jkthinkythoughts

[jkthinkythoughts]

...how? How would one do that?

Sometimes I forget people aren't multishippers then I see someone talking about how they used to ship something then got a new ship and I'm like what do you mean you aren't just collecting ships like cool rocks you see on the ground

[jkthinkythoughts]

hi, just wanted to let you know that i really vibe with your blog and to please tell me if my reblogs and activity ever get annoying or spammy, i've gotten blocked because of that once.

also, i've been really struggling with writing due to mental health issues and your story posts gave me a sudden burst of motivation, you have such a way with words and you make spinning ideas into paragraphs look so easy. so thank you so much for that, you have no idea how much reading the mulan post and the pigeon-and-a-cat post means to me.

It's no bother at all! I love when my writing makes other people happy! I cant guarantee I'll be this prolific long term - I've recently swung back to writing on the ADHD hyperfocous pendulum, but I'll ride it out for as long as I can 😀

I'm thinkythoughts on AO3 if you want to see the rest of my stuff - I have a series of original fables up there too:

[jkthinkythoughts]

There was a young man from Peru

Whose limericks stopped at line two

[jkthinkythoughts]

Becoming a writer is great because now you have a hobby that haunts you whenever you don’t have time to do it

[jkthinkythoughts]

Hot Take: everyone knows that Clark is Superman but everyone is convinced they’re the only one who knows that Clark is Superman so they’re all like “ah geez I have to keep this a secret so no-one finds out” and the only person who genuinely Does Not Know is Lex Luthor

[jkthinkythoughts]

HSI/ICE vs. hungry Mexican restaurant customers - WHO YA GOT?

[jkthinkythoughts]

okay but there is something disquieting about this urge to cast fan writers as altruists. they give us all this for free!! well, no.

they’re sharing

it’s a key difference in perception. fic isn’t given. it’s shared. it’s part of a fandom community— in which readers are also an integral part.

it’s probably inevitable mission creep from the increasingly transactional nature of the internet and fandom-as-consumerism, which was always gonna happen after corps worked out how much bank there is to make from those weirdo fan people

but like. fandom is sharing. i think we’ve lost that somewhere.

[jkthinkythoughts]

I have been HAUNTED for decades by a song I heard at 2 am on NPR in the mid-90's. It was instrumental, very harsh and industrial. I didn't get a chance to write down the artists name. Its been over 30 years, and still wanna listen to it again.

If the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down, then the radio station i listen to is shutting down. This will be the second radio station that I've lost in two years. I would like to live in a world not sponsored by iheartradio and Siriusfm.

[jkthinkythoughts]

Cool, cool, cool. I got it. I absolutely understand what you want people to do and the steps you require to be taken so that *you*, personally, are happy with your Fandom Experience (tm).

So, my only question is, what's your plan when the rest of the world fails to fall in line? When the people who don't agree with you or just flat out don't care about your moral crusade ignore your Very Important Rules?

Please tell me you have a plan that's more well thought out than "scream louder", because that's just embarrassing.

GET. AI. OUT. OF. FANDOM. Stop making headcanons with it, stop making fanfic with it, stop making fanart with it. If I see one more "asking chatgpt *blank* about *character/characters in a fandom* I'm going to lose my goddamn mind. Use your own fucking brain, stop asking AI to do everything. You could even ask other real people what they think. Just. Stop. Using. AI. In. Creative. Spaces.

[jkthinkythoughts]

Oh for fucks sake. The only "AI industry group" this is talking about is Anthropic. You want to know what happens if Anthropic gets nuked from orbit? Nada. zilch. bubkis. Their underlying tech gets bought up and absorbed by another tech company. Their devs and scientists will go to work for other tech companies.

OpenAI just dropped two separate models that can be downloaded and fully run privately on consumer hardware. Anyone with a solid gaming PC can now run a fully local instance of GPT. Merry fucking christmas, y'all.

Whacking off because someone wrote a headline you agree with is NOT going to fix the actual real issues with AI development.

The biggest threat to the "AI industry" right now is that we are in a valuation bubble that will pop at some point because that's what bubbles do. When that happens, NO, AI is not going to magically go poof any more than the web went poof when the first dot.com bubble crashed. You will see market consolidation and non-viable business models being done away with.

