#because as fun as side plots & stuff are idk I kind of just enjoy writing the boys being together

[ssreeder]

Hi! The last chapter was sooooo good. Thank you for posting it <3 your work is amazing and i love it so much. But seriously I literally screamed when I saw that the new chapter was out and I couldn’t wait to get home so I had to start reading it at uni 🙃. You have portrayed Sokka and Zuko so well and I’m so proud of how far they and all of the adults have come. I love how protective Hakoda is of Zuko now, it’s so cute. I have to say I never really liked Jet but you have me very invested in his storyline and the conversation between him and Zuko was just amazing. I do miss Toph and am super excited for azula to make an appearance. Well this was just my way to tell you how much I love your work and how this fic is my Roman Empire. I’d leave you a thousand kudos if I could.

I would eat your thousand kudos with my bare hands, I love you anon. I’m glad you enjoyed the last chapter!

I do think Hakoda’s desire to be a better dad is fueling his desire to look out for Zuko because he has FINALLY realized after a million wordcount that Zuko is a good guy & Sokka is completely and utterly in love with him.

It took him a while but he finalllyyyy got it lol... good for him!

Toph will be back next chapter!! She had to go visit her ‘parents’ like in canon because she got ‘their letters’ when the Long Feng was arrested. Fortunately! she won’t be coming back to a coup, unfortunately! She’s going to have to face some of her buried feelings & visit Jet.

Excited for girls chapter woho! Suki & Katara gossip is so fun to write I can’t wait for them haha.

[notexactlyrocketscience]

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood: a critically kind review from a femme acespec physicist <3

> scroll to the next section for my review on the physics academia content in this book!

First, a quick romance novel review!

spoiler: it wasn’t my favorite but I gave it a ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75 because being a writer has made me a generally more appreciative reader + I am so starved of woman in physics rep.

the good

It just felt good to read about a woman physicist, who are still incredibly underrepresented in fiction, especially as protagonists. (I’ll go off about that in a minute.)

The romance is so swoony with shoujo manga vibes, I haven’t read straight M/F adult romance novels in a while and I just loved the flutteriness of it.

A couple of chapters were so soft with excellent pillowtalk. There was something about the ambience of the snow, the hypnotic sadness of failure, the prescence of a comforting person.

I enjoyed identifying the relatable parts about physics academia. Hazelwood clearly did a lot of research, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It definitely kept me reading!

the bad

The academia issues are so over-simplified it’s almost juvenile. For an adult novel, even one marketed as a romcom, I expect more nuance, more explanations, more explicit lingering in tight positions.

And then the romance tries to be complex (and has a lot of potential!) but not a lot of conflict really happens.

A fictional physics fued between theorists and experimentalists is a really fun (and actually not far off) concept, but I would have expected some things to be the other way around. (More on that later!)

Okay this is personal but the main couple both have terrible taste in movies. Twilight vs white male rage movies??? There is no lesser evil here

Elsie’s hardships aren’t put in a very serious light. Her diabetes and lack of access to health insurance is used as a plot device to engineer romantic momentum between the characters and/or comic relief.

Just overall, the book tried so hard to remain “light” that I think it fails to garner depth. Because adult lives really aren’t that light all the time, and a book can bring relaxation and joy whilst including real worldly negative experiences.

There were aroace and sapphic side characters, but I wanted so bad for Elsie to be demisexual. It's set up so perfectly only for it to be averted—As a demisexual person myself, Elsie’s feelings about attraction felt acutely familiar to me, and every other reader I've spoken to has agreed that the book took a dissapointing and unexpected turn. I understand Hazelwood may not feel equipped to write queer protagonists but if I were her editor, I would have flagged that and recommended she make it canon. It would have added so much more context and dimension to Elsie, and would’ve put hetero demisexuals on the map. </3

Following up on the above: The smut tries so hard to be meaningful but it ... really is icky, stereotypical, unrealistic allocishetero stuff. Think: the shy inexperienced girl vs the man who knows exactly how to advise her. The characters try to subvert the trope by calling it out, but it feels performative because all is forgotten in the next second. The PiV sex is weirdly conventionally idealistic considering the pairing’s size difference. I’m picky about smut but also forgiving when I do like the dynamic. I just didn’t here.

Following up once again: I was ready to ignore all the repetitive comments about how sexy Jack’s height and muscles were, because sure, I guess Elsie has a type. But the sex scenes solidified the redundancy of it all. I've read this same dynamic in countless smutty heteronormative M/F paperbacks. And I have also been made aware by every Hazelwood reader that all her books focus on this kind of physical build pairing. I just want more diversity, you know?

IDK, I just wanted more physics in here than complaining about teaching, glossed over toxic mentors, and using some quirky physics term in every other sentence. (More on that below!)

I just wanted ... more? It’s not an extremely short novel, but both the plot and the character development fell flat. The ups and downs were too fast and easy, and the placement felt off. I finished the book and wondered, “That’s it? That’s all that happened?” It just wasn’t fulfilling. The side characters aren't expanded upon, and don’t get enough pagetime. My other romance reads this year were Bellefleur's The Fiancee Farce and Mcquiston’s One Last Stop. In both of those novels, the drama was fleshed out with so much care and detail. In comparison, Love, Theoretically may mention similar social difficulties in passing, but failed to really, really show us.

Overall ... the novel was fun for being about physicists but I really don’t see myself picking up another Hazelwood book, especially considering this isn’t even a debut novel. The conventional white steminist vibe and the particular allocishetero M/F dynamic just isn’t my thing.

But perhaps a reader wanting more of a novel and its characters is a good problem to have. Never say never, I guess! I look forward to keeping tabs on what Hazelwood publishes in the future!

Now, onto the physics!

First, most physicists, as good scientists, understand that theory and experimentation are fundamentally linked. It’s true that we each are often biased towards our own methods of research, but it is quite a stretch to imagine full professors so blatantly feud against others solely because of theory vs experimentation. Regardless, I was happy to suspend my disbelief for the sake of the plot that was framed in a genre-specific, lighthearted, humorous way.

Secondly, both theory and experimentation have sources of funding that are motivated in different ways, and Hazelwood's decision to have the theorists struggle with funding cuts due to declining interest in pop culture/the general public is actually quite credible. Experimentation garners a lot more interest from the application and engineering end of society, parts that are easily fueled by capitalism.

However, I think experimentalists in general are far less likely to be mean to theorists than the reverse scenario. Dr Fatima Abdurrahman has a great video essay about that called on her YouTube channel called “Quantum Physics, Feminism, and Objective Reality: What Physicists Don’t Want You to Know About Quantum Mechanics.” Dr Fatima outlines how old white men in physics have maintained this image of unwavering scientific objectivity in the name of rigor, despite studying a field that fundamentally is barely fathomable for humans. In simpler terms: Men, even in theory, pretend to be better, smarter, and more valid as physicists despite being in an infamously iffy field. And I would have liked to see that represented. It was just really hard for me to buy narcissistic grad students mansplaining Elsie about her field, and Elsie’s righteous feminine rage, when the field in question is … physics theory? It just didn’t make sense to me, when all of my personal experiences point to the opposite.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and having a woman theorist in a physics field that’s less popsci-oriented is actually … really cool. And having her love interest be a man in experimentation … sort of subverts gender roles and conventional media expectations.

Let me explain. The reality is that when women are represented in STEM, media prefers to put them in biology, like a nurse to a doctor, a people-oriented nurturer, a mere sidekick to the real “objective” scientist—often a mathematician or an astrophysicist who is always a man. And when women are placed in physics, they are automatically assigned to observational astronomy, which is dismissed as passive and easy. (This is wildly untrue—though styles of research in astronomy has interestingly allowed a somewhat more diverse array of researchers in history. Even today, you’ll see a higher frequency of women and queer people in every astronomy department.)

