#i should have spent more time planning i don't like the setup

[red-crescent-marigold]

i heard the people like .adventure time or something

[vaspider]

Just throwing it out there, but I'm a Quaker (aka Society of Friends) (a lot of people consider us to be Christian but I don't - we're not expected to believe in Jesus or even a god, nor read the Bible, go to church, celebrate Christian holidays, any of that, though we're allowed to if we want to. Quakers are actually allowed to belong to any other religion, or lack thereof, which is rather un-christian. Like, you could be a Muslim Quaker or a Hindu Quaker or whatever, it's all good (I'm an atheist Quaker). We did start off as an offshoot of Christianity but there's plenty of offshoot religions that become their own thing, like Christianity itself). Context aside, it's literally, explicitly against my religion to try to convert people. We're not even allowed to suggest it to people, although it's not a closed religion. Like, if you ask me about becoming a Quaker, I'm welcome to talk about it, but I can't just tell people that they should do it.

So yeah, just adding to the anti "proselytizing is just a required part of religion" pile.

On a side note, the main tenets of Quakerism are Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship, and in my experience, a frightening number of Christians (my parents included) balk at the "equality" bit. Like, people have legit gotten angry with me about it. Despite the "we're all God's children"/"all sins are equal in the eyes of God" thing that a lot of them talk about, because when *we* say equality, we actually do mean equal.

Also, fun fact since it's Coronation Day or whatever, Quakerism is inherently anti-monarchy as part of the "equality" tenet 😉

I attended multiple Quaker meetings (Lehigh Valley Friends Meeting, Lancaster Friends Monthly Meeting, Gwynedd Friends Meeting) for like... a total of about eight years of my life, and I was planning to marry a Quaker. My HS boyfriend was super active in Young Friends; we used to do a lot of the setup and teardown for the Peace Walk in December and before First Day Meeting. Emet and I used a self-attesting/Friends wedding license. I spent most of my life before 2019 living in the eastern half of Pennsylvania or in Maryland. I know what Quakers are, but I appreciate your thorough explanation for folx who might not know.

I ... have a lot of respect for the Society of Friends, and I applaud the Society's attempts to keep everyone under the same big tent, but to say that the Friends are not Christian is quite a stretch. 89% of Friends worldwide belong to Evangelical or Programmed Meetings, with a pastor and Bible readings.

It's probably more true to say that American Quakers of Friends General Conference do not have a Creed, that some Quakers are not Christian and that many Meetings, especially Unprogrammed Meetings in Friends General Conference in the United States, welcome diverse faiths as well as non-theist members.

I think it's important, however, not to look away from how deeply-rooted many Xian ideals and concepts are in Friends philosophy. Saying "Friends aren't Xian" kind of allows for a sort of magical thinking that all of those ideas - some of which are harmful or have been used for great harm - are just gone. That's not the case.

There's a lot of classism issues in many Friends Meetings, too, especially some of the older ones, because many of those Meetings are populated by people who have an awful lot of old money, and that can give people outsized voices when it comes to seeking consensus.

At least, that's what caused me to come away from the Friends, though I went through multiple times of returning to Meeting because I was deeply Convinced at multiple points. I was drawn to Meeting very strongly by the ideal, and the reality pushed me away.

None of this is to say that Friends don't do wonderful things or that FGC's work isn't often lovely and commendable. I just ... object to the idea that Quakers aren't Christian. Well, no, many are, and the deeply Xian roots of the Society are still very visible to me. I love the Friends deeply (the design for a Publick Universal Friend pin is waiting for me to set up our next Kickstarter), and I'm very glad you find such joy and fulfillment there. I have confidence that if anyone can continue working on the issues within the conference itself and on the greater issues of the world with patience, consideration, and genuine consensus-seeking, it's FGC.

