#edit: fixed some typos. my personal hell

[feartoxinjelloshot]

clipsverse SWAP AU! for fun! character elaboration under the cut because it gets kind of wordy:

selina's deal is pretty straightforward: she has the typical “saw parents die as a child" backstory, but she’s obviously not a millionare so she’s operating out of some kind of condemned underground parking lot... somewhere. authentic gotham grunge i guess. she’s a functioning alcoholic and i am obsessed with her. she's a hardboiled detective like batman, but tends to be a bit more cynical - sort of like if rorschach from watchmen was a normal person and also didn't hate sex. firefly is her "guy in the chair" similar to what alfred is to batman in canon, minus the surrogate parent part, obviously. public opinion is pretty split on if the bat is a man or a woman under there. i don't really have swap ideas for the robins ironed out, but i'm thinking that cass and stephanie are her robin and red hood equivalents (cass being dick, stephanie being jason). cass would have an allblack bird theme going on, so she might be "crow" or "blackbird" instead of robin. dunno what stephanie's red hood rendition is like. purple hood? i'll figure it out eventually.

bruce’s parents are alive, but he has a terrible relationship with them and with his own wealth so he mitigates the guilt complex by dressing up as a cat to steal and redistribute resources to people who actually need it. he could probably do that in daylight but there is something very wrong with him. i don't think his dumb slutty playboy persona is entirely genuine even without his parents' deaths, but he does lean into it more and incorporate parts of it into his vigilante persona over time. i think this version of bruce is just generally very lonely under the surface. he tries to be normal in his daytime life and he's very bad at it - theft aside, in a certain sense being the cat(man? woman?) is his own break for freedom; he felt a need to plunge himself far into the deep end of what normal society calls a 'freak'. ...writing it out like this, we're probably lucky he didn't start killing people. fortunately batman isn't really that kind of guy in any universe.

meanwhile on the other side of the rails: ivy! her deal is slightly unformed right now due to the fact that the hatter and the joker also swap places in this au - so the hatter is a dangerous, evil mastermind intent on controlling gotham to suit their whims, and the joker is... just a harmless silly little guy. yeah. i don't have swap-hatter's exact personality ironed out yet, so detailing his and ivy's dynamic would be difficult, but i can say that while she is his loyal second-in-command at his table of advisors, she is also plotting against him. ivy is a consistent loner in both mainline cv and here, and while she doesn't have the same tumultuous, antagonistic, emotional relationship with him as harley does with the joker, she is also frankly not interested in being his number one until the end of time. she wants to do it herself and she wants to do it right. this is an ivy who, in lieu of her own world-altering gift, is scraping tooth and nail to successfully supersede the most powerful entity she can get her hands on. the hatter is blissfully unaware of this - we can't all be perfect.

harley, for her part, is very tame in comparison. she mirrors ivy's canonical backstory pretty closely: an esteemed scientist studying stem cell relations who was denied funding, mocked, and forced to experiment on herself to prove a point, unwittingly connecting herself to a worldwide hive-mind of plantlife. this version of harley, while still dressed as a scientist, is far more surface-level emotionally volatile than mainline ivy, more impulsive and irrational, and probably willing to lean much farther into the classic poison ivy reputation as a villainous seductress, to varying degrees of honesty and success. it takes ivy an incredible degree of patience and control to maintain the mental and physical balance she strikes with the green, and this version of harley has far less of both. she lets it use her body as a conduit of earthly rage and she lets the poison infect her skin and organs until mottled and decaying. she's not unhappy, but she's not exactly stable, either.

jonathan is a mysterious, faux-sleazy lounge singer who lost his left arm to a snake bite infection as a child and thereafter became obsessed with the symbolism of the balance of life via games, tricks and questions - winning and losing, birth and death, etc. the ouroboros is a common symbol in his theatrics. he possesses a certain degree of social confidence that the mainline jonathan has never quite been capable of - while he doesn't have the same fervent need for attention as edward, he takes a compulsory delight in the mental influence he achieves on small crowds and will employ many avenues to get ahold of it. he's certainly not outgoing: he keeps almost entirely to himself offstage, uninterested in fame outside of his show persona. unlike mainline jonathan who views the scarecrow as a genuine self-inflicted diety, this jon sees his persona as more of a mantle or responsibility that he must take on in order to discover new truths about the world. like his canon counterpart he is asexual and uninterested in sex, but i imagine that he has less qualms about leading people on as an act to get what he wants from them. he's not terribly famous in his singing career, but he's become a bit of an underground legend for his resolute 1920s-inspired style and occasional genuine debonair charm.

edward in comparison is not nearly as ritualistically compelled as mainline scarecrow, but he’s far less cagey about his own machinations and his mental relationship to them: he lives in a tricked-out barn somewhere on the far outskirts of gotham, and he spends his time as a propmaster creating elaborate saw-trap-esque haunted houses and escape rooms to invoke panic in his “guests”. he wanders the halls of his own houses along with the guests, repairing and tinkering, or just scaring the shit out of them. he also makes a genuine living by making and selling cosplay props and other related objects online; he's developed a bit of an internet presence through this channel, though he's not as fixated on it as the mainline riddler would be. he still craves spectacle and attention, but he's more of a "quality over quantity" guy according to his own standards and is rarely happy with the work he creates, hence the endless roundabout of creation and reinvention.

[iwriteasfotini]

My favorite thing about Ao3 is the ability to go back and edit my published works. I don't think everyone does this, but I do! And it is tedious and time consuming (mostly because I keep a master google doc of each work so BOTH have to be edited), but the part of me which recognizes I can always do better gets excited every time I make an "improvement" edit. Even if it is just fixing a typo.

Maybe some people feel embarrassed thinking about editing their work. They think doing so waves a huge red flag to the wider community that there was something wrong with their writing to begin with. There was not! We are all human and make mistakes. Small mistakes like typos, or bigger mistakes like poor characterization or a line of dialogue which doesn't sit right or too much foreign language text for other readers to find the work readable. ;-)

And of course you should own your story. Just because one person says they don't like something you did or they didn't understand a passage doesn't necessarily mean you should rush out to change it! It is your story and you get to write it exactly as you want to. But I am writing fanfiction because I am working super hard to get better at writing in general. So that feedback, while it is always taken with a grain of salt, is meaningful. It is so hard to judge and analyze your own work. Call it author bias. And being able to process feedback is part of being a writer. By posting to a public platform you are letting the world know you are ok with some level of feedback. Otherwise you could have kept that story for yourself on your google drive, or your word document, or your spiral notebook.

It takes bravery to share. As does admitting something could have been written better or differently. The great thing is, there is no reason to be embarrassed for making changes or corrections to your writing. First, hardly anyone has read it. Sorry but this is just the cold hard truth. Second, with every change or correction you make, you get a tiny bit better as a writer. And to become a master at something it takes millions of repetitions through which you move from being ok at something to being fantastic at it. This applies to every skill you are seeking to improve on. Writing words is fabulous practice for becoming a better writer. You literally cannot get better without doing so. Editing and changing and improving something you have already written is the next step.

So know that if you are a perfectionist (like me) who gets an unwanted surge of adrenaline when I realize I have made a mistake in my work you are not alone! I take a deep breath. Remind myself this is a good thing. And work to improve.

NO ONE JUDGES YOU HARSHER THAN YOURSELF.

Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself grace. Laugh it off. Enjoy the feeling of getting better.

There is also a point at which you should move forward with your works instead of spending your precious time constantly going back and making changes on old ones. And that choice is a personal one.

But as a novice I say a huge "hell yes!" for being able to edit my published works.

PS Trust your gut when it comes to beta readers. Not every beta reader is created equal. And as novices giving each other advice, overwhelming harsh criticism which endures and feels personal indicates you and your beta reader might not jive professionally. I have not had this experience. My beta reader(s) have been fantastic! But I know it happens. Don't let it discourage you if you are on the receiving end... don't give up on writing. Find yourself a new beta reader!

[toxic-lone-wolf]

How to Drag Your Half-Dead Fic Across the Finish Line

NOTE: This is a duplicate post to the original that I posted in the Fanfiction Writers Unite community.

This post was inspired by a post I saw recently from @ezrabjork, who asked for advice about editing already-written chapters from old, unfinished fics when you discover you want to finish them.

As someone who rewrites and reworks my own stuff constantly--I get it. Editing old writing isn't fixing typos; it's essentially time-travelling into your past brain and trying to make sense of what the hell you were doing. So, this post is just my method for when I want to revive an old project without losing my mind! Take whatever you'd like from this list--it works for me, and may not work for you in the slightest. Even if you just incorporate one bullet point or one question when editing, I'll consider that a win. Enjoy!

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STEP ONE: Reconnect with the project.

Before touching anything, spend time remembering what you loved about the story, or even just your idea.

Write down, or simply keep some things in mind:

What was the original vibe, plot, or character focus? Was it a prompt? Did you just want to write some PWP?

How do you feel about it now? Has any of the original concepts shifted in your head?

What's your new goal with it? Do you want to just finish what's there? Rewrite it at your current level? Change the plot entirely?

STEP TWO: Read what you've got.

Read your old stuff carefully, ideally more than once.

As you look things over with fresh eyes:

Are there lines/paragraphs/scenes that still feel good to you? What do you still like and find up to your current standards?

Does anything feel wrong? Is someone too OOC somewhere? Does the dialogue feel too stale?

The important questions: What do you want to keep as is? What do you want to keep but adjust or rewrite? What do you want to scrap?

STEP THREE: Diagnose the damage.

Make note of areas where things are absolutely a problem in your eyes. Things like plot holes, awkward prose, missing emotional depth, etc. These should be things that you try to include in your own writing; it will be personal to you.

Be precise, but be gentle! Old writing may look uncomfortable to you now, but it's proof that your drive and joy for writing have continued and perhaps even gotten stronger.

STEP FOUR: Outline the repair plan.

Update your plot outline if you have one. If you don't have one, try making one! Messy doesn't matter if it helps you stay motivated and on track!!

Remember the notes you might have taken earlier? Compile them, and start making decisions on your next steps.

*STEP FIVE: Create chapter-by-chapter lists.

*This step can be skipped if your work is a one-shot, or doesn't have enough chapters for you to consider this worth doing. You could do it by scene or section, too. Remember, it's all up to you!

Go through each chapter and decide what each one needs (minor edits, heavy rewrites, total nuke, etc...)

Make the semi-final decisions regarding the important questions from step two.

STEP SIX: Start editing.

Work chapter by chapter.

Fix the big issues first (plot holes, character consistency, missing scenes) before focusing on the small stuff (prose, line or dialogue edits, grammar).

If you get stuck, which is normal even with loads of planning, come back later. Momentum matters!

STEP SEVEN: Know when it's "Good Enough".

Perfection is a lie. Your writing now is better than your writing then--and your future writing will be better than your writing now. That's simply how developing a skill works. If you can't seem to look through unbiased eyes for a particular chapter or even a singular scene, ask a friend to read it for you!

Your goal shouldn't be to just "fix" the old chapters; it should be to get the old stuff good enough to support you moving forward!

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As I said in the beginning, you can take snippets of this list or nothing at all! It's all about bolstering your process with what helps you stay motivated. If lists get you going, make lists. If you run on spontaneity, make sure you've got fuel.

Reviving an old fic is a labour of love. It's weird and messy and often quite frustrating, but it's also really special--you're giving a second life to something you cared about enough to start in the first place. That, in and of itself, is worth celebrating.

Good luck!! You've got this.

[tallimorgan]

The Indie Author Hustle

Originally written 07 January 2025

I saw a post on Bluesky yesterday from a fellow indie author—Azalea Forrest—talking about how not every book you write will be good, and not every good book you publish will do well, and sometimes the books you’re less proud of will do better than you expect. Azalea went on to say that regardless of the reception or your personal feelings about your books, each one is still a learning experience, and that is still valuable.

“It’s OK if it takes a while to put out a book. It’s OK to wait, or to shelve. And it’s OK if it’s done and it’s not what you expected or even wanted. It wasn’t a waste. It was an experience.”

This thread got me thinking about my own journey as an indie author and how easily I got swept up in the perceived hustle of self-publishing: this sense of pressure that if we don’t put out something new every few months, we’ll lose relevance and never be successful. Through the lens of social media, we get a warped idea of how much our peers are writing and how quickly they’re publishing, and that translates into a panicked urgency to get the next book out as fast as possible. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on the importance of a successful release day—achieving that ever-coveted orange banner—that often comes with the attitude that release day is the only chance for your book to “make it.”