I think my ideal version of this novel would be retaining Elsie in theory, while also making theorists the overall bad guys in the feud. I would love to have her talk about the unique sexism she faces as a theorist. I would kill for a scene in which Jack gets gobsmacked by how fucking good at math she really is, compared to him (instead of, like, only making fun of it like it’s easy). I would love to read about her getting a tour of his lab, and just more physics content. But maybe I’m the only one saying that, because I’m a physicist. Maybe Hazelwood simplified it all to keep the book appealing to the general masses.

Still, it all read more like a girlpower!!! chant rather than a real commitment to represent a woman in STEM. I savored every moment Elsie or George would go off about physics. I loved Elsie’s conversations with Olive, a different STEM academic. (Monica was more complicated and actually quite interesting, and I wish we could have seen more of her. Heck, I wish we had actually been given any tangible info about Jack’s mom, even.) But I genuinely felt these instances were rare. Elsie referred to being a physicist a lot (and frankly, her mind is more physics-y than any IRL physicist considering the sheer number of physics-inspired figures of speech she uses … but I excused that as silly comic relief, a quirk in Hazelwood’s writing style). But she didn’t tangibly do physics on page. It was disappointing, considering women characters in STEM is what Hazelwood is known for.

And there are physicists who love teaching—even physicists who solely want to teach. Physicists who do pedagogy research. I know the book was mainly trying to criticise the adjunctification and dismissal of physics higher education, and it’s actually quite accurate in representing that most physicists in academia would prefer not to teach. But the excecution also ends up erasing physicists who aren’t in academia just for research. And I say this especially because the validity of teaching physicists as physicists is dismissed in real life. It’s used as justification to further force all physics academics to try to juggle between both research and teaching, whether they want to or not.

Which leads us to bad mentors. I’ve had a bunch of those. As Olive pointed out in an excellent quote, “Academia is so hierarchical, you know? There are all these people who have power over you, who are supposed to guide you and help you become the best possible scientist, but . . . sometimes they don’t know what’s best. Sometimes they don’t care. Sometimes they have their own agenda. […] Sometimes they’re total shitbuckets who deserve to step on a pitchfork and die.” And the thing is, the novel really doesn’t show us any of that (perhaps other than in Monica). We don’t fully get to know what happened to Jack’s mom, or Olive. We are not shown what Dr L’s agenda really was. Their final confrontation was so quick, when in reality shitty mentors are often sticky and entwined with your work, hard to cut off and scarier to talk back to even after you’ve finally realized they’re toxic.

Which isn’t to say the novel is just inadequate about everything. It’s correct in how goofy physics faculty are, and how white man-dominated the field is, how students try to mansplain women profs, how theorists madly work on their computers (as an experimentalist, I could never understand), how publishing is finicky (to put it kindly), and how tenured faculty fail to understand the reality of the job market in academia today. There are certain parts (like the quote above!) where I felt incredibly seen as part of a minoritized identity group in STEM academia. It’s rare to have a book written from this PoV, and as a first I think this novel will always be special for me!

If you’re interested in reading about more fictional women physicists, I would highly recommend skimming through this list I made on GoodReads (and feel free to add more!).

And if you’d like to support memoirs and science communication books by IRL women physicists, then look to further than this other list I’ve also made. (We’re actually currently seeing a boom in these which is inanely exciting to me, so again, contributions are always welcome!)

[seeingivy]

bsfs older brother sukuna asks!

OUCH like you're literally crazy thank you so much. random side tangent that no one asked about but basically my mom has a masters in english literature and likes to read/write a lot (which is where i think i get that from) but basically we were talking about books that are meant to me read as books or other writing that is more like cinematic? if that makes sense.

like some people on here write fic that's really prose based and beautifully written. like truly I think the talent lies in how they choose to string the words together that always leaves me in awe. another irl author that does this a lot is celeste ng (ronnie book rec! everything I never told you is one of my favorite books ever)

but then some books are very very plot driven and kind of have plot as the main thing that kind of draws me in. I definitely think i'm this type of writer more where I know that my talent isn't necessarily in how I string the words together (not that I think it's bad, I just think that the way I build something up and make a plot out of something is kind of where I have the most fun and think I do the best in terms of the stuff I put out) an irl book that does this is the seven husbands of evelyn hugo - where it's very jam packed and driven by the actual events of the book as opposed to the actual wording and sentence structure of how they're written.

anyway this ask just validated what I was thinkiNG LOL bc I do think I tend to write some thats more like sucker punch yolo as opposed to really working on writing that's more prose like (and I admire people who can do that because I literallly fumble with normal words, like @/theragethatisdesire and @/neptuneblue are SOOO skilled at this that it always leaves me speechless. anyways.)

thank you again pookie 💌

literally that's emotional whiplash. I reread the entire thing myself (which is crazy, because I rarely reread my own works after writing them, but I do find myself reaching to read this one sometimes) and LORD like i actually kind of forgot the stuff in the beginning so PROPS TO YOU and it's so sweet that you felt all the feels that were going on that makes my heart so so warm.

heavy on the poor weird child me. mind you that both of these characters internal monologue/and somewhat of their backstory is based on me in real life and heavy on loving little weird child you and knowing that they're still in you somewhere fighting in whatever way they can (for me its fanfic....which is very on brand when I think about it)

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! 💌 idk where that all came from in three days but it did and im actually very very proud of it so it makes me so so happy that you enjoyed it!

anyways! idk I hope to write some more soon but someone in my family is having a five wedding events week business going on so i'm like out of capacity all weekend (and already overstimulated from so much interaction)

[tscritical]

my thoughts on the anime intro vid are basically “yes i enjoy seeing the sides just have fun but not at the expense of real content” if that makes sense

like it’s all about context? idk there may be a better word for what im talking about, but if we got sanders sides content more regularly then that vid would’ve landed better i think. it would’ve been like “here’s a nice lil silly vid in addition to actual plot and stuff” and it would’ve been nice!

but the way things are, it reads as “he’s able to make this but not the actual season finale?” because the time he spent making that could’ve been time spent on script writing for the finale, or filming it, or whatever stage he’s at with the finale (and im pretty sure he’s still writing the script but pls correct me if im wrong. i want so badly to be wrong)

and i get that he’s trying to like,, do what he can? like, he’s giving us what he’s able to do in a short amount of time, and i totally get that. i just kinda wish he would make like a public statement saying “im limiting the amount of “bonus” sanders sides content in order to focus on the finale” and im sure it’s not just me

idk what the point of this post is but i just have Thoughts. and i wanted to express them. and maybe im wrong and im just being overly petty or whatever but let’s be real here. how much demand is there for this kind of “content” right now

sorry if i sound like a bitch lmao it just kills me that these characters are trapped in character arc limbo or whatever like tensions are higher than they ever have been before and We Need Closure, Man

to summarize because i feel like everyone is gonna twist my words in some way: i love the lighthearted “content” but due to where we’re at in canon it’s not as satisfying as it could be, and i feel like if thomas focused more on the finale it would be a better use of his energy. yes he can do what he wants, it’s his channel after all, and im sure he has a reason he’s doing what he’s doing, i just feel like im going insane

[vrnvuld]

HSHQTASK059: FAREWELL !

when did you join ? what made you join ? what do you remember from the plotlines that were current at the time ? where were you in life when you joined and where are you now ?