[frickatives]

[ch1] against better judgement: the blunder [f!reader bounty hunter x mando]

[read on AO3] [masterlist] [previous chapter] [next chapter]

[a/n] thank you so much for the love on the first part of this story!!! I haven't shared my writing in forever, it was really lovely to see people having fun reading it. Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out -- I was originally planning on updating every monday, but given that orchestra season is starting back up (and has already caused me to fall behind lol), I may only be able to aim for every other monday. This chapter is a lot of setup (and hardly any dialog, which is very odd for me) -- I promise chapter 2 will be packed with reader x mando interaction, but wanted to establish some things about our mc to start with 🌝

if you missed last week's post, you can find the intro/prologue here!

also, if you'd like to be added to the taglist please leave a comment saying so, I'll happily tag you when ch 2 is out (and thank you for your interest in my lil fic!!) ❤️

[warnings/tags] canon typical violence, gore, mentions of death and injury, use of drugs that cause loss of consciousness, stabbing, too many hours spent on wookiepedia, thirst for sweet vengeance, fem!reader, no use of y/n, the slowest burn, enemies to lovers, bounty hunter reader, comically hostile workplace

[wc] 3k

Chapter 1: The Blunder

When you look back over the rock, he's gone. 

You take a deep, shaking breath, forcing air around the lump of rage lodged somewhere behind your tongue. You can take him. He doesn't have his little gang to back him up, this time. You have the element of surprise on your side, and it'll be one on one. Him versus you. 

Well, technically, him versus you versus a bunker-full of unfriendly goons and the bounty, but they're inconsequential. You can handle goons and bounties in your sleep. This one was human, and some kind of smuggler – you hadn't read the details closely. Small payout for a small-time crook, not worth paying much attention. They all start to blur together, anyway; one bounty is as ill-tempered and violent as the next. You only hope this one won't talk too much on the transport back to Coruscant, after you dispatch the Mando and finish the hunt.

Tracking the bounty had been easy enough. He's sloppy with his long range comms, and you know he's here, in this particular bunker, to pick up some cargo. It's a popular spot for smugglers, and likely full to bursting with people who don't take kindly to a couple of bounty hunters conducting business and settling scores in their midst. Definitely a high likelihood of violence, even before you go head-to-head with your competition. 

You tug your linen mask up over your mouth and nose, securing it to your helmet. No sense in flashing your face to a bunch of lowlifes, or in giving the Mandalorian the opportunity to recognize you – at least, not before you've got your knife buried in his heart.

You take another breath. Steadier, this time.

Your blaster is gassed-up and fully charged. Your blades are sharpened and freshly coated in your homebrewed millaflower concentrate. Your glaive – useless, probably, in a cramped bunker – is collapsed and strapped across your back. You have a respectable arsenal at your disposal. You can do this.

You're doing this.

Keeping low to the ground, you cover the distance between your temporary hideout and the door to the bunker. The metal is scorched, and there's a blasted-out hole where the locking mechanism should be. Completely inelegant. It hadn't even been a complicated lock – easy to pick, if he'd bothered to try. 

Faint sounds of violence escape through the damaged hatch. Blaster fire, and shouts of pain and panic. You pry it open and let it fall aside, sending whorls of fine dust curling around your boots.

You kneel and swing yourself through the opening, down into the bunker. Muted sunlight collects in the small chamber below – not much more than a vestibule and a single door. 

The air is significantly cooler and more damp even a few feet below the surface. Most of the walls are covered in formations of foul-smelling mold, painting the bunker with bright greens and pinks and yellows. You tug your mask a little tighter over your nose and grimace, heart pounding in your ears.

The noise is louder now. The door recessed into the wall bows in the middle, like it was recently forced open and struggled to close itself as programmed. Inelegant, you think again. Clearly, this Mandalorian's style is much less stealth-and-surprise, favoring the shock-and-awe approach to bounty hunting. 

As if to punctuate that thought, something explodes in the next room, igniting a new series of frantic orders and blaster repeats. You suppose, if you were covered in mystical armor and strapped with muscle from a lifetime of training, you might be louder about your work, too. 

As it is, though, you leverage your own skills to your advantage: an uncanny knack for tech that once carried you through one of the Core Worlds' top universities, and a commitment to discretion. Your former mentor once described you as having "a quiet step, a face people forgot the second they looked away, and an unchecked penchant for petty theft." You still don't know if it was a compliment. It's always hard to tell, with him. 

The door leaps against its frame when something big slams against it from the opposite side. It groans like it wants to give up on being a door entirely.

You tuck yourself against the slick, rotting wall and draw your blaster, flicking the safety off with your thumb, eyes pinned to the door, waiting for more movement. The tracking fob clipped to your belt blinks patiently.

