#and that people care about our work

[hero-deserves-to-be-happy]

aaa that snippet makes me so excited for the next part of when sun shines!! been absolutely loving the series so far and am eager to see hero and zoey meet proper!! :o

Awww thank you so much for sending in this ask, Anon! 💙 It made my whole day, and I know I speak for both Sprinkles & myself when I say that it really means so much to both of us to hear that you’re so invested in “When Sun Shines Again” and excited for the next part! It’s so flattering and encouraging to hear that other people are interested in our work, especially a story that is so dear to us.

To be honest, I’ve been struggling a lot with the next chapter (which is now so long it’ll (probably) have to be 2 chapters 😅) thus why there has been such a delay. I was sharing some of my frustrations with Sprinkles the other day and groaning (somewhat jokingly) “Is anyone even going to care if this ever, actually gets written?” (lol) 😅 So needless to say I really needed to hear this, Anon! Thank you so much for sharing how much you’ve been enjoying this series and how excited you are for the story to continue.

I'm going to include some unsolicited ramblings about the origins of "When Sun Shines Again" and a little bit about why it's so humbling and flattering to hear that you're so interested and invested in it (apologies in advance for even more ramblings from me!), but I've put it under the cut (since I've rambled enough already and it get into some OMORI spoilers 😅).

To wrap up here, however, thank you so much again for such a kind ask and your encouragement! I'm extra determined to wrap up these chapters for you, Anon! 🥺 Please don't ever be shy about reaching out to us, especially if you want to talk about "When Sun Shines Again." ⛅ Cheers & much love to you! 💙

"When Sun Shines Again" is such niche project and, in a lot of ways, an unexpected one given how much everyone (Sprinkles and myself included) absolutely love HeroMari and desperately wish they could have gotten their happy ending. Sprinkles' often makes the joke that "Of course, I want Hero to be happy and move on & love again if that's what he wants. I just don't want to know about it" (lol 😅😂). In that way, it honestly shocks me sometimes to learn that anyone is actually interested in this project. I certainly wouldn't blame anyone for not having it as their cup of tea, and genuinely thought "no one is going to read this" when I started posting it, so it has been such a flattering and encouraging experience to hear that people are interested and even invested in exploring this and considering what Hero's life after Mari might look like.

As much as I can get absolutely squealy over Mari Lives AUs where Hero and Mari get to live happily ever after together, at the end of the day, I feel like they don't comfort me, personally, because I know that the reality is that Hero has to learn to live in a world without her. And after spending several weeks listening to sad love songs and crying about HeroMari in my backyard after finishing the game (almost a year ago), I remember just genuinely thinking “Is Hero going to be okay?” and really trying to ponder what that would be like and what his future would look like.

I remember the first time I asked Sprinkles, “Do you think Hero is ever going to love again?” and she said, “No.”

I said, “Well what if he did?” And we kind of had this discussion about how neither of us had any ideas about what that would even be like. But I was feeling determined so I remember saying to her "I'm going to figure this out and get back to you."

I took that very seriously and did a lot of research and pondering and eventually came to the conclusion that Hero didn't have to be "ready" to put himself out there and actively pursue a relationship with just anybody (i.e. go a bunch of blind dates or try online dating or something like that), but he could eventually be ready to love a particular person. It's not so much that he's ready to love again in the general sense, but more that he's ready to love that person (in this case, to love Zoey specifically). And even that was going to take an extremely long time.

Using this as a jumping off place, I had this idea of what if Hero had this extremely slow burn with a friend of his from college who is spunky, smart, a little snarky, and really focused on her ambitions and her career (so she isn't just waiting around for a decade for him to be ready to date her). She's confident in herself and isn't threatened or insecure about Hero's love for Mari, rather she is actually very sensitive to his pain and his grief. She's intuitive enough to know that he's lonely and is kind enough to encourage him that he can open up to her and can share these things that are incredibly difficult for him to talk about. (And she was always a redhead in my mind too but that's not that important).