But hey, what the fuck do I know.

AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

well…darn

[jkthinkythoughts]

The lake took heat like a secret. Steam rose where her skin met the water and vanished into the night air as if it had never been. Mulan slid deeper until even her shoulders were covered, braid coiled on a rock like a rope she could pull if anyone came. Mushu paced the shore, flicking sparks at midges.

“Two o’clock, three meatheads,” he hissed, tail lashing. “Laughing about feet. I told you they’re weird.”

She went under on instinct and came up to her nose. Cold seeped behind her ribs. The voices grew from the reeds first, then the shapes of Yao, Ling, and Chien-Po, shirts slung over shoulders, boots clapping each other free of dust.

“Lake time,” Ling announced to the moon.

Mushu glanced at her, whispering “don’t move” then sprang onto a half-drowned log and threw his little body to twice its size with pure theater. Sparks cracked. Smoke coughed out of him like a bellows.

“Halt, mortals,” he boomed in a voice he absolutely did not own. “This waters is cursed by an evil lizard demon.” A pause, then with relish: “Me.”

The boys stopped. Three shadows against the pale water.

“A lizard demon,” Yao said, flat.

“Ancient. Cruel. Territorial. I hate soap,” Mushu said. He rolled his eyes back and worked up a gout of smoke that turned the reeds into trembling silhouettes. “Any man who lingers will be turned into a woman. Slowly. Horribly. With cramps.”

Chien-Po folded his hands. Ling snorted and then did not laugh.

Mulan edged behind the rock, and kept her mouth closed. Stupid. Should have gone upstream. Should have- Mushu’s glance pinned her again.

Yao spat into the grass. “There’s no such thing as lizard demon curses.”

“Oh yeah? Then how come one of your comrades already took the hit,” Mushu said, pointing grandly at the water. “Guy dove in like a hero to warn you latecomers and bam - afflicted.”

Ling’s head whipped toward the surface. “Who’s in there?”

Mulan pushed just enough of herself up that they could see a face in steam and dark, eyes wide above water. She pitched her voice lower and rough from lake chill. “Don’t,” she rasped. “Get out.”

If Mushu had set a stage, the lake breathed the line for her. Ripples ran. Frogs kept absolutely silent.

Chien-Po bowed toward the water. “Brother, thank you.”

Yao took a step back. Then another. He planted his hands on his hips like that made it a choice. “We weren’t going to go in anyway.”

“You absolutely were,” Ling whispered, which did not help.

Mushu leaned in. “The transformation starts in the… sensitive regions. First hour, poof - nothing you want to brag about in the barracks. Second hour, more complicated. By dawn his, um, voice will be higher, his patience will be shorter, and if any officer catches him he’s going to the surgeon and then to a farm where he can braid hats for the rest of his days. Tragic.”

Mulan closed her eyes against the heat that rose in her face. You could maybe not improvise the whole anatomy of humiliation. She kept her chin level in the water.

Yao turned his back to the lake and addressed the reeds. “Nobody tells the captain. We’re not getting Ping in trouble for heroics.”

“Ping?” Ling blinked. “That was Ping?”

“Who else sneaks off to bathe like a scholar and then never looks anybody in the eye for a full day,” Yao asked, almost rhetorically.

Mushu hummed, pleased. Smoke made a thin veil between them. “You boys owe him.”

Chien-Po nodded without hesitation. “We can bring him clothes. And a blanket.”

“Don’t bring him anything,” Mushu snapped. “Contact spreads the curse. Visuals from the collarbone down, also risky. He’s going to need solitude and a lot of respectful averting of eyes.”

“Right. Averting,” Ling said, studiously staring at the stars.

“Go,” Mulan managed. “Please.”

They went. Not running. Not quite looking over shoulders. The reeds breathed again. Mushu sagged like a damp match and wiped his nose on his arm.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

She let herself laugh once, too short. “Vagina curse?”

“You want results or poetry,” he said, already scuttling for the bag she’d left under the willow. “If they’re going to keep a secret, it has to be one that keeps them out of trouble, too. Fear of sudden womanhood? Powerful motivation.”

“Accurate, unfortunately,” she said, and hated that the truth of it warmed her more than the water.