i'm not entirely sure but i think late 2015. i was a sophmore in high school, i think i was in my high school's computer room killing time and looking for a new group. i don't remember which tag i was in. it could have been #royal rp but atst i don't think it was. i was sold immediately because i thought it would be awesome to play a finnish royal. i messaged the player who had the finnish princess because she had a wc up for a brother. i was so impatient and i didn't wait for her reply but applied for viveka. then she got back to me and i picked up a second character on my third day or something. i was super excited. that was almost 10 years ago. in those ten years i've graduated high school, worked here and there, acquired my master's degree, and now i'm working for the government. it's been an adventure !

which characters have you written over the years ?

viveka, viljo / vaughn, vanamo, viggo, minenhle, arnauld

what is your favourite plotline that you've been part of ?

i think i have three: farnauld break up summer, i think it was different from my usual stuff for arnauld and i enjoyed getting to write him at his most manipulative, and then at his most vulnerable. it was interesting and i was very active ! but i think i will have a massive soft spot for viani. it's so embarrassing that i'm just naming ships but idc, i'm an honest bitch. writing viggo as a young adult into an adult adult was really satisfying and i don't think it would have happened without armani / j. and then i have viveka and imogen. i think imogen was the reason why i stuck around at chambordrp. i really think i might have ghosted without the dynamic. it was the first angsty exes plot i EVER wrote and i was very happy with it. if i now read the stuff, i'm probably shed tears of blood because the writing was so bad. but the ship is also the reason why i ever started listening to halsey lmao kgbdkjgb

what about other people's plotlines ?

i really enjoyed reading annexei. there was a lovely amount of angst. i alsoooooo loved the beginning of layslan. it was full of drama and it was fun to follow ( okay i was a bit involved but i wasn't involved a lot ). there's been so many amazing plots and if someone now gave me a list of all the shit we've written together, i wouldn't be able to keep this section short. i will miss the energy :(

who is your favourite character from the ones you've played ? why ? what made you love them ? what made them so fun to write ?

viveka and arnauld. i think viveka will have a special place in my heart because she is closest to a self insert from all of the characters i've ever written and what happened in her story i sort of learned from ? idk how else to explain it but i feel closest to her and she became a very strong figure in my life despite being fictional. i enjoyed writing her, especially the times when she showed her ugly side. in her i wrote some of my best stuff in the sense that the emotions felt real. arnauld was kind of a caricature so he wasn't that nuanced imo. but i had soooo much fun with him as you could probably see. when i picked him up after a year long break, i was sure i'd lose muse because writing characters in their 40s was not easy in a group with young characters. somehow the group made it work and the political plots also became more important and i could do so much !!! it was fun to write someone truly horrible. someone whose behaviour was disgusting. i am so glad that i was given the opportunities and allowed to write a villain into the group <3

if you could relive a plotline, which would it be ?

this is too difficult !!!! for nostalgia i might choose this one event during chambord that was a trip to paris. it wasn't very eventful but i think... IT WAS SUCH A LONG TIME AGO. i want a piece of that youth.

a plotline that i enjoyed from start to finish would probably be the roman vs romanovs thing. it was complex and it moved surprisingly smoothly. it got dragged out but not as much as it could have gotten. i also loved the short skit when sylvia found the ultrasound pics. it was a funny week. and all of the nye events have been amazing. every first week of the past 8 years have been some of the funniest of my life. i also have a soft spot for the beginning of varbie. it was so natural and i don't think i've written anything like that afterwards. it was us saying yes to each and every idea. i loved their happy moments and their problems. there were times when they felt like real people with real feelings instead of just characters that were used to write a story.

is there a plotline that you'd edit now if you could ?

i wouldn't edit anything but like isa said, i'd finish farnauld quicker. i would have loved getting to write a bit of fluffy farnauld. because it's something we never really got a chance to write because even when farnauld was doing well the shadow of tekla and the croys was present. fanni had a lot of issues, arnauld was busy hiding tobias... i'd also give vanamo and valias more attention. i know we could have accomplished more but my muse was flaky.

what's a plotline you wish you would have been able to finish before closing or just write more of ?

farnauld. i'm embarrassed since i've given it most of my time here at hshq but i still would have liked to write a bit more.

what is your favourite ooc memory ?

oooooooh it would have to be some of the crazy muns. like at the time the moments weren't funny or nice but the stories are now. and i think it also brought me and j and others closer to each other akfbdsjgbs evy mentioned honesty hours and i agree with that too ! and i have to give a special mention to naomi. idk which particular thing but she has the best energy <3

where can others find you if they want to get in touch ?

i'll be here and on discord so don't be afraid to shoot me a message if you wanna write ! but i do think this might be the time for me to retire from tumblr / rp scene.

what else would you like to say ?

i've known some of you longer than some of my best friends. you know a side of me that no one irl does. i don't think i will be able to express how grateful i am for these years and the HOURS we have spent writing together. not everyone gets to experience this and it's been an honor. i've had so much fun and i honestly don't see myself forgetting this place. i wonder what will be the thing in the future that makes me think of something that happened at hshq. this is a very bittersweet moment for me and this honestly feels worse than graduation. hshq was more than a rp group to me and i love you guys <3

[selfproclaimedunicorn]

which of the characters in sotf father have you struggled the most with writing? which one has been the most rewarding? do you have a favorite storyline?

In terms of POV characters, I've struggled a wee bit with Aemon just because I haven't had much opportunity to characterize him in text yet. Like, I have a good handle on him I think, but I have only written from his POV a couple times at this point. Outside of the POVs/just on the periphery, I wanna say Harwin Strong. He hasn't shown up a lot (I wanna say he's only had a conversation with anyone in 2 chapters), but there's just so little of him in the show that it's kind of hard to extrapolate. So the 2 chapters I have had him have conversations with my girl Ella, it's even very "bro, what would you say?"

In terms of "most rewarding" to write, it's weird but I'm gonna say your man/Daemon. SOTF has has the unfortunate side effect of me coming to an understanding with that white haired weirdo & I appreciate him in my own way. I'm not going to join you in the Daemon Targaryen Lover Brigade, but I get him. Very "babygirl, no one understands you like me (derogatory)." And, y'know, obviously I love writing my OCs & I feel good about it every time. Ella & Yorick & Aemon are my little guys & I get so many feelings & some good processing for some stuff when I delve into certain aspects of their POVs & stories (bestowing upon them the highest honor I can: my own trauma), but that's all expected. I did not expect the "this man killed his wife & kis kids from her get revenge" fic to have the effect of "you now rotate him around in your brain & enjoy thinking about his justifications for acting like a cunt within your story." So that's fun in its own weird little way & I'm not mad, just surprised.

I have a few favorite storylines, I think. Idk, it feels weird thinking about the plot points as storylines, I'm very much not organized in that particular way 😅. Here's what I can try to articlate:

Currently ongoing, & I am enjoying the "Rhaella Royce/Laena Velaryon friendship" storyline. We're in the throes of "second act conflict" right now, but when the girls eventually make up from their argument, it's gonna lend itself into Ella getting her closure with Daemon (much sooner than her brothers). And also, I just think stories about strong friendships are good & neat, & I'm excited for where I've been & where I'm going with it.

It's only kind of started right now, but I very much love Aemon’s "fostering at White Harbor storyline." He makes friends & recovers (as much as one can) from the trauma of watching his mom's murder. Also, I've been calling it his "bisexual boy winter," so make of that what you will lmao

[havendance]

New Comics Time!