All of this is, of course, exactly as I said earlier: a perceived reality. It’s true that some authors write faster than others, or have the means to make writing their full-time job rather than balancing it with additional jobs. Hell, if I could write for 7 or 8 hours per day, I’d crank out a book a month too. But I also know that that wouldn’t be my best work. Not unless I combed through that rapid draft with careful and extensive edits.

Something I learned in 2022, the year I released 4 books, is that while I can write a book in a month, fully edit it in another month, and publish it almost immediately after, I shouldn’t. It doesn’t result in my best work. It doesn’t give me time to really sit with that story, get to know those characters, and put the thought and care into my prose that I know I am capable of. Having re-read the books that took me ages to write and the books I wrote quickly, there is an obvious difference in both the quality of my writing and the depth of the stories.

I don’t regret publishing any of my books. There are a couple that I wish I had done differently—those being Sweet Sorrow, which has now been revised, and Truthseeker, which I have complicated feelings about—but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I wish I hadn’t published them at all. Both of those books—as well as the others—absolutely were a learning experience, and my skills are better for having written them.

But let’s talk some more about regrets, second-guessing, and how we’d do it if we could go back, because I know I’m not the only author who thinks about this, but I rarely see people talk about it.

More under the cut:

Self-publishing offers a lot of freedom in a lot of ways, which is both a blessing and a curse; traditionally published authors certainly can’t go back and edit their books with the same ease that I could fix a typo and re-upload my manuscript and then have the fixed version available to buy half a day later. But one of the things I had to learn in my years since publishing my first book, was when to leave well enough alone.

I recently started re-reading my debut, The Oracle Stone, which I published in 2021. At the time, that book was my pride and joy; it was (and still is) very dear to me, my little book baby. I was wholly confident that it was the best thing I’d written and that people would love it.

None of that is technically untrue. At the time, it was the best thing I’d written. People did love it! Oracle got a wider reach than I ever expected, for which I’m incredibly grateful.

But when I started re-reading it a few months ago? I couldn’t finish it.

Yeah. My beloved debut, the book that I struggled to write for like 6 years, starring some of my favorite characters, was so wildly different from my current writing abilities that I could not get past the 20% mark. 

I don’t think it’s bad, but I couldn’t turn off my writer-editor brain and just enjoy the story for its nostalgia. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d reword a sentence here, or enrich a description there. I had not realized how much my writing had grown, and I cringed at the thought of people discovering and reading Oracle but not any of my newer stuff. For a second, I debated unpublishing it entirely and editing it yet again.

But I won’t. Because The Oracle Stone is a product of who I was and what I could write in 2021 (well, technically 2020 since that’s when I finished it), and to tear it apart again would be a disservice to both my past self and to the book itself. Let it remain a time capsule, representative of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve learned.

Knowing when to take down and revisit a book vs when to leave it alone is a tough call. It’s temptingly easy to let my perfectionist tendencies take over and fix every nitpicky thing even after I’ve hit that “submit” button to publish a book. I don’t want to do it with all of my books, and the ones that I am tempted to revisit and fix are, sure enough, the ones that I wrote too fast: Meliora and Sweet Sorrow.

I wrote Meliora in less than one month. It was my Nanowrimo project in 2021, and I was so thrilled to be drafting something easy and new after struggling through editing a different book, that I just took off and sped through it. I then proceeded to edit the whole thing in a matter of weeks the following month, and the only reason I chilled out after that is because I sent it to beta readers and gave them a few months to read. But after that, I sped through another round of edits, and then got everything organized and published it.

Now, I wish I’d slowed down. I wish I’d spent more time getting to know the characters and expanding the world. I wish I’d delved into the story deeper than I did. I flew through that book so fast that I don’t feel like I spent any time with the characters at all. My writing, too, is not as strong as it could have been, and I really feel like I sacrificed quality for the sake of speed with that book.

Despite all of that, Meliora has consistently sold fairly well, and it was my best-selling book in 2024 by a wide margin. Maybe that’s because it’s the most conventionally marketable one of my books, or maybe people crave light and fluffy reads. There certainly is a market for low-stakes, cozy fantasy, but Meliora’s relative success makes me wish even more that I’d taken my time with it.

That being said, my instincts tell me to leave that one be as well. I have some ideas to write other stories in the same universe, possibly revisiting the characters in Meliora, but I was proud of Meliora when I published it and to rewrite it now would, I think, do more harm than good. From a practical, businessy standpoint, it’s simply not a good practice to have too many different versions of my books out there.

Now, Sweet Sorrow is a different story. I wrote, edited, and published that novella all in the span of less than three months, and it shows. The worldbuilding is weak, I did not know the characters well, and—despite my beta readers’ assurance to the contrary—I still think the sex scene is cringe and the pacing is off. All of that alone would have compelled me to rewrite Sweet Sorrow eventually, but now that I’ve written the backstory and gotten a much better understanding of the characters and their connection to each other, Sweet Sorrow is a very different book. It needed that full overhaul that I gave it, and not only does it do better justice to the characters, it does so for readers as well, who would otherwise pick it up after Silver Blood and find 100-something pages of inconsistencies (and less refined writing).

I want to feel proud of the books I publish, and I’m such a perfectionist that I wouldn’t publish something I’m not proud of. But there’s a very different feeling of accomplishment that comes with finishing a book I’ve spent years with rather than months. The Oracle Stone might not be the best example of my skills anymore, but I’m still proud of it as an accomplishment. Every one of my books is an accomplishment in its own right, and I am pleased with each of them and the wisdom they offered me as a result of writing and publishing them. Does that mean I’m 100% happy and satisfied with them all the time? Nope! My feelings about each of my books fluctuate often, but at the end of the day, I’m still proud to call them mine. No one else could have written them, and I wouldn’t be the writer I am now without them.

This became more of a ramble than I expected, so if you've made it this far, thanks for reading!

Check out my books! | Follow me on Bluesky!

[summerofspock]

Hello,

Your GO fanfics Car Trouble and Under Construction are two of my favourites! You mention having beta readers in the notes and that's what my questions are about: do you recommend having someone(s) beta read prior to posting a fan fic?

Also, can you offer some tips on how to seek out a beta reader?

I'm completing the first draft of a GO human AU fan fic story and thought I'd ask as I head into editing it 😀

Hi! Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed my stories!

I think it's totally up to you if you want a beta reader. I'm the sort of person who edits to hell and back and wants to really improve my writing so it's important to me to have someone read my work and point out places where I could do better. However there's a profound opportunity in Fandom to allow yourself to just write for the sake of writing and not worry about "improving."

But there are also different levels of beta readers. You can ask someone just to catch typos (everyone has them) and fix your commas. Or you can ask for someone to rip your fic a new asshole with concrit. It's a spectrum.

As for finding a beta, I usually ask my writer friends. People I've met on discord or Tumblr is a good place to start. Or people I've betaed for will sometimes beta for me. You just gotta ask!

Ultimately, I don't think a betaed fic is any better than a unbetaed fic. What matters is what you want to get out of it. A more polished fic? Growth as a writer? Fun time poking holes in sentences with a beta friend? Your call.

[squarebracket-trickster]

#on writing#who would have thought everyone was different#might just be that I’m taking the advice to extremes?

@nacricissa

Apparently, I've just had a response to this sitting around in my drafts for ages haha, so, uh...

I wouldn't say you are taking all the advice to extremes... because I am the extreme.

I don't edit as I go. At all. Nope. Not even typos. The only, only exception is when fixing the typo will take me less than a second AND fixing it is absolutely necessary for future me to understand what the fuck I was trying to say.

Heck, even when editing, I have limits on what I'm allowed to do. I set a handful (~5) of goals, and that's it. That is all I am allowed to touch.

For WIPVII, draft 2, my goals were: cut 32k and fill out [square brackets]. I was also allowed to rearange the scene order and rewrite scenes to add or remove a character, change the setting, or change how a plot point happened. That was it. No line edits, no fixing typos, no fleshing out descriptions or googling synonyms. No research. Nothing.

For draft 3, my goals were/are: add missing descriptions (characters and settings), start considering how the dialogue and 1st person narration can reflect the different languages and dialects being spoken, address the plot holes and continuity issues I notice, and finalize exactly what happens, in what way, and in what order. I am only allowed to line edit if it's quick and easy; if I spend more than 5 minutes stuck on a sentence I have to leave it for draft 4.

Before I started draft 3 I took some time just to do research and plot things out on a map and calendar (for winds, moon phases, tides, seasonal changes). Once I started the actual draft, I was allowed to add in the products of this research/plotting, but I was not allowed to do anymore research or plotting.

Now, I love love love rereading my writing too. The whole reason I started writing was so I could read it; and I also have a hell of a time rereading my word vomit. It makes me cringe so hard I feel physically sick. If I could be the edit-as-I-go type, by god, I would be.

I tried, I really did, for many years, but, unfortunately, enjoyable to read was the enemy of done for me. I am so strict now about what I am allowed to edit because I spent years trapped in editing loops. I'd go over the same handful of paragraphs again and again and again because even though the passage was fine, I could always see a way it could be better, and once I got into the mindset of editing whatever came to mind, I was sure that if I left it to later I would forget all my (darling) ideas.

The only solution I've found to break these editing loops is to limit what issues I am allowed to look for in the first place, what kinds of ideas/solutions I am allowed to think of, and how much time I can spend doing what. And it works for me!

Yes, if I can get away with it, I may very well never open my first draft manuscript of wipvii again. The thought of doing so makes me nauseous! Once I'm done my third draft I will probably avoid opening my second draft at all costs too.

But, giving myself limits and letting my drafts suck intentionally at least absolves me of the fear that this cringe is my best writing, which makes rereading the cringe a hell of a lot more bearable when it is my most recent draft, and there isn't a better version I could read instead. It makes me forgiving enough that I can still even enjoy reading decent chunks of those drafts by ignoring the cringe and focusing on the stuff that actually is decent, despite my lack of trying, or that at least has potential.

I may never open my first draft again now that I have better versions of WIPVII, but I do also remember laughing along, giggling, kicking my feet as I reread it before starting my second draft.

And, it turns out there is one thing more satisfying and motivating for me than being able to reread my own writing anyway. It's renaming my document from draft_[number] to draft_[number]_COMPLETED.

So, to each their own, but, yes, the extreme does exist, and it's out of pure necessity for me. It's people like me this advice is meant for, and I owe so much to the pinterest screenshot of a tweet that first convinced me to try it out.

You’ll rewrite it later anyway, so stop staring at the blank page like it owes you money. Just start.

[deadhorse21]

Yogi; A Life of Love

It’s been a hell of a long time since I’ve put thoughts to paper (or in this case screen.) This was written a day or so ago; my feelings are still raw, the goal was to get them down before they faded. This was written in one go with close to no editing; if there are typos, punctuation errors, or faults in my syntax I’m fine with it. I wanted it to honest, editing would have made me strip it down. I don’t think it would have been as good. We all think our furry friend is the best and I am no different; he was a great cat, I hope I did him justice.

JGS3 - 12/13/24

Here you go…..

Summing up sixteen and a half years isn’t going to be easy to do, but I’m going to make an attempt to do so as I want to record how I feel while it’s fresh.  Getting a kitten in 2008 was something I wasn’t planning on, but a few events took place that allowed me to do so.  The first was Katie saying that I should get a kitten (because she wanted one to play with,) the next, and more important one was that Julie Borland’s sister had a male cat to go with four females; none of which were fixed.  Forty some odd kittens, and they showed me two.  One wasn’t into me, and the other curled up on my lap and fell asleep.  At the time I had a goatee, this kitten had a black patch on his chin.  That probably would have been enough for me to take him home, but when he fell asleep on me, it was like he chose me.  A few weeks later, against the wishes of my mother, who I lived with, I went to pick him up.  She never believed that I was going to do it.

A few hours later I showed up with a tiny tuxedo kitten who didn’t have a name and was meowing out of fear.  My mother was not pleased, and not won over immediately.  Her immediate reaction was to grab a bonsai tree I had, walk on the deck and throw it across the yard.

The kitten was shaky ground for a few days, and his status in the house was tenuous at best.  Somehow I convinced her to keep giving him one more day.  A month or so later she was laid off from her long time job, and was then home with the kitten.

Over the first few days and weeks he was with me I tried out a few names, none of which seemed to work for him.  In mid-July I remember having the MLB All Star Game on; Yogi Berra was in the booth doing an interview.  I looked down at the kitten and said “how about Yogi.”  It was the name that stuck.

