#i assume many of you might be the same

[august--and-everything-after]

Mutuals I wish I could talk to you all in person cause I'm so much more cool and fun and engaging irl

[puppyeared]

littlest furth shop

@laikascomet

[unopenablebox]

i was looking back at my old knitting posts to check on a thing and like yeah i really did just rocket right up the knitting skill tree over the course of a few months. no wonder i'm convinced i can knit literally anything i've spent ten minutes reading and watching videos about.

my personal knitting trajectory is that i learned to knit at age 8, stopped knitting at age 16 or so, and did not knit anything more complex than circular knit legwarmers with mild shaping at that time (so i could make rectangles and tubes and slightly widen the tubes). (ok i also did one lace scarf for about four inches but it was very bad.) then i got back into it at the end of college, and my projects were lace cowl > multiple stranded colorwork hats > socks on dpns > elaborately cabled sweater (which i finished only the back and half a sleeve of, admittedly, and am now picking up again) > most of a beaded lace crescent shawl in the span of, like, five months. and then a bunch of other shit after that! i literally can just learn to knit whatever the fuck i want, that's just uncontroversially true. what a fantastic hobby

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Saint of Bright Doors

a surreal Sri Lankan fantasy about colonialism, revolution, mixing fantasy with the modern world

follows a man raised by his mother to kill his father, a god-like cult leader

but as an adult he puts aside his life of violence and moves to the city for a quiet life

he becomes fascinated with ‘bright doors’ around the city that never open and have no other side, and joins a group studying them to find out more

and a support group for those with divine heritage that becomes increasingly revolutionary, until the task he was made for reemerges and his life upends

[sysig]

Horse girl arc (Patreon)

[dragonlordofmiddleearth]

I wish the Merlin 6: kingdom come people would be more upfront about their script being fanfic and not official because I am sick and tired of seeing people bitch about the bbc "scrapping" the supposed sixth season. There was no sixth season. Merlin did not get cancelled, it just ended. Afaik the kingdom come peeps have no affiliation whatsoever with the original merlin team, other than their contacting some of them to be like "hey would you want to make our script?" and the representative being like "appreciate the offer but no thanks". The script is no more canon than any fanfic you or I might write, it just so happens that they did it in script form which seems to have confused a lot of people, and no-one seems to have corrected the massive misunderstanding for some reason

[kasumingo]

Years ago I heard the quote "everyone in your life had something happen that would make you drop on your knees and wail" and it's a principle I live by

Be kinder to everyone

[keepthetension]

still thinking about grief and recovery and support on this show because oh boy did the shows airing this weekend put me in my dead parent feelings i said before i was concerned about how porjai is dealing with her own grief, and this episode we saw her easily talking about rung, and even casually yelling to rung that she misses her! maybe this is me projecting, because i can't do that, but this seems like a pretty healthy place to be, especially contrasted with mhok's relative silence, and i'm glad!

and mhok's silence doesn't come from anger or resentment (which are valid ofc, but i did wonder if imprisonment gave him time to work through this to some degree) but out of protectiveness. i fucking loved this, because it felt so realistic and lived-in. i lost a parent to intimate partner violence, and i NEVER open up about it; people sure have Opinions, and it makes me insane

but day finding out about rung offscreen wasn't on my bingo card, tbh. because we've been with mhok through everything he's found out about day

it doesn't bother me, exactly, but it feels slightly unbalanced, and i suppose what i'm thinking is: knowing what happened to someone doesn't actually tell you how they feel about it, or how it affects them, or how you can support them

mhok found out from that lady sharing personal medical info she had no business sharing about day losing his eyesight in the accident, but he put in the work to understand what it actually meant for day. and in most cases, we've seen day telling mhok about what troubles him in his own words (his crush on auggy, why he was avoiding his friends, etc)

bereavement is probably statistically more common, so i suppose it may not need to be spelled out for an audience? but i am wary, because there have been so many shows where characters are visibly — to me! — struggling with grief and everything else matryoshka-ed in it, but audience reaction simply doesn't factor this in

i'm also thinking about how often mhok tells day a story about himself with the intent of making him smile ("i bought two bracelets just because i had money to spend" "i found this rooftop when i needed to sober up" "my sister called this false rice". i'm certain there are more!). because this is what a caretaker does, or because this is what mhok does, or both?

because this always made me wonder what it would take for mhok to talk about something that wouldn't make day smile, or because he wanted to share. in the former case, it'd have to be something pretty bad!

of course, talking isn't the only way to recovery or intimacy. and mhok going from "i'm breaking up with my devoted gf because i don't want to drag her down with me" to "i'm going to ask you to be my bf" is pretty significant!

but as they navigate the journey from being caretaker and client to being boyfies, the balance has to shift around a bit to them supporting each other, consciously choosing to be there for each other

in this episode what we got was: you only want money to buy that car. and i'm not even mad about this, because this kind of comment is very in line with day's character. but wow. day, i know you're feeling big feelings, but throwing one of the few things you know about mhok's life in his face is. not it!

