disappearinginq

[disappearinginq]

[disappearinginq]

WHUMPERLESS WHUMP EVENT 2025

Welcome back to the Whumperless Whump Event of July, where we celebrate the situational and environmental side of our community via beating the shit out of our blorbos!

FAQ and plain text prompts under the cut!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How are the prompts divided?

Q: Where can I find the prompts list?

A: @whumperless-whump-event on Tumblr.

A: The title is a “theme” for the day, followed by two tropes and a dialog prompt.

A: Absolutely.

Q: Can I use the title as a prompt?

A: Not at all.

Q: Do I have to use all of the prompts?

Q: Can I use all of the prompts?

A: Absolutely. If it's fun, go for it--don't feel pressured to finish them all, but do follow what's inspiring you.

Q: If I'm writing a chronological story, can I swap the days to make it fit the timeline?

A: Yes. Just make sure you tag each piece with the prompt and day you're filling.

Q: Can I have early or late entries?

A: Yes. Early and late entries will not be reblogged to the event account, though.

Q: Is there an Ao3 collection?

A: Yes! This year's collection can be found here, or through searching whumperless_whump_event_july2025. Please remember to submit this year's prompts to the 2025 collection and NOT the 2024 one!

Q: Can I write NSFW?

A: You absolutely can, but the event blog will not reblog any prompt fill rated Explicit. Please ensure you tag NSFW appropriately.

Q: Can I use AI?

A: No.

Q: Can a whumper be included in the prompt fill?

A: The short answer is no. The long answer is that you cannot have the role of whumper in your prompt fill (aka: no whumper-on-whumpee); however, if the character you want to be a whumpee or a caretaker happens to be a whumper, then as long as they are not fulfilling the role of whumper, it's fine. Also, if there is a whumper, it must be totally impersonal and faceless. Here are some examples for clarification:

A character's drink is spiked at a party. OKAY: The whumper who spiked the drink is never mentioned and is completely faceless, and the story is directly about whumpee recovering. NOT WHUMPERLESS: The whumper who spiked the drink kidnaps the whumpee. A character is left alone in a storm. OKAY: The character is stranded or lost. NOT WHUMPERLESS: Whumper tied them to a post and left them in the storm. A character is mugged on the street. OKAY: The whumper is a stranger, faceless, and the focus is on Whumpee. NOT WHUMPERLESS: The whumper is a stalker and there to kidnap Whumpee.

All in all, if your goal is to fulfill the event, then try to avoid a whumper. If you're using the prompts elsewhere, then ignore this; but in the spirit of the event, no whumper roles please.

Q: How do I tag my posts?

A: Tag with #whumperless whump event, #wwevent 2025 and #wwevent day [x](Don't just tag wwe, that's wresting.) Then, tag triggers and content warnings. Please put these first in the tag order! It just makes it easier to reblog.

Q: How do I get reblogged?

A: Mention this blog in your post! It's the easiest way for me to find you. Otherwise, I won't reblog it. (This also means if you do not want your post reblogged to the event, just don't mention the blog, and it'll stay private.)

I think that's about it. That's a lot, so if you've got any questions, feel free to shoot me an ask. I'm happy to help!

PROMPTS:

INSULT TO INJURY: Infected wounds / Hurt and ill / “Fate really has it out for you, huh.”

PUBLIC MISINFORMATION: Presumed dead / Search party / “There's a hand, I can see them!”

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME: Left behind / Attempted Martyr / “Get out while you can, and don't look back.”

LIKE A KALEIDOSCOPE: Numbness / Dissociation / “Can I hold your hand?”

AT LEAST IT'S NOT MANUAL: Trapped in a car / Stranded / “You can't drive like this.”

DOOMED BY THE NARRATIVE: Scheduled execution / Near death experience / “That was too close.”

AHOY THERE MATEYS: Motion sickness / Washed ashore / “I hate the ocean.”

CHEF MIS-STEAK: Hot stove / Slip of the knife / “I swear, I'm usually better at this.”

SCHEDULE YOUR MAINTENANCE: Lack of self care / Sick day / “Just take a nap. I can handle the rest.”

BOOM, CLAP: Gunshots / Sound sensitive / “Shut up, please.”

CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP: Overworking / No time to rest / “We're not safe yet.”

HOW DID WE GET HERE: Isekai'd / Evacuation / “This is not a good place to be.”

A GOOD OLD FASHIONED BEATDOWN: Training mistake / Accidentally hurting someone / “…Let's take a break.”

RIPPED THE RUG FROM UNDER YOU: Despair / Clinging on for dear life / “Please don't leave.”

GET BEHIND ME: Using their body as a shield / Full team whump / “You're such an idiot!”

KNOCK ME OFF OF MY FEET: Collapsing in public / Dizzy / “Woah, there, you good?”

