#i got way too into formatting that story blurb

[neriyon]

Not all who wander are lost - South Shroud

South Shroud Landing │ Upper Paths │ Buscarron's Druthers │ Urth's Gift

"During my travels, I met a man who mentioned visiting the Black Shroud as a young lad. He talked about the forest with both reverence and fear in his voice. Of lush trees that seemed to drown out the sun itself. Of bubbling streams that hosted beastkin larger than fully grown hyur. Of roots so big and old they were tearing apart ancient fortresses.

It got me thinking.

Of the trees that gave shade during warm summer days. Of beasts that my sisters hunted for food. Of stories of past civilizations told by elders. Curious how things I'd grown to find pleasant during my childhood seemed to scare this traveller, who'd only heard the deafening silence of the cold nights and missed the warm laughter of a family around the campfire."

Bonus! Alternative pic of Urth's Gift since I really liked the colors on it

[rassicas]

I've gotten a hold of a very rare issue of Nintendo Dream from October 2017, containing an interview with the Splatoon developers. like seriously, i hadn't seen any documentation of this anywhere. HUGE huge thanks to @squidhominid, who spent Too Much Money to buy a copy and scan it!! Since a lot of it is formatted in blurbs like what's pictured above, I'd been unsure how to organize and share translations...I've decided I will gradually share snippets of it like so and compile it all later. Please be patient. Translation under the cut.

In relation to the characters from Story Mode The Rule-abiding Octarian Army

---Is Octavio a DJ and a general? Inoue: Well, his name is General DJ Octavio (laughs). He commands the Octarian army, so naturally he's a general. [[TN: Octavio's JP name includes "General" rather than just "DJ Octavio" like in english.]] ---Going off of that, there are other ranks, right? Amano: That's right. The Octarians as a species act seriously, so if they didn't have ranks they wouldn't be able to work properly. (laughs) Inoue: Originally, we made Octavio as a character as a pair to Cap'n Cuttlefish on the Inkling's side. Now as for why Octavio is an octopus that holds wasabi sticks... the act of "grating" wasabi made us think of "scratching", and "scratching" made us think of "DJ"...So he came to be both a general and a DJ. [[TN: takowasa, or octopus and wasabi paired together, is a popular izakaya snack. Same goes for atarime, (cuttlefish's JP name) dried squid. It's supposed to be like a snack showdown.]] Nogami: The Octarians are led by music. Octavio makes his own music to control them. Inoue: The music tells them to move and work according to the rules (laughs). ---So, for him as a general, is the music just for controlling the Octarians? Or does he enjoy it? Amano: It is for leadership, with that 'duntz duntz' sort of tempo. So I think for him, he sees the popularity and influence of the Squid Sisters as something that has a military-like controlling power. ---Is Cap'n Cuttlefish unable to turn into squid form, and can Octavio not turn into humanoid form? Amano: Cuttlefish can probably transform and produce some ink, but not like he could in his younger years. It's like when your grandpa says he's gonna do a squat, and he can kind of do it, but not really... it's like that. Inoue: Octavio became unable to take on his humanoid form due to an injury he got long ago. In a Sunken Scroll in S1, you can see a figure who appears to be Octavio before he was injured.

[[TN: This has to be the true origin to the information of Octavio being unable to take on humanoid form! I was troubled by the fact that when this info was brought up by the writers of nintendo dream in that 2018 issue in a way that made it sound like obvious information, they didn't say when or where they heard it...but this is it.]]

[ginkgo-phyta]

Hotch would definitely give you the princess treatment, and you know what? Jack would too, after seeing his father he knows how to treat a girl right. And the team would definitely tease Hotch, because his son is going to steal his partner from him :)

omg no LITERALLYYY tho like just like omfg alright i got carried away with this and its not even really what you're talking about but listen to me okay LISTENNNNN

tagged spencer reid x reader because i want more people to see this teehee pls dont hate me i have spencer fics yall should read if you havent already but also you should still read this too

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH AARON HOTCHNER AND ITS INFLUENCE ON HIS SON JACK gn!reader, FLUFF, no warnings(?) another informal blurb typa format :P

you and hotch decide together you'd like to date for a while first, take things slower and fully solidify and strengthen your relationship, before you become a part of jack's life. you didn't want jack to get attached to you or write you off too quickly in case life took you in different directions. you didn't know it at the time, but hotch introduced you to jack when he was sure he was going to marry you some day- and soon. he had been so incredibly head over heels in love with you and once you and jack got close, the little guy really got to witness how highly his father regarded you- and just how he showed you it every day. even in the little things. from the way hotch pulled out your chair, held all doors open for you, always kept your favorite drinks and snacks stocked up in the fridge and pantry, never let you open your own car door, the way he made spaces for you in his bathroom and closet without even being asked, and how he always stuck to your weekly dinner date- whether in person or over the phone. to the way his father would look at you, listen intently to whatever you were talking or ranting about, how he'd cup your hands and press quick kisses to them or move any bothersome strands of hair from your face when you'd eat, and how enthusiastic he always was when you and jack would spend time together.

jack was a bit hesitant with you at first, he was a bit older at that point and the quickness with which beth had left his life had admittedly stung him, leaving an ever-present welt behind. but he warmed up to you, appreciative of the way you welcomed him with open arms, never pressured him to spend time with or even like you (letting him accept you at his own pace) and how you clearly were not trying to take the place of his late mother- even many, many years into your relationship with his father. what he loved the most was how you always encouraged hotch to recount stories of haley, put pictures of her in jack's room or wherever else he wanted them, and how you would remind him: "your mother would be so proud of you jack." you would watch old home videos of their old family and jack never failed to notice how you wouldn't ever feel negatively about it. that was really what won him over. he also loved how open you were with both him and his dad- every day you'd say "i love you!" both casually and purposefully. it instilled in the young boy the importance of expressing appreciation, love, and care for others.

before you, hotch was always a just bit emotionally closed off. even when it came to jack he liked to keep himself a bit more reserved. he tried to stay a strong and unwavering inspiration, only wanting to show his son his best face. but once you came into their lives you inspired hotch to open up more than he had the last few years after haley's passing, inspired him to embrace even the "uglier" emotions he felt in life: grief, anger, sadness, and tiredness. it ended up passing onto jack in small ways, allowing him to feel even closer to dad. you became a huge structural post in jack's life. your love for one other inspired him, as he grew up he dreamed of one day having a relationship like yours. he looked forward to being able to treat his significant other the way his father cares for you.

you loved jack as if he was your own, though you never wanted to say that to him for fear of overstepping your role. aaron would always assure you, especially as jack grew older, that his boy felt it. you watched him go from a playful child, to a moody teenager, to a budding adult eager to make his mark on the world. and you were there supporting him the whole way.

you'll spend a lifetime with the both of them and although there will be many funny, loving, or frustrating moments you'll hold in a special place in your mind, there's one memory from when he was still a youngin that you love the most. it was a surprise dinner party at your fancy restaurant, aaron had booked the whole place just for you and the guests to celebrate your engagement and he had enlisted jack's help to plan the whole thing. jack, the bau team, and your friends and family were all there to shower you in love. the most memorable part of the night was the moment everyone sat down for dinner, all around a giant table (possibly multiple tables pushed together). as everyone moved to take their place jack ran so eagerly in front of you to pull your chair out before his father got the chance. you were shocked for a second before bursting out in a melodious laugh- it was so unexpected but you were incredibly moved. "oh, jack, thank you!" your loving, excited, and genuinely appreciative tone made jack's already huge grin grow even wider and more endearing. everyone else had noticed this too and laughed in joy along with you. "oh my god!" "that was so freakin cute" "he did not just do that!" rang out around you. of course aaron noticed, standing in silence for a second, a similar smile mirrored on his face, before he shook his head with a chuckle. as you took you seat, jack made sure to push your chair in just before you sat down fully, diligently executing what he'd studied his father do hundreds of times before. you turned to thank him, but before you could even open your mouth jack moved to take your cloth napkin from the table, shake it open, and carefully place it in your lap. awwws flooded in from all sides of the table

"oh you are just so adorable jack, thank you so much." you said as you pinched his still slightly chubby cheek "you are just the kindest, sir." you playful tone cause jacks entire face to blush and he shyly walked over to take a seat next to you.

"what? you take my job, and now you don't even want to sit next to me?" hotch spoke up from you other side. jack knew his father was joking, but he still bashfully giggled, sinking a bit more into his seat

"you better be careful, hotch," derek spoke up from across the table, motioning to his former boss with a breadstick, "looks like you got some competition there."

everyone broke out into more laughter, especially aaron. in the midst of the hysterics, the once-stoic man's hand crept into your lap to hold your own, thumbing over the back of your hand and the beautiful engagement ring wrapped around your finger. you shared a glance while you both laughed before you looked over to jack. wordlessly, your hand suddenly hopped up to ruffle up the little boy's hair, causing him to scrunch up his nose and giggle even more.

but you didn't have to say anything, your eyes held the truth. love. jack continued to look up at you, feelings of warmth, joy, and safety draped over him like a fuzzy throw, covering him from the crown of his head to the tips of his fingers and toes. he knew that with you in his life now, besides him and his father, everything would be okay.

A/N: SCREAMING how was this anon? sorry i didn't delve into the team teasing hotch more bc these thoughts were swimming in my head and i NEEDED to get them down perhaps i could do another post of just teasing quotes if that's something you'd like! i got a few ideas swimmin already teehee i hope you enjoyed my love!!

[norrizzandpia]

okay but how about a tiny blurb where lando or oscar catch reader watching edits or reading a fanfic

lol i love this

Whatcha Readin’? (LN4)

Summary: It was a good story, that was her only argument.

Warnings: nada

Lando’s workout had been grueling, straight from hell and constructed just to murder his entire being. His legs felt like they were about to give out under him as he unlocked his front door. He entered his apartment, an unusually quiet apartment seeing as his girlfriend should have been home too, and looked around aimlessly.

He expected his girl to be bursting from somewhere in the house, throwing herself into his body for a few kisses and murmurs about missing him, yet he came up empty-handed. She wasn’t the napping type, so being asleep wasn’t an option and she wouldn’t have been out, having groaned to him this morning as he got ready that she was so burnt out, she needed a day to stay in and do nothing.

His feet took him through the arch of the foyer, into the kitchen, before he was rounding the corner and finding her sprawled out on the couch. Her head laid against the back of the sofa, her headphones in and blasting music so loud he could hear it, with her phone propped on her stomach. At first glance, it looked as if she was utilizing that Kindle Unlimited subscription he had gotten her for her birthday months before, but he knew the way that app was formatted and when he gave it a second glance, he realized what she was looking at wasn’t Kindle. Stepping closer, he squinted his eyes, not wanting to get too close and spook her, trying to read what was on her screen. Whatever she was reading was quite intense, a couple fighting over the fact that the boyfriend had been neglecting the girlfriend for months and forgetting about important events like her birthday and their anniversary.

