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vampire sucking blood from the inner thigh can be something so erotic and more vampire media needs to get on this train

look at this post with your eyes if you agree

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the big thing about worldbuilding is that it’s ALL about tone. The other thing about worldbuilding is that it’s about repeated tropes that keep showing up in aggregate. You can control your story’s tone but unfortunately your story exists in conversation with all the other stories in its genre and you can’t control those, only how your story engages or doesn’t engage with the trends those other stories set.

“why are there potatoes in this Generically Vaguely Medieval European Fantasy World?” gets mocked a lot but it’s a question worth asking. If your world has Wizard McDonald’s with a McDragon (dragon hamburger) and Magic Fries no one is gonna be asking where the potatoes come from because you have set the tone of the world: it’s silly and satirical and those aren’t the relevant questions to be asking.

There’s also something very fair to be said for the Vaguely Medieval England Fantasy World, like the Vaguely Star Trek Sci-Fi World, as a known setting: we all know it, we all know its tropes, we all basically know How It Works, so authors don’t HAVE to do any meaningful worldbuilding any more than they’d have to if they set their story in, like, London, or New York City. Anyone in the English speaking world is at least vaguely familiar with how London or NYC work; similarly, the Generic Medieval Setting and the Generic Space Setting are places English language genre readers Basically Know. It’s a pre-made world full of inbuilt connotations to drop your characters/plot/concept into. There’s value in that, imo particularly for short-form works.

But if you take your secondary fantasy world to stand seriously on its own, to support a fantasy epic of your own, it can fall apart at the seams under the conflicting weight of own casual assumptions, and that’s what the “where do the potatoes come from?” question is all about. It’s about assumptions. The potatoes question is basically a synecdoche for, “if your world has the (literal) fruits of nonwhite people’s labor and cultures in it, does it have any nonwhite people?” The Shire has potatoes, tobacco, and iirc sunflowers and strawberries: all plants native to and domesticated in the Americas by Indigenous American people. The question is for you to ask yourself, why are potatoes a quaintly charming English thing for hobbits to eat, while, say, a hobbit eating quinoa or avocado toast would be jarring? Why do the royalty of Westeros eat lemon tarts but not curry? Why is coffee normal in this temperate-climate setting, but papayas and bananas would break immersion? Why are some foods “normal” and others “foreign”? What does this indicate about the assumptions baked into your story-world about what is Normal and what is Foreign? And why are potatoes, in particular, so common in fantasy worlds that are Vaguely European? Why is this a Normal Part Of The World but quinoa or maize corn (other South American Andean staple crops) aren’t? Why don’t we think of potatoes as a South American food?

It’s not about the potatoes, not really. It’s about whether you’ve thought about how Your World works, whether you’re being deliberate with the tone and the type of expectations you set, or if you’re just repeating what Feels Normal without digging into what’s Normal and what’s Foreign and why.

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writing is so funny because i could write nonstop for 9hrs and then hit a block where im like "how do i transition between this moment and the next?" and then i just dont touch it for 6 months

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evil scientist x test subject but the subject keeps asking reeeallly nicely for the scientist to do fucked up experiments on them and the scientist is like um.. thats scary... idk... :(

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The one time I made an epub I used Sigil, but you do need to know/learn a bit of XML for that, which is honestly not difficult if you already use AO3. Maybe it's what you're looking for!

Hey does anyone know of a free software that can help format a manuscript for ebook in epub format (or whatever it is, just not pdf)?

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girl shocked to discover that inaction can have consequences too

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Getting kidnapped as a superhero is rather embarrassing, but at least you were certain that your friends would rescue you. Which is why it came as a massive shock to you to see one of your villains bust the door of you cell open and unlock your restraints.

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No shame in using the safeword (quitting a fic that doesnt do it)

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Sometimes you have to function in society while your head is full of The Characters.

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being doomed by the narrative is cool and all but i like when a character is doomed just by being a fucking idiot. sorry that happened to you but it is entirely your own fault and you could have just chosen to not do all that

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Everyone needs a sicko to bounce ideas off of. It's necessary to survive any fandom ever.

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Shout out to characters who want to be used. Shout out to characters who are so desperate to be worth something that they'll endure anything. Shout out to characters who build their entire self worth around being useful, being a tool. Shout out to characters who don't care how they are treated, as long as someone pays them any attention at all

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Hi everyone,

I know my posting has been all over the place. I wanted to provide some notice before I go through with my decision. TL;DR I'm deleting my blog.

These days, I have felt regret with having opened my blog. While I've met a lot of people who I cherish, it's also brought me so much hurt that I think I'm done with Tumblr. I'm realizing that these days, I've been anxious while on the app and happy when I'm off of it. I worry about metrics and stuff I really don't have the capacity for anymore, what with my real life and all.

I'm in a different place in my life than when I started this blog. I will be downloading a backup and closing my blog at 3pm tomorrow. I'm announcing ahead of time so that people who wish to have further contact me with can add me on Discord.

I'm probably keeping my writing on AO3, but I will just be keeping my finished stories up there.

I know this will mess up links for collabs. I will be allowing the people who I collabed with to repost my parts so that the story is cohesive.

Thanks for the good times, you know who you are.

And for the others, you also know who you are.

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DEVIL MAY CRY (2025)

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Did anyone else always imagine their ocs living in a mansion together when they were younger?

Like mine lived in a huge mansion in the woods away from everyone, and they'd always go on adventures together

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The whumpee was someone that was supposed to help people, they were supposed to be a beacon in the dark- which is exactly why the whumper wanted to snuff them out. Hope meant people would grow bold, and bold people revolted- the whumpee could not allow this. Yet despite everything, the whumpee refused to break, even after bruises and burns and cuts, nothing worked.

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making a collection