(Doing this for the first time lol)

Batman #138

Look, let's start with the basics: have I read the rest of this event? No. Will I read the rest of this event? Who knows? Probably not. I jumped into this issue for the drama.

And it did not disappoint!

FAMILY BEAT DOWN TIME! We get an ALL OUT BRAWL!

Man look, I am a simple bro with simple pleasures. I am here from the dysfunction.

We've got some messed up Jason and Bruce stuff (I am an enjoyer.)

We have Dick and the batman oath!!! Man, I love that. I love a good oath

Dick fighting Bruce! Tim fighting Bruce! Brother fighting brother!

Tim calling back to why he became Robin in the first place! He's over here holding Dick back!

Damian is also very fun. Poor kid coming over from his lighter (as I've heard) Batman & Robin series to get caught up in this.

Birds of Prey #2

The art continues to be the MVP here. I love the stylism and dynamism of it all. The fight scenes are so good.

(And the x-ray effects are also very cool)

More of a set up issue plot wise. Last issue was the assemble the crew issue (a trope I do enjoy) and this issue is the go over the plan and set up various rabbits to pull out of hats later issue.

Hopefully next issue will let us get into the action.

Less Cass and Barda :(

Harley was less irritating to me in this issue though! I actually found her kind of fun.

I'll be interested in seeing Themysicra. When I last left off on reading Wonder Woman rebirth comics (issue 71ish), it was still inaccessible so this'll be my first time back in current continuity.

Looking forward to more fight scenes :)

King Shark at the end was fun. Look, he's a giant shark man. I think it's hard to go wrong with him.

Detective Comics #763

Okay, this isn't a new comic at all. In fact it is a 20+ year old comic. However. I also bought it and reread it at the same time and I remembered how much I loved it.

So this is the Joker: Last Laugh tie in where Huntress teams up with Sasha Bordeaux as written by Greg Rucka and look. The man has Brought it Again.

I am forever obsessed with his use of the Jason case in this issue.

Sasha: I protect people. And I can't protect anyone doing what he says.

Anyway, when I first read this issues, I didn't care that much about Sasha and this was one of the issues that got me to the other side.

But her and the Huntress. Helena's perspective that she brings to this: one day you will fail him because everyone does and then you'll fall.

(Someday (maybe today idk) I will write the little follow up scene between them for the AU where Huntress kills the Joker in Joker: Last Laugh that lives in my head.)

Just the way that this question of failing Bruce haunts Sasha during her whole time in prison later.

Anyway, definitely glad I picked this up.

[asteria7fics]

How did you come up with the idea to make TSOB?

You know, I’m surprised to say that I don’t think I’ve answered this question on Tumblr before!

The short version that I tend to tell people is this: I was bored at work one night, working the closing shift, and I had an epiphany. I thought to myself, “Isn’t it weird that I take so much comfort in terrible characters? Like Agamemnon, and Cartman-… wait a damn minute!”

Seriously, it occurred to me that Agamemnon and Cartman actually had quite a few similarities, and then I realized that Kyle would make an excellent Achilles, and the rest was kind of history.

The long version? Well, how much time have you got?

I can’t really pinpoint the moment when I got really into Greek Mythology, and Classical/Ancient Greece in general, but it’s been an interest of mine for several years now.

I spent hours just exploring Greece in Assasin’s Creed Odyssey (as well as taking detailed notes in the historical tour mode), watched so many YouTube videos, read a great many books, etc.

Reading was actually where my love for the Trojan War in particular began. Idk man, there’s just something about those characters, and that conflict, that I adore.

I could give you a list of contemporary novels I’ve read and really enjoyed, but you didn’t come here for book recommendations ahaha so I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say it was the only thing I read about for like a year.

Fast forward through a really intense k-pop obsession (it’s still a majority of the music I listen to. I’m listening to Ateez as we speak) and I’m in the throes of a new interest. Fucking South Park.

I really did just, get the idea one day. I was around season 15 of my first time watching the show (though I had a ton of stuff spoiled already, hence why I made Heidi and Cartman exes), and I had just started reading fanfiction. I had no intention of actually writing the damn thing, but the more I spitballed ideas with a few select coworkers, the more I realized the thing needed to be written.

Who else but my crazy ass would write this thing, really?

I suppose I should also add another, small piece of inspiration. Right before getting into South Park I actually decided to be surgically sterilized. I won’t go into detail as to why I made that choice, but the idea crossed my mind while developing the story to have a side plot where the adults are losing their minds over all their condoms going missing (because, yah know, they were needed for warfare!) and the whole town gets caught up in this big debate over if the man or the woman has the responsibility to be sterilized, should a cis & straight couple choose to be done having children.

Obviously this would have been a Randy and Sharon heavy debate, and I’m glad I didn’t include it as a proper plot point. In my mind though it does still occur, the kids are just totally oblivious to it. Likewise, the adults are totally oblivious to how ridiculous their kids play war is getting, until of course there are real consequences to the whole thing.

There’s one bit that alludes to it, when Annie has gone to the little girl’s house to discuss getting her Switch back and the girl’s parents are arguing about something they ‘don’t understand’. A fun remnant of a plot point that didn’t quite make it in!

Anyway, I’ve already broken down the story beats and how they correlate with the original text in this post, though if you were wondering where Cartman and Heidi canonically get their inspiration, I like to imagine they binged this show while they were together. It’s actually a pretty entertaining retelling, I would definitely recommend it to a casual enjoyer of Greek Myths!

Wow, that was a lot! If you actually read all of that, thank you!

And thank you for this ask, friend! (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)♡

[slashingdisneypasta]

So, you're feeling gay, huh? 😏

Imagine that while you're with your Evil Queen, you two have to keep things secret (for now, she reassures you) because being gay back then was considered unholy. So as far as the historians in the future court knows, you two are just good friends... As such, one of the men felt like they had every right to walk up to you and ask you to walk with him around the castle gardens. You can see in his eyes that he's not interested in the stroll or the garden, and all you can think about is how enraged Grimhilde must be right now. (I know that since she has all the power, Grimhilde could have probably very easily been gay with you in public. I just like the forbidden secrecy that comes with historic gay lovers.)

Imagine with Cruella, you two got into an argument that day. Not too bad, but you two are still angry at each other. And you just so happen to be a spiteful bitch; Cruella says you can't do better than her? Let's see how she'd like you flirting with another model or designer at some formal event you guys had to attend (bonus points if the one you were flirting with particularly gets on Cruella's nerves. Whether that be because they're an oaf or they're a rival designer).

Remember that Jane the Killer x bisexual!Reader drabble you wrote? Imagine that for your guys' anniversary, you have your own 'prom night' with her since you didn't get to go with her that night. Maybe you guys decorate your house or a small part of the Slender forest, you get a mix tape or a playlist ready, your guys' best attire for the night on, and just dance together. Just the two of you enjoying each other's company with the luxury of privacy.

Imagine providing Reba the big break from people she needs. You bring by some of your guys favorite alcohol so you don't have to go out to the bar (or just any drink of your choosing. Reba can't drink on work nights anyway), grab one or two of your guys' favorite dumb movies to watch, order some takeout, and just relax with your tired milf girlfriend ^^

This one is a bit more self-indulgent on my end and kind of more like an idea for a fanfic (I like coming up with plots for mult-chapter X reader stuff, even though I know I'll never get down to writing them xD). Imagine that you were intended to be one of the annual Halloween victims of the Firefly family, but Baby took a liking to you. And you quickly took a liking to her. She was so much more fun and lively than your let-down of a boyfriend. During her Halloween show, and Baby gets to the part where she flirts with the boys in the crowd, she instead goes to you.