A long, quiet moment passes. Almost enough to convince you of the door's innocence. 

Just in case, though, you activate the Knock protocol you built into your personal comlink. ("Comlink" is selling it short. At this point, the thing strapped to your wrist is a homunculus of ongoing pet projects.) As designed, it sends a wide-range ping and opens data-only connections to any nearby comlink receivers, displaying the results as flickering dots on the cheap, glitchy little display you attached to it.

Dozens of dots are down here with you, some moving and many sitting still, including one just on the other side of the door.

Finger easing towards blaster trigger, you elbow the door control and it reluctantly trundles open. Someone's body – a Mon Calamari with a significant blaster burn in the center of his chest – slumps through the doorway. One unmoving comlink dot accounted for.

You draw one of your twin knives and test the weight of it in your free hand.  

If the student you were a decade ago saw you now – holding a sizable, serrated knife and a blaster pistol, creeping your way into an active bunker fight with a healthy case of bloodlust for a Mandalorian – she'd be horrified. You're nothing like the future she envisioned for herself. You don't live in the same galaxy she did – so much shifted in the intervening years, warping you into a person with far fewer compunctions about violence.

Speaking of violence: to business.

None of the excitement beyond is aimed in your direction, so you breach, stepping over the motionless Mon Calamari. 

You don't see the Mandalorian. You don't see much of anything, at all. The air is thick with smoke and debris, and the low-ceilinged room is a labyrinth of crates and cargo. It's all illegal or stolen (or both) goods – bricks of spice plasti-wrapped together in massive bales, weapon crates decorated with Imperial designations, even a cage containing some kind of exotic and infuriated animal whose screeches underscore the chaos unfolding inside the bunker. 

People are yelling in a variety of languages, most of which you don't understand. Even so, you can tell from their clumsy overlapping cadences that the smugglers have been caught off-guard, and that their response to the other hunter is severely lacking. 

Something acrid stings at your eyes. You can hear your mentor's voice in your head, going off on one of his tangents about the "smell of a good fight – blood, bile, and bowels." Whatever it is, it's wretched enough to make you wish your mask was thicker. Maybe you'll steal the Mandalorian's helmet, when you're finished.

You jump when an alarm sounds – someone must have enough of their wits about them to call for help – and the room is bathed in red and yellow light, alternating in time with the klaxon. You need to move, before reinforcements arrive.

You focus on your comlink's display, taking the first corner nice and slow. 

The wall mold is aggressive, covering large patches of floor and even some of the stashed goods in nasty, cheerfully-colored growth. It squelches underfoot.

In front of you, the corridor of contraband is littered with bodies and their corresponding comlink dots. Most are blatantly unconscious, maybe dead. One isn't – he snarls at you as you pass by, though he's too injured to do much else about you. 

Still, it's bad form to leave threats un-neutralized. This one is kitted out in the livery of a local merc group – an expensive merc group, too. He's wearing several pieces of armor which, individually, cost more than your entire cobbled-together armorweave get-up. You're not going to leave the window open for him to show you why he and his ilk are worth so much coin. 

You check up and down the corridor for more movement, and finding none, you crouch to meet the man on the floor. You catch his weakly-swatting arm in your blaster-holding hand and nick his exposed wrist with the tip of your knife. Then the millaflower does its part of the job: the merc's eyes droop and his head swoons, and then he slumps forward as his body slackens completely. All tucked in for a nice, long, drug-induced nap. 

Dipping your knives in millaflower concentrate had been your idea, back in your early hunting days. Orys, your mentor, thought it was simultaneously lazy and overcomplicated in that way older people often think younger people are, but he couldn't deny that it at least compensated for your mediocre fighting ability. ("Scrappy," he'd once called you when he was feeling uncharacteristically generous – usually he trended towards comments like, "you're lucky you're smart, kid.") 

It's true that the concentrate gives you an advantage in any fight. All you have to do is land a single blow, as shallow as a scratch, and your opponent is down for the count. You make sure your millaflower concoction is just shy of lethal; strong enough to force even a hutt-sized person under with a few cuts, but not likely to kill. It's not that you have reservations against ending a life (especially not with the promise of vengeance nipping at your heels), you simply prefer to avoid it, if possible. Deaths tend to spur people to come looking for the murderer, even if that murderer had a perfectly legal bounty contract. Plus, bodies are heavy, and they involve a lot of annoying paperwork when you need to move them cross-system to collect a bounty. 

