#and that's awesome

[floofballsammy]

They could never make me hate you Andrealphus.

You're such a dramatic asshole for no reason and I love it. Keep being mean and conniving you gay little elsa bird. Scheme those evil plans.

[majimasleftasscheek]

decorated my framed majima and now he's perfect 🥰

[glitchedgirly]

Every day on Qsmp, they get closer and closer to speaking their own type of Pidgin

[allforreading-fandomthings]

I wish tumblr would sort my notifications into likes, comments, mentions, reblogs, messages and not just messages and all the rest. It's so hard to keep track of it all like this

[wave-nine]

You would mind posting everyone nicknames I got a bit confused when I found you call swapfell sans grape since I’m so used to him being called blackberry or razz

I don't think I'm the right person to ask about this because I first learned about AUs via pixiv works, so I'm more familiar with the Japanese names;; I only learned about names like "blackberry" later on and was also confused by it at first because I'd only known SF sans as "grape"! (To be honest, until just now I thought some people called SFR sans "black", but it seems it was a nickname for SF sans... haha)

I was under the impression that "razz" was used for SFR sans, though, because I assumed it derived from "raspberry", which is red? In the same vein, I find it curious that the UFxUS sans ship is called "cherryberry", but UF sans is not referred to as "cherry" (from what I know). In fact, it's SFR sans that's called "cherry"... 😵‍💫

If somebody better informed would like to clarify the common nicknames, please do!

[ravenwolfie97]

this is one cover that blows the original out of the dang water

[eri-pl]

of Men again

AKA "Gold, East, Easterlings, humans in general and other evil-coded stuff" AKA "no, Morgoth, your trademarks are invalid" AKA "reclaiming the symbolics" AKA "another post on reading Tolkien in Christian context"

And by "Christian context" I mean less the values and more the "Silm is a fantasy prequel-fanfic for the Bible, especially the New Testament" (which is at least in some points of Tolkien's life, how he wrote it)

And as all fanfic authors, GMs and generally people working creatively in a preestablished world, especially one with some preestablished future, there's no fun like foreshadowing. Seriously. Adding foreshadowing to everything is the best creative fun. OK, I'm biased. Anyway

So, what do we have in the Silm? West is Valinor, East is the evil guys. Also, dark-skinned guys are generally in majority (I know Bór exists) evil (which is racist, but we'll make it less-racist in a moment) and serve Morgoth. He just goes and claims stuff as his own, and the Valar hold on to what is left.

hmm... I wanted to add silver/gold and moon/sun divides here, but they get complicated and aren't a good example, even if I instinctively map them to the West/East divide. I think it's just me in this case.

What do we have in the Bible? Where do the main event happens? East. To this day, churches face east, because east is the holy-ish direction. Also, symbolically, sunrise is a big thing.

That's a good metaphor for the elf-human difference. Elves are chasing the sunset, so that the last rays fade slower and last so very long. Humans cannot chase. The night falls upon them, but then the sun rises anew (spoiler: it doesn't set after that). But first the night must fall. And it is sad and scary and all that.

West-facing Elves versus East-facing Men.

So, back to the main event. Easterlings... well, the Jews aren't very pale-skinned or grey-eyed or beardless. To put it mildly. So it's kinda "Tolkien is racist in places", but maybe also kinda "Tolkien goes for maximum contrast and Morgoth getting defeated from the center of the lands he'd claimed as his own" maybe. a bit.

Like maybe in his mind putting so many evil Easterlings into the story still balanced well, because hey, later they got Jesus and all His early blorbos followers? Or maybe I shouldn't go guessing what was Jirt thinking.

Anyway, if you look at Silm as a Bible fanfic, some things suddenly jump into places.

I'm not saying it's the only way to look at it, I recently listed 2 or 3 (if we count Arthurian myth as separate) other angles. Silm is multidimensional, various parts of the story make sense when looking from various angles, that's why it's so incoherent at times.

[chillingxy]

Trick or Treat! -@antimony-medusa

This is my dog Blade (Named after Technoblade, yes<3) and he was my best friend. He recently came to visit us from the afterlife and played with his siblings at home, had his favorite meal and made us company for a day. Let me tell you about día de los muertos or day of the death.

TLDR: One of many versions of the myth of day of the death, what it often means and why it's cool.

ALSO! I'm (unfortunately) not a historian. I just got mexica/aztec history, mythology and cosmovision as special interests of mine since my senior year or highschool so most of my knowledge is for classes, asking my teachers, studying for exams and researching on my own. There's a lot of myths and legends about this beautiful tradition and this is just the one I know, so if you're interested, please feel free to be curious and do the same!