SEEING RED: Bloody nose / Coughing up blood / “Good lord, is all that yours?!”

BREAKING NEWS: Storm Shelters / Huddling for warmth / “It'll be over soon.”

IRRESISTABLE: Venomous snake bite / Spiders / “Man, these bugs really just love you, don't they.”

GOT THE SNIFFLES: Seasonal allergies / Can't stop coughing / “Bring tissues next time.”

FEAR IS THE MIND KILLER: Phobias / Uncontrollable shaking / “I gotta do this. I have to.”

HUG TIME: Touch starved / Comfort / “You're safe. I promise, you're safe.”

RECOVERY PERIOD: Tending to past injuries / Bruises / “Alright. Lecture me before you pop a blood vessel.”

IT WAS ALWAYS BURNING: Wide-scale fire / Third degree burns / “You'll only make things worse if you keep doing that.”

IT'S JUST SPRINKLING: Stuck outside during a storm / Natural disasters / “We should not be out here right now.”

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE: Flying debris / Pinned / “We gotta get you out of here.”

ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH: Withdrawal / Hangover / “You'll get through this.”

TAKE A WALK (LITERALLY): Hiking mishap / Heatstroke or heat exhaustion / “Can we take a break?”

TAKE A WALK (FIGURATIVELY): Snapping under pressure / Lashing out / “You wanna say that again?”

MIND THE STRINGS: Mind control / Psychic mishap / “Come back to yourself, please!"

ONE WRONG STEP: Caught in a trap / Impaled / “If we remove it, you'll bleed out in seconds.”

ALTERNATES:

THE CLOCK IS TICKING: Losing track of time / Long term coma / “Was I… dreaming?”

IMPROVISED SOLUTIONS: Field medicine / Makeshift gurney / “It's all we have, I'm sorry.”

HARD KNOCK LIFE: Severe concussion / Clumsiness / "Sorry… who are you again?"

UNDER PRESSURE: Can't stop the bleeding / Disrupted healing factor / "Why isn't it working?!"

WHO'S YOUR EMERGENCY CONTACT: Workplace mishap / Distress call / "Talk to me."

SHENANIGANS AFOOT: Time loops / Body swap / "You're scaring me."

A RIVER IN EGYPT: Working through injury / Recovery / "I'm fine. I'm fine."

[disappearinginq]

WIP Week Day 2 - Newest WIP

“Hello, mother.”

He had been hoping she wouldn’t answer the phone, but River Cartwright had learned a long time ago that it’s the hope that kills you. 

“River? Is that you?” Isobel asked as if she didn’t have caller ID like the rest of the world. 

“Yes, mother, it’s me. You alright?” River asked, grateful she couldn’t see through the phone to him, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers and regretting this decision completely. 

“Ah, so you do remember me. Did that woman you work with remind you to call me?”

River almost felt as bad for Louisa having to speak to his mother as he did for the whole faking his death thing. God, he missed Rose at times like this. 

“Yes, she did,” River said, and everything he wanted to say suddenly lodged behind the lump building in his throat. 

I met Dad. Great guy, why didn’t you mention him before?

[disappearinginq]

Bitches will find a fictional man attractive and then immediately imagine him in situations where he is losing alarming amounts of blood

[disappearinginq]

saw this cute post and now I'm not going on reddit for the rest of the day. quit while you're ahead

[disappearinginq]

Reblog to let your followers know that despite your current obsession your previous obsessions still exist and are simply lying dormant until they awaken and strike again

[disappearinginq]

30-Song Guess Your Age Quiz

Fwiw, they thought I was MANY years younger than I am. Just made me feel good all over. 😊

[disappearinginq]

I am like two weeks late but better late than never, right? RIGHT?!

Hard Love by NEEDTOBREATHE

Lost Boy by Ruth B.

Forever Bound by Von Grey

Sing Loud by Alpha Rev

Some Dreams You Never Wake Up From by Valerie Broussard

Sinners by Barns Courtney

Round Hole by Rebecca Brunner and Song House

Teenagers by My Chemical Romance

Midnight by Tyler Glen

The Wolf by Phildel

I am tagging anyone that wants to give me music recommendations - I don't care if it's in an ask or a comment or reblogging this, but I am always on the hunt for new music.

got tagged by @seeking-elsewhither to put my on repeat playlist on shuffle and give the first 10 songs YAY!

re-enchanted world john mark mcmillan

tear in my heart twenty one pilots

terminals relient k

sahara relient k

unhaunted john mark mcmillan

cuckoo! neon horse

burn out bright switchfoot

عنوان إقامتي ayman kafrouny

which to bury; us or the hatchet? relient k

all i have sarah sparks

tagging... @in-echoes-forever @thatfriendlyanon @ghosts-and-blue-sweaters @sunflower-chai :3