Lando’s foot went to step away, deducing that she had found another platform to fulfill her reading addiction. Except, just as he was about to leave it, his girlfriend said loudly, “Lando would never say that, though!”

He froze, turning his head slowly in confusion. His eyes flew over the screen before landing on his name, the character of the boyfriend being filled by him.

A fanfiction.

His girlfriend was reading a fanfiction about him.

He died.

Over the volume of her music, Y/n heard faint hysterics, making her turn her head to see her boyfriend doubled over in laughter. She took the earbuds out, looking at him weirdly as his face turned red from a lack of oxygen.

“What’s so funny?” She asked, standing before him with a look of pure confusion.

He clutched his stomach as he choppily got out, “YOU- FANFIC- ME!”

The color draining from her face sent him further into a state of pure amusement, “Oh my god, Lando…”

He continued laughing although part of him felt bad as her face began to heat up in embarrassment. Pulling himself together, he rounded the couch and kissed her cheek lightly, “Oh, love, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard in my entire life.”

Her mouth fell open, “I’m so sorry. I don’t read it that often. I just-” She began to make excuses before stepping back and looking at him helplessly, “The storyline is just really good, okay?!”

He nodded with a smile on his face, “I don’t care, Y/n. You read whatever you want to read, baby. I won’t love you any less.”

She blushed, opening her mouth to say an affirmation of love back, but he decided to continue his thought, “Plus, I won’t lie, it’s a bit of an ego boost to know that my girlfriend is reading stories about me. Can’t get enough of me, huh?”

He teased her, poking her sides lightly, as she began to laugh with him.

When he pulled her into him by her waist and kissed her lips, she whispered, “Can we at least keep this between us?”

He nodded, “Sure, love.”

He kissed her again, this time with a squeeze of his arms as they wrapped around her. And when he plopped their bodies back onto the couch behind them, he picked up her phone.

“Now, what would I not say?”

[thefangirlfever]

The studious type (a Miguel O'hara fanfic, 18+, MDNI)

Summary: Boyfriend Miguel helping you relax during your finals week.

Tags: F/M, afab reader, College AU, established relationship, smut, oral sex (F. receiving), Miguel being a munch (because I can), use of condoms, masturbation, thigh riding, PIV penetration, fluff, soft Miguel O’hara, a bit of dirty talk, aftercare

Note: Finals are not the only thing coming… Very self-indulgent. My first time trying this format, hope you like it.

I am too tired and I don’t have much time, so please, accept this blurb instead of a real story ToT

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Saying that you are anxious for your upcoming finals is an understatement. You keep on pulling all-nighter after all-nighter, taking micro nap sometimes, eating only instant noodles… Finals are really taking a toll on your physical and mental health. And it shows. You also start to get tired and more susceptible.

This doesn’t go unnoticed by your boyfriend, Miguel. Not only does he notice all of this but he also tries to help you as much as he can.

He also has to think about his own finals but that doesn’t stop him from texting you every day, making sure you’re eating enough, taking some naps and just to check on you in general. He is not really prone to public displays of affection or such things but he cares. And his way to show it is by his actions, as small as they may seem.

The two of you also had shared study session. It didn’t matter that you had different classes and majors. You would just keep helping each other, exchanging glances from time to time… And each time Miguel would feel you close to falling asleep, he would either tell you to rest or wake you up with a gentle nudge, depending on the time of the day.

Always brings your favorite snacks to make sure you have eaten at least one thing.

He doesn’t say it but you really amaze him. You’re always motivated, determined to do your best no matter what. One would even call you a perfectionist but that doesn’t bother him. He is really supportive of you in everything you make. You got a presentation? He’ll gladly listen to you as if he was your future audience. You could be talking about something he knows nothing about and he would still be 100% invested in your speech, asking questions afterward… You want to write a phd thesis? He got your back. You want to spend more time than it’s necessary on a paper because the topic matters to you? He will proofread you.

Needless to say, you gladly do the same for him. In fact he likes when you ask questions about what he is working on. And it’s actually endearing to see him geek out about things like dark energy, quantum physics and other things that would usually bore you to death.

After every study session, he walks with you to your bus/ subway station. You usually don’t talk much since you are both tired. Sometimes he would take your hand and slips his fingers between yours without saying anything about it.

Always texts you to make sure you did get back home safely.

You can be sure that the last day of your exam (or a few days after if his finals end later), the two of you will have one of your usual date nights.

Depending on how tired he is, he would either cook something or order take out. If he cooks something, you always make sure to bring something of your own. Even if he tells you that you don’t have to, he always ends up eating what you bring because he is a sweet tooth.

You’re usually too tired after finals to do anything else than just sitting on his couch, watching a movie the two of you probably already watched a hundred of times but that doesn’t matter. There’s something comfortable in what’s predictable.

And every part of this evening is predictable. From you falling asleep while the two of you cuddle to him gently playing with your hair in order to keep you awake. If it’s cold outside, you are wrapped under a warm blanket that covers each of your limbs. His hand that holds your waist slowly drifts to your thigh and draws lazy shape over it. He is not even thinking about it; it has become a habit of his.

Just like the way you nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck while wrapping your arms around his shoulders. Was it the most comfortable position? Not. Did you care? Also no.

The night would usually end with Miguel having to carry you to bed since you passed out on the couch.

NSFW content ahead

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But sometimes the night would take an unexpected turn. All these days and even weeks spent studying had left the two of you filled with pent-up sexual frustration. And no alone time was the same as the intimacy you guys wanted.

You’re sitting on Miguel’s lap in front of the TV, but none of you are really paying attention to the movie at this point of the night.

He is too distracted by the scent of your hair since your head is so close to his face. His fingers playing with the locks of your hair are not enough for him. He has reached this part of the night where he wants more. He kisses the top of your head in an attempt to test the waters, see if you’re in the same mood.

He would make it look like it’s nothing, or an accident but the two of you know each other too well. After the third kiss, you understand what he has in mind. And you’ve been thinking the same thing all night long, if not longer. These last weeks have been nothing but frustration and you’re more than ready to give in.

You lean further into his embrace, clearly indicating your will to go further. You do this in a nonchalant way, as if it was nothing but he noticed the way your thighs brush against his and how you rest more of your weight near his crotch region.

The hand that was on your lower back supporting you slowly snakes up along your spine until it rests on the back of your neck. His free hand drifts toward your thigh to draw lazy shapes over it. But this time he is deliberately thinking about the moves he makes. His fingertips brush over you as if it was an accident once again, it’s barely a flicker.

The back of his fingers drag along the curve of your thigh, running over your skin until he reaches your knees. He repeats this movement over and over before gripping your thighs more intently. His fingers dig into your flesh, making you feel very aware of his presence behind you. He would usually use his thumb to draw small circles on your inner thigh, eliciting a trail of goosebumps all along.

While the two of you played this little game, you never look at each other. On your side, you still pretend that nothing’s happening, keeping your eyes on the TV but still pushing yourself more against him. He can feel your chest presses against his, your hair brushing his chin and at some point, you’re practically just sitting on his groin.

As the evening goes on, Miguel’s hands get bolder with his actions. He squeezes your thigh from time to time before eventually bringing it under your shirt, avoiding the spot you want him on on purpose. His warm touch on your stomach makes you squirm on top of him. The way your hips shift doesn’t help with his growing erection and his hand on your neck keep you in place, holding you in a careful but firm way.

Without saying a word, his fingertips dance their way over the curve of your belly. He makes sure to trace over the folds of your skin, of every roll on your tummy, to just explore and take in the softness of your belly. He can’t wait for the moment his face will make contact with it. Your skin is too smooth to resist it in his opinion.

You’re a blushing mess at this point and you don’t dare looking at what his hands are doing on you. Your breath gets a little more shallow with every stroke of his on your stomach. He leans closer and brings his face to the crook of your neck, nibbling your skin while making fun of you for not being attentive to the movie playing in the background. When he sees how flustered your are, he decides to act upon it.

“Got something else on your mind?”

You just nod your head and tighten your grip on his shoulder. But he has other plans for you. The hand behind your neck now grabs your waist and makes you sit still over his bulge. Your eyes are on the TV and your mind is on Miguel’s body.

His fingertips brush over your crotch, making you squirm more. Your butt rubs against his crotch and he can’t hide a smile this time. His fingertips barely tap over your crotch before his middle finger rubs over your slit. He then rubs two of his fingers over your groin, pushing his fingers against the fabric of your pants, rubbing his fingers in circle… When he gets too frustrated by the fabric covering you, he asks you if he can just take it off.

“Wanna feel you closer, muñeca...” That’s what he would usually whisper into your ear before kissing your earlobe. You can feel his warm breath, his voice almost shaking with desire as he toys with your zipper. A nod of you and your pants are pulled down your thighs. He doesn’t wait for you to remove them fully or even take off your underwear. His eager finger keeps rubbing you over the fabric of your panties until a damp spot appears in the front.

You lost the count of time as the minutes pass. You’re making a mess of yourself, rubbing yourself on him and when he finally pulls down your underwear and his hand cups your sex, the two of you let out a low moan. His fingers find their way through your bush and he rubs your labia, waiting for you to let him know when you’re ready to take him.

You bite down your lower lip and completely leans back against his body. He wraps his arm around you, holding you tightly and making sure you’re comfortable. Miguel then kisses your cheek. He rubs his nose against your skin, kisses your jawline before nuzzling his face in the crook of your nick, kissing and lapping at your skin.

The movie has already come to an end and in the silence of the room, your moans and Miguel’s heavy breath are the only thing that can be heard. His hooked fingers stimulate your clitoris and when you get comfortable enough, he starts thrusting them in and out of you, almost scissoring you.

He then brings his attention to your clitoris, rubbing it in slow motions. He can feel it throbbing under his fingertips and that makes him moan against the skin of your neck. His warm breath raises all the small hair on your nape and you’re getting hot and bothered. His words aren’t helping either.

“I’ll be damned if I don’t taste you before the end of the night. Been craving this pussy of yours for day now...”

When he catches you trying to relieve yourself of all the tension, he whispers “What are you doing?” There’s no anger in his voice, just pure astonishment. “You know you could just ask…”

The mischief in his voice doesn’t go unnoticed by you. He likes seeing you this needy and you can feel it. Your body writes on top of him and your shoulders slouch down when you whisper his name. You know what he wants to hear and you finally surrender when the teasing gets too overwhelming. “Please, Miguel…”

Your needy voice gets him to smile again. He leaves an affectionate kiss on the back of your neck before pulling his fingers out. He wouldn’t mind having his way with you here and there but he has more self-control than that. He gently kisses your shoulder before lifting your body up.

He usually carries you to the bedroom, helping you lay down the bed while the two of you undress. When your clothes are discarded on the floor and he is busy looking for the box of condoms in his nightstand, you take a good look at him. You watch his figure being drawn by the shadows in the room and your gaze lingers on his back. From his shoulders to the small of his back, your eyes trail down his spine. You smile when you see his back dimples and he catches you staring.