The fact remains: sometimes killing is unavoidable, in your line of work.

This is the first time you've been hungry for it. 

Before leaving the slumbering merc, your hand slips into his pocket of its own accord and snatches his comlink. Theft is second nature to you, after relying upon it for survival post-Alderaan. You pry open the device with your knife and rip out the infochip, pocketing it. A fancy merc may have previous communication with his fancy bank stored on his comlink, you reason. Maybe you can misappropriate some data to your advantage.

You make quick work clearing the rest of the underground warehouse, knocking out any smugglers, mercs, and other various miscreants left conscious in the Mandalorian's wake. There aren't many. His technique may be as unsubtle as they come, but it's thorough. 

You hope it's also wearing him out.

Several more overpriced mercs decorate the moldy ground, here and there. All out of commission. Certainly not worth whatever the smugglers paid to hire them.

As you move deeper into the facility, your focus narrows to a single point. The slime molds and alarm klaxons fade. Your eyes catch on every shiny surface, in search of your quarry. Each crumpled body, each twisted limb, each bloodied face cast in dizzying red-and-yellow light spurs your heart to beat faster in your throat. You can do this, you remind yourself. You can do this, you can do this, and more importantly, you want to do this. You want it so badly, your blood sings with it. 

At the end of the maze you find another door, prised open. Your display shows you two comlinks in the next room, so close they're overlapping.

You hear voices. Not screaming, but arguing loudly. 

"Get your hands off me, you chuff-sucking son of a bitch," one says.

"I gave you the option," another replies coolly. "You chose the hard way." This voice stops you in your tracks. It's grainy, modulated by a vocoder. 

It's him.

You've caught up with him.

Moving as silently as you can, you pass through the ruined door and hover in the entryway of a dingy office. The Mandalorian has his back to you as he forces a man – your bounty, judging by the frenzied flashing of your tracking fob – head-down onto a desk, shoving his face into the wooden surface with a gloved hand. The bounty wrenches his head to the side, spitting more obscenities up at the wall of beskar. 

You take aim at the pair with your blaster, but continue into the room instead of firing. Better to take the Mando down with the millaflower and then kill him, rather than risk a blaster shot ricocheting off all that armor. You'd worry about the bounty, later.

Your grip on your knife tightens like a snare.

Time to die, Mando.

The bounty manages to turn in the other hunter's hold, lurching upright and swinging at unforgiving metal with his fist. You take advantage, closing more distance while the Mandalorian is distracted. 

Over the Mandalorian's shoulder, the bounty sees you, and he stops thrashing. His gaze slides down to your tracking fob. Disgust pinches his expression, and then, oddly enough, he smirks. His eyes land on something behind you.

"You should be keeping a closer eye on your friend," he sneers at the Mandalorian. 

That stupid silver helmet whips around to look at you, and then several things happen very quickly. 

First: you forget how to move. 

It was one thing, seeing him at a distance. That distance left plenty of physical space for your anger to vine and branch and root in your body. Now, with only a few steps between you, it feels like that same anger has been forcibly uprooted, tearing itself up and out of your arms and legs, burning and ripping all the way. The pain of it blinds you – infuriatingly, it paralyzes you. You look at his helmet, but all you see is that demon with the sword on Nevarro, swinging his blade and ripping you in half as easy as paper. 

You want to hurt him, hurt him like his people hurt you. End him like they tried to end you. Do it. Do it, damn it. But you can't move, not an inch, so you just stand there, staring numbly at the both of them, your mind screaming. 

Which leaves a long and awkward pause wherein (secondly) the bounty makes a run for it. He lunges towards the exit, immediately drawing the Mandalorian's attention back to him. 

You probably would have kept better track of their skirmish, if it weren't for the third thing that happens. 

Someone grabs your other knife out of its sheath at your waist. 

There's another merc standing behind you. One of the convincingly-unconscious brawlers in expensive armor you hadn't bothered to dose. Stupid. Sloppy. You don't know how you hadn't noticed him behind you sooner – no, that's a lie, you know exactly how you hadn't noticed him, and it's very shiny and currently elbowing your bounty in the throat – but it doesn't matter, because before you can react, the merc buries your own knife in your side up to the hilt.