[disappearinginq]

We've seen Luke and Steven and Leigh in your Haunting of Hill House wip, do Theo and Shirley make any appearances? I really loved the snippet you shared with Luke finding Steven in the kitchen, I loved seeing their relationship. I think it's such a great idea to expand more on Steven's relationship with his other siblings. (I really love everything I've read from your wip and it's been on my mind recently)

Oh boy, do they. Shirley less so because I don't like her as much as the others, but I'm willing to accept that's likely because she plays the role extremely well and it's a little to close to real life people I know that are UnFun. But yes, Shirley and Theo are a large part of the plot, and it generally is a Found Family story in the sense that they have been lost to each other for quite awhile, and the story is them reconnecting and becoming an actual family again - this story essentially fills in the gaps between the final scene where everyone is happy and having moved on (Luke, 2 years sober; Steven and Leigh expecting; Shirley still married; and Theo engaged/married). Mostly because Found Family is trope you will pry from my cold, dead hands (which is hilarious given this is a ghost story). Annnnnnnnnyway. Onwards to the snippet:

“You know what always pissed me off about that last night? And how dad refused to tell us anything?” Steven asked quietly. He leaned back against the sofa, resting his head against it so that he stared straight up at the ceiling.

“Besides everything?” Theo asked.

“That we could guess anyway.” Steven absently twisted the glass in his hand. “If you took all the pieces from that night and saw them for what they were, we could figure it out on our own. He wasn’t protecting us from shit, except a definitive answer from a goddamn adult.”

Luke shot a worried glance to Theo, but his middle sister didn’t say anything. Shirley, on the other hand and as per usual, had something to add.

“Yeah, Steve?” she pushed, needling in that way only she could. “And what exactly is that? How did you manage to solve the mystery of the Crain family when no one else could?”

Steven didn’t move, and Luke found himself looking at the same spot in the ceiling his older brother fixated on, trying to figure out what was so interesting, even if he half expected a ‘made you look!’ joke.

“I listened to you. To Nellie, and to Luke. We had all the pieces. We just…didn’t look. Not really. Maybe because we just didn’t want to know. Not for sure. But when you take away the imaginary parts - the ghosts and the tea party and all the little kid stuff - what does the story tell you?”

Shirley scoffed quietly. “You never listened to me.”

“Just because I don’t listen doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention,” Steven admitted, and finally he pulls his head up with herculean effort, and for the first time, Luke sees parts of Hugh there. Steven looks older, wearier. That same weight that always seemed to be pressing down on their father had settled on his brother, and Luke worries how much more Steven can carry. “You said Mom never left. She didn’t go see Aunt Janet. You came down for food that night, and you saw her in the kitchen with the tea set. It’s strange, sure. But not menacing, not by itself. So something you saw, something in the way she behaved, made you run for Dad. You were twelve and weren’t exactly what I would call imaginative.”

Shirley bristled at that. “I had an imagination.”

Theo shot her a glare. “You wouldn’t play pretend with Nell ever, and you kept trying to pawn her off on me every time she asked about having a tea party.” She didn’t mention that Shirley continued to pawn off her siblings on Steven, or even each other, well into adulthood.

“I’m not complaining about it, I’m just saying - you weren’t the type to overreact. You didn’t scare easily from imaginary things. And still, something about Mom made you afraid.” Steven glanced over at Theo before letting his gaze slide back to his own hands. “Then, according to Theo, she runs into Dad on his way out of the house, and he has both Nellie and Luke with him, and he orders you out to the car because he has to come get me and you. But not Mom. When Dad came and got me, he made me promise not to open my eyes, and he carried me out of the house. He didn’t walk, he ran, and he didn’t put me down again until we were almost at the bottom of the stairs. We got in the car, the girls were crying, Luke was screaming about Abigail, and Dad took off. He didn’t look back, he didn’t turn around, he didn’t stop until we were at the motel. And all he told us was that’s not Mom. Luke said Mom looked hurt - that they were having a tea party with Mom and Abigail in the Red Room, and Mom fell. And do you remember what Nellie said?”

“’That wasn’t Mommy’,” Theo supplied. She’d almost forgotten that conversation in the motel. It seemed more like a dream than an actual memory. Or maybe nightmare was the better word.

“So, break that down and we have,” Steven said, raising a finger with each point, “Mom acting so bizarrely even Shirley noticed. That six year old Nellie and Luke noticed. Mom did something so bad that Dad had to get us away from her, and for him to not even think about bringing her with us when we left. That something had to do with a tea party with Nellie and Luke and…and Abigail. And that something had to be so bad that Dad reacted in violence. Something bad enough, Mom couldn’t live with herself afterward. Put it together and, with what the prosecution accused Dad of, you can guess well enough.”