The next few years he grew into a beautiful, friendly cat.  He was never very large, everywhere he went he was loved and won people over with his personality.  He went from house to house in the neighborhood collecting treats and making friends.  The Donnelly’s in particular cared for him and looked after him.  Many of them have reached out to offer condolences in only the way cat people can.

Yogi wasn’t without his issues; as a young cat he got into quite a few tussles and was put into quarantine from wounds from fighting.  He had a cut on his stomach, bites to his tail, one of his front paws had a knuckle that was practically skinned to the bone once.  On these few occasions that he wasn’t able to go out on his own, my mother and I would take him out on a leash.  He didn’t love it, but he cooperated to some degree.

Over the years he came to dislike the car and would let out the most horrendous meows.  To keep him calm I would sing to him.  I have no idea if it did any good, but it made me feel like I was doing something to at least keep him calm.

He loved to find a patch of sun to lay in, and would lounge on the carpet, on the couch, on the deck in the warm rays.  He had a knack for sitting on the railing of the deck, which was no small feat, considering it’s a 2x4 narrow side up.  He managed to do it though, all the way through the summer of 2024.

Another thing he loved was a good lap.  He was always friendly and affectionate, but his lap time could go on so long as to be an annoyance.  I’d be trying to eat on the couch, he’d be climbing into my lap.  Another of his quirks was laying between my knees, whether it be on the couch watching TV, or while in bed he’d find the spot that was best for him, but left me unable to move.  When he slept with my mother he’d curl up behind her knees.  A cat that weighed less than ten pounds most of his life immobilizing full grown adult humans.  But you didn’t want to move, because you felt bad disturbing him.  

Sitting up high was another thing he liked to do.  He’d perch on the back of a reclining chair, or the couch.  In my mother’s room he’d find a way on top of the bureau and make it a bed.  There were also times when he’d go to the basement and lay in some bizarre spot; on top of a storage tote, or an old pop tent that was stashed somewhere.  Two of the spots he liked to lay that drove me crazy was in the pink fiberglass insulation in the eaves of the attic, and on top of the knee high drawer in my room.  

He was a cat that would go out in a rain storm to go to the bathroom because the litter box just wasn’t his thing, but if you flicked water on him he’d scowl and run out of the room (this was something I’d do in the kitchen after washing my hands.)  Blowing in his ear would bring on a shake of the head, tapping his paw with your toe was playing with fire, as he’d swat at your or worse pounce on your foot.  As much as he didn’t like his feet being touched, he loved an ear rub or a chin rub.  

People complain that cats are problems because they climb on counters or ruin furniture.  Yogi didn’t do either.  There were times he would jump up there as a pup, or pick at the chair or couch, but the only place he usually went that he wasn’t really welcome was the dining room table, and that’s due to it getting morning sun from the east, and afternoon sun from the west.  He knew where he wanted to be.  We could leave food on the counter and he wouldn’t touch it.  Not many cats are like that.  He was trustworthy.

I’d be remiss if I left out his proclivity for hunting.  He was a prodigious mouser.  The local chipmunk population was in decline because of Yogi.  He also brought him birds and voles.  His last two catches were in May or June of this year, and he went out in style, bringing home two bunnies.  In all the years he lived with us he’d never brought a bunny home before.

As an animal you are given a meal, and the person giving it expects them to eat it.  Yogi, not so much.  He was beyond a picky eater.  What he liked on Monday he may turn his nose up at later in the week.  One thing he never fussed over were treats.  He’d gobble them down like the cat cookies they are.  Over the summer he would walk around the house meowing.  The only thing that satiated him in this period.  The meowing may have been a clue that something was happening with him.

From a young age we found out he had kidney issues, and it was something that was monitored (along with a heart murmur.)  Over the years they went from good, to ok, to poor, to failing.  In September of this year I noticed him kind of bumming around the driveway and acting a bit strange.  It dawned on me that he was having trouble seeing.  A call was placed to the vet, Saturday September 14th I brought him to his regular vet’s new office.  They had him for a few hours and decided that he needed a greater level of car than they were able to provide.  The local VCA admitted him and took him in for exams.  A few hours later we went back to check on him and get an update.  They thought that with treatment he’d be ok and have more time.  We opted for that and began giving him daily saline injections for hydration (the result of poor kidney function,) as well as blood pressure medicine.  With his blood pressure under control his eye sight returned (although I don’t think it was as good as it had been.)

One thing was certain; his days as a free roaming outdoor cat were at an end.  The cat that would jump off my lap on the floor, and bound to the arm of the recliner had lost a step; coupled with his diminished eyesight he wouldn’t be able to go out without supervision.  He was no leashed and given a run of either the front yard (where he would inevitably decide to lay hidden amongst the flowers,) or the back yard where he’d try to get into another flower bed.  Around this time we also began walking him.  He’d go grudgingly; I found it better to carry him down the street, then let him lead me home on the leash.  At first it would only be a few yards from the house, but over the weeks I’d bring him to the school yard down the street; I’d put him on the ground and he would lead me home.  He’d do his business on the way, and upon arrival in the kitchen he’d get a few treats, then he’d head back to the couch.  The corner of the couch was outfitted with a heating pad, from September to December 11 it was the place he was most often found.  There were a few times when he decided to sleep with mom, and on one occasion he looked at me and meowed from across the room.  I tapped the arm of the chair a few times, which was an invitation to come sit with me (that’s another thing, he preferred to be invited to sit with you; he had such good manners!)  He jumped up and spent some time with me.  That was the last time he sat with me in the chair on his own.  At the time it seemed like he was getting back to his old self, but that wasn’t the case.  Unbeknownst to us at the time he was getting sicker.

The next few weeks he began turning his nose up at more food that he had previously liked, instead opting for small piece of meatloaf or left over chicken.  His ability to jump on the couch was diminishing, his balance was getting worse.  He would have to climb up on mom’s bed, then in the final days he would have to climb onto the couch.  When this started to happen I noticed his paws where getting puffy.  Initially it was a forepaw, it went away on its own after a day or two.  A week or so later his left rear paw got puffy.  After two days it didn’t go away.  Mom and I assumed it was from the medication he was on, and maybe a diuretic would take care of it.  

We wanted to bring him to the vet, but didn’t want to make an appointment.  By this point he wasn’t moving off the couch (this was Monday the 9th of December.)  Two days earlier he and I had gone for our stroll down the park.  It was cold, and had rained, so we didn’t go as far as we had the previous few trips.  I put him down (I now trusted him enough to let him go off leash,) and we began the walk him.  He was slow, and needed to take breaks, but we made it.  I carried home over a muddy spot, and up the stairs, but by and large he went the distance himself.  The next day he didn’t do as well.

Mom brought him in as a walk in; he was admitted right away.  A few hours later they called her, and let her know that he had a mass in his abdomen, likely cancer and there wasn’t much to be done.  She brought him home. By this point he wasn’t eating, and had also stopped drinking.  She began spooning him water, I gave it to him with an eye dropper.

We decided it was time to stop his suffering.  Tuesday morning from work I called an at home vet who would be able to ease his pain.  It was around 9:00 AM.  During the call I was a basket case.  I was hoping to get one more day with him.  The person on the phone said if he wasn’t drinking we shouldn’t wait.  They had a doctor available at 3:00 PM that day.  I acquiesced, and made the appointment.  Not sure what to do, I thought I’d go home at 2:00, but realized it was selfish of me to stay away.

Leaving work at 11:30, I got home about fifteen minutes later.  He was in the same spot, hadn’t move in hours.  All he could do was lift his head.  He’d stopped meowing a few days before (he had always been very vocal, and also stopped purring, which was absolutely devastating from a cat that purr generously.)  Most disconcerting of all was his body had no fight to it, he was like a limp noodle.  He had nothing left to give, it was clear when I had to hold him up. I laid him on my lap for a while, then mom decided that she wanted a turn.  I moved to the chair and she sat with him until about 2:00 PM.  At some point I fell asleep.  When I awoke she asked to move him so she could get up.  We put him back on the heating pad, and covered him to keep him warm.  He remained that way until about 2:40.  I was doing something across the room when he put his head up and whimpered.  Looking over I asked if he was ok.  He let out a second whimper, at which point I went across the room and took his head in my right palm and stroked his chest with left.  He died like that, with his head in my hand.  It was 2:43.  He went out on his own. No injections from a stranger, nothing to be stressed over, and he gave me the ability to live without the guilt of putting down my best friend.  

I love him. I will never forget him.  I am heartbroken.

[mjjune]

How to Handle Beta Feedback (or: how to analyze, synthesize, and improve your story)

So this is the 3rd (and potentially final?) in a series I'm doing, so I recommend reading the first two posts first! I also took inspiration (and wholeheartedly agree with) another post which I recommend below.

Part 1: How to Have a Good Beta Experience (alpha vs. beta)

Part 2: How to be a Good Beta Reader (critique vs. beta)

Other recommended reading on writer mindset/accepting feedback here!! by @shaelinwrites

Now that you've read those posts (because you definitely read all that lol) and are ready for even more info--

As usual, this is very long post, and disclaimer that this is all based on personal experience and what helps me as a writer.

Topics:

So You've Got a Bunch of Comments... Now What?

Conflicting Comments

Negative Feedback: Headspace

Editing Your Story

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So I've Got a Bunch of Comments... Now What?

First, you thank your beta readers. They took the time to read your book, usually for nothing in return. So thank them!

Then, here comes the fun part (or the worst part, depending on who you ask, lol).

Now, you have the hardest part of writing, after getting the words down in the first place. Now, you have to read all those comments, over and over, and figure out what to do with your story based on them.

But, MJ, how the hell do I do that?

Well, a lot of this is trial and error and figuring out what works for you. But I can break down what I do. Keep in mind this is basically a skeleton version of what I do and may not work for everyone. You'll have to adapt this to you.

So I'll split this up by type of comment. In my experience, the majority of comments will fall into these categories. Some of these are "easy" to make changes on, and some are not.

Typos & Grammar

Style & Prose

Plot & Structure

Character Arcs & Development

Typos, Grammar, Style, & Prose

So, this is where personal style/taste will differ. For me, when I'm in the beta stage, I ignore these comments. Yep, you read that right. Ignore them. Completely. Like they don't exist.

During beta rounds, my goal is to analyze and fix the story and grammar and prose have very little to do with that. This is something I will edit right before I give it to another set of betas, but I never start here (unless it's a glaringly annoying typo).

However, if you are overwhelmed by how many comments you have, or have conflicting or hurtful comments (which I address below), or if you are sweating because you think you might have to rewrite large portions -- maybe start here. These edits are short, quick, and don't require Hard Decisions™, so you can edit these and feel productive, get back on track, dig a little deeper into your story, and it'll give you some time before you have to tackle the harder stuff. Overwise, I would hold off and not bother with this until other edits are made (because, if you end up rewriting a whole portion, then the typos/prose might change, anyway, so it's more work in the long run). But this is totally personal preference!

That said, when it comes to feedback on style and prose, I would be hesitant to jump in and change everything that readers recommended. In a lot of cases, this comes down to personal preference. Making your prose more/less descriptive, more/less concise, etc. etc. might not be making your writing better, just different. So, dive into these comments with a goal for your writing style in mind and only edit based on comments that 1) agree with this goal and 2) you agree that the change would make the prose stronger.

Examples: If you know you want your story to be fluffy and descriptive, you might ignore comments that ask you to shorten or remove descriptions, and instead act on comments that strengthen your descriptions. If you know you want your story to be minimalist, then you might ignore comments that ask for more descriptions, or only add in description if all betas agree that something is unclear or difficult to picture/follow.

Plot, Structure, & Character Arcs

This part is harder and can be overwhelming. This is the part where you might actually have to scrap, rewrite, and/or drastically change.

When I'm reading these bigger-picture comments, I jump in with these mindsets to help me focus:

All comments are opinions and suggestions. Regardless of how they are worded, I am not obligated to follow them.

They are trying to help me and want my book to be the best it can be. (If some readers seem to not have this intent, perhaps ignore those comments for now*.)

*I will discuss this more below

These reminders help me hold on to the positives, and I tend to start there. Which parts of my story did everyone across the board respond well to? Perhaps it's a specific character arc, or a particular plot point. I always like to make mental note of these, because no matter what happens with the rest of the comments, I don't want to lose these. I don't want to edit these parts out, I don't want to lose the most engaging parts of my story, even if there are a lot of issues that need editing. Even if the entire scene gets redone, I don't want to lose what people connected with.