By morning, the curse had a name and rules. It lived on chalk on the latrine wall – a rough lizard with horns and a note: No bathing between last drum and first light. Time limit ten minutes. No lingering. Offerings accepted: fish bones, shiny rocks, respect. The characters were crooked but careful.

Ling arrived at breakfast with two small red cords tied around his wrists. “Protection against lake demons,” he said lightly to anyone who asked. Nobody did. Most of the camp had grown up with grandmothers who pointed at door lintels and warned about what lived in wells.

Yao became a gatekeeper at the water barrels. “Ten men at a time, move it,” he barked. If anyone asked why, he opened his mouth like he had a deep reason and then they remembered Ping and shut up.

Chien-Po, who prayed over meals anyway, added a line about lizards to his morning mutter.

They were not good at subtlety, but they were excellent at complicity. When Mulan tripped on a loose stone and caught herself sharper than she meant to, three hands reached at once then stopped mid-air because of the contact rule and hovered awkwardly. She shook them off, embarrassed, and saw how relieved they were to obey the boundary they had invented for her.

When Shang asked why the squad had drawn a circle of ash around the practice dummy and declared it a no-splash zone, Yao looked him dead in the eye and said, “Superstition, sir.”

“Superstition,” Shang repeated.

“We will work harder, sir,” Chien-Po added, serene.

They did. Push-ups rose from the dirt like crops, even when nobody counted. They passed canteens without the sideways jokes. They ran together instead of a blur of lonely races. Mulan tasted what a unit could be when everyone had a reason not to fail each other and nearly cried on a hilltop for no noble reason at all.

Shang watched with confused skepticism. He liked results. He distrusted sudden ones. At the noon break he caught Mulan alone by the cookfire, sorting greens into a washbasin.

“You seem tired,” he said.

“Long night,” she said, careful with the angle of her face.

He considered that and considered the odd perimeter of red cords in the camp and seemed, briefly, as if he might press. Then he didn’t. “You’re keeping pace,” he said. “No complaints.”

“No complaints,” she agreed. Not a lie.

He nodded once. Tentative. Pleased in spite of himself. “Whatever you’re doing with the men - keep doing it. Within regulations.”

“Of course.” She put a leaf in the water and watched it darken.

Mushu, from the cookpot rim, mouthed within regulations and almost fell in.

At drill, Yao barked at anyone who drifted toward the lake edge. “Eyes on the captain. Eyes on the mountain. Eyes anywhere else and you’re cursed.” Nobody wanted to look at the lake. That helped with focus.

The secret softened around its edges until it felt less like a lie and more like a pact. Poor Ping, afflicted by the vagina curse, had made a mistake, and that made him theirs. They positioned themselves so he walked in the middle without it being obvious. If someone came too close in the washing line, a cough rippled down the rank. He didn’t reach for buckets they could carry. He hated that and accepted it because defiance would bring more attention.

Mushu kept the performance warm. A glimpse here, a hiss there, a scrap of blackened reed “accidentally” found as a demonic scale. He did not breathe fire except once, discreetly, to help the cook start a damp pile of twigs. The cook’s gratitude wrote another line on the latrine wall: No eating lizards. Bad luck for seven campaigns.

On the fourth day, the captain made them spar in pairs and then as a unit, shields linked, boots thudding as one. When the shield wall closed, Mulan felt the click in her bones that meant a group had become something solid. Fear held them together – and so did the quiet agreement to steward one another’s humiliations. There was honor in that if you squinted.

After, Shang stood apart and watched them file past. He shouldn’t have looked proud. He did, a little. “Your squad is getting along,” he told the lieutenant beside him.

“They’re… creative, sir,” the lieutenant said, eyeing the red cords, the chalk lines, the way Yao would physically relocate Ling’s elbow like they were brothers.

Shang followed his gaze to the lake. The surface was flat, unreadable, moon waiting in it for later. A bundle of reeds tied with cord had been set on the bank like an offering. He opened his mouth to ask what that was and closed it again. 

“Fine,” he said. “If it helps.”

He walked on. The reeds clicked together softly in the breeze. The pact held.

Mulan AU where she does get caught by the other fresh recruits while she's bathing but Mushu helps her spin it like the lake is cursed by an evil lizard demon and will turn men into women if they stay in it for too long.