I named her "Zoey" because it means "Life" from the word ζω meaning "to live" (thank you high school level Greek class) which is what I wanted so desperately for Hero. I wanted him to live and to have a life even after everything that he's been through. That life doesn't have to include moving on, loving again, and settling down, but if it did that's what Zoey represents. (Though, to be fair, I did ask Sprinkles' if the name was a little too on the nose 😂).

After I had this vague vision, I took this very barebones idea back to Sprinkles and she encouraged me that I should write this story. I told her, "I don't think anyone will read it" 😅 But she said she would, so I decided to write it for her and for myself. That said, it means the absolute world to me to hear that other people out there are interested and that they want this story too.

It started off very small, but it grew into something much bigger because I think "When Sun Shines Again" is about so much more than just Hero eventually falling in love again. It's about Hero finding healing, finding people who love and support him, and ultimately finding himself and his sense of purpose again. Even Zoey isn't just there to eventually date him, at least I hope not! (I was thrilled and incredibly touched that you mentioned her in your ask! Thank you for that!🥺💕) It's important to me that she has a whole life and a purpose outside of just being a love interest for Hero and that they have this deep and meaningful platonic friendship which would be just as beautiful even if it remained purely platonic between them and Hero was never ready to move on and never wanted to take it to a romantic place.

I think is why I actually started with "Am I Ready For Love Or Maybe Just A Best Friend?" which is mostly about their platonic friendship and Hero finally opening up about his grief and how much still loves and misses Mari. I always go back to that heartbreaking line in the game on One Day Left when Hero says, "I've been so busy with school and studying, I don't really have time to make friends anymore." He's so alone at a time in his life when he is most in need of the support of people who love him. Even if Hero never loves Zoey romantically, there's something beautiful and something important in him having a friendship with someone who says to him, "You can open up to me. It's safe. You're not going to hurt me" and for him to believe her.

From there we created this whole group of friends for Hero to have at college. We tried to be very thoughtful in the creation of them and really just wanted Hero to have these people in his life who love and support him and who he can hopefully (one day) open up to without the fear of hurting them (or of bumping into their own wounds and grief surrounding Mari's death) so he can really start to heal. We felt strongly that those degrees of separation for Mari were really crucial, though there were many discussions (and some disagreements) about how similar Hero's friends (and especially his eventual love interest) should or shouldn't be to Mari. In a way, I think every single one of Hero's friends that we've made up has something in them that parallels Mari at least in some small way whether it's Lorraine being giggly and talented arts & crafts or Kyle's having an injured knee. (Tamra is probably the most like her, but I digress... This is all a discussion for another time, perhaps).

The truth is that Mari is irreplaceable, but that doesn't Hero mean can't build meaningful relationships with other people. His new friends don't have to be Mari, and they don't have to replace her either. Moving on doesn't mean having to forget.

And that's really what this new section of the story is all about so, needless to say, we are so excited to finally get there and are so happy to hear that others are excited too. Thank you so much for all of all your support and encouragement! Take care 💙

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[uncanny-tranny]

And another thing that gets me about the human condition is how we weren't even meant to survive this world alone - humans with humans. We chose to trust certain animals, to nourish them, to be symbiotic with them, to love them like we love ourselves. I think a lot of people talk about how selfish it is for humans to take advantage of animals, but I think that's too simplistic. It's closer to friendship - if you do not foster the relationship, then it simply won't go anywhere, and I think the implication that animals can't ever know anything for themselves, for their survival, is also human-centric and selfish (selfishness not inherently being a bad thing).

It's just nice to know that we want to be around people - we want to be around comfort and security and safety so much that we now have animals by our side. Every time I cuddle with my cat, I think that we weren't meant to survive this world alone; she is shaped to fit in my chest, and my arms were made to wrap around her.

[otterronpas]

Unpopular opinion: I don’t have a problem with how this was translated in engsekai

(shoutout to @moss-kii for pointing this out btw mwah)

While I do kind of prefer the gentler approach of the OG translation (“I think it’s okay to run away”), the directness of this line really emphasizes just how serious Mafuyu’s situation has become.

By this point, Mafuyu’s mental state is slowly but surely deteriorating as her mom takes away her connections to the things and people she finds comfort and love in. Mizuki knows this, and at this moment, they don’t know what will happen if Mafuyu stays in this situation.