Maybe even write these down. I don't do this personally, but maybe start a document and keep bullets of the parts that most/all betas collectively agree are the strongest parts.

Then, go through and do the same for the weakest parts. The hardest part of all this is figuring out which parts are actually weak, and which parts are just not to some readers' tastes. Then, on top of that, once you have found the flaws, you have to figure out how to fix them.

So how can you tell if a comment is pointing out an actual issue, or if it's personal taste? Here are some pointers:

Keep your goal in mind (re: the themes, a character's development, etc.) Does the comment conflict with your goal? If yes, it could be personal taste. (Or, it could mean something is unclear and/or they've interpreted it differently, in which case it's your decision to edit or not)

How many betas commented on it? If it's 1/5, then it's probably personal taste. If it's 4/5, you should take a deeper look.

Is the comment pointing out something you were considering changing / something you already suspected was weak? If yes, then it's probably a real issue. Always trust your gut.

Is the comment telling you how to change or fix something? If yes, take a step back. It might be a real issue, but you need to decide for yourself how to fix it.

Personally, I take notes and leave comments within the manuscript like sticky notes of what I'm going to change. For example, for a recent wip, multiple betas felt a particular scene was slow so I made a note for myself so the next time I go to edit I'll dig deep and figure out why it was slow for myself (regardless of what they think the reason is) and fix it.

But, when it comes right down to it, you have to make these decisions yourself. It can be very hard to determine which comments need action and which ones don't. A lot of it comes with experience.

On a side note (not to worry you lol) I thought when I went through multiple beta rounds with my first finished manuscript that it would be easier the second time. I thought: ok, I know what bad comments look like now. This will be easier on my next wip. Nope. Wrong. A new story meant a new audience meant new problems and new comments. It was easier, because I know how to handle the emotional side of it better. But actually discerning the major issues in the manuscript and how to fix it was not easier.

And one of the hardest parts about it is the next two sections, which is why I separated them out...

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Conflicting Comments

When you have multiple readers providing feedback, this is going to happen. It's inevitable.

One person might think your story is super slow, or that a plot point didn't make any sense, that a character's arc was pointless, or that the climax was a huge letdown. Another beta might say the exact the opposite. So what do you do?

Essentially, you have to decide for yourself and your story what to do. I don't have much advice here other than you're not alone in going back and forth.

I can tell my own story, though, and maybe you'll get something from it. Twice now, for two totally separate manuscripts (and genres), I have struggled with what to change when betas have incompatible criticisms and recommendations.

And over and over again, I have come across the same result:

Betas read it and make suggestions, and I make changes that I think are best at the time even though the comments were conflicting.

I let those betas reread it, and they LOVE it. So much better than the previous draft. Great!

I hand it to new betas, and they make the same exact comments that were made on the original draft. Again, just as conflicting as before.

And it's an endless cycle. And from it, I have learned that there is no such thing as a book that will satisfy everyone. No matter how polished, when you edit things to fit others' wants and needs, there are going to be others who don't like it.

And especially in my first manuscript and beta experience, I realized (after 5+ drafts) all I was doing was changing the story, but not making it better. I was adapting it to people's personal tastes, and in doing that, it was losing the me in it. I actually ended up going back and doing a full round of edits through the whole manuscript to literally inject myself back into the narrative. And it is wholly better for it.

I have gone through this twice now, where I have adapted manuscripts based on beta feedback and ended up in this loop.

If this does happen to you, the only recommendation I have for this is to step back. I wish I had done this sooner, both times. Force yourself to not look at the feedback or the manuscript for weeks—if not months. All of these changes you've made, all these different comments and feedback and drafts? Let it marinate, go work on something else, and come back later.

Conflicting comments are a part of writing. You're going to have to get used to it, and know that it's impossible that your story is going to resonate with everyone, or that your style is going to work for everyone. It takes experience and practice, like everything else, to get good at interpreting comments and acting on them.

But just know that conflicting comments doesn't mean your story is bad or that you need to scrap it and rewrite the whole thing. Conflicting comments is actually a good thing. It means, like all works of art, there are various interpretations, and readers with those differing interpretations are making recommendations based on them. You, as the writer, must decide your own intent for the work, and no one can tell you what to change or how to edit (at least, not until you have an editor/publisher lol). That's part of the writing process you have to figure out on your own.

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Negative Feedback: Headspace

Rude comments. Condescending comments. Comments that feel like a punch in the face.

They happen. To everyone that writes and has the guts to share it.

Sometimes comments had no intent at all to hurt your feelings but did, and sometimes comments just genuinely are condescending and mean.

Regardless, this is when writers get these nasty imposter syndrome thoughts. "I'm a bad writer" "a good writer wouldn't have gotten comments like this" "this beta is a good writer so what they say must be right and I'm a fraud."

Firstly I highly recommend reading the post I linked above and is linked again right here. What I'm about to say is along the same vein.

As the post says above, these negative thoughts are not objective.

That's not to say that you can't be upset about comments that trigger these thoughts. I've gotten comments before that, honestly, I can't think of a reason why someone would say that except with intent to hurt my feelings (or even in some instances gaslight). And it works, unfortunately.

So how can you get a handle on your negative, imposter-y thoughts?

Control Your Headspace: Be Objective

Take a step back and say, "This is an opinion." Writers and readers can be very good at stating their opinions as if they are facts. (See: this whole series of posts, which is really just all my opinion and personal experience, yet likely reads like an instruction manual. Nothing here is fact, either, by the way.)

"This book is unfinished." "Descriptions are required to set a scene." "You're not using this word correctly." "It doesn't make sense that this character would make this decision." "The beginning isn't as polished as the rest of the book."

None of these comments are, by themselves, hurtful (though the first one definitely stung). But all of these comments easily tried to sneak in and plant doubt: "the book needs to be redone, it's bad the way it is, I'm not a good writer."

Because yes, these are all real comments (slightly paraphrased) that I've gotten in various beta rounds. And they all sound like facts, don't they? And probably, some of the people leaving these comments believe they are facts.

But they're not.

And this is why I'm going to emphasize two points made in the above post I linked: do not dwell on the most recent comments only, and be objective.

Having 3+ betas is so, so important for this reason. Having multiple sets of eyes and feedback can be the difference between dwelling on one person who didn't click with your story, and being able to clearly see "ok, this person just didn't get it" because other betas did.

That's not to say that if someone didn't like it or is telling you to change something or that something didn't work for them that you should ignore it. But it does mean you shouldn't let these comments seep into your subconscious with negative self-talk.

And there are a few points I want to make here, regarding being objective when you look at comments like these.

Even if a comment is harsh or hurtful, that does not mean it's useless. Being objective means you can take a step back, acknowledge that the comment stings, and come back to it later when you can be more objective.

Condescending and (purposefully) mean/hurtful comments can actually be useful. They force you to defend your work! Defending your work, seeing the worth in your work, is a huge part of the battle against negative self-talk and imposter syndrome. See this post for more discussion on this.

Even if you do multiple betas and they all collectively agree (including yourself) that your book needs a complete rewrite or needs to be scrapped, this objectively does not make you a bad writer.

Being objective means you can distinguish not only opinion from fact, but acknowledge that needing massive edits, even dropping the book entirely—these negative thoughts are not true.

Objectively, all writers have shitty drafts. All writers have stories hidden in a drawer somewhere that are so unfixable they won't ever see the light of day. Yes, even the Big Ones™ like Neil.

Getting negative feedback, harsh or mean comments, readers who don't connect with your work, having shitty drafts, and tossing drafts away entirely are all part of writing and none of these things make you a bad writer.

Fighting with your inner imposter syndrome and negative thoughts is an ongoing battle that all artists face. It comes with the territory. Hopefully some of my rambling will help you fight that battle.

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Editing Your Story

Alright. I'm not going to tell you how to actually edit your book because that's not my job and every writer works differently. What works for me probably won't work for you.

But I do want to say that even though this is often seen as the hardest part of writing (other than getting the words down the first time, I guess), it can also be the most fun and hopeful time as well.

You finished a manuscript. That's a huge accomplishment. Even though having all this feedback can be daunting, especially when everyone has their own ideas of how your story needs to change, this can be the most rewarding time because you are creating a plan on how to make your story exactly what you want it to be.

So, at least for me, the only thing I can really recommend is to break down your own book as if you are a reader yourself - taking a break from it (again, for months) can help you come back with fresher eyes for this - and analyze your own story as a fake audience member.

What are your themes? What are you exploring? What are your take-home messages? When you put the book down, what do you feel and what did you learn?

Then, compare: Did beta readers, in general, have the same experience you did? Were they able to name the themes and have a similar experience reading your story? If not, focus on the comments they made that reveal insight into why they didn't. These comments are probably going to point you in the right direction of what to change.

Other things to consider, regardless of comments:

If you outlined, go back to your original outline and see what's changed. Did you leave anything out? Were any themes or plot points lost that you would like to include? (or vice versa)

Are there any themes you want to explore that you haven't yet? Or any that need more emphasis?

Do all the characters that you want to have development have satisfying arcs? Do any of them need more page time or feel unfinished?

Does the prose style align with what you want?

Regardless of whether readers agree/disagree or even commented on these at all, I like to take these into account during the editing process. Because editing isn't just "what did readers say and how do I fix it?" Betas are here to show you how your work will be interpreted by an audience and share opinions—that's all, really.

In reality, editing is you analyzing your own story and making it the best version of itself as humanly possible, while knowing that it isn't possible.

You do what you can. You make changes that you agree with, that strengthen your story, to tell the story you want to tell, even if others don't always like it. That's what makes it yours.

So go forth and make your stories magic. That's what all stories are, after all.

Peace out

~MJ

[kaiowut99]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episodes 89 and 90 Subbed (Finalized)

(Previously: Episodes 87 and 88 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

TURN-89: The Hell Kaiser vs Darkness Fubuki

Ryou, now the Hell Kaiser, has returned to the Academia to take part in GeneX.  His best friend Fubuki, scoping out the situation, decides to confront the Hell Kaiser, hoping to return the favor after he had helped save him from his fall to the dark side before.  At last, Fubuki and Hell Kaiser begin their duel, and Fubuki intentionally uses the power of Darkness, summoning Red-Eyes Black Dragon.  Meanwhile, the Hell Kaiser uses...

TURN-90: The Academia’s Pride

Chronos and Vice-Principal Napoleon, anxious about the Academia’s reputation worsening as their students lose to Pro Duelists, get certain characters to take part in GeneX--as their secret weapons.  Meanwhile, Junko and Momoe were dueling the Pro Duelist Sommelier Parker, and just as they were about to surrender their tough bout, Asuka, thought to have entered the Society of Light, appears.  Asuka then takes over Junko and Momoe’s duel and takes on the Sommelier.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next duo of episodes is finalized~

Episodes 89 and 90 are a good time; 89 explores more of Ryou’s personality shift (and how sinking so low fighting with his ideals and then discarding them to actually think of winning now has him obsessed with the feeling that comes with it) and the new Cyberdark deck he took from Samejima, along with showing that Darkness is still very much around despite his defeat to Judai in S1 (mainly because for some reason Fubuki kept the card he was trapped in around, though I suppose logically to avoid Darkness potentially getting to someone else lol) which’ll come into play again in Season 4 (better than never, really).  90′s a fun time with more of the tournament currently going on playing out, we get to see Taizan and Motegi again which is nice, and Asuka shows some of her pre-SoL personality is still in there, like with Manjoume.  Also nice to hear Camula’s Theme again as she takes out Sommelier Parker.  The flashback scene with Ryou and Fubuki is also nice (”Just as this lighthouse guides ships at night, everyone’s feelings were the glow that brought me back”) and it would’ve been nice to get that properly after Fubuki recovered, but it works well here.

Editing-wise, there wasn’t too much to fix in 89, though there was a unique one that I wanted to do my best to fix; 90 saw a bunch of card fixes along with one or two quality-of-watching fixes, plus a big translation edit revamping one of the first on-screen ones I’d done when I first subbed episode 90 back around 2012 that looks pretty good now, if I may say so myself, lol.  Details below the cut, as usual, for the interested!