Pain rams clear through you, striking deep, punching all the air from your lungs. Serrated metal shreds armorweave, muscle, and viscera alike. 

If the stabbing doesn't kill you, the humiliation just might.

Stabbed with your own kriffing knife.

You stumble away from the impact, your blaster and non-traitorous knife clattering to the floor. You follow them a few seconds later -- your legs don’t seem to work anymore. You can't breathe. You can't kriffing breathe. 

Worse, the millaflower is already working. Fast. Your head spins. Your eyelids are so, so heavy, already. It would be so easy to just sleep. 

You're pulled in two directions. Violently jerked towards the pain in your side, towards the struggle to breathe, to live, to fight. Steadily pushed down, down, down, into a gaping maw that promises you serenity and smells just like the meadow outside the tiny cabin you keep on Batuu. Home. You swear you can feel summer sunlight warming your face. The nose-itching tang of blooming grasses tangles with the survival instinct clawing at your brainstem. 

Your hand wraps itself around the protruding grip of the knife instinctively, and you whimper when the blade nudges against something soft and vital inside you. You will yourself to yank the dagger out, to use it on the bastard merc in front of you, but you can't. Your vision blurs with spots. Every nerve ending in your chest burns white-hot with pain, even as your thoughts drunkenly slur sleep, sleep, go to sleep.

You look up at the merc through fluttering lashes, and you know you've lost.

He looms over you, snarling down at you, his own blaster in-hand. You wait for the killing blow, or for the rushing wave of unconsciousness to sweep you away and drown you. Either way – oblivion. 

All that borrowed time, since Nevarro, wasted on the floor of this moldy bunker.

And then something runs the man through. 

A sword, but not -- it looks like the absence of a sword. A plane of darkness pierces his armor and sweeps an arc clean through his torso like it’s nothing.

The merc, probably even more surprised than you are, keels over beside you in pieces. Your nose fills with the stench of charred flesh, grasses and sunlight forgotten. You retch, and the agony in your side floods your eyes with tears. 

Your lungs stutter and fail. No air is coming. Your mouth tastes like copper. The room around you is a dream. 

The Mandalorian is standing before you, now, brandishing– well, brandishing something impossible. A black blade curves out of a baton in his hands. Its edges distort and vibrate, intensely enough that being this close to it feels like you've licked a battery. Such a shame he's going to murder you with it before you have a chance to steal it – it’s just like the energy weapons you heard about in fairytales as a kid, come to life. 

Or maybe you imagined it entirely. One final absurd hurrah for your oxygen-starved, millaflower-coated synapses, because it’s at this moment that your brain gives up and you slip away, into the black.

[continue to next chapter]

[taglist] @orcasoul @djarins-cyare

thank you so much for reading!!! ❤️❤️❤️

[elegance-and-grit]

3/100 days of productivity

14.09.2023

Habits

🚶 1 hour of movement (45 minutes of biking and 15-minute walk, counts. Let's see how I'll approach this once I am living closer to uni and don't have to bike that much anymore. 0.0)

🏊‍♀️ 30 mins of sports (Went for a short 20-minute run, but I am letting this count. I trained for a Tough Mudder 10k at the end of august; it was a great success and fun. However, after 7k my knee started hurting so bad, that I had to stop or risk again not being able to even walk without pain for a few weeks (been there, done that). Was quite frustrating, because I had the condition, I just didn't have the properly trained knees. So the plan now is to run a lot but short intervals and increase them slooooowly. The method for now is: September 20mins, October 25 mins, November 30 mins and so on. Let's see if it will help!)

🧘 Yoga (any duration)

🥗 Somewhat healthy food (well, i am giving myself half a point here. Managed three and a half proper and healthy meals, but drank far to sweet coffees and ate two slices of cake, which might be a lot of sugar.)

Study & Work

📚 Read 30 minutes (Nope :/)

✍️ Wrote 30 minutes (Nope :/)

💭 Thought 30 minutes (Nope :/)

💻 Concentrated work for 6 hours (I tried really hard, but yesterday wasn't a good day. Got close to 6 hours but can't really say that it was concentrated.)