The way I‘m looking at it, phrasing it like this is a more direct way of telling Mafuyu to do whatever she needs to do to protect herself and her mind before it’s too late.

[wellthatschaotic]

whenever i see someone who is like "yes but [x] isnt as oppressed as [y]!!" or "[x] is widely accepted now!!" as a way to like. disregard queer people's experiences. i'm just like. have you been outside? have you been in the real world?

[weirdmageddon]

how do people even find partners. i dont want a bullshit answer, like really

[vaspider]

Please forgive my extremely messy and hasty wrap; I haven't regularly wrapped my hair in almost 20 years, since I stopped selling roses at Faire, BUT

We got a sample of a scarf that I think might be a good option for tichel wear. The big issue has been that a lot of the scarves we've been able to get over the last few years have been too slippery, too translucent, too itchy, or some combination of the above.

This is a poly weave, 27" × 73'', and it has enough grip to it and is soft enough that I could wear this and not get the sensory heebie jeebies.

We've been looking for options literally since we started NK in 2017, and I'm really hopeful about this. I was able to keep it on my head without it moving around just from twisting and tucking it, no pins or anything, and i bent over and shook my head around and so on. It felt pretty secure.

I'm going to try it again after it's washed and dried and see how it feels.

Oh - the print here isn't very well featured bc you can't see much of it in the wrap but it's the trans pride Braille print, which will drop April 15th. :)

[heavnlyhetfield]

also. holy shit.

genuinely admire him in every way possible i just love him so so so much

[yardsards]

clint mcelroy creating a dnd character: oh yeah, this bad boy can fit so much simple zest for life in him

[dmclemblems]

“Claude in Hopes is exactly the same way he is in Houses! He’s always been like that and has the same feelings/morals!”

Claude in GW/Hopes:

Claude, literally, in Houses:

Let that speak for the fact that Claude was written with a 180 characterization in Hopes.

Claude wants peace and to bring everyone together; not to tear them further apart. That is his character.

[kouhaiofcolor]

I really miss the natural hair community & watching natural hair content generally. That was so good for Black Women; we were thriving at it, too. And as rapidly as it rose to popularity, it’s crazy how dead the whole concept is now. I think it had more to do w all the division created over routines around maintenance than anything else. Everybody was entirely too pushy w trying to make what worked for them personally a staple for taking care of textured hair in general — & that shit walked so that colorism, featurism, texturism & misogynoir could run. Now the same ppl who was riding the wave a few years ago & swearing by all these products, brands, sponsors, wash day & styling methods have put natural hair away as a concept entirely.

Also, why the hell did we waste all that energy prefacing everything w, “Stop doing this and do these things for your hair to grow to tailbone length overnight🤡” — just to go right back to weave and perms? All that researching for what? All the dedication to disproving antiblack/misogynoir notions about Black hair for what? All the redefining of protective styles for what? All the trying to unlearn the belief structures around the colonization of Black hair for what? What did we teach ourselves fr? How did we make things any easier for Black Women and little Black girls? It’s tragic af. The Natural Hair Community/Movement is dead, it seems like. I don’t think we fought hard enough to prevent what happened to it honestly :\

[imagionary]

Happy 20 years of not speaking to each other

[bookshelfdreams]

.

[themoonking]

when people bring up the racism, homophobia, transphobia, romanticization of domestic abuse / rape / pedophilia / incest, literal actual written porn of literal actual real life flesh and blood children, et cetera et cetera on archive of our own, one of the ao3 stannies’ main defenses is “you can just filter out the tags if you don’t want to see that!” when that defense has no fucking legs to stand on.

ao3 is not an archive, it is barely even a website: a rant <3 (very long)

ignoring the fact that it’s a problem that all of that is permitted on the site in the first place (i guess child porn and racism are fine, and the people who allow it on their platform are fine, as long as i, personally, do not see it), that defense literally means nothing. it’s assuming that every little thing on ao3 is tagged properly and it absolutely is not, and if you think it is you are dumber than rocks. i mean for fuck’s sake, just touching on archive warnings and not tags, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is literally a valid option for fic authors to use when it should fucking not be.