(As a side-note, Sangre Guerrero in 90 is... interesting; the credits list his name as “サンブレ・ゲレロ”/“sanbure guerrero”/”Sombre Guerrero,” which is what I’d originally used, but then I saw Crunchyroll go with “Sangre,” which isn’t what the katakana would back up [”sangure”]--but the more I listened to Manjoume saying his name, the more it did in fact sound like “Sangre.” It wouldn’t be the first time I’d run into a typo in the ending credits--a lot of the animation staff tend to have typos on their names every so often, so it takes me a fair bit of looking into which spellings end up sticking later in the series to decide on consistency--but it was a potential first for a character name, and Japanese Wikipedia and most sites, along with Yugipedia, had spelled it as “sanbure” pulling from the credits.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a profile on the official YGO site, and I don’t think he’d had one on any official Japanese one to verify, being such a minor character.  But “sangre” would make sense given his “hot Latino blood” line [”sangre” being Spanish for “blood”], so, given all that, I went with “Sangre” as well. 

Also, I did end up finally catching that the name for Junko’s VA is Tomomi Yachi and not Tomomi Taniuchi as I’d been using per AnimeNewsNetwork; I was hoping that “Yachi” could’ve been a more recent change, but I clicked into her JP Wikipedia page and saw her blogs going back to the time GX was airing in the mid-00s referencing “Yachi,” and Yugipedia does have “Yachi” too, so... going with that now.  I might decide to revise her other episodes, but having lost my OP/EN credit sub files for S1 and early S2, and given she only finally spoke again in 90 after not doing so for... over 30 episodes, I might just end up leaving it.)

Anywho, enjoy, folks--91 and 92 are on tap for next time, ft. our Grim Reaper one-hit card-slinging-slasher one-off, and Pegasus actually dueling as Chronos and Napoleon duel him for a job worrying they might be fired; should be fun to revisit!

Fixes/Edits! (89)

As Fubuki and Ryou are about to begin dueling, they jump together on a split-screen to turn on their Disks and shout, “Duel!”--but just before Fubuki’s starts to turn on, there’s one frame (held still for a few frames) where it’s not fully drawn in its off state; fixed by painting in the rest in Photoshop, then throwing the fixed frame into the footage in Sony Vegas.

Later, once Fubuki lets Darkness consume him thinking it’s the only way to help Ryou now, Ryou brings back Cyberdark Edge using Call of the Living Dead; Darkness!Fubuki notes the futility of it when facing his Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon, and Ryou clicks into a split-screen to surprise him by summoning another new Monster in Cyberdark Keel, but a few things happen here--mainly, once Ryou clicks into his split-screen with Fubuki, the entire shot keeps panning to the right towards Fubuki.  Then, a few frames before Fubuki reacts to Keel, it shifts downward and to the right, and as Fubuki’s saying, “Another new Monster?”, the shot keeps panning towards him, before the split-screen then splits apart, but not before we get a quick frame of them splitting into green before the right whooshing background’s in there in the next frame to lead into Keel being summoned.  As I hadn’t worked on a fix to a split-screen error like this yet and thinking I might not be able to do too much, I initially mitigated it by using Vegas to fix it such that the shot stopped moving once Fubuki started reacting, repositioning three frames of his face and lip-flaps (closed, semi-open, and open) and masking them onto a still, recycling as needed to match his original flaps before letting the split-screen split out--but I was inspired on Friday to give it more of a try, and I think it came out nicely after 3-4 total hours late Friday night and early yesterday, lol. 

In addition to what I first did there, I went and first took the starting pan of Fubuki as he notes the futility of the move and moved it slightly so that Fubuki’s final position in the pan, before Ryou clicks into the split-screen, matches the position I had him in just before he reacts which I’d kept him still at--but doing this left a bit of the shot, along the top and right, unaccounted for with missing pixels; to deal with that, I used the aforementioned frame of Fubuki’s final position and redid that initial panning with it by keyframing it for most of its 105 frames, then put that in a layer under the repositioned pan--this allowed it to fill in the rest of the shot seamlessly, so Fubuki and the background were fully moved.  Then, after Ryou clicks in, I masked in a still of him prior to holding up Keel over Fubuki, then masked in and repositioned his rising hand with the card, along with his face and lip-flaps which I recycled as needed; this made it so Ryou held up Keel and said his line while everything else in the shot stays still.  I applied some additional masking over these layers during the split-screen to keep their hair and the backgrounds behind them consistent, too.  There’s still a slight amount of movement for the 5-10 frames of Fubuki reacting that I couldn’t edit out, but all the previous editing combined with what I’d done before made this shot much more consistently still overall. (Hopefully that makes sense, lol.) Also fixed the quick green-bg frame error.

Fixes/Edits! (90)

For the hardsub, as I detailed here, I took the computer screen Samejima’s scrolling through as he laments how only some of the students are winning their GeneX duels, showing how Judai and the others are doing on that front, and freshly translated it; as mentioned up top, this is a revamp of one of my earliest on-screen translation edits, necessarily redone because, for some reason, I thought it smart to save the original edit with Samejima’s line hardsubbed onto it... but also given the difference in video quality with the DVDRip I used here, lol.  Where initially I mainly used Sony Vegas to manipulate the existing footage to get things blanked, borrowing from how the dub wiped the text in spots, to then add the translated text in Aegisub, this time I used Photoshop exclusively to blank the Japanese text and then add the new English text, after first stitching together the entire screen with everyone’s profiles, using Sony Vegas to redo the scrolling or touch up for consistency a little as needed.

Also for the hardsub, for the scene just after the title card as Samejima scrolls from Misawa’s profile to Saiou’s, I was able to get that freshly translated as well, as detailed in the update to the post I linked in #1 above. (I also created this video to showcase both edits, as well as mockups I did of what the English dub could’ve done if they wanted to translate it vs what they actually did [blank all the text but mysteriously leave empty name boxes intact] and comparing them to my initial edits from 2012.)

As Chronos and Napoleon run to see Taizan duel with Mathematica, we see the current status of their duel with their LP counts, but while Taizan has Big Shield Guardna out in Defense Mode on his field, his card under it is facing Mathematica as if in Attack Mode; fixed by first making a proxy, then using AfterEffects to put it in place in Defense Mode on one frame during the panning shot, with the effect box facing us the viewer, and then masking Big Shield Guardna on top of it--once done, I took that frame into Sony Vegas and redid the panning shot with it, masking in the LP counter on top as needed.

After activating Illegal Summon and summoning Middle Shield Guardna to Taizan’s field, Mathematica has Taizan summon a Monster to his field for its second effect, and he goes for Drone; as it gets summoned, its card is missing on Mathematica’s Disk.  Fixed by using AfterEffects to first put a proxy I made for it in place on his second Monster Zone before the DEF counter covers it, brightening it as the light from Drone’s summoning reaches it, and exporting that; I then exported a single frame of it in that position, which I threw into Vegas, where I redid the slow zoom that happens here as he activates Death Calculator with it, and combined it all.

Some seconds later, as Mathematica activates Transistor the Survey Warrior’s effect (tributing Drone to attack Taizan directly), a few things happen: 1) a repeat of #3 happens with Defense-Mode Drone, whose card under it is facing Taizan as if in Attack Mode, and 2) Taizan has the just-summoned-to-his-field Middle Shield Guardna where Big Shield Guardna should be on his Disk, in Monster Zone 4.  Fixed in two parts: 1) I used AfterEffects to apply a proxy for Drone under it in Defense Mode (name box facing our left) for a frame and masked Drone on top of it, then taking that frame into Vegas to redo the panning shot here with it, masking Big Shield Guardna and his shield over it and fading it out as Drone gets tributed and disappears; 2) luckily, as this shot gets recycled a bit later, and it correctly has Middle Shield Guardna and Big Shield Guardna in Zones 2 and 4, respectively, on his Disk there, I was able to use that and use Vegas to reposition it and then redo the panning here with it before just masking them out--though the repositioning meant that Big Shield Guardna wasn’t fully on Taizan’s Disk (as I had to move it a bit upward, leaving empty pixels under), but I used AE to slap a proxy on in one frame, then redoing the pan again using that frame to handle that.  Combined both parts in Vegas, and voila. (Quite a bit of fun keyframing involved here as a result, but the result looks good)

After summoning Drawler, Taizan uses its effect to add his hand back to his deck, but two quick things happen: 1) there’s a few frames of his Disk showing where Big Shield Guardna is missing from his Disk (Fixed in AfterEffects by just slapping a Defense-Mode proxy in Monster Zone 4), and 2) for a quick frame as he lifts his head, the pupils of Taizan’s eyes are black and not white (fixed by just recoloring them in Photoshop, then mixing the fixed frame into the footage in Vegas)

Later, during Motegi’s duel with Sangre Guerrero, the Latino Pro Duelist [what Elvis impersonation] tries to get Motegi to feel worried, but notes how he’s taking the fun out of it for him by being so chill; as the split-screen between them while this happens starts to split, there’s a quick frame where the border is missing from Guerrero’s side.  Fixed in Vegas by masking in his side of the split in the next frame with the border and repositioning it into place.  I also re-slid his side to fix some coloring issues I noticed with him.

Later, once Asuka and Sommelier Parker are dueling, after Asuka summons Benten, Parker notes that she would be “medium-bodied” as a wine compared to his “full-bodied” Bacchus, before the Parker/Bacchus split-screen splits to show Judai, Shou, and Manjoume, as Shou turns to Manjoume wondering what the “bodied” talk is about--but two little things happen here: 1) a frame before the split starts to split, there’s a little flicker along the border (fixed just by holding the previous frame over this one), and 2) after Shou turns to Manjoume, after he says his line, he jitters and turns slightly from Manjoume, where he stays until after Manjoume’s line, when he and Judai turn back to the duel, but this jitter desyncs Shou’s movement from Judai’s there (fixed by first masking Shou so that he stays in his pre-jitter position, then using that jitter position to make it so he and Judai start turning back to the duel at the same time).

9-11 here happen in the same scene, but I can’t do sub-bullets on Tumblr here, so I’ll split it into a few points for readability.  As Asuka tells Parker that Cyber Tutu’s about to end the duel, he slides in on a split-screen to question that, causing Asuka to react in surprise before the split splits out to show a drunk dizzy Cyber Tutu--except Asuka’s side of the split takes a frame longer to leave the screen, as they started splitting a bit unevenly.  Fixed by using Vegas to mask and redo the split-out slightly so that the two start splitting more evenly, letting Asuka’s split leave the screen with Parker’s.

After we see drunk Cyber Tutu, the two’s split-screens start sliding back in, but Parker’s is uneven with Asuka’s; fixed in Vegas by masking his full split and repositioning it to redo it slightly.

Once back on their split-screen, after Parker comments that Cyber Tutu has had a bit too much of his Bacchus Banquet’s sake, they start to split out to show the Bacchus Banquet card behind them on Parker’s field, but the border that should be on Asuka’s side is disconnected from her.  Fixed in Vegas by masking out the border and attaching it to Asuka, masking in the new scene behind them to wipe it away from the middle.

A bit later, Parker has Magna Mutton attack Cyber Tutu, but Asuka has her Holy Life Barrier Trap to avoid damage; as she gets ready to activate it amidst Magna Mutton’s attack, she’s missing Cyber Tutu in Monster Zone 4 on her Disk. Fixed in AfterEffects by just slapping a proxy on.

During her last turn, after Asuka uses Fulfillment of the Contract to bring back Idaten, as she explains that her effect lets her re-use a Magic Card in her Cemetery (going for Pot of Greed), along with missing Cyber Tutu in Zone 4 of her Disk again, a bit of an oddity happens here in how her Idaten card starts to... slide off her Disk, lol.  There’s also a quick frame where the Pot of Greed she’s grabbing from her Cemetery disappears in the slot before it reappears there as she moves her Disk.  Fixed by first using AfterEffects to put Cyber Tutu in place, which I then repositioned during the light zoom-out in AE, then in Vegas holding Idaten in place by masking its Monster Zone into another layer on top for the rest of the shot, and then holding Pot of Greed in place for that one frame.

During the preview for episode 91, an error happens as the Blue student Tachibana is dueling gets impacted by an attack he made in which he has a Magic Card in his Disk’s Monster Zone 4.  This was fixed in 91 proper, as it’s Armed Samurai -- Ben Kei there, so I fixed this by using that footage in Vegas and masking in the Japanese “Preview” text over it, using a fair amount of feathering so it blended in.

[the-official-account]

Episode 19 liveblog take two

We made it happen!

@threeofheartscast

Because I do actually really want those notes on QC. Listening at 2.35 speed which sounds....awful. but useful! Semi from memory this may not be entirely in order

OMG HI!!!! I KNOW YOUR FROM THE TWITTERS!!!