With a cheeky grin on his face, he gets back on the bed. You’re expecting a kiss but his lips land on your stomach. His face rests against your skin while he kisses you all over the smooth surface of your belly. Maybe it’s the scent of your lotion. Maybe it’s the way he can feel your breath catching up. Maybe it’s how close he is to your arousal and can literally smell it… he doesn’t know exactly what makes him love him love this moment but he never gets tired of kissing you there.

Of course he has to taste you after that. Each of his kisses send an electrifying feeling to your body and you can feel yourself growing more aroused. When he starts eating you out, you wrap your legs around his head and this feeling immediately gets stronger.

One of his hand holds your thigh while the other keeps teasing you. His fingers keep thrusting in and out of you while his tongue focuses on your clitoris, sucking and licking. When he feels you close, he keeps his pace steady, focused on only one thing. You. Your thighs quivering around his face, your hands holding his hair, your soft moans… He has waited too long for that and when you finally relax and release all the pressure inside you, he growls against your lips.

He quickly wipes your juice off his chin and gets up. His body towers over you, watching the aftermath of what he did to you. His thumb rubs over your sticky thighs and with his free hand, he brings his cock closer to you. You can see the red and swollen head of his member rubbing against your clit while a few moans escape his throat. He throws his head backward, his shoulders quivering as he feels himself growing more impatient.

He is still careful when he penetrates you, using a tad of lube to make this easier. And the fun part is that he gets to tease you more while rubbing it over your entrance. You wait patiently, at least you try, with your hands gripping the sheets while he gets you prepped up.

Everything feels worth it as soon as you feel him moving inside of you. He keeps his pace gentle, making the moment last as longs as possible. You’ve both been waiting too long for this for it to end too soon. Your limbs are entangled over the sheets and he melds into you. You brush away a few strands of hair from his face and he leans his cheek into your palm. His lips place a few kisses on your hand and even your wrist.

You both make sure to never break eye contact, reading on the other one’s face his emotions. He can see from your red cheeks and parted lips that you enjoy this moment. With one hand on your cheek, he leans closer and kisses the tip of your nose before whispering sweet nothings to you. It could be about how he likes your scent, your eyes, or even how good you feel wrapped around him…

Your hands travel down his back that you were admiring earlier and grabs his butt cheeks firmly when he starts to fasten his pace. You keep guiding him with not only your expressions but also your words. When he gets closer to his release, his shoulders lock tightly and you can feel every muscle on his body flex.

He is not really vocal in this moment and usually a few groans let you know that he reached his climax. However he likes hearing your small whimpers while your body writhes and arch under him. He watches you reaching your orgasm with a content smile before kissing your forehead, telling you how good you were.

The two of you stay in bed a few minutes after this moment. He doesn’t usually pull out immediately after, letting you feel him inside of your walls as his member gets back to its usual size. Even after that, you’re still locked together in a tight hug. He knows he will have to let you go at some point but for now he just wants to keep you inside his arms as long as he can.

The aftercare can vary depending on your mood. If the two of you are in a good mood or still feeling playful, you keep exchanging a few kisses. Miguel’s fingers keep running over the curves of your body, especially your stomach and your thighs. On your side, you like letting your fingers run down his spine until you reach the small of his back. Your fingers then brush against his skin in slow circles. He both loves and hates when you do that. You know he is very sensitive down there and he can’t hold back a few moans.

Some days he would help you get into your pajamas while kissing your shoulders and the back of your neck. You don’t speak that much these days but the silence is not awkward. It’s rather comforting. His fingers run down your hair and he can’t help but take in the scent of your curls. He watches you detangle your hair after a long day of work. This has easily become one of his favorite rituals of yours. When you’re done, his fingers run smoothly down your hair and he watches you in awe braid it, helping you when you ask for it. You can be sure that as soon as your nape is exposed, he will kiss it gently.

It usually doesn’t take long for the two of you to fall asleep after this. His arms are wrapped tightly around you, even though he knows you will probably move too much during your sleep for it to be really useful. But he doesn’t care and you nestle yourself against him.

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Note: This was supposed to be really short but I got carried away ToT

Thansk for reading.

[mjjune]

How To Have a Good Beta Reading Experience (or: what I've learned from 3 years of beta reading)

So lately I've been having a lot of discussions about beta reading with my discord groups so I thought I would write it out here and also share some resources I've used over the years.

This is mostly by and for writers, however readers can learn from this post as well!

DISCLAIMER: I'm by no means a writing expert, but I have been either beta reading others' books, or having my own stories beta read consistently since 2020. THIS IS ALL PERSONAL EXPERIENCE/OPINION. Others may agree or disagree ❤️

Here are the main points I'm going to talk about in this post, and I'll do it under the cut to save your dash space:

Understanding Alpha vs. Beta Readers

Choosing Readers

Being Clear About Feedback

Swapping / Compensation

The Importance of Writing Community/Groups

Websites/Resources for Finding Beta Readers

1. Understanding Alphas vs. Betas

So this is extremely important and for me, this may be the difference between me finishing your book or not. Many times, especially from new writers who had never had anyone read their work before, had extremely rough drafts that were barely coherent and were NOT beta ready, but asked me to beta read. I am not a person who can look past extensive grammar errors, nor am I the kind of person who will sit and fix all your grammar line-by-line for you.

Alpha Readers - for first/second drafts

Beta Readers - for polished drafts

It is ok for alpha reads to be unpolished and have grammar issues, and it's even ok if they have plot issues, continuity errors, etc. Because alpha readers are there for that purpose: to be the first eyes on your story and help you find and fix those issues.

The issue I have had over and over, though, is people asking for a beta reader when what they really needed was an alpha. I went in expecting a polished draft and got someone's Draft 0. In some cases, I got 100k drafts where the writer obviously had no idea how to format dialogue grammar and every single dialogue was wrong. Obviously this made me slow and in many cases, unable to finish.

Alpha readers will go in expecting it to be unpolished, and will be prepared to look past grammar/stylistic errors in order to focus on the big picture issues (plot holes, character consistency, pacing/engagement issues, etc). A Beta may be too frustrated by an unpolished draft to finish it or provide the feedback you're looking for. If you have been experiencing a lot of betas backing out and not finishing your work, you might consider this as a possible reason why.

I would also recommend, if you have never had anyone read your work before, even if you have had multiple drafts, it might be safest to ask for alphas rather than betas.

A quick way to see if your work is beta ready (again, personal experience): Pick up a published book from the shelf in your genre. Does your book read similarly? Does your formatting & grammar look the same? Bonus: read it out loud! If reading the published book out loud is significantly easier than reading yours out loud, you're probably in the alpha stage.

TL;DR: Understand your draft and which level of reader your draft is ready for. Know the difference between polished and unpolished, and be upfront about it.

2. Choosing Alphas/Betas

You may not like it but: Just because someone is your friend, real life or online, does not mean they will make a good reader for you.

#1 MOST IMPORTANT: GET READERS WHO LIKE & REGULARLY READ YOUR GENRE!

I cannot stress this enough. As someone who writes vampire content, I cannot begin to express to you the amount of useless comments I got from readers who had clearly never read a vampire book in their life.

You need someone who is familiar with your genre and you likes your synopsis/blurb.

Caveat: that said, I did find a few great betas who had never read vampire content before and gave awesome feedback. However, these readers knew and admitted they knew nothing about the paranormal genre, and because of that did not make any comments on worldbuilding, instead sticking to plot and character development only. Some readers can't make this separation.

Another thing I would recommend, especially if you are swapping or the beta reader is also a writer/on writeblr, I would recommend reading their writing before having them beta read. If you read their excerpts and see that it's really unpolished or a style that's vastly different than yours, that might change whether you want them to read for you.

In my most recent beta round, I used a google form to do a quick survey to see who was interested in beta reading. This worked really well for me and I would recommend it! You can also use this to make all potential readers agree to not share/distribute/plagiarize your work, so you have it in writing just in case someone were to try something.

This was also a great way to see which genres they usually read and how many times they have beta read in the past!

TL;DR: Get readers who LIKE your genre. Read their writing and see how they write. Use an online signup form to narrow down.

3. Be Clear About The Type of Feedback You Want

This is perhaps the second most important thing when you get readers. Many readers will shy away from reading your work if you have nothing in mind for them to look out for. Also, being clear about this shows that you 1) know it isn't perfect and needs work and 2) you have insight into what the issues already are.

For Alphas, these traits are what I have found to be the most helpful:

Immediate inline reactions - particularly emotional engagement and pointing out lines that resonated with them

NO grammar/stylistic comments (unless incomprehensible)

Questioning of worldbuilding, character decisions, and character development - particularly if confusing or unclear

Comments on action sequences & their readability

Comments on believability of the plot points/progression

For Betas, these are what have been most helpful to me:

Comments on grammar, especially if repetitive

Stylistic comments, particularly for over-used words or noticeably repetitive sentence structures

Comments on pacing

Comments on plot initiation point and buildup/execution of the climax

Not questioning my worldbuilding/plot and trusting that what I have written is intentional. Only pointing out areas that have on-page evidence of inconsistencies.

Everything above is simply personal preference. You might find other comments to be better for alphas/betas. However, being upfront about which comments you want or don't want can drastically change which people want to read for you!

Some readers are obsessed with in-depth inline grammar/style comments, some aren't at all. Some writers LOVE these in-depth grammar comments, and some don't. Being clear about what you want is the best way to make sure you and your readers are compatible for the stage of editing you're at.

4. Swapping / Compensation

So this one I might have a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I wanted to cover it because so many people talk about it on here and other sites.

Again, based on my personal experience, swapping and compensation does not mean you're going to get better feedback or have a better experience or relationship with readers.

For the record, for everyone who beta reads for me—and finishes—I always offer to read theirs, even if it's a genre I don't like.

Personally, I have never tried compensation (re: money) for beta readers. However, there are a few issues I've come across with swapping:

Mine was beta ready and theirs was unpolished first draft

Our types of feedback didn't align

Our genre preferences didn't align

Their feedback was nowhere near as high quality or constructive as mine

In these cases, one or both of us burnt out on reading the others' work, and then we'd both bail. Especially with #4, it was very disheartening for me to spend hours finding their plot holes, helping them come up with ways to fix them, for them to then write 1 paragraph about what they thought of my story that was extremely surface level. To me, that wasn't even a swap, and was practically worthless. There was even one who got sensitive about the feedback I was providing (which was a queer sensitivity read) and then left almost identical comments on my story, which weren't even relevant. It was like revenge-commenting.

All this to say: I have had positive experiences with swaps. My alpha for twtr was a swap and I really enjoy her work and she enjoys mine, and we will probably continue to swap forever.

This goes back to #2 above: be picky & choose your readers well. Your story is your baby, and it deserves to be critiqued by people who value you and your story, and want to help you make it the best possible version of itself.

To summarize, I have had two good swapping experiences. I have had 10+ good uncompensated betas—with an offer for me to read their stuff when it's ready. Do with that what you will.