That's all I got right now. Soft stuff for the horror icons, and drama/kinda darker stuff for the Disney gals XD (idk why but it's easier for me to imagine mainly darker stuff for Disney, and mainly fluffy stuff for horror). I hope this provided the homo-serotonin you needed ^^

Oh my god these were a blessing to wake up to!!!

Evil Queen: Oh my goodness. Imagine this happens in court; Like, the throne room. And there's Hilda on her throne, sitting regal and bored and ready to poison someone, and there's you at her side looking as if you're asking her if she needs anything but really you two are just chatting- when Antony, this Nobel dude, strolls over and (First of all greets the queen. Then- ) asks you for a walk right in front of Hilda. Right in front of her two eyeballs. Less then a foot from her feet. Disgusting; How dare.

You immediately go to accept, for appearances like she's always talking about, but she immediately demands (Bluntly, and rudely, just as you're reaching for Antony's hand) for you to go fetch her a mug of ale.

Antony and you look at her (Him like 'Oh no, oh damn, the queen needs something. I better piss off, bye bye- ' and you like 'Are you serious??') and Hilda just gives a dainty shrug, like 'I'm very parched'.

Cruella De Vil: This is amazing XDD I love reader being a spiteful bitch with Cruella XDD Imagine you flirt with ALONZO to get on her nerves XD Like, he is so pathetic- and so easy- and Cruella hates him so much for being such a gross sycophant with her.

Plus, this means that instead of schmoozing other brands like you're there to do, you are hanging out in a corner with the 'help', which really pisses Cruella off. She tries to demand (/threaten) you go talk with some CEO's at the drink table, but you just give her a dainty shrug and an evil smile. You absolutely love pissing this woman off. She's terrifying and mean and its addictive. "I'm actually having a great time with Alonzo! Did you know he breeds chickens at home?" "Ugly, pathetic creatures are chickens." "Well, I want to learn more about it. But please!- be free to go talk to those men over there on your own ^^ You have my permission ^^ "

Jane The Killer: Yes I remember this!! I was genuinely quite proud of that one ^^ And ohhhh, this is so so sweet <3

(Note, I'm running out of time as I respond to this- I have to go to work XD So it's not that I like these ones less, it's that I don't have time to write a whole lot in responce!!! )

Reba: REBAA reba reba. We need to talk about her so much more, she is so cool <3<3<3 AND THIS SOUNDS SO GOOD XD I need this, haha XD Imagine sitting with her, your legs Twisted up with eachother onto of the coffee table and you're making fun of a beloved dumb movie together <3<3<3 Ahhh I love this so much ^^

Baby Firefly: Like I've said before, self indulgence is very very welcome here!! ^^ And I love this idea! And you would be so in her trap because like- just look at her, Baby is so so pretty and so sweet (Sometimes XD) ^^ <3 <3 <3 If she treated me how she treated that guy from the Office, I would be soooo very dead XD 😅😅😅

[pleuvoire]

i've been reading every rising sun by jamila ahmed. it is a historically-grounded retelling of the story of shaherazade. i love the prose and the grounded attention to historical detail and it's emotionally compelling, i've been getting through a hundred pages at a time, it's an engaging read. and it's set during the islamic golden age which is one of my favorite eras of history to learn about. but it is in some ways not quite living up to my expectations. i was hoping there would be more political machinations because it is about shaherazade trying to keep the ruler who beheads all his wives placated during a time when the declining seljuk empire (which the main characters belong to) is under attack from the khwarazmian empire and the oghuz turks at the same time, and also all of them have to deal with the threat of the franks undertaking the third crusade. so for example, shaherazade considers letting the murderous malik she's married to ride off to jerusalem and die fighting against the european crusaders, but if she does that then the region she lives in might fall to the khwarazmids and oghuz, so she has to come with him to try to keep him alive. that sort of thing is fun, but there is a lot less of it over the course of 400 pages than i was hoping for, and more of it is devoted to shaherazade trying to keep on his good side so he doesn't kill her, especially when she starts crushing on this other guy and has to try to keep it hidden. i mean i understand because writing intricate politics is hard as shit. but also i'm a bit disappointed. oh well.

another aspect i'm disappointed in is the whole story thing. of the course the story of shaherazade is famous for how she kept herself alive by telling her husband compelling stories and leaving him in suspense. this was portrayed really well in the beginning but then the book became more about a bunch of other stuff happening and the storytelling started to feel more incidental. it still serves a role because every time he gets pissed at her for something else she's like "umm hey wanna hear the next part of the story i was telling?" and it distracts him but, idk, i was expecting it to be way more central to the plot. also, the stories themselves are not very compelling. they feel way too modern in their style and structure and the amount of detail involved and they don't have the same timeless enduring folkloric feel as the actual irl 1001 nights. i've been writing a lot of spiders jeremy fanfic lately and really having fun messing around with that fairytale storytelling style, so it disappoints me that the author couldn't be bothered to do that, or at least not very much. then again, replicating that kind of folkloric style is really hard. i'm reminded of how recently i was reading the first queen's thief book which is super good but every time the characters start telling a mythological story from their world i feel like "hmm... this is a bit too detailed... it just doesn't quite feel like real irl mythology..." but i feel like this book does an even worse job of landing the style and is barely even trying. oh well.

i guess it's not fair that i'm asking this book to both have more complex intricate politics and be more about the stories shaherazade tells. though i think you could pull it off with a lot of tight seamless plotting - that's one of my issues here, that the book is kinda rambling and loosey-goosey. but i would settle for one or the other, if the politics were more complex and intricate or if the stories took more of a central role and had more thought put into them i would be happier. anyway despite all those words i am enjoying this book for all the reasons i said above, it's a solid 4 out of 5 stars for me, i just really like going in-depth on the criticism front so i thought i'd make a post recording my thoughts. if you read all this congrats and thank you

[weer02]

25. Ramble about anything, everything you are dying to tell the world of your WIP.

Sorry you had to wait so long for me to answer your ask, but I held off answering it until I'd have chapter 20 posted. It's the part of my WIP I'd like to ramble about 'cause I feel like quite a lot has happened in there. It will make more sense after reading the chapter, sooo I'd recommend reading the chapter first (it's posted now) then this post!

Max&Nathan doing jigsaw puzzle on the visits

I'm gonna start with a fun one, not really important to the plot . I wondered about the things they can do at the visits, have something that would help them bond as friends. I went for jigsaw puzzle, inspired by my own inexplicable need to assemble a jigsaw puzzle (which I did btw, bought myself a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and assembled it alone within like a week haha). While I was doing the puzzle, I thought about the size, what kind of assembling strategies they'd have. Yeah, that starts to sound like "method writing" 😂

Nathan getting worried about Max's emotional state

Ok, I'm gonna ramble a lot about it, 'cause that's one of my fav things in this chapter,! I love to write nice and sweet scenes with them after so many angsty scenes! One thing that I love about my very slow build is how they slowly warm up to each other, start to trust themselves more to share certain stuff, how they begin to notice odd behavior in each other.

Max being quiet on the visits is something alarming, because she was always rambling about random stuff, so he asks her to tell him about how is she. He's the first one to know about what's bothering her lately, what makes it more easy for her is that he is/was dealing with more severe emotional issues than her, so she assumes he'll understand + won't judge her. And what she assumes turns out to be true.

Surprise, now it's Nathan who's helping Max! How the tables had turned! Yeah... at some point of writing this fic, I think I was writing chapter 6? I figured out that Max will develop some kind of mental issues because of the trauma she went through. One of the tropes? in the caulscott I'm writing is that they both somehow bond over their issues, and the help part (that in many caulscott fics is often one sided) is reciprocated here. It's gonna be explored more in further chapters!