[nerdyfangirlingbooks]

Does anyone in the Tomorrow series ever actually... tell Ellie that what happened in NZ wasn't her fault?? That it's absolutely different to what Lee chose to do, in that she had her choice taken away? That it's not lame or weak or a reflection on her in any way? Because I know the way she's dealing with it is realistic for a lot of people but I also think it's really important that a series aimed at kids acknowledges that it wasn't her fault instead of inadvertently teaching them that it's okay to internalise all this, and by extension that Ellie was right to blame herself. Idk. I just know that if I had read the series through when I first started it at 12, I would have learnt from Ellie, and it's getting hard to read now, thinking that some kids would have.

[not-poignant]

I'm late to the party but if you're still doing the fanfic meme...I'd love to know 2 and 14 for Stain!

Woo let's do it! For A Stain that Won't Dissolve:

2: What scene did you first put down?

I feel like I've been saying this a lot, but the first scene I wrote is the first scene everyone reads. I've been writing in chronological order for a while now!

I ran a lot of scenes in my head mentally first. Because my first image of this story was of them as like... the ages they are in the game, and it just wasn't working. They were too young, and not mature enough. Things really kicked off when I was like 'okay, what if Sebastian is a divorcee who leaves and comes back' and then really kicked off when it was like 'what if Alex becomes a cleaner to pay for his grandparent's medical debt.'

All of those things came in stages and I really noodled on this story and its structure for over a month.

By the time I started writing, I was ready to start writing. And I knew I'd start with Alex being like, quite provocative and shocking to set the tone, so the first sentence is literally around him reminiscing on the fact that he used to imagine forcing Sebastian to give him revenge blowjobs lmao.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

I don't really like to be didactic with my writing. Like I don't set out to 'teach' moral lessons or anything like that, and I'm maybe even a little selfish in that I'm often not thinking about the reader in that way at all. I'm thinking about writing an entertaining story for myself with entertaining characters. I really want to entertain the people who read the story. I think more about emotional responses than learning. I'm not trying to teach, I'm trying to entertain. But teaching can be a byproduct, it's just not the focus.

BUT, I do think I like exploring themes around classism, small-town dynamics (it's not the first time I've explored this), attitudes of learned helplessness, what real support in a community looks like vs. lip service support, etc.

In a perfect world, I want readers to go away having enjoyed the fic and gotten something meaningful out of it. Even if that meaningful thing is simply that they felt comforted during a tough time, or they got to escape from reality for a while and feel happy for the characters at the end.

I don't know if I need them to learn anything new about something grand or whatever. I'm not out here trying to teach deep lessons, but because my characters are often learning deep lessons, sometimes that happens anyway. Alex for example, devaluing himself the way that he does? A lot of people (including me) relate to that. Giving someone like Alex access to support, means some people (including me) get to vicariously experience that getting support or looking for it can be scary, but often lead to good things.

That's not a bad thing to take away from any story.

But I'm pumped if people enjoy it, and I'm not out here trying to teach big lessons. My goal is always the emotional responses and the emotional engagement and the emotional journey. If people read my stories and feel nothing at all, then I'd be the first to be like 'hey, um, hey, there's better writing out there, you'll enjoy that more, trust me' lol

--

From the fanfiction / AO3 fiction meme!

[skrunksthatwunk]

kind of funny whenever (and this happens quite often) someone older than me is like "yeah the world aka US politics went to shit in 2016 it wasn't this ridiculous and bizarre before aaaa it feels different" because whether i Would agree or not is hampered by the fact that i was roughly 11 at the time. like i'll take your word for it boss o7 bc i was a zygote in terms of political awareness. my ass was not paying attention enough before so i have no previous era to compare it to. i was thinking about hex bugs or something that whole time idk

[seariii]

Reading articles upon articles and people explaining the concept to others, only to leave not understanding it at all... Maybe it's just one of those concepts my brain can't understand and I just have to accept as a fact...

[night-creeps]

Oops scrolled the tags on that spencers mlm flag post and now i feel like shit

[hershelchocolateart]

Can you please reblog Darkdragonsouls addition to your desaturation post? It's very useful and it's spread would help counteract the number of artist's I've seen feeling demoralized or angry. Multiple people in different Discord servers have been sharing your post, and I've had to redirect them to try and help them avoid brashly changing settings they don't understand. Thanks! 

Took me fucking AGES to find the post you were talking about, Tumblr search function sucks so bad oh my god. Thanks for being so polite about this though!