Back when the Aztecs were the biggest empire in America, whenever a person died by natural causes, it was said their souls were going to travel to the Mictlán (Nahuatl for place of the death), which is similar to hell but not as such as Hell, since Mictlán is the death new home, rather than a punishment. And it too has 9 different levels with 9 different tests by the god mictlantecuhtli and his wife mictecacíhuatl (god and goddess of the place of the death, respectively) for the souls to reach eternal rest.

(This is the place where most people would go, but there's, if I remember correctly, around 3, maybe 4 afterlife places souls would go, but that's a ramble for another time.)

The very entrance of the Mictlán is a river that souls need to cross in order to get in. Here, xoloitzcuintles (xolotl means monster/weird thing and itzcuintle means dog, so literally translating it means weird dog or dog monster. As a fun fact, axolotl literally translates to water monster since it has -xolotl) would help them to get across, but only and ONLY IF souls, when alive, were kind to animals. Thus Aztecas having xoloitzcuintles as lower deities.

But the 9 trials were tough, and mictlantecuhtli didn't know what to do to motivate souls to get through all of them. So then he allowed for them to go back to the world two days a year. November 1st is the day for the children to go visit their parents and siblings. November 2nd is the adult's turn to go visit their families. Aztecs were pleased by this and started making their favorite dishes to help them recharge<3

Apparently, it was the people around 2019 who decided that it was pets' turn to come and visit us October 27th, and we all embraced it. A lot of people's first experience with grief was with pets, and I think they deserve the same treatment. Like with humans, a candle is lit to light their way home along with cempasuchil flowers to trace their path. They're all welcomed with their favorite meals, water, and in some cases toys or their favorite things when they were alive.

As a kid I never had a reason to celebrate día de muertos, but now I do. And rather than that being sad, I took the opportunities to reflect about life, death, afterlife and memories. As long as we remember them, they won't ever die. They'll always live with us, in our hearts and the happy memories we shared with them. Grief is the price to pay for loving in life, and I think every second of pain I've ever experienced, was worth the smiles my loved ones drew in my face when they could.

I encourage anyone of any nationality who feels curiosity to research and put together an ofrenda, share memories about your loved ones and remember how happy you were. Tysm for reading<3

[transbian-vergil]

something ive learned about my character preferences in ttrpgs is that I love to play absolute losers, it brings me joy

[kahuna-burger]

Fanon is good, actually.

[denieatsart]

Remembering that I'm allowed to be upset but not letting it spiral >>>>> how things used to be for me mentally

[fallloverfic]

Also to clear some things up in the notes, specifically about Ao3:

Authors on Ao3 do not get notified if you subscribe to their work. We do not get notified if you leave a bookmark, even if it's public. If it's public, we can see a bookmark if we check the bookmarks, but a lot of people don't do that, or at least don't do it regularly. If it's private, we can't see it at all.

What authors can see (outside comments, kudos, and public bookmarks) is their statistics page, which lists, among other stuff that isn't relevant, total # of bookmarks on individual works (which includes total private bookmarks as a combined # total with public ones, but no names or links), total author subscriptions, and subscriptions for individual works. The only time we can see who did what is when we check comments actually on the fic, check kudos, or we check the public bookmarks. That's it. Who is making up that total subscription # count and total bookmark # count (which again, includes the # of private bookmarks, but not who made them), is a mystery. And we can't see total bookmarks and subscriptions for series. The only thing we see for that is public bookmarks.

If an author allows people to add their work to a collection (just a regular collection, not a bookmark collection), or to ask to add the work to a collection, an author will get notified of that. Collections are not bookmarks. And authors will not get notified of bookmark collections. We can see those by checking the public bookmarks, if the bookmark collection is public, but we do not get notifications about it. And if they're private, again, we don't see them all, other than presumably they are included in the total # of bookmarks on the stats page for individual works.

Also authors have to manually check their stats page. Most of us try not to do that daily because it can drive you insane (I know plenty of us check all the time though, and keep track of it offline, mostly to track trends). And if you've got a lot of fics... that's a lot of stats to keep track of. What I do see every day, though, which is very easy to read, is my daily kudos email, and within 15-30 minutes of posting, an email that someone has left me a comment.

(This is mostly a PSA to people who are upset authors don't know they've subscribed, and who leave nice comments solely in their bookmarks; even if it's a public bookmark, it's pretty likely the author will never see it, or at least not see it for a very long time, because a lot of people check those only rarely or don't check at all, versus comments and kudos, which are sent out as emails).

(Also just a personal one; if you've ever reblogged fanart, maybe consider doing the same for fanfiction, too? I see some wonderful people liking fanfiction promo posts, but seldom do I see people reblogging/otherwise sharing them)

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[maviyenot]

[viejospellejos]

Moooola!

[color-ns]

Sometimes tweeter people know their stuff- this is the right kind of toxic angst I want to read.