The other patient's breakdown

Something that I came up with to show more of the hospital environment; that it's a relatively calm space for Max and Nathan to form their friendship, but there are also moments when something unnerving can happen, because it's still a psychiatric hospital. It's also for the plot's sake, the breakdown adds some action to a scene, but also serves as a some kind of a parallel to Nathan's situation, in his group therapy he has people who committed crimes like him; and his line "Yes, I did fucked up shit and that's why I'm locked up  here with other people who also did fucked up shit. I don't know why are you so shocked." is a great summary to what I was trying to achieve by introducing that OC (? idk if an episodic character counts as oc)

The Nightmare

I decided to do more "Nigtmare Sequences" because of the feedback I've got for it (and because of one of your reviews Kris @kpchrs :DD)

-For the hallway part I have to say that I drew some inspiration for the setting from my interest in dreamcore/liminal spaces -For the second part with flashes were inspired by the nightmare sequence from the original game, the visit scene floating in the void by the Max&Chloe "memory lane" -The part that happens after the "blood red flash", the "worst outcome of that day/alternate universe glimpse" is actually an angsty thought I had once, that "what if things in chapter 1 went not in favor of our protagonist(s)", "What if Jefferson's plan worked?". That's just plain angst(tm) for all the readers from me :")

I really enjoy considering "what if" scenarios, and because LiS' universe heavily connected time travel/parallel worlds, I took the opportunity.

But is it just a nightmare and her brain fearing the worst or a glimpse of an alternate universe? "Our" Max thinks she got to see a glimpse of another universe, mostly because of her alter-ego's implication, but what's the truth is up to the reader's interpretation. I had so much fun writing in the dreamlike, nightmarish setting, and I'm not done with it yet!

The therapy session

An attempt of a rational explanation of Max's powers, one of things that can be found in one of my first outlines. It was supposed to go like she went through multiple therapists, and from the last one she'll hear she made up the powers to cope with a traumatic experience. I think it's a plausible explanation of her powers, especially for like a realistic approach. It's not the typical "character wakes up and realizes everything (supernatural) that happened was a dream" (though "Staying Vertical" by midnight_neverland on AO3 does it SO well), but something in between. I'll see where that will go in my fic 'cause I have a few ideas how to wrap up the Max's powers part, even though it's not a main focus of this fic. But some kind of explanation about why Max had got her powers is something I wish was more explored in the game.

Speaking of the therapist scene, there's a funny thing in context of my new obsession, THG. I named Max's therapist Dr. Collins, because that was what the name generator came up with, before I even started watching THG and got into it. The authors' name is Collins too. I'm gonna leave it like that 'cause I love a funny coincidence 😂

Oh, so many things happened in this chapter but at the same time I feel like nothing happened at all 😩 I sometimes feel like going in circles with this fic, even though I'm satisfied with my outline and I'm following that outline! Ugh, writing struggles once again! As of right now I have around 10 more chaps planned so the fic would have a nice number of 30 chapters. No one knows what will be left of these plans, 'cause in the original it was supposed to be 20 chapters 🥲

For anyone that stayed up until now, thanks for reading!💖💖

[misiwrites]

4KINGDOMS RE-READ ADVENTURE part 5

today turned into more of a fic editing night because all of these chapters were a little trashy. but hey. better fix them now than never

Chapter 18: max makes a bet with rei that's "going to be an easy win", then proceeds to lose the bet 50 chapters later

i've always enjoyed including the detail that giancarlo has taught max to sneak out of the house. because gianni does it in canon. it's just perfect and i can't believe these two prob don't even talk to each other once in canon

and now max is starting to roast ralf too but also, nice foreshadowing there

“It’s just not right,” he said, “for a royal knight to not be by his master’s side at all times.” “You’re starting to sound like Ralf!” I congratulated him. “Incredible.”

holy shit max being like "idk what rick dislikes me for. maybe he's mad i'm cuter than him"

he also just flat out calls takao obsessed with kai. already

i forgot about this thing of them betting about kai's visit to cherrywood

max says he's jealous of takao! takao just said some chapter back that he's jealous of max! funny how that works

hmm. this was very cheesy

Chapter 19: takao-sensei teaches us world geography

thank you takao. i didn't remember some of the worldbuilding stuff in here so like. good to know. actually the thing he's saying about the east believing there to be three mountains that holy beasts originate from, i found those three things from wikipedia the other day and was like ah. did i intend to use these for something or.

i also forgot takao here talks about mao like oh she's so pretty. she so curvy. NFDBGHSDGSD

OH MY GOD TAKAO IS SO PETTY!! THIS BITCH

Whatever, I'd show them later - then they'd admit they were wrong and I was right, and they’d apologise for having been so silly and prejudiced. Yeah. “Sorry, Takao! You were right all along!” and so on. “We’re sorry for ever doubting you! You were steps ahead of us with your thinking!” Like that. […] I’d show them, I’d make Kai my new best buddy, and then we’d have so much fun together every day.

i may have kind of forgotten this subplot about all the mentions of kai's absence in southern media, i mean it's still gonna be relevant but i forgot this was. one part of it. yeah

this chapter wasn't very well written tbh so i spent like an hour fixing it just now. where were we again

Chapter 20: just a stinky pile of reimax fluff

the one where they stand on water holding hands. this is some aladdin&jasmine shit. these two got intense very fast

As soon as he was back on the veranda, he let out a sigh of relief. Then he immediately recollected himself, straightening his back and trying to look brave. “That was fun,” he said without a hint of fun is his voice.

rei you are so pathetic

oh this is a drop that i enjoy:

I shook my head and turned my attention back to Rei. “Doesn’t matter. I was just thinking that you could end up such a powerful magic-user. And yours seems like the offensive type. You could become a real fighter!” “A fighter?” Rei repeated the word as if sampling its taste. “Like the knights? Do you think magic could be used with a weapon?”

i know i had the major points of this story planned beforehand but i'm still all LOOKKK I KNEW TO FORESHADOW THIS AND THAT! OH HOORAY! like i had no faith in myself that it was in there. IT'S JUST LIKE MAX SAYS TO REI IN THIS CHAPTER have faith in yourself!!

i very much love the robot koi fish of rei's pond

Chapter 21: kai arrives at takao's house and it's. not so fluffy

the plot moved a lot faster back then, now kai is already coming to cherrywood! i could just do a time jump in my current chapters too tbh

so like, about the first 1-on-1 interaction in person between takao and kai that they ever have, is this:

Kai slid it open a few inches, just enough to glare at me through the narrow gap like I was a cockroach that he couldn’t quite reach. Or didn’t want to. “Hey,” I whispered. “I wanna talk. Could you let me in?” “Why?” Kai bellowed, not lowering his voice at all.

i am great at writing romance yes.

takao realises that kai has probably never had a single friend……… /plays the world's smallest violin (and, any extremely handsome and sexy person who has read my other tales oneshots, knows that kai literally asked johnny what a "friend" is)

Chapter 22: takao gets nothing out of kai, surprise

yeah this is the point with double takao chapters! this is my own story where i'm the one who did the decisions yet i keep imagining this being like a wrestling match between rei and takao where they fight which one is the protag---

this chapter is really just description of cherrywood and the garden. the highlight is takao deciding he needs to try if the triangles on kai's face are paint or not

i wasn't very good at describing things in these chapters, i remember struggling with that and rewriting things a hundred times actually. well, the good news is that it comes easier to me now so clearly something has improved.