5. Writing Community / Groups

On to a more positive note! I have had the best experience here on writeblr, and this is coming from someone who has tried multiple other communities (which I discuss in the last section below). Having my own discord server from tumblr, joining a few other writers' discord servers, has completely changed the game regarding finding consistent betas, more resources, and just having an overall much more positive time writing and editing.

Writeblr keeps me grounded, keeps me hopeful, and even if I share something that doesn't get tons of notes, it's so nice to have interaction. It's so nice to give and get back, consistently.

I do want to emphasize the importance of giving to get back. If no one is liking/interacting with your excerpts, tag/ask games, etc. then that's probably because you're not interacting with them! It's very important to show interest in other people's work!!

I'm not saying you need to jump onto everyone's taglists for all their wips, but join the ones that genuinely interest you the most. Play in ask/tag games consistently. Follow writers back who follow you (if they post things you're interested in, ofc).

I have the same amount of followers as the people I follow right now, and I think that goes to show that people reciprocate here on writeblr! It's a lovely community and don't be afraid to reach out ❤️

I have found almost ALL my recent betas from my tumblr and discord groups. They have been lovely so far and I would highly recommend building up community here if you are interested in finding betas.

6. Websites/Resources for Finding Betas

Alright, last section. Thanks for bearing with me. I'm going to go through the sites I have used, and why I still use them, or why I dropped them.

Scribophile

So, for starters, this is one I don't use anymore. This was the site I first used when I had a polished draft in 2020 and had no idea how to get feedback. Essentially, they have a point-system. The more comments you make, the more points you get, and then when you have 3 points, you can post a chapter. It continues in a cycle.

Pros: Personally, I think the site helped me a lot in realizing what a bad critique looks like (which is helpful!) and also helped me learn which comments/feedback types work for me, and which don't. I don't regret my time there by any means, and I found one life-long friend and beta reader there I wouldn't trade for the world. It also allows you to post/remove your story and the readers don't have direct access to it—meaning if they want to download/steal/plagiarize, they'd have to copy and paste or screenshot chapter by chapter. It's a little safety precaution.

Cons: It's not the best place to get constructive feedback. The issue with their system is it encourages quantity over quality in critiques. Because of that, you'll get strangers rewriting your entire chapter in their own style so they get 2-3 points for one critique, but... was any of it actually helpful to you? Maybe, maybe not. It's also random, so you can't control who comments on your stuff, and they might just comment to get points even if they hate your genre. I also don't think it's fair to have to do 3-5 chapter critiques in order to save up enough points to post ONE chapter of your own. And if you want to post your story for full beta reads and control who reads it and who doesn't, you have to subscribe monthly.

So I keep an eye on it occasionally to look through their forums on writing, agents, publishing, etc. But most of the forums gets nasty, because there are a lot of really pretentious writers who think they know all the rules. If you join small groups (e.g. sub-groups based on diversity, etc) they tend to have better and more meaningful discussions.

Personally, I would never use it for beta/alpha/feedback ever again. This is the site where most of my bad swaps came from. But you might find it useful! So I thought I would share it.

Nanowrimo Forums

This is another one I don't use anymore, but might consider reusing in the future. The biggest issue I have with nanowrimo is that a lot, and I mean A LOT, of these participants are first-time writers and have no concept of what polished vs. unpolished even means. I did find two really good swaps there (actually the only two good full swaps I've had) but those were very hard to find.

There is also the issue that a good chunk of them only write during November, not year round. So for finding consistent, year-long partners, this is not the best option. I'm a member of 2 discords that have all fallen silent as soon as Nano actually ended.

Also, in my experience, asking questions about anything related to "controversial" topics (especially trans and minority ethnic groups) becomes toxic very quick, which is unfortunate. There are even a few moderators who seem to be contributing to the toxic/immature discussions rather than fixing them/shutting them down, which is the main reason I stopped using it.

However, it's a GREAT place to get free, simple covers! Their artisan section is fantastic and there are a lot of people there willing to make basic covers/banners for you for free.

BetaBooks

I've only been using this one about a month so far, but I'm really liking it. It's set up that you can invite betas to your story specifically, or you can look through a beta reader library, read their profiles, and invite them to see if they're interested.

This is essentially an alternative to Scribophile. It allows you to post your story online and find betas and become a beta.

Why I like it better than Scribophile: it's not a point-based system, meaning it's uncompensated so the readers have nothing to gain other than enjoying/helping your story. There's no hard feelings if someone bails. It allows you to see all comments in one place (which Scrib can't do). (And with discount codes found through google, it's cheaper, too. Message me if you need help with this 👀)

It also is all online, easily removable, so readers would have to copy/paste or screenshot chapter-by-chapter to steal it. So again, just a little safety net that makes me feel better.

Writeblr

Yep, that's right. Right here. Actually right here on tumblr has been where I have found the most beta readers and in the shortest time. I talked about this in the section before so I won't regurgitate. But there's a reason why this community is so long-lasting. It really is the best one out there I've found.

TL;DR / IN CONCLUSION:

Know where your book is in terms of reader-readiness. Know the difference between alphas/betas and polished/unpolished. Know the types of feedback that work for you and specifically request it when recruiting betas.

Interact with a community. Give interaction in order to receive, and don't expect people to reblog/like your content if you don't reach out first. Join small, niche writing community discords. Find like-minded writers.

Decide to swap or not, but this won't make or break you.

There are many writing communities out there designed to help you not only find betas, to provide beta-reading feedback forms and commentary. Try them out and see what works best for you.

And above all, thank Writeblr for being such a lovely community ❤️

[buggywiththefolkmagic]

Buggy's Book Reviews: The Old Mountain Spellbook

Well well well, look who has returned after a long hiatus while life kicked my ass from here to Sunday. Let's get started with a bang shall we? TW: Slavery mentions, appropriation, generalized frustration at the writing space currently with the rise of ghost writers and AI.

This is: The Old Mountain Spellbook by Alda Dagny

Rating: 1/10 

Buckle up. This is gonna be a bumpy ride. Prepare to be shocked, horrified, and gobsmacked.

For context the cover art of this book caught my eye and then I read the small blurb of a subtitle for it and cringed so incredibly hard that the moment it showed up in my Spotify audio book list, I had to give it a listen for a measly 3 and a half hours of my life while at work. 

I regret this decision so very hard.

For further context:

This “author” Alda Dagny has also written books on…”The Secrets of the Nile” a three part series called “The Old Norse Spellbook:”, and “Secrets of Mesoamerica”. 

My head hurts from thinking about the gall to “write” on such a wide variety of topics in a seniority form. But before I get ahead of myself let me go back into my proper format for these reviews.

Pros: SOME of the information is right. The mentions of planting by the signs and how the signs works was very accurate. The generalized description of grannies, while very surface level and focused far too heavily on the midwife aspect, which don’t get me wrong is super mega ulta important! Was right if not very generalized. That’s about all I’ve got. 

It does mention that Hoodoo is a closed practice that stems from African Dispora/the Trans-Atlantic slave trade which good for this “author”. You will understand why that term is in parenthesis later! 

This book also included a Bell Witch mention twice which made my Tennessee heart hopeful for like two seconds.

Cons: Gods help me. For starters, I know this was likely not a choice this “author” made, but why in the seven hells did the publisher pick an AUSTRALIAN PERSON to do the narration for this book? The mispronunciation of Appalachia and Asfidy are now burned into my brain for life. I do not appreciate it. The MINIMUM a narrator should do is glance through for proper pronunciations. 

My gripes with the audiobook out of the way let’s get into the meat of this review: The book’s contents and why I believe this was ghost written/stolen from other places and put forward by an ai generated “author”. 

The second entire chapter of this book, a whopping 40 minutes of the audiobook, is all about Hoodoo. The real thing that got me was it SAYS that Hoodoo is a CLOSED PRACTICE stemming from Africa Diaspora. And what does this book do anyway? Break Hoodoo down into stupid candle magic and mojo bags and tell you how to do “it”. I was surprised it got the origin of Hoodoo right! It was RIGHT! And then it shits on itself. 

Examples: Hoodoo shares similarities with wicca. Tarot is incredibly important to the practice. And it is a religion and not a practice. The practice is “rootwork”. Did I mention that Hoodoo focuses on “doing no harm”? Oh and the third eye is important too, especially to Hoodoo despite it being a Hindu concept. I cannot make this up.

The wording of this book is also incredibly strange. I don’t have a ebook version to double check but I am positive the words Furthermore and However are included at least 50 times. EACH. The book also repeats itself numerous times. A good example is with the Furnace Ghost story it tells in the 4th chapter I believe? Where it repeats the same end of sentence with just slightly different beginnings within the same paragraph. There’s also other phrases used at the end of chapters to usher in the next that just read…weirdly? Examples: “Let me set the stage” “You are not going to want to miss this.” What are you writing a script or a book? 

Now for the proper “Appalachian Magic” side of the book. It consistently uses the term Granny Witch, and states numerous times that witchcraft was just fine! Appalachia did not care and the “fear” of witches never penetrated the mountains. But yet a “granny witch” would use faith not as a proper form of healing, oh no! It was “to keep doubters at bay”. So faith healing was a cover up and not the actual practice itself. 

This book also has two whole chapters on legends and myths, which is fine, if it didn’t focus on the ones everyone knows like Bigfoot and Mothman only. Like it doesn’t cover any of the smaller localized things or spirits at all. Just the things you could easily find if you googled “appalachia spooky”. Hmmmmmm. Strange isn’t it? 

This book also stated that tarot and black tourmaline was ULTRA important to Appalachian magic. Like where does that come from? There’s another chapter dedicated to the phases of the moon and “spells”  which they mean in a modern new-age witchcraft way and definitely not Appalachian, although I will give it props for saying the moon phases and astrology are different here. Because they are.

Tiktok was mentioned twice; it appropriates dreamcatchers and other Hoodoo items in the “non-Hoodoo” sections of the book. Hell, it even said, accurately mind you, that Mothman has even “spawned fanfiction”. It even got the information on where Roanoke was…wrong.  Roanoke is in Virginia. This book claims it is in North Carolina. 

The most damning thing however, and I use that however in a very sarcastic tone, is the “author” herself. I painstakingly typed in some text from the book and was surprised to see it come back as “human written”. I don’t think that’s quite true, if it is then they text portions must be stolen from other sources and shoved into a book form. Because this author? A bot.

Her profile image used on Amazon, which is the ONLY SOURCE of information on her, no socials, no google, nothing. Is AI generated. Proof is here: 

And a blurb from the book I wanted to include as well. The first of many furthermores used.

The author's Biography, which again is the ONLY SOURCE OF INFORMATION on this supposed person, says as follows: "Alda Dagny has always been drawn to history. Growing up in Scandinavia, history has always been all around her, gods and goddesses, pagan rituals and spells. Ancient ruins that dot her homeland captivated her from an early age, giving her a lifelong love of all things history. " That's all I can find. That's it. Just AI and or ghost writing/theft has officially found itself in the AFM space. I hate this society.