if someone is a freak who thinks that pedo shit is hot, they might not tag it as “rape” (archive warnings OR tags). i’ve literally seen underage father/son rape porn with no trigger warning tags but “child abuse if you squint”. IF YOU SQUINT. if someone thinks that domestic abuse is actually cool and sexy when attractive people do it, they might not tag it as “abuse”. if someone is a freak who likes incest, but bends over backwards to justify it by only shipping adopted family members, then they tell themselves that they don’t view it as incest, and might not tag it as “incest”. if someone is a racist, a homophobe, a transphobe, et cetera and they wrote bigotry into their fic (or else wrote a deliberate troll fic to trigger people on purpose), do you really think they’re going to tag it as racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera? and some people get kicks out of writing purposefully triggering content and either leaving it untagged or mistagging it so that people will read it unsuspectingly.

even for just general content tags, it’s a mess. people just forget to tag things all the time. people deliberately won’t tag the endgame ship of their fic because “it’s a spoiler heehee”. people use the romantic or sexual “x / y” tag instead of the platonic or otherwise “x & y” tag, sometimes by mistake sometimes on purpose. it’s a joked about issue how people will tag characters or ships that appear in their fic for two sentences.

there’s no standardization of tags, which is a pretty obvious problem. what first comes to mind is the “dead dove: do not eat” tag which should just not be a tag at all because it just has no meaning. depending on the individual fic writer using it, it could mean anything from “literally the most sickening and depraved thing you’ve ever read in your life” to “horror w/ gore”. but it applies to other vague tags too - different fic writers will have different ideas of what the tag means.

in addition to that, what is and isn’t made a filterable tag, what tags are made synonymous, et cetera, is entirely up to the whims of the site staff. as an example, if you’re trying to look for fanfiction of a singular animated disney movie, the infinite crossovers with other disney movies will not actually be counted as crossovers (which they are) because they’re classified as the “disney theatrical animated universe” (which isn’t a fucking thing), so you can’t filter them out the “exclude crossovers” way. if you try to filter out the fandom tag “disney theatrical animated universe”, it’ll show up with zero fics because that tag is synonymous with every disney animated film (regardless of if the fic author actually used the tag “disney theatrical animated universe” or not), thus also filtering out the one you actually wanted to find.

and do not get me fucking started on the “all media types tags”, which also just shouldn’t be a thing because it makes it fucking impossible to find the specific fics you’re looking for. some people use it in place of tagging a specific canon / adaptation when their fic very clearly draws from one specific canon / adaptation, and you can’t filter it out because it’s synonymous with every fandom tag under its umbrella.

as an example of the issues of both the “all media types” tag and mistagging in general: as a fan of the witcher books, it used to be a fucking ordeal to find fanfiction specifically for the books (post netflix show release). some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag their fics with the book fandom tag in addition to (or even in place of!!) the show fandom tag when their fics were unquestionably show-specific, meaning i could not simply search only in the book fandom tag. i could not simply filter out the show tag, because some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag as fucking “all media types”, when their fics were unquestionably show-specific. and alas, i could not filter out “all media types” and the show tag, so that i see only those fics which have been deliberately and exclusively tagged as the book, not only because as mentioned some show fans would tag their show fics with only the book tag, but also because the fucking all media types tag filters out the book tag as well, leaving me with zero fucking fics REGARDLESS of if the author actually used the “all media types” tag. now, thankfully, i’ve thankfully seen this issue in this specific fandom lessen, but it still occurs in other fandoms and i guarantee that it didn’t lessen in the witcher fandom because of any fixing of the site on the part of ao3 staff.

another common defense of ao3 freaks is that it’s an “archive”, and therefore can’t get rid of anything anyone posts, and disregarding the fact that that is not how archives fucking work, they don’t just allow anything and also ao3 DOES get rid of fics... when they say that they don’t like proshippers, apparently, archives have... you know... archivists. they have someone or a team of someones making sure that everything in the archive is *properly fucking categorized*. they have someone or multiple someones making sure that everything they recieve (1) belongs there and (2) is properly labeled and organized. same for libraries. meaning that if ao3 really were an archive and not a sub par fanfiction website, they’d have something like that in place. something as simple as a report button for fics with a review team that will see if something’s been mis- or untagged. they’d have some kind of standardization of tags (especially the warning / trigger tags) and have proper tagging enforced in some way. and then they could also do something like stop being spineless racists, queerphobes, and pedos have the barest minimum of content guidelines saying that you can’t post fucking hate speech.