[eightwholebreads]

doccy who thoughts

This series was basically fine so long as yo don't actually think about any of it. Moment to moment is fine but overall its like well okay what was all that even about. After the specials it ws very clear that this just wasn't going to be a good jumping on point for people. (idk maybe it is but idk because I've seen most of nuwho and that can't be undone). I do feel like if series 1 was written by RTD as a fan wanting to write for people his age and maybe younger then this series was written for their kids. Personally I'm not that fussed about the optimistic and energetic tone but whatever I can sit with it for 45 minutes a week fair enough.

This was a really weird series too. Of the 7 stories, the doctor more or less wasn't in 2 of them and completely immobilised in one AND those episodes were 3 in a row.

Episode opinions summary

Space babies: cringe. Didn't enjoy it. When they weren't doing the basic plot they were speedrunning dw lore. There was a couple of good ideas in there but I didn't enjoy it

Devil's chord: Okay. And probably not much better than okay. Maestro was alot of fun but the actual plot was kind of eh. The musical number at the end was fine and whatever. I didn't enjoy it but I'm sure someone out there did.

Boom: Good. I was wondering how moffat would trap ruby in a b plot and then she spent most of the episode unconscious

73 yards: Interesting but didn't do it for me at all. Whatever

Dot and bubble: The slug thing actually scared me a bit like imagine walking into something you're not even aware of augh. I'm sort of going back and forth on whether the racism twist was actually good or not. I watched josh must win by coincidence shortly before this episode and you could feel maybe similar thought processes in that show where several of the other contestants were saying stuff like Oh he just needs to try more and I don't think he's comfortable here so I hope he gets voted out. Like the thought processes sort of look similar from the outside where you can't see the underpinning mechanism and its one people can fall into from various different angles so when the underpinning mechanism turned out to just be space racists it was like oh so now we don't have to think about our own possible behaviour because they're doing it about this one specific and unacceptable thing. On the other hand it is made for all ages and keeping it simple means you're less likely to lose people and the final scene was pretty good. Basically most of my criticism boils down to "ah this episode didn't do what I thought it would" so whatever.

Rouge: Oh boy I sure hope the doctor and rouge flirting doesn't take up the whole episode. Romance isn't my thing but I can appreciate it as a little side dish to a decent episode... and then the romance takes up the whole episode

The legend of ruby sunday: setup. The time window scene was neat. Literally don't understand why classic fans were all Oh maybe the nuwho only peeps won't understand sutekh. Yeah they make it super clear he's the (probably egyptian) god of death. Easy to understand

Empire of death: Eh. The payoffs didn't really work. The solutions were cheap and based on lying to the audience. The final few scenes really worked. I don't particularly care for the drama stuff but they worked.

Excited for christmas? No not really but I'll still watch it and the next series. Not as actively irritating as the moffat era, not as crushingly dull as the chibnall era.

[adventuringblind]

Awwww im sorry :(

Life sucks most of the time (unfortunately) sometimes and a lot of ppl deal with it better than us.

If no one’s said it yet IM FUCKING PROUD OF YOU FOR NOT GIVING IN.

Regarding the angst fics: GIMME. I’ll be the LAST person complaining cause it actually makes me feel something other than indifference and numb.

And max??? Your Ghoul max especially??? I WILL EAT THAT SHIT UP. GIMME. (On your own time and writing speed ofc).

If it ain’t obvious I’ll read pretty much anything you write. I’m a sucker for your ao3, I’m rereading one fic or another daily atp.

Also cause I always see you and 🦡 talking about energy drinks (monster) I’ll add my little quirks about caffeine in general cause I keep being told I’m weird for it and need some kind of opinion from ppl who don’t know anything about me:

I have said for YEARS that I don’t want to try energy drinks because I have an addictive personality. I damn well knew that I’d be addicted to the caffeine “high” or sleep (depending on how my adhd took it).

Until February when my friend but redbull in a separate cup and had me try it. Summary is I liked it and immediately wanted to cry when she told me cause damnit I’ve been avoiding it!!!!

So now I have EXTREMELY strict rules about my redbull consumption (it’s the only source of caffeine other than Coca Cola I actually enjoy the taste of (no I don’t like coffee)). And refuse to try anything else because one is bad enough.

Sorry this is so long but your always asking for ppl to talk… so I just did (whoops)

- 🦒

Okay yes… I am aching for human interaction. The interaction I’ve had with friends recently is not the greatest but in my defense! I’m still religious and so are they and we all have different values. As in - tumblr is like my side hoe that nobody knows about. I’m also bisexual which isn’t the most values thing in Christianity and so I get some weird looks when I rant about pretty woman. I CANT HELP IT THO WHY ARE YOU ALL SO GOOD LOOKING IT’S NOT FAIRRRRR. Same goes for a lot of other shit. Drinking and sex and smoking and sex and - the list goes on for days. IDK man just Lemme liveeee. Also trying to explain to people why you won’t go back t church is a pain. Like - idk? You watched my dad abuse my mom for YEARS, didn’t say anything and gossiped instead about how we were the ones not following him as the head of the household, the proceeded to hail him a hero because he stayed with my mom after she dealt with a fucking predator? Not thanks! I’d prefer never to speak to y’all again!

(Sorry for the random trauma dump lol)

That all being said, the interaction I’ve had is limited to my fiancé and my beta reader who is overseas in the UK. My fiancé has friends and goes out with them and I sit watching movies with my parents while getting trashed. My sister is there too. I love her dearly. But she’s 17 and dual enrolled to graduate with her associates degree in a couple of months so she’s busy T_T

Basically - I’m alone with my thoughts majority of the time and it’s not a fun place to be.

I’m considering making this specific Ghouls Max fic into a mini series because there is so much shit here. Plus, background Landoscar and Charlos have me FERAL. The plot is actually a lot like my Ao3 fic in some ways but not? Like themes are similar ig. I fell in love though and might make a series of one shots that follow Max and Reader post the events of that fic 👀 (which I will have for you EVENTUALLY)

Redbull isn't my favorite unless it's sugar-free (don't ask why because I find it IRONIC). I feel you with the caffeine thing and finding it hard to pace. I don't have a crazy reaction to caffeine and usually get by with a monster in the morning. Coffee tastes gross unless it's one of those places that have their own coffee beans and stuff. Which - okay - I'm from Washington state, and we have SO MANY COFFE PLACES HERE. I have three that are a 20-minute walk from my house. Also, Starbucks sucks.

Saw your ask right after this by the way and laughed because I'm blind and the emojis looked similar, so I didn't even realize at first!

I'm glad to see me and 🏍 are spreading our propaganda 😂

[witchboyjimin]

okay but not you making me go major uwu and then crack up right after with the answer to my last ask lmfaoooo

love and dedication my phone has for your story hahaha. It's brothers in arms with my Browser that goes 'oh she must mean ILHDYS when i type in anything CLOSE to the words i like how' roflmao. It's all off and go from there hahahaha

And the way i cackled over your first reply to my question. It's just quite something, writing smut, huh? I was genuinely gonna say i haven't done that before but then i remembered three separate fics i wrote in teen wolf where i decidedly and irrevocably DID write that lmfao. But not as on the kinky side as yours. I do wonder tho, if you don't mind further questions of course!! How do you go about writing and putting ideas into plot and paper? Like, when do you go oh that's totally gonna be a thing I'll write and what remains a daydream only kinda thing? Hard to answer probably, huh.