I also got far too stuck on some setup issues to debug my patch. Not really sure what the hell I spent my time on there. Feels not well invested. (And that happens to me sometimes, I think I need to start be more pragmatic about what is actually the goal/measure of success and how to reach it). But the setup is now running, so today I can actually tackle the challenge!

Other

I am sitting in a coffee shop writing this, but it's really not romantic, man. The music is far too loud and the customers are somehow really impolite and that makes me very uncomfortable. But hey, got a good coffee first thing in the morning! And now my headphones stopped working.

Fixed the headphones thing with a small power charge, I am a certified engineer after all! But noise-cancelling headphones are sometimes really a life-changer!

The 3-small tasks a day thing is working great for me! Would be funny if this simple approach finally solves my continuous problems with my doom pile. But I am ready for funny.

(My doom pile issues are really not so good, I keep delaying a few tasks one really should not delay, and feel really blocked on tackling them. Not sure why. But I feel good about this three tasks a-day thing. 3 tasks fit nicely on a post-it and the "doom" feeling that happens when I look at my list, doesn't set in.) Even today I realized when I looked at my three points of today, that I was daunted by two of them, but like it was manageable? Maybe my brain was just disillusioned before, always convincing myself that I would get this mountain down in one very productive day. Again, funny.

Had a really nice lunch with a good friend (and a coffee and a walk). If I sometimes ask myself why I don't manage 8 productive hours a day, maybe it's mainly because of 2 1/2 hours lunch breaks or other breaks like this. But not decided on what to do - I like those breaks. Anyone having any suggestions? How do you manage to get your number of productive hours in?

Had a really nice evening with my boyfriend, too. I think we're both becoming more relaxed and it's great. I think this type of evening (with the same kinda setup) would have perhaps been stressful before, but now we managed to make it really nice. Proud of myself here!

Feeling really good and I am grateful for that. Also - I am really happy about every like and follow and more blogs to discover and follow myself. Thank you all lovely studyblr people! So far studyblr really is having a positive impact. <3

[anothershadeofpurple]

Yay for a happy ending but wow Mariana really didn’t deserve Ana what was that? Why do that? Ana pining all the time while Mariana barely had any scene telling us that yes, she was in love with Ana at last half as much as Ana was. After all of that Mariana didn’t even had to make any effort to get Ana?

I spent way too long wanting Ana to get over Marina and realize that she is truly bi (not that bs that she is not gay she just loves Mariana 🙄) and finding someone else who can love her the way she deserves. Really Ana and other women not Mariana was some of my favorite parts lol I really wished Ana had a one night stand, she would still be miserable because she was so in love but at least she could have some great sex, and not just pine while Marina had Ferran

I guess the writers in the end are just not that good, s2 was also pretty underwhelming and s3 was I guess better but not as good as s1. And yes I blame the writers I don’t think that Netflix made any changes there. Just one scene with Mariana and Ana talking about their feelings all that went through, Mariana really talking about how heartbroken she was when Ana pushed her away in s1, about that night together scared her so much she couldn’t think, anything about how much she loves Ana would help so much instead it ended making me feel that Ana was so much more in love that made me kinda sad for her.

Ohh btw sorry for the long rant, the show left me all over the place 😆

Oh my God, I hear you Anon, I'm all over the place too. I should be adulting for Christmas, but instead, I want to do meta deep dives on Tumblr. And I am.

Season two did get boring as well because of the dudes, much like this season, but I do feel it all comes down to trying to keep some imagined general audience happy while carving out space to even be able to tell a gay story, not a lack of capacity. (I like giving creators the benefit of the doubt, especially since we did actually get a textual slow-burn love story between two women. Writers may choose to do it themselves to avoid the network mingling in the first place. I don't know.)

Yes, Ana as truly bi or gay would have been less of a cop-out, I'd like to just think she needs more time to come to terms with her sexuality and this is just an in-between state. After all, it's in character for Ana to be methodical about her sexuality and try to control it. "I'm gonna go out, pick a woman, see if I'm into it and then I will know for sure where I fit in." She might as well have started the episode with a PowerPoint presentation in which she explained this plan to Elena. Ana wants control, she wants shortcuts, which doesn't work in cases like this. We had one of her phony bridge club friends say that "She knew she was a lesbian since high school" when Ana introduced Mariana as the other mother of her daughters. Ludwika just shows us there's so much going on with Ana behind her eyes, I feel like she has a very rich backstory for Ana that she is tapping into. Would love to hear her talk about that. And yes, the chemistry with that woman was actually... good? Even with Elena. She's got Momistry with Mariana, but with these other women... it was easy to imagine more interesting exchanges.