if something is mistagged or untagged, the most you can do is leave a comment politely asking that the author fix the issue, and then hope and pray that they do that. and if that person thinks [insert form of abuse] is hot, or if they’re just straight up a bigot that wrote bigotry into their fics to be bigoted, or they’re a troll that gets kick out of deliberately traumatizing people by tricking them into reading their mis/untagged fics, they might not! AND if you see a major tagging issue on an orphaned work, or a work that has an inactive author / hasn’t been updated in forever, good fucking luck getting even a negative response.

you can’t permanently block tags (i mean even tumblr.hell has that), meaning that if you would like to search for fic without coming across something troubling, triggering, or just something you don’t like, you have to either (1) do a work around by having a bookmarked link for every fandom you’re in or every character you like with all of your tags already blocked, (2) download browser extensions that do the work for ao3 because they can’t be bothered themselves, or (3) input every individual tag every time you search ao3 and don’t forget that all of those options only fucking work at all when everything is tagged properly, and we’ve already established its not. you also can’t actually block people (you can only prevent them from commenting) meaning that if there’s a specific person you’d like to stay away from your fics or a specific fic author that you don’t like and would like to stop seeing their fics clogging up the tag, you’re out of luck (though for the latter you could insert “-[username]” into the “search within results” box, but then uh oh we’re right back around to having to input that every time or have a bookmark)

their archive warning system is shit. first of all it’s functionally useless because, as mentioned, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is an option. what’s the fucking point of special required archive warnings if you’re going to allow people to opt out anyway. second of all, aside from “chose not to use warnings” and “no warnings apply”, the only warnings are “major character death”, “graphic depictions of violence”, “rape/non-con”, and “underage”. disregarding the fact that they shouldn’t be allowing porn of underage characters in the first place (but i’m talking to a brick wall on that issue) and that “non-con” (and “dub-con”) as terminology needs to die, it’s just fucking rape lets not use weasel words... this is a paltry list of possible warnings. there’s no official warnings for depictions of: domestic abuse, animal abuse, depictions of racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera, suicide, self harm, et cetera et cetera. and we return to the issue of standardization of tags. in your required archive warnings at very least, there should be a standardization of what these mean, but ao3′s own faq is just like “ehh... you decide. we’ll leave it up to you”. what qualifies as graphic depictions of violence? two people may write the same level of violence, but qualify “graphic” differently, and make different decisions regarding their warnings. and we also return to the issue of: if a freak doesn’t see something that is clearly rape as rape, they might not tag it as such.

this website gets a disgustingly large amount of money every year that it doesn’t fucking do anything with. it’s been over a decade and they’re still in fucking beta. features that would actually be useful, like an actual block system, don’t exist. they technically have a report system for abuse and harassment and such, but apparently what they qualify as abuse and harassment is fickle. ao3 defenders seem to be very proud of the legal work they do for fandom / fanfic authors, but they set aside a very small amount of the money they get every year for legal advocacy, and they actually use even less of that, because it’s not the early 2000s “anne rice hates fanfiction” era anymore - you aren’t going to get fucking sued for writing fanfiction in the first place. based on their own self-reported yearly cost of upkeep, they literally already have enough money to run the site as they are now for the next twenty years.

once again: ao3 is not an archive. it is not a library. it is barely a even a website.

[hella1975]

i need to read more books and annotate in the margins i need to write more i need to buy jeans that fit me i need to eat more fruit i need to buy good quality headphones i need to get a skincare routine i need to talk to my friends more i need to wash my hair i need to stop treating this inhabitation as a curse. i am tired of punishing the body that has fought me for survival every day for years. i deserve little treats as regularly as possible !!

[bleaksqueak]

I haven't been online most all day, and now I log in to see AI generated junk on the promotion radar. Ew.