QC elf, brown eyes and longhair In ponytail wears all black suit, gloves, book, robin-mask

Is this sir thimby person thinbleton? Sigil on card with future slanted font helmet with two crossed swords

Despite the fact that it's morally wrong I kind of ....yk maybe let him kidnap diamond a little bit? Some light kidnapping

I love how his first insibt when a fire starts is to stick to the CEILING. How are those lungs looking bestie

This music is GROOVY

IF ITS NOT GAY ITS GOT TO GO he's gonna love the agents.

For vellums kidnappings minimum 7 times depending on

-if random count extra,

-or if he wandered away and someone picked him up,

- didn't notice kidnapped,

- kidnappers forgot him and he just left,

- infodumped until the kidnappers got so annoyed they let him go

-about to walk into an open net while reading but manhole instead

The music is not as good as 2.35 speed

This entire scene was very cute and my original reaction included a lot of keysmashes. Vellum just went for it I appreciate that.

I feel like if there was a field agent hand book vellum would have at the very least edited it.

Xbala and spar having kissed us very soar behavior

Fic of them eating dinner after 2nd kiss before hotel

Vellum giving him a kiss. Draw spar half up in bed, with his face in vellums shoulder, vellum looking soft blushing (this shit is cute) muttering, petting his hair "mmmm breakfast is good, important part of the day....mmmm yup" -spar

Their argument here is the best

I FORGOT VELLUM SAID "YOURE VERY CUTE LIKE THIS" THATS A FUCKING DORABLE

I'm just gonna assume spar has a thing for suspenders

QC just Speedran becoming a coming of interest in a kidnapping (so fast the kidnapping hasn't happened yet)

HE HAS TELEKINSESIS what a little guy... He's so absurd in the best way i adore him. In my mind he is a Manlet I will die on this hill

Jack has a druid parent... Sanguinia. Stays with "g/Cladia" friend in...........city stoneloft

RADIO MOVIE NIGHTS ARE SO CUTE

I remember freaking out about greggins and Jack being qpps (just like me, fr!)

"Intense feelings and situations"

Grey just know it wasn't worth lying to vellum, he's too smart

There was a lot of freaking out about Max being the kid, but I landed on the theory that Grey both kept them seperate and wants vellums blood because Max is a werekid, and it wouldve been traumatic for both of them to raise them together but maybe vellum can help him find a cure. I can understand why there would be so many feelings messed up in all that

Vellum got SO cold in this question and I don't mean in a mean way but it's the...determination

Grey does have the best outlook on clovenheart & I think that's sus

Persuaded the FUCK outa him

Providince......don't thing I trust this. Grey's in his Gatsby era

"Fix other harms that needn't have happened"...........*squinting* return magic?

I WANT GREY TO COME BACK now that's she's less immediately evil) sus

Also I DID say I thought resurrecting vellum's parents could be a part of Grey's motivations!!!!, I did say that!

I really like joy

your sparkliness sounds very diamond

QC and the agents being at odds with eachother at this party sounds like the setup for SUCH a good time

HELL YEAH!!! Songs were groovy. Formatting still banging. I made a note herea out how juggling scenes like that is hard but Jordan did it really damn well. Kitt's so funny!!! I'm excited that they're here. QC is just a funny little guyyyyy he's just a little guyyyyy!!!

Note: hey future lushlet if you get up to wiki shit dont trust this I make hella typos

[madam-agony]

The Exaggeration of Problematic Ships

WARNING: Mention of Abuse, Death Threats

Hello! In this post, I will explain my point of view on this whole thing about “problematic ships”.

The reason why I decided to discuss about this kind of subject is because I’m completely tired of seeing people throwing hate and bullying other people over something so harmless.

By the way, excuse me if there will be any grammar mistakes.

First of all, I will explain what “problematic ship”, “pro ship” and what “anti” means

“Problematic ship” means a ship between two or more fictional characters, regardless if they’re abusive, age-gapped, blood-related, or just considered wrong in general. (examples of proships: Sebastian x Ciel, Hisoka x Gon, Endeavor x Todoroki, Bakugo x Deku, Illumi x Killua, etc)

“Pro ship” means to believe it’s completely fine for people to ship whatever they want, even if it’s a problematic ship.

“Anti" means to be against pro shippers.

Now, I will explain why being a pro shipper is completely normal and deserve respect just like all of us.

Never compare fiction with reality. It’s dumb and makes no sense when you compare these two different things in a case like this.

A problematic ship would be bad in real life because it does harm someone. Though, in fiction, nobody gets hurt.

We can do whatever the hell we want in fictional world and no one can tell us what to do, and that’s the beauty of it. We can do whatever we want without caring about anyone else. Telling someone to stop fantasizing about something just because you find it wrong is pointless and dumb

Fiction doesn’t affect reality. At least, not in the way to be considered as dangerous. It’s silly to blame a video game for a person’s actions, the game has no fault. An adult is completely aware of what they are doing, so they should know that any action they take has consequences they must consider. If it’s a child or a minor, then it’s the parents’ fault for not checking up on them and not taking enough care of them.

I understand that it may trigger you and may be a sensitive topic, but it’s not our problem. I don’t want to sound rude, but it’s honestly not our problem. We can create, post, and discuss about whatever we want as long as it’s not harming anyone directly. If it makes you uncomfortable, just block us. It is not up to us to create content that you find enjoyable or at least decent. It’s our posts, our accounts, our lives. We don’t hurt you on purpose.

Don’t say “but it teaches children to behave badly because they saw in a fanfiction it’s okay to be abusive or be fondled by adults!” just no. As I said, the parents should be more responsible with their children and check up on them whenever possible (not as in “spying your child every time you’ve got the opportunity” but you get my point). Also, if you really need to believe that everything displayed in fanfictions is normal/healthy, then you should get proper education.

I am myself a pro shipper, and while I’m not that hardcore of a fan, I still had previous experiences with angry and frustrated antis.

I know it will make me seem like I’m complaining or anything, but this will be an easier way I can guarantee you that people like these exist, since it was in my own experience.

I once wrote a fanfiction that implied pro shipping. I did put warnings in the description and before the story began, but I see that it was useless because people prefer to get triggered and shocked than read the description and pay attention to the warning so they can insult the living shit out of me later on. The next day, I woke up with 20+ hate comments and death threats in the comments.

All of them were horrible, it made me feel like shit and made me wonder why people are like that. Luckily, after a hour or two, I calmed down and realized that I shouldn’t stress on people like these so much. I should take this bad experience and make it something good to teach other people, something that I can give to other people so they can learn from my experience. I was stronger than before. (as cringe as it sounds lol)

At that moment, I realized that people like that barely even care about the real “issue” here. They only see it as a chance to bully someone without looking bad in front of other people. They are so sucked up in their own mind that they think what they’re doing is right.

People like that are the worst. Their morality is corrupted.

Because, their morals is like: it’s not okay to write things like that, but it’s okay to send death threats and bully them”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s completely fine to dislike a ship! I dislike some ships too, but that doesn’t give me the right to go and jump on them like a wild animal.

Not all antis are mean, but most of them are like that. It’s okay to not like something, but don’t make a mess out of it.

Now here are a few examples of frustrated and crazy antis.

Hell, they are so annoying when they put heart emojis at the end of their comment so they can make themselves look quirky and cool. Disgusting, that’s all I have to say about this kind of people.

If you really believe someone is doing something wrong, approach them in a gentle manner and talk respectfully towards them.

I’m sorry if I sounded rude in this post, and remember that you should look in other perspectives too, not in only yours. Even if someone does something wrong (but pro shipping is not the case), then explain to them what they’re doing wrong, not fuck them up.

Thank you for taking your time to read this.

If you have any questions, just comment on this post or message me privately.

(Yes, I edited this post because I have mistaken the difference between “problematic ship” and “pro ship” and fixed a few typos. Don’t worry, my points in this post are still the same and I fully mean them.”

[maraudersftw]

This is weird. My dialogue is awful. I've been writing for over eight years now. I've barely improved. I feel demoralised every time I reread something of mine because it's just plain terrible. Like, there's no way anyone is actually ever going to say that. Let alone two super witty people, you just know would be great at bantering / flirting. I've asked people to beta, they're just too nice to actually tell me the very apparent issue with my dialogue. I'm not exaggerating. What should I do?

Hey, anon! First of all, I'm honoured that you thought of reaching out to me for this question even though I'm definitely still learning a lot of things about writing and what feels right to me myself. But I understand where you're coming from, and I'll do my best to help you out in whatever way I can. If any of my lovely writer mutuals have more to add, please feel free to do so!

1. Before I even start talking about anything else, it's important to remember that we're our own toughest critic, so it's possible (and quite likely) that your dialogues are not nearly as terrible as you think they are. When you've been writing and staring at the same words you've written multiple times, even the most interesting of dialogues can feel lame and try-hard to you. Whenever I write a fic and proofread through it before posting, 9/10 times I feel like it sounds boring or too dragged out. And it's because I already know what's going to happen, what the other person is going to say. Even if something is meant to be witty, I no longer find it to be so because I've written them. Return to your fics a year from now and you may feel differently.

2. Your betas are there to help you. I know it's difficult to broach that awkward boundary where you want them to be brutally honest about your writing vs wanting strangers on the internet to shower you with validation, but if you really, genuinely, want to improve your writing and make the maximum use of your betas, try talking to them about it. From what you've told me, they seem like very nice people, and if you tell them that they should just be as critical with your writing as they are with theirs, I think they'd understand. If they find that uncomfortable, that's fair. You can always ask someone else. I find that having different betas for different fics is always a good idea because you get to see how differing perspectives work.

3. Ask your betas to leave you comments when they're editing. It's easier to just pass on the doc and have them fix your typos and grammatical errors, but ask them how you can improve the dialogue and pacing as well! Tell them to leave some tips for you as they go over your work. This way, it doesn't have to be an one-on-one conversation (so neither of you feel awkward), and you can just return to the doc later and go through the suggestions slowly and imbibe them into your future works.

4. This might sound very simple, but it's important to remember when you're writing fic that these characters are normal humans who talk and behave like normal humans do. Sometimes, the whole flirting/bantering feel of the conversation just comes through from their actions and not their words. For eg. instead of writing something like:

"Hey, Potter! Are you free this weekend?" asked Lily.

"Why? Wanna take me on a date, Evans?" He smirked.

"Maybe I do."

You bring the scene to life through the same words, but more actions. Like so:

"Hey, Potter!" Lily called, her fingers tentative as they fell on his arm. James turned around, one eyebrow cocked. "Are you free this weekend?"

He looked at her silently, a smirk pulling at his lips. "Why? Wanna take me on a date, Evans?"

Lily's eyes glittered with the thrill of a challenge, and she pressed a little closer. "Maybe I do."

5. Make sure that you let your characters talk and breathe like normal humans, too! Let them take those heavy pauses for tense scenes, let them break off in between sentences because they can't finish a thought right or they're laughing too hard or they've just suddenly remembered something that froze them on the spot. Let them fumble and sigh and repeat words like we do IRL conversations. If your character is having an argument, and they're red in the face, they're probably not gonna say: "Why not?"

They're much more likely to say: "Well, why the hell not?!"

You can throw in a couple of "um"s and "uh"s and "er"s for those unsure few milliseconds. Em dashes are your best friends here. Sometimes, even saying that they're pausing to think or breathe or collect themselves can help bring your dialogues to life.

But yeah, don't overdo them either coz then the flow might break lol

6. Read! Read! Read! As writers, we sometimes forget to really read other stories or appreciate different characterizations and writing styles, which can make your writing growth halt. Not saying this is true for everyone, but reading more definitely doesn't do harm. And especially for us fanfic writers, this works even better, because we're writing about the same characters again and again. If you read another writer's take on it, you'll slowly start to hold onto the pattern of how a certain character speaks, or what they're likely to do. This is extremely useful when writing a dialogue. For instance, I know how headstrong and stubborn Lily is, I've read so many takes on this trait of hers. So when I write my dialogues, I know I can't have her backing down easily. She will go red in the face, she will yell, she will be in denial, and say harsh things she probably doesn't mean entirely when she's mad. But at the same time, I also know she's unflinchingly kind, so you know you have to write that she speaks in soft tones when comforting someone. She probably smiles really kindly, tucks her hair behind her ear when she's shy, confesses things with a lot of bravery, watches James from the sidelines with the softest expression (sorry, got lost in the feels for a sec)

Similarly, you've gotta make James be the loudest one in the room, the one who's voice carries over to everyone, who's absolutely unabashed in his dialogues and whose confidence shines through his words. But the same boy then turns unsure and tentative in moments where his heart is on the line. I always write his dialogues as super vulnerable during such scenes (much more than Lily's would be). A lot of desperation, pleases, promises, etc. etc.