[murdrdocs]

hi... this is awkward, i admire your work very much! i mean really! I'm an anon who has been reading fics on tumblr since like almost 2 years ago and right now i want to write my own fics! (it's my hobby to write and i have so many writing ideas that i want to write down) but I don't know how to really start writing on tumblr... so I'm asking you for help if you don't mind! like what apps do you use for writing before u upload it in tumblr? how do you edit your fics and how do you edit the, what is it called... the picture above your fics... as you can see I am not educated in this LOL.. how do you edit the fonts?.. to make the lines that seperates.. whatever, stuff like that!! if a writer saw this post too, maybe you can also help me!! thank uu 🧡

oh i got u anon (imagine me rubbing my hands together)

for my drabbles/blurbs, i write and edit in tumblr just bc its sm easier for me that way. i do everything on my mac now (sometimes i'll use my phone to write but i always edit on my mac) but sometimes i'll give everything a read on my phone bc i catch errors easier that way.

when i'm writing a full fic, i keep it simple and use google docs. the app doesn't matter i don't think, i just know when copy and pasting into tumblr on docs, if you copy and paste on a computer it'll keep all your formatting (italics and bolds etc) and make it sm easier for you.

when i edit my fics i just read and check for errors, plot inconsistencies, the flow of the story, and just things like that. nothing crazy revolutionary.

for the pictures above my fics i use art that i find on pinterest (im not well versed in art i just look for pics that i think r pretty) and the i crop them. when i crop i legit guess on how thin i like them to be but i never do any bigger than 16:9. however i also used to do the three square pics format, and also just use gifs. this part is totally up to u and it'll deff change over time.

i use one font on tumblr but before the keep reading line i use the cutesy tiny text. to get the tiny text u just highlight ur text and next to the 'B' and 'i' will be a '<s>'. and the for keep reading you place a space between your text blocks and there's a grey icon that has a line, a squiggly, and then another line. thats the keep reading button (very crucial plz add it!)

and tysm!! this is not awkward at all i get lots of questions like this

[kyuziipon]

wait I feel like I missed something what is the promise of the cherry blossoms im so curious

EHEHEHE I LOVE THIS QUESTION…

Ok so the promise of the cherry blossoms is my oc story about a highschool basketball club!! I named it that because cherry blossoms are a huge signifier of change and new beginnings, and I want a big part of the overall theme of the story to be that there’s always hope, there’s always room to grow, and you’re never stuck where you started, you can have a new beginning. I haven’t made any actual materials for the story (yet) mostly because I struggle with which format would be best to tell it in.

The story itself focuses on each member of the club, as well as the two managers and their coach. Every character has their own personal story, usually intertwining with some of the others in some way. The other main theme of the story is the idea that what you see on the surface isn’t always everything to a person, and there’s a lot more to them than meets the eye.

The characters:

Starting with the players on the team, we have the captain, Soga Umeno (his surname is subject to change cuz I don’t like how it flows). He’s in his third year, and cares very deeply about the other members of his team, but struggles with how at home he was practically forced to become a parent to his three much younger siblings.

After Soga, the vice captain is a third year named Seki Matsuda (aka Matsu). While Soga is very warm and caring, he is extremely cold and harsh. He believes putting 100% of your effort into everything you do is the best way to be, to the point of it being extremely detrimental to his well being. He is extremely sleep deprived, extremely exhausted, and extremely stuck in his own head. He’s very autistic and has ocd. He’s also (fallen out) childhood friends with the next character.

Onto the other two third years on the team, Kazuha Yumeno (aka Kazu) is the token pretty boy. He’s spectacularly gorgeous, but also spectacularly self centered and vain. Similar to Matsuda, he strives to be the best, but instead of in everything, it’s specifically in beauty. He has an eating disorder and hates himself so so much, and he sacrifices a lot of his life in the name of his beauty, which was a major factor in his and Matsu’s falling out.

For the final third year, we have Akihito Tsukimori. He was one of the first characters I made, when I still didn’t know what I wanted the story to be, and he’s not as fleshed out as the others. He’s a really laid back, cool type, who is a passionate musician who is stuck under his parents’ thumb and cannot pursue his dreams due to their desire for him to follow in family tradition and have some boring normal job, like a doctor or something (I never decided lol. He’s not my fave tbh). He plays trumpet.

For second year, let’s start with Yuta Ito. He was originally the main character before I got rid of the concept of a protagonist in this story. He’s a (mostly) pre transition trans guy who just transferred to this school and has always dreamed of being a professional basketball player, and goddammit he will stop at nothing to be allowed on the boys team and prove he’s just as good (if not better) than all of them. Spoiler, he is better than all of them, not for special reasons, everyone else just kind of sucks.

Next is Kiyohiko Suzuki (or, later in the story, Kiyoko). She was the second character I made and I LOVE her. Upon Yuta’s arrival in the club, she’s introduced to the idea she may not be as cis as she thought, and begins experimenting, only to discover she is in fact a girl. She really struggles with her family in this regard, but especially her relationship with her two older sisters, and the fact that her family favored her for being the “only son”. There’s a lot more to the sisters but that’s too much for this little blurb lol.

For the final second year (there’s supposed to be a fourth but I just… have never made him), we have Hideyoshi Akazuma (aka Hide). He’s pretty much a shoe-in to be the next captain, and he’s essentially perfect at everything he does. He and Yuta don’t get along, especially due to Yuta’s similarities to his twin brother. Hide is extremely pressured by his parents and teachers to uphold this perfect persona, and it puts a lot of tension between him and his peers, but more importantly, between him and his brother.

The first years are arguably my favorite, so let’s start with Daishi Edogawa, as he’s the easiest. Daishi is by far the tallest on the team, and is extremely awkward and nervous. He grew up raised by his mom and grandma, alongside his little sister, Tsuna. Due to this, he never really had any male role models in his life, and now is struggling with his relationship to being a man and his masculinity, and what all of it even means. He also has a crush on the following character, Madoka.

Madoka Kume is everything. He is my boy. I love him. He’s the second smallest of the cast, and matching to his appearance, he has a very strong childlike innocence (for the most part) and naïveté. He was raised by his older sister Utaha, after his mother decided she hated him and severely neglected him. Utaha could have her own section with all this stuff… anyway, Madoka is very aware that his disposition can make it a lot harder on his sister, and desires to become stronger and more independent to ease her burden, but throughout this develops an avoidance to asking for help. He is also autistic, dyslexic, and possesses some other ambiguous learning disabilities.

Following on to my ACTUAL favorite, Hotaru Ibe (previously known as Haruka). He is a former child model who was extremely talented and beautiful, but also very lonely and desperate for human connection. Due to this he experiences some of the horrors of the industry with a photographer acting as his friend and taking advantage of him. After a particularly bad incident, Hotaru quits, decides he’s never doing this again, changes his name and his entire look, and does his best to repress all his trauma with the desire to be “a completely normal kid”. He’s got a lot of shit going on.

And the final player, Ryuunosuke Itori (aka Ryuu), Hotaru’s best friend (Ryuu has a hella crush on him btw). Ryuu is the top of his class, and is extremely similar to Hide and Matsu. He works hard and is is very smart, but the stress starts getting to him. When his delinquent cousin moves in with him, Ryuu finds himself becoming friends with some unsavory types, and soon finds himself spiraling out of control after getting involved in some drug related shit and becomes more and more apathetic and less and less of who he was before. His and Hotaru’s stories (which are actually very intertwined) are probably the heaviest topics.

Onto the two managers, let’s start with Shunichi Itori, a third year, and Ryuu’s older cousin. He’s a delinquent involved in some gang stuff, and after getting detained overnight, his parents are finally fed up and tell him he’s not welcome in their house anymore. His aunt and uncle offer to take him in, if he agrees to put all of that behind him. He takes the offer, and at first he keeps doing bad shit behind their back. They force him to join the basketball club so Ryuu can keep an eye on him, but after he accidentally gets Ryuu involved with his friends, he seems to realize what he’s doing is kind of fucked up, and starts to work on becoming a better person and putting all that stuff behind him, with the help of the other manager.

Aiko Tachibana is a first year, and she’s the third character I made! Her story has shifted a lot, and I have yet to find one that works perfectly. She’s similar to a lot of other characters, she’s very childish but hates being seen this way, has strict parents with high expectations for her, and struggles with her identity. She has anger issues and hates when people don’t take her seriously and struggles with her self image over this. She also has a crush on Suzuki, and believes she likes “mature women”, which factors into her desire to be less childlike.

And of course we have the coach. Her name Maki Ikegami, and she’s an ex professional basketball player who’s career was ended prematurely after an injury. She’s a relatively new addition to the cast and I haven’t worked on her much yet, but she struggles with the new route her life has taken and the way she’s been completely displaced. There’s also supposed to be a club advisor, but I haven’t made them yet oops.

We also have a ton of side characters, such as Utaha Kume (she could have her own section she’s probably the most fleshed out side character), Kiriko and Kaoru Suzuki, Tsuna Edogawa, Ryuu’s currently unnamed prostitute friend (I can’t think of anything that fits her), and many other siblings and family members.

I’m also just now realizing how major a role sibling and family dynamics play in most of these plot lines (unmentioned is how Kazuha and Yuta’s respective brothers are major parts of their characters, among other things).

Sorry for rambling so much I just. Love this story so much and I get excited when anyone asks about it hshdhdjdh

[aconflagrationofmyown]

hii i was just wondering and i mean this with like no malice, seriously i love all your aus and series, but i was just curious if you plan on writing anything anytime soon that isn't of an au/series? i read one of your works that you reposted on a different account that i had no idea existed and was just blown away by it, and i really didn't know you wrote in that type of format, it was called The Honeymoon i think, and i really mean it when i say it was absolutely amazing. i think i just really liked the back and forth dialogue between elvis and the reader, it was such a cute relationship from what i could get of it. i cant say enough how much i loved the relationship and the way you made the reader out to be, contrasting so much with elvis in the most amazing way possible.

so this is kind of both an ask and a way for me to pay my highest compliments to you for that fic, i was too shy to leave an actual comment, so im leaving this little love letter 💘💝💗

Gosh what a sweet thing to find in my inbox, you absolute doll. Thanks for making my day. I wish I knew who you were so I could batter your dm-hobbit-door down and give you extra thanks but I don’t wanna scare you off and I appreciate that you’ve reached out. Thank you, again!

Honestly? I would totally love to write for more in that genre/reader insert. I do love my AU’s and I’m very appreciative and loyal to the folks who’ve become so invested in them but that’s not to say my brain doesn’t have some schemes from time to time and I’d love prompts.

So -i’ll happily take any prompts.

Here’s the deal: Ive learned over a year of writing that I prefer writing AU’s with a significant turn from his actual life, if that makes sense? We’ve got so many authors in this fandom doing such an incredible job writing stories that are so near to the real timeline they read as torrid biographies and I simply don’t see myself achieving anything but subpar mimicry of what they’re already doing so, so well.

