lot of time to make a change to something they've already been working hard on can be really demotivating - even crushing.

For a lot of authors (possibly even most?) they put a lot of work into their fics before they ever get to the point of posting them. They've read, revised, planned, and plotted. They might even have additional chapters already written that are in the revision process and just haven't been posted yet.

Especially in long works, authors look to the comments as a cheering section to urge them on towards completion, so posting corrections or pointing out errors can feel like someone standing up and booing. I think that's what happened in that BNHA situation you referenced in your ask.

That's why the general suggestion when it comes to commenting with corrections is just to not do so. If you want, you can comment about all of the things you like in the fic and then ask if the author wants a beta. That would allow you to have those conversations about their vision for the fic, and it would also allow you to offer feedback before the work is posted and while it's still being edited and worked on.

Otherwise, if it really does bother you, I'm afraid you might just need to dip out and find a different fic.

[cat-the-dragon]

Snapshot of the extra fic I'm fitting in this year's NanoWriMO!

Harry Potter and the long road to Valinor

“If there are any to see I at least am revealed to them. I have written Gandalf is here in signs that all can read from Rivendell to the mouths of Anduin.”

They crossed the invisible boundary of Imladris’ protective enchantment, and at once, Asfaloth’s gait became spirited and bouncy. The Valinorian horse delighting in making the small jeweled bells of his harness chime loudly with each of his strides. Glorfindel smiled gamelly and adjusted his stance so he wouldn’t bounce against his horse’s back too heavily, he too was happy to finally be home, and had long since learned to enjoy Asfaloth enthusiasm.

Behind him he heard the gentle chuckle from Elladan and Elrohir, whose horses liked nothing more than to follow Asfaloth lead, especially as they too knew they were almost back home and could expect to be pampered and luxuriously fed once they reached the last homely house.

They were still in the woods when Asfaloth abruptly stopped and perked his ears upright. Glorfindel came to attention at once, searching around for what had alerted his horse.

Light began to shine from underneath the eaves, and it took the twin’s gasp of “Glorfindel!” to understand that the light came from him.

Glorfindel watched uncomprehending as his hands shone brighter and brighter with the remembered light of the two trees. He normally could call upon this light at need, but it was the first time this happened without him willing it, and it was fast outshining what he could manifest on his own.

As he thought this, Glorfindel flung his fea about, looking for the source, and immediately recognised the cool, kind hand of Mandos upon his brow. He panicked for a moment, thinking himself on the brink of death, but Mandos soothed his fear gently. Calmed by the reassurance that the anomaly was born from a Vala, even if he didn’t know why, Glorfindel opened his eyes again.

He was just in time to see his light leave his skin and coalesce in a silhouette just in front of him.

He stared, dumbfounded, as the form of light pulsed thrice, then the light was abruptly yanked inside the silhouette, leaving it’s surrounding to it’s natural and suddenly overwhelming darkness.

Glorfindel blinked, fast, to adjust his vision again, and looked again. Nothing. He then looked down, on a hunch, and there, almost under Asfaloth’s hooves laid a prone body.