From there it's not actually difficult to get the other soldiers onboard with covering up the fact that poor Ping took one for the team and got afflicted by the vagina curse, especially since it would have been all of them if they hadn't gotten the warning ahead of time. So they agree to help him cover it up, because obviously the army's not going to understand.

Shang is... tentatively glad that the men are bonding and getting along, even if they continue to be deeply weird about it.

[jkthinkythoughts]

Wizard disguised as a harmless beggar showing up at a castle and doing everything in their power to make themselves an obnoxious guest so that when the master of the house finally snaps they can declare them a poor host and put a curse on them, but nothing is working, and they're starting to wonder who's really fucking with whom.

[jkthinkythoughts]

The pigeon had no business on the ground. He said as much, often, to anyone who would listen - which was usually no one. Still, the cobblestones were warm and the spoiled vegetables from the market alley were a convenient snack.

That was where he met the cat. Heavy in the belly, her fur patched and dull, she lay in a thin bar of sun like she owned it. The pigeon cocked his head and told her she was too slow to catch him, which was true. She told him to mind his own feathers.

He came back the next day. And the day after that. By the week’s end, she had stopped pretending she didn’t see him.

When her kittens came, she didn’t ask for help. The pigeon wasn’t sure what help a bird could give, but he tried. He stole bits of twine, leaves that hadn’t yet rotted, even a scrap of sailcloth. The nest he built was crooked and smelled of the river. The cat stared at it for a long time before curling herself and the kittens inside.

She didn’t thank him. He didn’t expect her to. Still, he roosted on the ledge above her for the rest of the season. Not to guard her - he’d never admit to that - but just because the air was better up here.

---

The tom strolled in like the rain was an accessory. Tail high, shoulders rolling, fur slicked to a dark shine. He made a slow circuit of the nest, voice low and syrupy, telling the mother cat how good she looked, how he’d been thinking about her.

The pigeon, above, made a noise halfway between a cough and a laugh.

The tom’s head turned. His eyes found the bird. The charm slid off like old paint. He crouched, pupils wide, and the street seemed to shrink.

Then a hiss came from the nest. Three kittens stood with their fur puffed and teeth bared, miniature copies of their mother with none of her patience. The smallest struck first, batting the tom’s paw hard enough to sting. The second jumped and bit his ear with her sharp milk teeth. The eldest puffed up and hissed in his face.

He swore under his breath and backed off, tail twitching as he slunk down the alley. He muttered about ungrateful women and brat children, but they never saw him again.

The pigeon stayed on the ledge. The kittens regarded him solemnly with their big eyes, then curled back up beside their mother. Their uncle might have feathers, but he’d kept the rain off their heads and the rats out of their den. Pigeons weren’t food in their alley.

Moral: It is not the feathers or the fur that make a family, but the shelter you give and the claws you raise in its defense.

[jkthinkythoughts]

i hope suzanne collins kills mr beast

[jkthinkythoughts]

ykno the thing about poetry is that 99% of it is bullshit and the other 1% will cut you like a material knife, and for every person that 1% is a different section of the whole. this is probably true about all art.

[jkthinkythoughts]

You know I’ve written quite a few Ekkreth stories at this point but despite several attempts I still have never reached the incredible smoothness of the blended dialogue between the POV events and Ekkreth story which @fialleril did in Ekkreth Steals the Moon. Like truly that fic is just so beautifully tightly crafted it’s amazing. No matter how much imitation I get up to or how Star Wars changes in my eyes, I will never ever not be in awe of Double Agent Vader

[jkthinkythoughts]

“Nobody’s going to want to sit on high-speed rail for fifteen hours to get from New York City to LA.”

Me. I will sit on high-speed rail for fifteen hours. I’ll sit on it for days. I’ll write and read and nap and eat and then do it all over again. I’ll stare out the windows and see America from ground level and not have to drive. I’ll see the Rockies and the deserts and cornfields and the Mississippi River and your house and yours and yours too. I’ll make up stories in my head about the small towns I see as we go along. I’ll see the states I’ve yet to see because driving or flying there is a fucking slog and expensive to boot. I’ll enjoy the ride as much as the destination. And then I’ll do it all over again to come the fuck home.