Quick shout out to @whositmcwhatsit who is nailing 70’s tour life, @be-my-ally who has a treasure trove of different fics and eras, @ellie-24 who has an amazingly immersive army fic, @thatbanditqueen who slays both 70’s and army era and perhaps more I can’t keep up with her genius, @from-memphis-with-love who has created my dream Hollywood fic, @ab4eva has us down on time travel, @elvisabutler gave us Professor Presley, @prompted-wordsmith gave us ghost meets Austin…so so so many more here I’ve omitted due to brain cell shrinkage and space.

Anyways, so…long answer shortened: If there’s an idea you have that you’ve not seen done much before and based on what else I’ve written you would be intrigued to see me take a crack at it…it would be my honor to give it a try.

I’ve also got a couple of Reader fics already in my head, a genuinely nasty Trailer Park Cop Big Daddy AU and then Regency Elvis that I’ve already written a blurb for. I’m sure there’s much more out there to be explored.

Thank you for all your sweet words and for expressing your interest. 🌸

[twilightarc-gm]

💥👓💛👻

😍 Specs!! Hi!! I see you with these questions 🕵️‍♂️

From this Ask Game: Here

💥 What is one canon thing that you wish you could change? (MDZS) YOU KNOW ME!!! But instead of the super obvious answer about the romantic subplot or whatever, I gotta say like, I really don't think JYL had to literally die for WWX's man-pain. Would the Present Timeline story be drastically different? Yeah, but I think it would have been better. I think it would have forced WWX to confront and resolve his past in more satisfying ways even if MXTX still makes him break off everything with JC-JYL-YMJ. Hottake, but I think it's spicier if he keeps trying to leave everything in the past but his mistakes are still alive and would like a real apology. With JC there's the whole transfer thing, mucking up who might need to apologize to whom, but with JYL it's very clear and very devastating. Where is all the angst this story could have given me?? No, I'm not going to rewrite MDZS about it 😩 I'm just going to suffer in my Yunmeng Trio feels.

👓 What helps you focus when you write? You're going to use this against me, I know it. I'm gonna be like, "Specs I can't focus." And you're going to go, "Well YOU said this helps you focus so are you doing it???" And I'll be like... "🥺" Not to be all aging-Millennial on main or anything but a shot of hard liquor, wordless music, a clear idea of a scene, and someone waiting to read what I wrote. It's a hard combo to achieve, let's be real. I have written 5k at a time with that combo though, so it's a big winner. @robinade knows nothing motivates me more than someone on discord going 👐🙏. And then I feed them the snippet and then they grade me with emotes. I'm very rewards based, who isn't? They tell you to write for yourself first, but it's always nice if I have an end goal of entertaining someone else as well, otherwise the ideas just stay in my head la-di-da style.

💛 What is the most impactful lesson you’ve learned about writing? I got nothing inspirational to say here. I think a game changer for me was doing this thing with "scenes" but like... as a roadmap. So what I do now that helps me figure out what to write is listing off all the scenes I want to write and a little blurb about those scenes (or a lot of blurb depending on how specific I have it in my mind). It's like an outline, but not very high level. Anyone that reads my stuff lately can see I label my scenes with section titles and that's from this process. It sort of fills in the for the writing advice about how, when you get to the end of one scene, make sure to write the first sentence of the next so you don't get stuck on how to start a scene when you get back to it. This format is really working for me and it's not as cumbersome as an outline (even though for big fics I have those too).

👻 What is your wildest headcanon? HOOOO it's really hard to have a "wild" headcanon in this fandom (MDZS) without someone taking the biggest offense to it. And honestly the word "wild" is doing a lot of work here, it can mean anything. So basically I have a lot headcanons but what's wild enough for this question??? BAM!! JGS uses women as human cauldrons to further his cultivation. And JGY used that knowledge to kill him.

🧡 😎 Alrighty, I think my work here is done. 🌹 🎩

[naranjapetrificada]

Academic excerpts as a framing device

So in the ask game I've been enjoying today, @piratecaptainscaptainpirates asked an interesting bonus question about the academic blurbs I've been including at the start of each chapter of From the Firmament that I started answering on that post, but things quickly go long enough to merit their own post so here it is! The question (as such) was:

(also, I was just re-reading From the Firmament and I will never be over the academic article excerpts. They're just such a neat and fun inclusion! I'd love to hear about your process while writing them, how you go about working them in with each chapter's themes, etc.)

Whatever specific idea that spawned the fic itself is now lost to the vicissitudes of ADHD memory, but it was born in the context of a lot of Thinking About Tropes in ways that were new to me at the time. In particular I was interested in a different first meeting, specifically one that involved Stede actually visiting the Queen Anne or being taken captive by the QAR crew, and Ed having to react to Stede under those circumstances.

I started playing with a draft in that vein that I'm going to come back to at some point, but the other trope I got really interested in (both as a reader of fic and also just like, intellectually) was arranged marriage. Basically every version of that I could imagine required an entirely different world than the canon one, and once I started casting about for the right circumstances I started thinking about history a lot.

The academic blurbs started as a worldbuilding crutch when I was first trying to get the fic together at the beginning, and it was easier to gather all that kind of information in a "just the facts" format when starting out. They started taking on a more concrete form when my thoughts about history intersected with 1) stuff I'd read before, 2) stuff I was reading at the time, and 3) a joke that got out away from me.

1) Two of my favorite novelists period are K.J. Parker (who I've mentioned at least once in the fic's notes) and Guy Gavriel Kay, both of whom are obsessed in their own ways with history in a way that come through in their fantasy work in interesting ways. Kay tends to straightforwardly mention in-world history and historians, without mentioning specific works but making a point to draw attention to the fact that he's speaking from outside of the characters' perspectives. Here is an example passage from Kay's Under Heaven, which is presented in its own separate section between character pov chapters:

It was said to be the case that the emperor's favourite wife, regarded by some later historians dangerously subtle and too influential, played a role in encouraging him to keep that agreement--with a view to securing Kitai's boundaries.

Meanwhile Parker, who includes the names of specific fictional works and specific fictional historians, is more likely to bring up history in the flow of the narrative, when at any time the next sentence could discuss history and/or in-world philosophy:

Saloninus, in the Exceptional Dialogues, speculates about the end of the world. Will it be a great sundering, the sky falling on the land, or a great inundation, the sea gradually rising until the last treetop is drowned, or a great fire, or—Wrong. The end of the world is like this, and a deaf man who couldn’t lipread wouldn’t even realise what had just happened.

I enjoy both of these approaches despite (or maybe because of) their differences, and when you've read as much of either author as I have this sticks with you.

2) at some point after I started playing with the idea that would become FtF and the draft of Chapter 1 coming together, I picked up Parker's Sixteen Ways to Defend A Walled City. One thing I really appreciate about both Kay and Parker is that they almost never tell their stories from the perspectives of rulers (with the occasional exceptions of rulers who began as commoners and are usually, like canon Blackbeard, some combination of bored, overwhelmed, and made miserable by their position at the top). Kay tends to alternate between a few main characters, with individual one-off outsider POV sections, while Parker tends to have several characters whose alternating perspectives cover the whole story. In either case those characters usually span the middle 3/4 of their given society, neither prince nor pauper. People who aren't starving but aren't wealthy, mid-level bureaucrats, low-ranking government officials, generals who we met as lower officers, etc. This was true of that novel, and helped me arrive where I did with Ed and Stede in my WIP's world (yes they're both high ranking, but neither is a ruler as such because that didn't interest me). I think looking at them in the canon world and realizing where I wanted to put them in the world I was building led to point #3:

3) "Wouldn't it be funny if Stede was accidentally incredibly influential?"

In some ways that question is a central question (and joke) in the show itself. Like, this guy shows up and starts doing things differently because he can't help but be who he is, and his desire for the world to be a better place then spreads beyond anyone's wildest dreams? And yeah Stede isn't the catalyst for the end of traditional piracy in the world (that's the British Empire, their culpability as represented by the death of Izzy "The Avatar of Traditional Piracy" Hands), but he is the catalyst for it on board the Revenge. And the place he was able to influence intersects with the wider world after a series of accidents and unlikely events, and even without season 3 (😢) we can see the way the world is changing now.

And how that got out of hand was I started thinking about contexts where accidentally becoming important to history would be the most unexpected (and therefore the funniest) and ended up at republican-era Rome. Something about the pomp and circumstance and veneration of it all, and then here's my favorite little guy with his inherent kindness and autistic whimsy, ready to turn everything on its head.

And from there: the blurbs just became a means to an end and the best way to draw attention to that joke. I couldn't stop imagining people talking about Stede Bonnet the way they do about Rome and laughing about it, so here we are.

As for your process questions: I tend to write them on their own, whenever a given topic seems interesting or like something that could fit into the world. The blurb in chapter one kind of just sets the stage for things, but when I first wrote it it was significantly longer and was much more about the documents cache it mentions, because at the time I was thinking about historical document preservation. Since it needed to be much shorter and kick things off I just reshaped what I had to serve my purpose. I do still have plans to incorporate the rest of it later!

The second one came from thinking about Edward "Daddy Issues" Teach's relationship with violence and how having a father who is different from canon was still going to allow violence and daddy issues to still intersect. The idea for the arrows it describes is lovingly (if shamelessly) borrowed from the Parker book I mentioned above, in an attempt to create a situation where Ed could still have (misguided) ideas about the capacity for violence being something inherent about a person.

Lastly, I'll say that while I'm not intending the opening blurbs as obvious statements of purpose for the chapters that followed, they do fulfill a worldbuilding purpose relevant to where they show up in the story. So the first one is, by necessity, an introduction, and the second one is both meant to inform and remind everyone of the bad blood that exists between the parties trying to bridge the gap between them with the marriage. I won't say yet what the third one is but I will say that I've foundered way too long working on Chapter 3 because I didn't immediately establish which one I wanted to open the chapter with. So they're important scaffolding, important worldbuilding, and in the way of worldbuilding they'll be relevant to later things when those things come up.

Thank you so much for asking this question, it was super fun and helpful to nail all of this stuff down like this and get it out of my head!