That being said, I don't think I'll be sharing it solely because. Well, it is a nice explanation about the different color settings, but it seems like the main point of the post was to be careful when printing things. I am very much not printing things, and I'm willing to bet 99% of the people leaving comments about their characters reference sheets are also not planning on printing things

Having your art printed in general takes SO much work and research into how best to save the image anyway (as someone who's printed dozens of my own pieces), and I'm really hoping people would be doing that research anyway, but for purely digital art purposes, maintaining that saturation still seems important to me (you're not even supposed to print pngs anyway, 99% sure you're supposed to be using TIFF)

That being said, feel free to keep sharing it around yourself if you feel it's important! I never really thought a post I made would get this big, and it was DEFINITELY something I made in a fit of utter rage and despair at the situation, so there was a lot of nuance I couldn't keep track of. I am admittedly a little worried for the people in the comments who are changing the setting and calling it good without fully checking whether or not it worked for them, but there's nothing I can do about that. The post has gone way farther than I ever thought it would, and with the wide variety of people claiming to have the same problem, I feel like it's more on a case-by-case basis of how your device and your program uses colors

(also, despite what the notes on the post would have you believe, I don't actually have a lot of followers here and I doubt me reblogging a single post would actually get it to spread very far)

[cherry-shipping]

ok so like........... obviously i hate the concept of soulmates and soulmate aus cause FUCK the idea that a person is inherently incomplete without another person, thats fucked up and lame. BUT. with the presence of souls being an undeniable fact in undertale and by extension my selfship with sans, and the fact that i headcanon (? i feel like its canon but i might be thinking about inverted fate LOL) that sans' perception of each reset in the underground is, aside from being a knowledge that it IS possible (like asgore), mostly based on each reset bringing a stronger and stronger sense of deja vu as the timelines overlap in his memories. i do sort of like the idea of him meeting me aboveground, his soul recognizing me as its. well. soulmate, i guess. but him confusing that feeling with the deja vu he experienced in the underground and thereby being so fucking suspicious and afraid of me and like. doing everything he can to get me to stay away from papyrus and everyone else, cause he thinks im another anomaly like frisk or flowey. naturally, i dont feel that, because while humans DO have souls monsters are a direct projection of theirs, and humans are significantly less in tune with their souls overall. and since a soulmate thing would. uh. well, heavily depend on the very existence of souls. well, i wouldnt really recognize it as anything but "lol funny bone man i wanna be his friend moreso than the other monsters". anyway i phrased this so badly cause its 6:30am but tl;dr this was a longwinded way of saying "if me and sans were soulmates i wouldnt feel it and hed be terrified of my very existence and would do everything in his power to push me away". lol.

[senotsuri]

Okay, so I'd like to delve more on the Vestals being plant-like. You mentioned they use photosynthesis through their skin, so tactile-wise, would they feel similar to that of a plant or a mammal's? You also mentioned something about them being more built for sprint-hunting? So does that mean Vestals hunt like Earth's cheetahs do? I tried googling what sprint-hunting was, but the results gave me non-answers. Lastly, if Vestal diets are meat-focused, what dishes do they cook, and which of Vestal's fauna is used as livestock.

I think their skin feels mammalian, but the fine hairs on their skin (like the fine hairs humans have) are more... feelable? Like how you can tell if a leaf has little needly hairs. Hairy leaves feel very hairy, if that makes sense?

That comes from LiterallyThePresident on AO3 (they have a tumblr, under a different name, but I'm not sure if they're ok with having their tumblr mentioned =v=;;), who wrote the Connection series. In that, specifically the medical focused Beat, we find out that LTP's Vestals have two hearts and smaller lungs. The two hearts would suggest more circulation than a human (an endurance hunter), which is perfect for sprinting and still getting blood/oxygen to the body's cells so they function.

Sprint hunters don't stalk their prey for miles until they're exhausted like Endurance hunters do. Instead they stalk up close, preferably camoflaged, and then sprint at their prey, either to catch them off guard, or give chase to their prey (of which is likely fast enough for an actual chase.) I wouldn't say they're as bad at hunting as cheetahs are (low percentage of successful hunts), but that's down to the fact that they could make tools decently easily given opposable thumbs.

As for livestock... hard to say. Vestal itself is a ecumenopolis, a singular city that encases a whole planet, and aerial images in scenes show very little grass. The most grass Vestal has is seemingly on Klaus' small floating island. But, there are huge reservoirs easily visible. One or two might be dedicated to aquatic fauna?

Current Vestals probably thrive on synthetic (but close to the source as possible) meats of ancient prey species, and whatever Vestals oceans had (whale, fish, turtle, crab, so on so forth.)

Honestly vestals would go mad for scampi, fish soup, and calamari, amongst other seafood-based dishes.