I know this got really long, and I'm not sure if any of it was at all helpful. If you're looking for something specific, please do send in another ask! I don't mind helping out!

[apathycares]

“Hawks”

So here's an edited piece I wrote way back when. Whoop.

※ Warnings: secretive hawks, possible typos idk, reader with a certain personality ig

※ Pairing: Hawks (Takami Keigo) x reader

Interestingly enough, the first time Hawks met you, you were walking down an empty street, jamming to some music. He had been in the last hour of his patrol, grateful that he hadn't run into anything in particular - causing trouble or otherwise, and he was almost convinced that it'd end as a mundane day. How wrong he was.

You were hopping along down the street, music blaring loudly from your headphones and bleeding out of your ears, as you strutted exaggeratedly to the beat. Hawks flew closer in amusement, watching your performance in rapt attention, wondering how long it would take you to realize that you weren’t alone on the quiet streets of Kyushu.

Two songs and a fit of enthusiastic giggles later, he was hooked. Something about the way you were so carefree, dancing around on the street past midnight without bothering to glance back fascinated him. Hawks wanted to talk to you, but at the same time, didn't want to break the impression that he had of you either. 

The moment he decided to float around behind you and see where this goes, you stopped abruptly to pause the song before turning around with a knowing smile, like you were...

"If you're going to be here, at least pay me." You said in a silvery voice, before your face fell in surprise. "Hawks?"

"Oh, you knew I was here huh?" He chuckled awkwardly, his arm coming around to scratch his nape. When you didn't fill in the silence, he let his gaze flutter back to you. "It's a little late to be out here, dontcha think?"

You tilted your head without a word, eyes boring into his own like a knife digging into butter. Before he could speak up, you beat him to it. "I was feeling a little daring today, but thank you for the concern. Not many heroes would follow a random person for so long -" You threw him a pointed look, letting that notion hang. "Seeya."

Hawks blinked comically as you walked off, before a sense of panic set in his chest to stop you from doing so. "Wait!"

You do so, glancing back for the first time that night. 

"Wanna go on a date with me?"

----

---

--

-

"You did say you were feeling daring today? I mean, how daring can you be am I right?"

Hawks' eye twitched. Why the hell was he convincing you for? 

"Sure." You shrugged, walking back over with a straight face, and then extending your hand when you were close enough. "Give me your phone."

He grinned boyishly, passing you his phone, yet his mind was reeling trying to make sense of the whole situation. While you created a new contact, he took the chance to let his eyes rove your figure. Well, he couldn't really tell with your sweats. You were pretty sexy though. Your eyes trailed languidly up his chest and to his own golden eyes, narrowing in mirth. You were too sexy for your own good, he thought, raising his eyebrows at the gesture.

"This is a cursed question, but how often do you pick up dates like this?"

Hawks laughed, his own eyes narrowing. "What can I say? I have no self-control when it comes to the things I want."

"That's some messed up shit you're saying to a stranger." You threw his phone at him all of sudden, and when he caught it coolly, you snorted. "Or I'm one to talk."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

You sipped your iced tea as you fiddled with her phone, waiting for a response from Hawks since you had nothing better to do on your break. Honestly, you were kind of surprised he reached out to you after last night's... disagreement, but you’d give him the benefit of the doubt.

What you didn't expect though, was him calling you.

"Oh?" You said when he answered the phone, only to hear his deep chuckle.

"You sound so surprised, y/n-chan. Can't I call my favourite person in the world?"

You rolled your eyes. "That's bold. Especially after last night."

"Ahhh, can't we pretend like it didn't happen? I'm not mad at all. I —"

"What's your real name?" You interrupted, staring hard at your desk. From the little exhalation he made in response, you could practically see the disappointed frown on his face.

"Y/n."

"You said you were going to take me on another date, and if that's the case, I still stand by what I said yesterday."

"That's fine, I understand. Can you come to your window?"

You sit up a little, glancing at the window across the room. You bite your lip to stifle your laughter when you notice a mess of blond hair bobbing up and down the ledge.

Unlatching the lock, you gently push the window open and your eyes lock on to Hawks, floating there with a bouquet of flowers and a cheesy smile.

"Can I come in?" He speaks into the phone, eyes fixed on you as his smile grows wider.

"Not sure yet. What kind of flowers are those?"

Hawks inches closer, allowing you to catch a whiff. They smelt expensive. "It's a mixture of I'm sorry for leading you on and please take me back."

You giggled a little, and you were so mad you did. You just couldn't catch him off guard, could you?

"Also —" Hawks puts his phone away and pulls up his visor, golden eyes dead serious all of a sudden. "I don't want to lose you. I don't want you to be pulled into my chaos either. I....I care about you too much, so..."

"So?" You deadpanned.

He bit his lip, studying your impassive face, his heart hammering in his ears the longer you stared at him like that. You’ve always been extremely attractive to him, but that face you made, this one that had all your emotions locked away enticed him and frustrated him in equal parts — he wasn't sure which angle he could go when it came to that face.

"So I don't know what to do." Hawks finished lamely, deciding to be honest yet again. Honesty was a refreshing thing with you, he'd come to know that last night with your interesting reactions to things, but this particular truth was hard to give voice to. He didn't know what to do.

You stepped closer and accepted the flowers, eliciting a pleased noise from Hawks. You pushed the large bouquet on one hip and leaned forward until you were inches apart, and before he could say anything, you kissed his nose, giggling when his face flared instantly. "I like you too much to be mad at that, I guess."

"Does that mean — !"

"Absolutely not." You deadpan with a cheery smile, turning around to put the flowers in a vase, missing his disappointed pout. "What kind of person would I be if I didn't stand by what I say?"

Hawks mumbles some stuff under his breath.

"Hmmm? Are you still here?" You call from your desk.

"You're so mean y/n-chan."

"Also, I prefer tulips and poppies, Hawks."

He was quiet for a moment, before bursting out with a sudden, "Don't call me that."

You look up, perplexed. "Excuse me."

Hawks knew he was wrong. He knew he couldn't, shouldn't pull you into his life. But you were so —

"Hey, you okay? I was just kidding about the flowers —"

He bolts off. You raise your eyebrows in confusion.

You had all but a couple of hours to think about it and get over it, before he's swooping out of nowhere when you’re done for the day and taking you on an impromptu flight around town. 

Did you mention out of nowhere?

[azurite-writes]

Problem One: The Screen(s) and Digital Workspace

Part one of my multi-part doc about what I learned from doing online college at a non-online institution. This chapter: my Desktop as a Desk

     Highlighted points: learning styles, work type/function in relation to the computer 

       My biggest problem with being pushed online after being at an in-person institution was, and still is, my forced reliance on the computer. I have to sit in front of it for hours: attending classes on Zoom; checking email every three hours; accessing Moodle pages for class and out-of-class work (Moodle is what my institution uses, other web management/e-learning software platforms include PowerLearning, Blackboard, and OU Campus, among others). And the work itself can be watching documentaries, watching seminars, accessing ebook/PDF documents, annotating documents in online portals… it's a lot. People have talked at length about "zoom fatigue," as well as the eyestrain headaches that can come with staring at said screens for hours at a time. I'll talk about my own lessons learned about that later.

       The assumption among the administrators and (some) people of older generations than those currently in school seems to be that working online with computers and smartphones is more efficient. That isn't necessarily true; it all depends on the type of task and the person being expected to complete it. In my case, I cannot, for the life of me, focus on dense sections of text presented on a backlit screen. Thus, reading and answering emails is okay, but downloading scanned textbook pages to be read on a laptop screen (along with trying to highlight and annotate them) is hell on earth.

       Why is this? Different reasons for different people, but in my case it's because reading/"writing" on a screen interferes with my learning style(s), which are visual/spatial, audio, and kinetic. Audio doesn't come into play for reading on a screen, but seeing words physically in a certain location relative to other words on a page is very important to my memory of the material. Computer screens can display pretty much anything at any given time; book pages can only display whatever was permanently printed onto them. That is, the content of a book page in physical space will always be the same unless you, the reader, manipulate it; a computer screen can have any type of content displayed as long as its pixels can light up and process the information. And for me, that's a problem because I don't have any physical space to relate the information to, plus I don't get a sense of how long the document is. Recalling a passage in a printout, for me, goes like this: "I remember it was on the top-left of a page towards the beginning, the shape of the paragraph was funny too… ah, there it is." Recalling a passage on a digital scan of the same document is much harder for me by contrast: literally any of the paragraphs could have made its way to the top-left of my computer screen, if I moved the window around or zoomed in to better read the text; documents are an endless scroll upward or downwards, with (maybe) a sidebar to tell me what page I've landed on. All of my "landmarks" are functions of the program I am using to access the document. They're static and contained to a window... that can show up anywhere on my computer screen. Not conducive to the way I learn at all.

       My kinetic learning style comes into play with the computer, too. Annotating a document? In the physical world, a pen on the document itself does the trick; going through the physical movement of circling a word or making a note are things that solidify the information in my mind. Annotating a PDF document? First of all, it's difficult to do with a mouse (and God help you if you have a trackpad), and it's highly dependent on the program that the user selects to open the PDF. I could connect a drawing tablet, if I have one, but they're very expensive and their use is, again, dependent on the compatibility with whatever reader program the user selects. All this to say: annotating on the computer doesn't work for me, either. My kinetic and visual learning styles come together with note-taking. My memory is highly dependent on seeing words as they are formed by my own hand, processing them, and connecting meaning to them as they sit in a specific place on the page (am I over-explaining this? Basically, writing notes by hand and seeing where those notes are on a piece of paper help me remember them). Typing notes isn't a replacement for hand-writing notes for me; while I'm busy fixing my typos (on words I would never misspell on paper, usually, since my fingers are just moving weirdly over the keys), the professor moves on, and I'm not listening well enough to catch the fact that I've missed new information.

       The takeaway here is figure out your individual types of work relate to being on the computer. As I said, the computer hinders many aspects of my learning when it comes to memory and efficiency. As a creative tool, however, it has almost the opposite effect; writing assignments for fiction, poetry, and screenwriting classes are much more efficient on the computer. From creative thought to keystroke, I have less time to second-guess or forget my ideas, and both the immediacy and changeability of word processing programs actually works in my favor for those sorts of things.

       What I did differently from first online semester to second:

       1) I figured out which materials helped me remember my notes the best. Honestly, I wasn't even doing this when I was at in-person college, and to my detriment, but I couldn't get away with it at all once I went fully remote. Think back to when you were in lower levels of school: were there certain types of materials you gravitated towards in the classroom? Did you like basic composition notebooks with faint blue lines? Wide-ruled or college-ruled paper? Did you discover that graph paper just worked really nicely with all notes besides math, or that blank pages were less busy for your eyes? When you used pens, did you prefer blue or black ink, or did colored ink help certain things stick? If you can control what materials you use to take notes with, consider using ones akin to those from a class you either a) remembered the most fondly or b) remembered the most information from. Scour your memories of class experiences for anything, no matter how small, that may have made your life easier. Equally, take note of what tasks actually worked well digitally. Adjust accordingly.

(Personally, I found my magic formula was a 1-subject memorandum notebook — marginless, with very narrow line rulings; while I hesitate to direct you to Amazon, they are hard to find at a decent price otherwise, and you can get a 12 pack for just over $40 from them — with black ink from a 0.38-size gel pen (I used a basic Pilot G2 pen until it ran out, then bought ink refills in the smaller size). To "highlight" my notes, I circled or underlined information with a blue gel pen of the same variety. Keep in mind again that I'm learning to be a translator; this is just what works for me.)

       2) If I needed to print something out, I printed it out. Environmental guilt is something I struggled with a lot, and there was always something about staying on the computer that convinced me I was being "less wasteful" by staying digital. But with how much time and energy I ultimately saved reading a printed document that can be recycled vs the electricity I ate up spinning my wheels in front of the ebook… to me, it was worth it. If you find that helps you, too, don't be ashamed to print certain things out.