[helenewate]

hello olivia i hope you are well. i checked your website recently, and i just wanted to say that it looks very cool!

i think you shared some descriptive blurbs or like a summary of "the hauntings" before, so i was already pretty interested since i really like your writing, but the photos made me so much more into it! you describe it as a "multimedia project", which i'm sort of curious about. you mention things like newspaper clippings, poetry, and diary entries, and whole i assumed that the diary entries and poetry is yours, i was wondering if the newspaper clippings were your own creations, or if you were choosing articles from the time period, to sort of follow real life events as the story unfolds? regardless, it has piqued my interest quite a bit, especially the collage style, and i can imagine it gives the story a richness that only a combination of formats can really hit!

secondly, i read your poem "spare room" and it was so beautiful. i loved the atmospheric language, and the little details of the room like the wall paper and the creaks, all added up to such a humanising picture of mothers. the last 4 lines of the second verse made my heart break a little, at the way women are made to chase youth, at the terribleness of not knowing what'll happen when your 40, at wishing you could warn or comfort your younger self, at how our parents are living for the first time too, how, at the end of the day, they were young kids too. I know i am essentially repeating the themes of your poem back to you, but i am trying to stress that 1) you were able to spell them out so clearly that i felt them in a rush of emotion and 2) that you have captures something quite universal in the particularity of your grandmother's house. just calling the mother's old bedroom a "spare room" made me feel indignant on behalf of the mother. it made me think of my own maternal grandfather's home in pakistan, and really made me think of my mother and the person she was to her parents, to her sisters, what family meant to her and what it became. my mom and her sisters sold the house when he passed away, and it recently went up for sale again, and i was horrified to see that the owners had hgtv-ified it. your poem reminded me of what my mother looked in her father's room.

you are such a wonderful writer, which i'm sure you know, and i have faith in you and your manuscript, any publisher would be lucky to publish your work. best of luck to you in all your endeavors!!

p.s i love your photos! they're really beautiful, and evocative of the era, and make me miss and cherish a family history i don't even have! i believe this one is my favourite!

yayyy this makes me so happy to hear! the purpose of the website was really to immerse anyone thinking of reading into the world they'll be diving into. I've been very particular and specific about the photos I take/use because I have it all mapped out so clearly in my head

I'm looking forward to the colder seasons so I can show a little bit of the more desolate side of the book. I'm hoping to add another page to the site as a "photo album" almost and have a chronological depiction of the seasons and years (but I have to upgrade to premium first, I'm so poor)

the newspaper clippings in the book are all written by me! they're used to show a little more of the town and the people living there, and how they sort of behave/view the world.

"spare room" is one of my favorite poems that I've written. I actually wrote it when I was watching sharp objects one night and I wrote that little blurb on here about how your grandma's house can feel so eerie and comforting at the same time.

similarly, when my grandma passed, my uncle sold the house that my mom and uncles grew up in. they moved there in 1977 and lived there until 2022, and I got to go through one last time, but I wish I would've taken more pictures

my biggest thing with the whole "immersive" side of my book is keeping things authentic, so I'm happy to hear it's all convincing! lol I've been very strict about research and making sure things are of the time they're supposed to be

the photo you attached was taken on a whim! I took my shoes off to walk up a hill, and I turned back to where my sister was taking a picture of me, and I yelled at her to bring me my camera because I saw my shoes sitting in beam of light and loved the image! it's meant to display the youth and innocence of the narrator, but there's an eeriness to it that leads you to believe that innocence is being tainted.

thank you for being so kind, as always ⭐️ and thank you for talking to me about my book :)

[endiecutieo6]

-Gorebruary 2023!-

Week 1

Hello everyone! So, in 2020, I impulsively took a goretober list and decided to do in February, because I just could. It ended up being a little bit of tradition on my Instagram, only not done when I genuinely just didn’t have the time. I’ll reposting these here because idk. I just wanted to.

The format ended up being a picture followed by a short story, which I’ll also put beneath each image just to make it easier to read, along with a short personal blurb!

First off: I’m going to the trigger warnings from each image here. Sorry if stuff repeats.

Day 1/Crushed: Blood, mild body horror, organs, eye trauma(?)

Day 2/Decapitated: blood, decapitation/dismemberment

Day 3/pin cushion: needles, blood

Day 4/Amputation: depictions of medical procedures, missing limbs, lots a blood, medical themes

Day 5/Experiment: depictions of medical procedures, medical malpractice, lots a blood, medical themes

Day 6/Infection: cuts, mild blood, depictions of an infection, mild body horror, mild nudity(?)

Day 7/Body horror: Body horror (duh), blood, mentions of suicide in the story segment

With warnings aside, let’s begin the fun!

“Accidents happen.

Things get bumped over, slip out of hands, and clatter to the ground in pieces. It was okay, accidents happen. They were okay.

No one knows how to happened, but the cave collapsed after a loud boom was heard. Everyone got out, asking just what happened and who did it.

After spotting Mr. Riley, whoever did it, decided to keep their mouth shut.

Personal Note: I worked my ass off on this one, and there’s only a few things that I feel I did poorly on. I wanted to start things off with a bang and oh boy did I! For the story, which wasn’t a good as I thought it was like wow, I think I made it so the cave it was caused by Martha missing her shot and hitting the wall. Freddy just happened to be the one who died.

On another note, I was only able to work as well as I could because I’d make concept sketches ahead of time and made a ref sheet. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to my computer/ forgot to email myself the files so I might have to show those another time. It made work a lot better because sketching is such a long process and having a ref made it easier to color.

“Freddy prided himself on his unwavering will. When he wanted something, he did everything in his power to get it. Life was too short to wait and have it pass by, so he did it without care for the consequences.

In the manor, things were a bit different, and he was fully aware of his disadvantages. So, he made up for it by trying to be one step ahead of everyone. If it meant setting traps, hiding things, or telling little white lies, so be it. He was not going to allow himself any weakness.

He thought certain rules would protect him, he hoped they would protect him. After all, hunters could only do so much right-“

PN: this is technically a redraw of a 2020 gorebruary piece, but this one I like much better and uses cooler colors. Story wise, it was the ripper who did it after getting a little too frustrated and losing his cool. Freddy can be a little shit after all.

“Hmm, looks like I need to make some… last minute adjustments…

I’m sure you don’t mind helping, right?”

PN: I HATE THIS ONE. I hit a wall after the first two and relied way to heavily on 3D materials (a benefit of using clip studio paint) so it just looks off. Anatomy is off, pose is still, the story is just ass I shoved in last minute because I really didn’t enjoy making this one. If I redrew it, I’d change a LOT.

“Date: 1/9/XXXX

After the XXXXXXXX incident with subject 5-8-7, and getting the limbs that had been severed from subject 5-8-7 during the incident, we have decided to take one of our test subjects and jumpstart project XXXXXXXX.

At 9:20 am of January 9th, XXXX, we subdued subject 4-0-3, who had somehow informed of our plan and was resisting aggressively. We strapped him down and, due to destruction of our medical grade morphine, had to preform surgery without it.

He is still currently in a near-catatonic state, most likely due to shock, as shown in the picture. He has been patched up, hooked up to an IV and in care. As of me writing this, he hasn’t spoken a word.

Once we have him stabilized and make sure nothing becomes infected, we can move on to phase 2.

- Dr. XXXXXXX”

PN: this, along with the rest of the images for this week, are connected! It’s a resident evil inspired story which also features that years gorebruary “mascot” as a part of the story. Also, in sharp contrast to the previous image, I LOVE how this turned out. While I’d undoubtably made a few errors, I just have a soft spot for this image.

“Date: 1/12/XXXX

We proceeded in phase 2 of project XXXXX, but not without its complications.

Once again, subject 4-0-3 resisted violently, resulting in a few bruises for our staff and some lacerations to the chest on him. We bandaged him up, drugged him with laughing gas, and attached the severed ligaments from subject 5-8-7 to him. The stitching itself is poor quality, making it easier to take off if the limbs are rejected.

Instantly, the arm bonded with the body, even allowing subject 4-0-3 to twist his wrist. The leg has yet to be as responsive, it’s only noticeable changes being the slow increase in length, presumably to match the length of the natural leg.

Something peculiar should be noted: the sudden presence of black veins that are spreading not only on the foreign limbs but on subjects 4-0-3’s body as well. Currently, we are suspecting that’s it’s a bonding method of some sorts.

Subject 4-0-3 has been more quiet than ever, seemingly docile for the time being. He’s under constant supervision to make sure any changes will be noticed ahead of time.

-Dr. XXXXX”

(Note: I’m editing the story’s only a little bit. Nothing major, just for ease of reading)

PN: I like this image a little less. The colors aren’t as contrasting as I would’ve liked them, and the shading is not great. I’d change quite a bit if I did it today, mostly in the posing n such.

“Date: 1/21/XXXX

Time: 7:54 pm

Surprise to no one, Subject 4-0-3 for a severe infection. Discoloration, redness, swelling, boils leaking pus, and other standard symptoms. It’s repulsive to look at, and definitely should’ve been noticed sooner. I feel like an idiot for not noticing sooner, especially when the scratching began.

Outside of the infection, he’s having changes we just can’t fully explaining. The black veins and consumed both limbs, and has absorbed the stitching. His eyes have become discolored, and an identified fluid is just leaking from his face.

I’m more concerned about his sudden shift in behavior. He’s a cautious and guarded man, and he was practically mute when this project finally started. Now he’s chattier than ever, though how aware he is over the situation seems up to coin toss. He’s compliant, but that only makes more worried.

Jean took the photo of him and I, and I can’t say that I’m not having second thoughts about this. As I’m writing this, I’ve come to an disturbing realization: he shouldn’t be walking around with such ease. He’s as blind as a bat, shouldn’t he be struggling more?

On that note, I’m going to go and make a quick checkup on him, maybe even recommend sedation for the foreseeable future. Then, I’ll check on subject 5-8-7, who’s already fully recovered but far too quiet.

- Dr. Wesker”

PN: Tumblr is struggling to let me type. I’m mid about this one, just doesn’t feel all that standout. I’d chance a lot about this one.

“If you’re reading this, my name is Aiko Wesker and I fucked up.

This whole project was rigged from the start; she KNEW and was LETTING it happen, and now Freddy has mutated into something as twisted as her. Half the facility is dead, and no matter how many gunshots I hear the laughter just won’t stop.

They’re keeping me alive. She’s watching me as I’m writing this, staring at me with those soulless eyes. I’d kill myself if I could, but I don’t know if they’ll allow it.

I don’t know what their plan is and I don’t know what to do. May God have Mercy on my soul.”

PN: I don’t really like this pic. I didn’t work as hard as I should’ve and you can see it. You can also see the resident evil hinspo clear as day, which I should’ve really leaned more heavily on. This storyline is wrapped up though!

—

Thank you for being interested in this mess! I’d add more but Tumblr is bugging out hard so goodbye for now! Keep an eye open for week 2!

[verycharismaticdragon]

Hey what if I did, like, a lets play of On Air Island but! an interactive one where we collectively choose the next option (via a poll) would anyone play with me

Um yeah to expound on that thought

What's On Air Island?

On Air Island is a game I'm currently brainrotting about.

The genre is stated as horror/thriller but even if you're not a fan of these genres id say still check it out because im not a fan either and Yet

This is perhaps because the game has a strong mystery element and encourages multiple replays/going back to try out different options (theres a really comfortable to use mechanic for that too!) so theres this drive to uncover more of the story. Which is why I'm still playing despite having finished all 40 endings already (yes, thats forty endings)

Quick plot blurb: the plot follows the cast and crew of a survival show called 'Never Stop Watching!' set up on a remote island. The show's unique setting is that every cast member streams their experience, and the winner is determined by the number of donations they receive on their stream. However, the island is not as simple as it appears, and soon enough the rankings will be the least of the cast's problems! (Que horror/thriller elements)

Why interactive Let's Play?