“Which is?” Shirley prompted.

“They call it ‘filicide’- when a parent murders a child,” Steven continued, his voice still in that same flat, monotone. “Parents are responsible for sixty one percent of children’s death under the age of five. Sixty one percent, Shirl. Seventy two percent at six and under. So, yeah. When you ask me which version I believed - Mom was killed by a haunted house, or Mom’s mental health was allowed to deteriorate so far that it took her trying to kill our siblings before anyone took it seriously - of course I thought the second one, because it happens to other people. It wasn’t just us. Or Mom.”

Well…fuck.

I really must finish this. It's been like...75% finished for ages, but I don't really know how to end it, so it just sort of flounders in WIP Land without a destination. So - if you have suggestions, or thoughts, you can always either shoot me an ask or a DM. I am always down to discuss this show.

[disappearinginq]

WIP Wednesday

tagged by @thewildballyntynesgrow

Ok, maybe I missed the deadline by a couple minutes, but in my defense, I was scrolling through things to see what I had already shared (I haven't had a chance to write anything new) BUT. I think I found it - more of the Young River!fic but it's expanded slightly to include Catherine, because, assuming I did my math right, Catherine would've just started working at Slough House with Lamb right around the time that River comes to live with his grandfather.

Ahem.

Anyway.

“You’re worse than the roaches, Cartwright - how did you even get in here? Who let you in here?” One of these days, that boy was going to turn up at some place that actually made sense, but Lamb doubted it was any time in the near future. But Christ on a bicycle, he knew his Horses were slow, but he didn’t think they were so slow as to let a child in the front door, no matter what he told them.

River was sitting cross legged on one of the empty desks, peering through one of the folders marked ‘DESTROY’ in bright red stamped letters across the front, delicately sipping from a broken and chipped mug that had seen better days. “Granddad sent me here to punish you,” he said, without looking up. Instead, he put his mug down, pulling his knees up closer to his face so he could prop the folder closer as he squinted at something on the page. “What does ‘absquatulate’ mean?”

“It’s a deeply silly word meaning to abscond with something,” Catherine answered as she sidestepped around Lamb. “Like I’m about to do with that file, which I told you to leave alone.”

“It can’t be that silly if it’s in an MI5 document,” River argued, still squinting at the page. “How are you supposed to be able to read this? The writing is terrible.”

Catherine peered over the boy’s shoulder, pretending to study the document seriously for a moment. “It says ‘Listen to Catherine and put it in the shredder like she asked you to’.”

River laughed at that, his blonde hair that was getting redder by the day falling in front of his face before Catherine absently pushed it back, before pulling the folder from his hands, exchanging it for a plate with an edible looking sandwich that Lamb suspected was from her own packed lunch.

It was so…weirdly domestic that Lamb almost physically recoiled, but he wasn’t sure why, and did what he always did when he didn’t feel like examining his own self too closely. “What the…Standish, you can’t feed it, then we’ll never get rid of him!”

Catherine scowled at him. “He’s a boy, not an it, Jackson.”

“You don’t know him like I do,” Lamb pointed out. “I’ve been trying to get rid of this one for years - like a bad penny, that one.”

tagging....hmm.

No pressure tags but know that I am deeply invested in your WIP's no matter what they are (drawing or writing): @tenderhooked @abubblingcandle @jamietarttsnorthernattitude @lord-owlsnake @itsjustdg @dragonnan @philcoulsonismyhero aaaaaaaaaaand anyone else who wants to play a belated game of tag

[disappearinginq]

THE ENTIRE WEST IS BEING PUT UP FOR SALE AND I AM BEGGING YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS

Trump’s budget bill has many, many things in it, but buried amongst it is the MILLIONS OF ACRES OF PUBLIC LAND FOR SALE.

This is the entirety of the Arizona state forests, the entire Cascades mountain range. Swathes of pristine desert around the national parks in Utah. On the doorstep of Jackson Hole.

THIS BILL IS BIG, BUT IT CAN BE AMENDED AND ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT PASS AS IS please.

If you have ever enjoyed the wilderness, we stand to lose it all forever.

CALLING your senators - NOT JUST IN THE WEST. ALL SENATORS, is CRUCIAL.

Outdoor alliance has a great resource for reaching out.

I don’t have a huge following but please, everywhere I have ever loved, the forests I grew up playing in, the land I got married on, is all at risk and I am begging.

[disappearinginq]

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

[disappearinginq]

these are KILLING me

[disappearinginq]

First time in NYC, and I kinda like it in the rain

[disappearinginq]

Did you ever just feel so lucky for knowing someone you met online? Like.. I was one click away from not following you. I was one second away from never even knowing of your existence.I would never have been this happy!!!...