I do enjoy all the smut you wrote and write, even though some things are not as much my thing if I'd consider writing myself. But first and foremost, writing is supposed to be self-indulgent imo and i can usually appreciate it the extra bit if it's apparent the authors joy is in the fic and story hihi

- cabin anon ✨

kekeke i was like i can be honest here, can't i?

dkfnsjk clearly u and ur browser are the #1 ilhdys fans wow!!! incredible!!!! you're visiting it more than me kdjfn i had better step up my game

i feel like writing porn/smut is such a...you do have to be in a certain mood and it can be quite daunting. especially because i think people sometimes assume writing porn is easy when it is. really not. i'm super grateful that jimin inspires me so much because idk if i could have written as much porn as i have if not for him. that aside, incredibly exciting that you're writing for/wrote for teen wolf fandom!!! truly one of the best fandoms out there in terms of porn AND creativity. there's some really cool story-telling in teen wolf.

as for your questions: i think i ruminate on fic ideas quite a bit. i also think, for me, i need time for an idea to kinda stew so that i can write it down the way i envision it, too. i think the fic that ends up being written vs the stuff that stays a daydream is just based on what is a reoccurring daydream/how often am i thinking about a certain idea or scene because the more you think about the same thing, the more likely you are to write it down.

of course, there are ideas i think about relentlessly that don't get written but i think usually in those cases, it's because something's missing from the story i'm telling. likely, part of me thinks it's a dull story because the plot isn't giving what i think it needs to give. i find lately i get bored very easily if i daydream about a fic and the stakes are really low or it feels like there's not a lot of tension or points of conflict. one of my current wips has kind of been put on the backburner because the plot's too basic/fluffy for me so i need to ruminate some more and figure out what story i want to tell.

also, i think with writing now i am trying to veer away from some of the traps fic lands you in eg. i want to write more fully fleshed out characters who aren't 100% likeable. i feel like with fic and especially bts fic, there's like this expectation that you only write wholesome versions of bts who never do anything wrong but that is not how real life works so a lot of my wips are being revisited and will likely be rewritten so that i feel more engaged with what i'm writing. when the characters are perfect and the plot's super low stakes, i lose interest and i'm glad i've realised that.

god! so very sorry for how fucking long this is and kudos to you if you even read this far fjdnk thank you once again for such a fun ask cabin anon ✨ you are so delightful! hope you have a great weekend!

[magnumdays]

Magnum PI 4.09 - Better Watch Out review

So where to begin with this! I mean while a good chunk of this episode was Magnum and Lia running about, BUT we got so many small Miggy moments and stuff I don’t even mind! 

(In fact Magnum/Lia relationship in this felt more like it was there to give us Miggy moments more than anything. Which is kind of what it is about so yeah... makes sense.)

We also got so much soft Higgy. From her being all ”this was the best way I could think of '' about the Santa/Elf gig (can we talk about character growth? I mean season 1 Higgy would rather get shot before putting an elf costume on!)

(Though Higgy does looks like she be ready to murder someone wishing her a merry Christmas here!) 

having the lads as a background on her computer

being there to tease, support Magnum in his relationship and for saying  ‘she don’t know what she’s missing’ there at the end. And staying when the crisis is over just because she’d rather be there to support him. All the good stuff.

It was nice that we didn’t get an actual hostage crisis at the precinct like the summary said, but a digital one. This made it make sense for Higgy to be left at HPD trying to hack and stuff while Magnum and Lia did the physical detective part. Good reason to put her on the side-line rather than having something stupid like they’ve done before, so Magnum and Lia working together could happen. 

I would have, despite not really caring about Lia/Magnum, to have seen some more of the feels going on there. Because when Magnum confines about being upset Lia lied to Higgins, it’s almost surprising. (Loved their talk here and someone remembering - if vaguely - to reference Hannah.)

I mean sure, he is clearly upset but at the same time… not really feeling it. But because she’s more of a “in the background obstacle” to Miggy than anything else, we don’t want or get to see much of their ‘normal dynamic’. So IDK. Maybe having her be like “yeah, I’d love to come to O’hana X-mas” at the start and then at the end realizing he’s hurt and going “Actually I have paperwork.” 

Small question about Lia’s dad and Magnum and Higgins’ previous dealings with them - didn’t Higgy push a company assassin out of a window 20 floors up in s. 1 or 2 and he got smashed like a pancake? Or maybe that was some other organization? It’s not gonna happen but it would be excellent fun if Lia’s dad had Magnum followed, one of the followers recolonized Higgy as the person who killed said hit man (who was actually a close friend of Lia’s dad) years ago and we got a big dramatic mess when they tried to get revenge on Juliet... (fic idea ding-ding-ding.)

As for Caleb and the car plot as well as the bail skipper small time crock with a heart of gold was nice. 

(I’m really happy that even crocks get to be nice and love their families sometimes. It’s very X-mas appropriate.)

At first I wasn’t sure what was going on with Caleb and wanted him to be more embracing and happy about being part of the O’hana, but when he talked to Rick I kind of felt like it worked. He had a life and family and traditions and while he’s happy it’s different and he’s still not quite feeling like he’s part of the O’hana fully. But him being thankful and doing the little speech at the end was nice. At the same time, I kind of like him better when he’s angry or upset for some reason.

Favorite moments

This expression on Magnum’s face when he realizes he just invited Lia and her mom to Christmas dinner...

Magnum and Higgins talk / heading out together at the end.

I so enjoy the fact that we’re getting Higgy being just as supportive of Magnum’s relationship as he was with her and Ethan. I do hope we get more progress during the remaining half of the season on the Miggy feels though, because we have already done this story-line in a way with it taking forever for Magnum to even be a ‘currently nothing more than friends’ so yeah. Need something else to happen. (But by the sound of 4.10 it does already sound like the writing team knows as much.)

Also wonder if this is what is going to be the begging of the end for the Magnum/Lia thing, or just a bump in the road? Could we get a “Higgy has sexy dream but Magnum and Lia are now closer than ever so…angst?” sort of thing next time. 

I honestly would either like some actual feels between Lia/Magnum or for them to amicably break up and she just be Gordon’s partner. I really like her and Gordon’s dynamic and it’s good to have another female character around!

Loved Thomas giving Kumu a little hugg-y cheek kiss. They so adorable!

Higgy making (in)famous Christmas pudding! I mean, licorice and basil? (Actually it doesn't sound too bad, but I am a Swede and thus a licorice fiend… though still not sure about it in pudding form.)

The ‘doesn’t she know what she’s missing’ moment of course even if it was meant to also imply the whole O’hana hang, it felt more like Higgy pointing out how awesome Thomas is. Which we love. Them heading out together… just feels right.

Same with the bringing her a change of clothes.

Them just being adorable and him teasing her about it but having done it. And I just want to point out… this is the top he picked for her…

(Or maybe she had some clothes picked out for him to stick in a bag but still I like my Magnum gives himself a christmas gift - Higgy-cleavage - idea better.)

Magnum (always) having Higgins back being all “She did it for you Gordy, aren’t you tried of us asking for you favors?”

And the end. Let’s not forget about the end( I already posted these pics but can’t have too many pics of our two idiots looking at each other, now can we?)

I really don’t need anything more for Christmas!

(I am working on a X-mas fic though, that’ll be up today or tomorrow! Just in case anyone wants more Christmas fluff feels...)

Overall, I enjoyed the episode a lot. I loved the fact that this is their yearly tradition, imply they’ve been doing this every year even though we haven’t gotten to see it. Extra points for the fact that Higgy makes weird English Christmas pudding they all eat even though they don’t like it. It’s very nice and makes my Christmas-heart feel happy and full.

So yeah, this ep was a winner! 

And Merry Christmas everyone!