The thing I found the most refreshing about OAI is that you, the player, do not play as the protagonist, but rather as one of the viewers on the protagonist's stream. When the absence of 'i would not fucking say/do that' experience hits lol. Because of such setting, aside from the main cast, the presence of Observers - the fellow viewers - is strongly felt throughout the story as well. EzraHanse girlies in the chat you will always be famous. And... sometimes other Observers have completely different ideas about what's good for blorbo from your streams!

Then, since I run a poll aggregator blog and see like hundreds of polls a day, the vision of in-game choices and tumblr polls overlapped in my brain...

...and I thought, hey, wouldn't it be extremely atmospheric and true to in-game experience to have a bunch of people chipping in to determine the advice and tasks the protagonist receives from his viewers? Thus, the idea of doing an interactive lets play was born.

What are the pros of participating in the Let's Play, instead of just playing the game?

Well, first of all, this is absolutely my dastardly plan to make y'all play the game, make no mistake!

That said, if you aren't sure you are interested in playing it, you can experience the story in bite-sized chunks (i just vidded the prologue up to the first choice, and its less than 2 minutes!) on a semi-daily basis, with a little dopamine hit of clickin' the button at the end <3

Another thing is that making 'a donation' - ie, a choice in game - requires in-game currency. There are various ways to farm currency and there are almost always cheaper choices available, however! Since I already played and replayed multiple times, I have many choices unlocked, and it'll be easy for me to farm for the remaining ones. Especially now that I got all the endings and the desire to find the best one no longer plagues me so. So - you can experience the game while avoiding the grind!

And, ofc, as I've mentioned before, having many viewers/Observers would be very true to the atmosphere of the game. Ideally, I would hope for some discussion in the comments too, to parallel the in-game chat! This is also why I hope people who already played the game will participate too 👉👈 The more Observers we have the better, right? ;3

What if I don't vibe with watching videos / miss something / etc?

I'm planning to have a transcript available for each video, and something like a story-so-far post that you can check out to get up to date at any point. I also figure I'll be adjusting the format along the way, if we can get this party started at all, so feel free to suggest improvements to me at any time!

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: Books Pt 1

Tumblr deleted the entire first draft of this, which is cool and awesome. It was too long anyways. These aren't meant to be full on analytic reviews, just blurbs about my experience with the books and what I thought about them. I might move into more in depth stuff later on next year.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

He was pride. She was prejudice. Can I make it anymore obvious?

I started this on CD audiobook for the first half before driving my car off of a cliff. I was fine, but Elizabeth Bennet was a casualty of the accident, so I found the rest of the book on Libby with a different reader who had Very different vibes. It kind of fit how I felt about the book. Jane Austen is very good at regaling the audience from Elizabeth's point of view about how Darcy is the shittiest man alive, while turning at the halfway point to reveal he is actually the Only Good Victorian Man to exist.

I've seen this tale play out in both BBC and Keira Knightley formats, which are both fantastic in their own right, but I was significantly more invested in the characters this time around, especially the supporting cast. Elizabeth/Darcy romance was very cute, Jane and Bingley was adorable, Elizabeth's shitty cousin was hilarious. I like the glimpses of how she thinks about the rest of her family that you don't get in the movie. She hates how her dad views her mother as entertainment, she hates how her mother treats her children like products to be sold, she hates how her younger sisters make them all look silly. Damn she's really hateful, huh? Almost like she's preju-OHHHHHHHH.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Funny Cat, The Spider Mom, and the Weird Door

This was a book I was excited to get into. The movie freaked me out when I was little, as did it everyone else, and I'll get to that since I watched it immediately after this. Maybe this Friday. But it isn't anywhere near as vividly horrific as the OG Evil Narnia. In a fun way. There's an implication in this book that the Other World and Other Mother are just two of many possible little horrors that live under your bed or behind the door that shouldn't be there that want to hurt and/or eat you. Kind of like real life. That's okay though, you can get through it alive. And Coraline proves it.

I like her a lot as a character. She isn't near as naive as she is in the movie, and catches on to the nature of what's happening on the end of night one, thus Other Mother kidnapping her parents to serve as motivation to come back. That gives the book freedom to explore the Other World and its nature thoroughly, and watch as it all crumbles around Coraline. I like that everything is just a bunch of bugs stretched into the visage of pleasant things by a giant spider. I also love that spider's contrary motivation. She needs to feed, but there is also a genuine desire to love Coraline, to be a mother, whatever her bizarre conception of what that means. Evil hungry desire is more pressing though. Get in my web, girl.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Digimon season one for 1950s British kids.

At some point I decided to reread all of the Narnia books. I got through like, 4 of them in a weird order due to how Libby works. I promise I do read physical stuff its just hard to find the time to finish them. The first book the Narnia line up was originally written for my boy Clive's real life goddaughter Lucy Barfield , who was temporarily displaced as a child during WWII, as a children's story. He even dedicated the book and maybe the whole series to her. However, by the time he finished this one she was already an adult and "too old for fairytales." Classic blunder. I'll still read your stuff, Clive.

The whole of Narnia is a wintery wonderland turned on its head, its magic and majesty suffocating under a thick sheet of ice. Jadis is a very cool antagonist. She's not super complex, but she's a very strong character and extremely threatening villain, as we see throughout the series. The Pevinsies all have a sweet relationship. Edmond's an asshole in a very realistic sense, but they all care deeply for each other in an even more realistic way. The end of the book starts a pattern Mr. Lewis likes to repeat where a quick epilogue is hamfisted into the end that blows over large swaths of time in a hurry to resolve everything. I have problem's with that in later books, but it works best here, skipping to the famous reveal that time moves much faster in Narnia, and two decades or so only equals a few minutes in our world. A little fucked up. Go through puberty again, Pevinsies, this time in BRITISH SCHOOL.

Prince Caspian by Clive

Ocarina of Time for 1950s British kids.

The second book in the series gives more context to the world Narnia lives in, while also screwing with our perception of what Narnia is in first place. A previously unmentioned country to the east invades and colonizes Narnia, oppressing its people and removing magic wherever they can. Lewis can write about the complexities of colonization as he actually comes from a country familiar with this kind of shit, believe it or not. Who are they conquered by? A country of Minotaurs? Dragons? Wayward dwarves still allegiant to Jadis? Humans??? What the hell?

Turns out Narnia is the weird magic fairytale place even within its own universe. Everywhere else is inhabited by eternally 18th century European style society. It's also 1000 years later, but a year for our dudes, so the Pevinsies get to experience how Narnia has changed physically in all that time. Like Cair Paravel, that place two whole pages mention in the first book. I like that the age reversal thing is acknowledged in this book, and how that might have affected our heroes and their development. At the end of the book, the colonizing force gets sent to Earth, and Prince Caspian is crowned as King Caspian. Aslan (or maybe one of animals, idr) says outright that Narnia is better ruled by humans than its own people. Which is. An odd note to end on a book whose main conflict is colonization. Huh.

A Horse and His Boy by C. Staples L.

He was a horse. He was his boy. Can I make it anymore-okay shut up.

This is an interesting one. Five books into the Narnia series and we are introduced to brand new protagonist, with zero connections to previous characters, in a place that is not Narnia. He's a young boy who runs away with a talking horse in their desperate attempt to both escape slavery. They meet a spunky, ass-kicking princess who's also running away, this time from an arranged marriage. Narnia in this story is more of an ideal their working towards, rather than a physical place the story spends time in. The plot is very refreshing in this aspect, especially if its the fifth, or in my case, third Narnia book you've read in a row. It could likely stand on its own outside the rest of the series, though you do get a surprise cameo from the adult Pevinsies pre-wardrobe-return, which is fun.

I do have a couple issues with it though. I'd argue against the idea that all of Narnia is a direct analogue to Christianity. Aslan is definitely furry Jesus, and C. S.'s theological beliefs are an obvious intentional aspect of the storytelling, but most of the books have themes and lessons outside of that and pose a genuinely fun fantasy world to engage with. The religious metaphors in this book specifically are pretty heavy-handed though, and not very delicately woven in. The setting of the story also pulls allusions to several real-life Middle Eastern cultures, and if you think a white British dude in the 50s wrote about that respectfully? Sorry no. There's also a lot of mention of Boy (I straight up forgot that kids name) being Special and Different for having pale skin and blue eyes. :/. At the end is another rapid-fire epilogue that blazes through Boy's life as the new prince of wherever that I think the story could have gone without. Just let it end with dignified mystery, Clive.

The Magician's Nephew by Siwel S. C.

Honestly Clive the mulitverse trope has been done to death, bro

Last Narnia book on the list as of now. Luckily, its also the best one. This is a prequel to the whole of the Narnia continuity, which details the creation of Narnia and the origins of Jadis, but the actual plot revolves around two new Brit kids Digory and Polly. Digory is described as grubby at least sixteen times throughout the story. His mom is sick and his magic uncle sucks ass and he's scared and he has no friends. Polly decides to be that friend which ultimately burns her as he's also a bit of a selfish brat. Learning to get past that brattiness and mature enables Polly to forgive him and ultimately helps him save his mother.

The plot takes place in the Wood Between Worlds, which has still stuck in my head and spurned on my imagination years later. You move outside of Earth to find the grandness of the Milky Way, you escape the Milky Way to discover the imperceivable majesty of the universe, and you find the indeterminate edge of that universe and land yourself in an idyllic forest with trees so high you cannot see the sky, the forest's floor dotted with puddles leading to other worlds. Jadis' origin is also pretty fascinating. A queen so obsessed with ultimate power she destroyed her own empire rather than let her sister take it. Aslan roars the world into existence. The whole vibes on this book are pretty stellar, ngl.

The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath

You wouldn't be cool if it weren't for the lessons that you learnt in the BELL JAR, nah, nana nah nah.

And now for a weird fucking heel turn. And also the last book I'm doing for now. I'm going to be honest, my original interest in this book came from the song "I Cut Myself" by Talkshow Boy, who mentions the book in the above lyric. Also, my college roommate said she liked it a lot. I went in with zero expectations and was surprised at how hard it hit home. I've never been personally institutionalized, but I know people who have, and I can relate to the downward depression spiral Esther goes through in this book.

Its interesting to see the thought patterns and paradigms that Esther voices in her inner monologues that partially lead to her mental break. Little observations that reveal her hyper-awareness and implicit nihilism. They're good observations too. The vivid description of the horrific image of a woman giving birth compared to a dulled animal being hooked into a machine. You can see her perspective on a lot of subjects, probably even agree with much of it. It makes sense, as this is the author famous for vivid and introspective poetry more than anything. Looking at the historical context for this book made me sad, especially given how hopeful the ending was, at least how I read it.

Going to shift into movies at the end of the week. I'll need to start doing these at least bi-weekly if I want to finish before the end of the year. Also more bisexually.