(If conserving ink and paper is a concern to you, it is possible in some viewing/editing apps to remove or cover images, either with white squares or by taking the images out completely. I have an old MacBook Pro and on current versions of Preview, one can draw shapes and fill them in white to cover parts of the scan that would eat up ink, such as blurred black borders and scanned images. For documents in a word processing program like Microsoft Word or Pages, it may also be possible to print the documents out at a smaller size, allowing more text or even multiple pages to show up on a single sheet of paper.)

| In the coming days/weeks I hope to be posting more content about how I tried to adapt to fully remote learning and the things I’ve learned along the way! Follow for updates ♥︎ |

[mywitchcultblr]

CALM DOWN INQUISITOR WILL BE BACK

okay there's people who are worried that Inquisitor wouldn't be in the next da, but Inquisitor definitely will be back, here's why (edited, I add another point about the red lyrium idol and my arguments against ALBEISM within the fandom)

1.Solas

Solas , Solas is a very very personal person for The Inquisitor, don't know about you guys but Francois is Solas Bff and he seen Solas like a brother he never had and he promised that he doesn't want to kill Solas ,hell and it would be disrespectful for people who are still stuck in Solavellan hell if they didn't get Answers!!!

Based on information from Tevinter nights, INQUISITION AND INQUISITOR IS STILL VERY MUCH IN ACTION

Solas literally gave message to charter to send his sorry to the Inquisitor , and Inquisition and Inquisitor have business in nevarra

2. Remember Josephine personal quest? Of somewhat a fallen fortune

Josephine literally said that when Inquisitor visited Antiva, the Montiliyet family would literally throw the biggest party as a thanks to The Inquisitor for helped The Montiliyet, and I'm sure antiva would be one of many northern country we will see, and based on Tevinter Nights (seems like qunari have a plan to fucking invade Antiva) and new DA4 tease of the female antiva crow, Antiva would be one of northern countries that would play a big role

3. Dorian Romance

Yeah no shit Dorian, you wanted to be with Inquisitor and Inquisitor also wanted to be with you, y'all better be get married ASAP, Tevinter would be one of major countries that definitely will play a hugeee role in whatever Solas doing right now.... And Inquisitor also stabbed Tevinter map with the war table knife at the event of exalted council , the next mission would be in tevinter everybody know that, if anything it's confirmed that Inquisition will move it's operation HQ to Tevinter, 'Some claimed to have seen The Inquisitor on the street of Minrathous on rare occasions, sneaking into the heart of Tevinter to aid his Amatus" It's fine to ask help from your lover Dorian....It's fiiinneeeeeee..... Hell I think Inquisition and Inquisitor moved to Tevinter, so Inquisitor can be closer with Dorian and for their missions........

Well hello there Magister Pavus *wink*

Seems like Isabella, Dorian, that skeleton boi and that woman jumped into the sea to avoid arrows? Are they on a quest?

Besides The Inquisitor status as 'The Inquisitor's and Dorian Pavus lover ,a Magister of great influence and power definitely would tremendously help Inquisition and the new hero.

4. Song about Inquisitor

Maryden song is not just a song about Inquisitor glory, it's about fear and uncertainty of what's to come NEXT, and people who rely on The Inquisitor as their leader,people who place hope on the Inquisitor to guard them from darkness to come, this isn't a song about 'yaaayy the world is saved y'all can be happy and go back home's

Inquisitor is still the hero people rely on and needed to lead them against the future threats that definitely will threaten Thedas.....Again and....Solas (whhyyy T.T )

Inquisitor....Lyrics

A soldier, a savior 

A hero, a leader

Inquisitor fought for our souls

A battle, a breach

The one we beseeched

To protect our lives and our homes

Now how do we follow

The battle is all but won

Peace can't last forever

Guard us from what's to come

Inquisitor, take your breath

A soldier, a savior 

A hero, a leader

Inquisitor fought for our souls

A battle, a breach

The one we beseeched

To protect our lives and our homes

Now you all shall follow

The breach is all but closed

Light can't last forever

Guard us from darkness to come

A soldier, a savior 

A hero, a leader

Inquisitor fought for our souls

5. The ragtag people in DA teaser we have seen lacked resources power and support.

Hell even they are described as a bunch of people who wanted to change things but lacked the power to do so....Sounds familiar with Inquisitor and companions at the beginning isn't? Now Inquisition and The Inquisitor is a forces to be reckoned with, Inquisition is not actually disbanded, The Inquisitor and Inquisition simply refused to be collared by chantry and Orlais (ewww besides tf want to be collared by chantry and Orlais) and they went rogue, and Inquisitor once again will save the world, and need an agent that Solas doesn't know.....

Who can give those groups of people resources and chance to be something more? If anything Sutherland and company group of adventures is a foreshadow of the new ragtag bunch of groups, and who gave Sutherland and Co resources and chance? Inquisitor who believe in them. The Inquisition and Inquisitor is the only group that can give these people chance and resources they needed, and as foreshadowed and basically confirmed by The Inquisitor song, Inquisitor is the leader and boss of Inquisition and that new group.

Come on who's gonna trust them and give them resources if not Inquisitor and Inquisition? Even on the brink of destruction, state leaders always preferred to fights against each other rather than save the world and fix shits!!!! People like Gaspard and other state leader would prefer to perish on their throne rather than fixing problems they have.

6. Have you seen the red lyrium idol?

Link for proof that the red lyrium idol have three figures, and much more clearer picture of the red lyrium idol:

The red lyrium idol actually have three figures, Solas who's hugging mythal and Mythal who hugging him back (that figure dragon tail and crown? Come one that's Mythal) and hugging the third person behind them, and then there's the third person behind Solas and Mythal, a figure who lost their LEFT ARM! And we knew one person who have close ties with Mythal and Solas who also lost their left arm:

Inquisitor.

7.Stop ALBEISM within the fandom

I don't want to hear another person who think.... and absolutely believe that disabled people are helpless or cannot be relied on, stop that shit okay? It's just rude, and let me tell ya ladies and gentlemen and people of any other identities and genders , The Inquisitor is a badass hero, I have wrote in point 4 and 5 that The Inquisitor is the leader and hero people relied on and needed, and Inquisitor still kicking ass after the event of exalted council, Inquisitor is a seasoned hero and veteran, Inquisitor feats:

• killed Ten high Dragons

•killed Corypheus

• leading Inquisition Armies to fight against legions of red templar and many other Corypheus followers

• literally murdering demons here and there as if it's just a walk in the park

•sealing rifts all across Thedas

• survived time travel and psychically entered the fade

• Successfully ended Orlesian civil war , so The Inquisitor do have great talents in politics

• Darkspawn? Darkspawn is just another noob enemies The Inquistor eradicated with companions

• have seen Titan's heart and defeated it's guardian, survived deep roads

• defeated a mother fucking avvar god aka Hakkon Winterbreath

•probably surpassed Ameridan as Inquisitor

There's nothing that stop The Inquisitor to fight like a badass and to be in action, losing one arm can be solved with prosthetic ( there's Dagna) and I have said that in the red Jenny tresspasser slide, The Inquisitor have crossbow/hook arm,I don't know man Francois is one of the most powerful mage in Thedas? He's a mage. So the arm problem also definitely can be solved with magic!

Besides Inquisitor definitely would be boss of the new hero, Inquisitor is a capable and seasoned leader and veteran,who has been proven time and again as a legendary fighter (just like HoF and Hawke) and a great leader both in politics and military, I will make second post about my theory and covering Thedas newest political leaders and state also the continuity of this post.

And in conclusion

8. Double hero/ protagonist?

Duo/double heroes (Inquisitor and new hero) is the best way, the new hero need sponsor and resources , The Inquisition and Inquisitor need new agents, besides it's confirmed by the red Jenny slides (Inquisitor have prosthetic ) , tevinter nights, the song and romance with Dorian that The Inquisitor is still the hero and leader and still kick ass like a badass, it would be so great to see them disagreeing and agreeing about stuff, come on it would be so interesting to see dynamic of their approval, to see them interact with each other, and fight together.

They'll work so well together!!!!!

Seriously guys....Pavelyan romancer....Dorianmancer....It's all fine calm down....Inquisitor is back........

Sorry for grammatical mistakes.... I am south East Asian so English is like my third language and I try to fix typo here and there....

I am so excited.....I'm too excited

[alicejohnson]

I already made a messy post about this amazing book series here, but because I intend to use this blog as dumping ground for all of my thoughts properly now, I wanted to do an "official review".

Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (In my heart it's a 5-star rating, but the plot and the writing is not THE best)

The review in itself is pretty much spoiler-free, but thoughts and interactions with this post might not be.

What is it about: A found family trope that revolves around a made-up mixed-sex sport called Exy (imagine if lacrosse and hockey had a child). Oh, and all of the college students playing in the team are "troubled children". Also, it is LGBTQ+ :)

Warnings?: All of them. All of the warnings humanly possible. Graphic descriptions of violence, r*pe, child abuse, drug abuse, overdoses, death, self-harm, suicide. Someone made an entire list here. PLEASE do go over it before reading these books.

Writing: It is dialogue-heavy, and kind of cringy in the best way possible. There are times you know there's no one who speaks like that, but at the moment it sounds pretty good. It did get repetitive and some phrases are used multiple times during the entire series to the point of "yes, I know, thank you". But the banter is just immaculate though, characters' interactions are pure gold.

Plot: The story in itself is not entirely realistic, I've heard people compare it to a very good fanfic and I agree, it has mafia elements, cult-like behaviors, and sometimes it is just quite out there in the realm of reality, but it's really compelling and perfectly paced. Also, even when it's not as realistic, everything fits into place and makes sense so it's not annoying or just outright crazy. Take the plot more as a trigger for character development rather than anything else.

And it is actually a funny book. When I was not in pain, I laughed a lot. 10/10 :)

Characters: I love them so much it pains me. The way the author describes and portrays feelings and trauma is incredible. Also, it's VERY CONSISTENT. I can't remember a time I thought "wait, why is X acting like this?" (except when it came to trauma-induced behavior that I will never understand cause I've never lived through it or when I failed to unravel all the characters motivations cause again, they are very complicated people in a complicated environment).

The MC, Neil, is a cinnamon roll, and actually has one of the best arcs I've seen in a book. He grows, learns, he cares so much, and gave me all of the comfort. I understand why all of them are in love with him.

It has good representation, (females kick-ass and are treated equally by the team, I mean the freaking captain is a woman! Loved it) and characters with very different personalities, and almost no one important is completely one-dimensional.

(Andrew is my fucking comfort character and no one can change my mind)

I do recommend it, actually, I believe everyone should read this book and learn about consent, trauma, boundaries, sense of belonging, identity, and a very specific kind of love that I've never seen before.

Thoughts: This is going to be pretty short because I left all of my feelings in that post (Edit: I lied this is long af. lol) I linked at the beginning that made no sense, had lots of grammar mistakes, and typos, but I was just feeling it at the moment.

These characters came to my life to teach me that I should not just bend over for love. That my boundaries - both respecting others and my own- can be an entirely new love language.

We carry so much emotional baggage created by just existing in this fucking world that we start to believe we are unlovable, hoping for the day some magical creature will come and suddenly lift all of the weight from our shoulders. Love will now hold it for us from that moment on till forever, and that's just not true. It's never going to happen. Yes, love keeps us moving, but it won't ever be the solution to our pain.

But, the good thing is that Andrew taught me that, instead, when this magical creature does appear, we can lean on them, work on our issues by ourselves, and the days we can't it's ok too, cause they will be there.

We don't need someone to save us, we need someone who respects our boundaries, our pain, our experiences and still loves us without us needing to be fixed as a condition, without us putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations, without us feeling unlovable for feeling the way we do.

We live in a world where boundaries don't exist anymore, hell, in the middle of the pandemic we even take classes or work in our safe place, so this book reminded me that it's ok to have them and to communicate them to the people around me.

(Thank you Neil for learning with me how to ask for help)

The opposite to The Song of Achilles, these books strip everything out of romance and leave us with the raw horrifying experience of being alive, alone, and terrified and takes it to the maximum amount of trauma and pain.

But, at the same time, it teaches us to love in the middle of all that suffering and that there are good people that are willing to be with us. (Yes, Neil, there are people in the world who are horrible, but there are also others who are not)

Side note: I'm in awe at how much the foster system sucks in the USA. These books also tackle a lot of issues around police incompetence, the State's inability to protect children, social class differences, and the abuse of power authorities use on a regular basis. Chef's kiss.

“He'd come to the Foxhole Court every inch a lie, but his friends made him into someone real.”