I think the setup for Mariana actually loving Ana instead of Ferran is there, but they did a terrible job with the pacing and gave us so much Ferran that it became difficult to believe. There's the conversation with Elena where the acting makes it very clear she doesn't actually love Ferran, but is playing it safe with him... but even so, it was her turn to talk about her feelings to Ana. And it could have been a few sentences, a short scene, it really didn't need much.

I feel if this last episode would have had another passionate kiss, a few words from Mariana and some tears I would be ridiculously happy right now instead of rationalizing that I should be happy and grateful for getting that next step. It's still progress, hopefully it opens doors for the next slowburn. Eventually someone's gonna get it right.

I better finish my lesbian Hallmark script...

[planeoftheeclectic]

Oh boy, this is about to be a blast from the past. Thanks @skarabrae-stone for the tag!

Rules: Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass this onto other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💖

So I only recently started writing again, meaning I've only got 2 works that are from the last decade, but honestly I'm still very fond of those older ones; they do an excellent job at being what they are.

Doing the no pressure tags above the cut because I don't know if that messes them up: @stonemaskedtaliesin, @zyrafowe-sny, and @firecoloredwater, plus anyone else who sees this and has written something! Hyping yourself up is good practice!

Columbo: Turnabout's Fair Play | 19k (Incomplete) | T | Columbo x Ace Attorney set between AA3 and AA4

Summary:

Technically speaking, Mr. Wright, this isn't my usual beat. But Detective Gumshoe - you know Dick, right? - I owed him a favor, see? And it had been a slow week, so I figured I'd look around, see if I could give the guy a hand. Real stand-up guy, he is, we could use more like him. And anyway, I know you're a real busy guy Mr. Wright, so I'll make this real quick, get out of your hair. I know you and he were real good friends, so I'm sure this is a difficult time for you. Oh, uh, just one more thing Mr. Wright. Why were the two of you such good friends again?

As I say in the dedication, this is the idea that helped me break a very, very long dry spell, so it has to take the top spot for that if nothing else. @stonemaskedtaliesin had introduced me to Ace Attorney, I had introduced them to Columbo, and at some point they went looking to see if there were any crossovers and were disappointed to find none. They come tell me this in discord and I, like a fool, say:

"Well, actually, it makes sense there aren't any. I mean, they're kind of contradictory worldviews. The whole point of Columbo is that he always gets the right guy, and the whole point of Ace Attorney is that the police never get the right guy."

Fortunately for all of us, I continued:

"I mean, for it to even work you'd need some kind of convoluted setup - maybe that would stop the AA police from just arresting someone immediately. And who would be the killer anyway? Well, ok, there's an option there, but who should they murder? Maya? That'd be mean, but that's the obvious choice. Hmm...nobody likes him, I could murder him, but how--oh."

And at that point I stopped talking because the end of this story materialized in my brain and I wanted to make sure it was a surprise. Spoiler culture may be overblown, but murder mysteries are an exception, I feel.

Anyways, if you're a fan of either series, enjoy gen fic, like seeing characters get what they deserve, or just want to see Columbo at an anime convention, this is the fic for you! From a writing standpoint, it's been really fun to experiment with a very limited POV, to try to mimic the feel of a television camera. And of course, Columbo's dialogue is a joy to write. (As you'll see later, dialogue is one of my strengths)

Song of the Peregrine [Podfic] | OG fic is 39k (Incomplete) | T | Chrom/F!Robin but honestly it's mostly gen | Kid Icarus Uprising x Fire Emblem Awakening

Summary:

There were reports of something in the skies of eastern Ylisse. Something with wings as black as pitch and eyes as red as rubies. Dark Pit has no clue where he's managed to land himself, but it turns out that Pit and Palutena don't have a monopoly on annoying. He can leave these humans anytime he wants, and he will. Soon. Any day now. If the Shepherds have it their way, that day won't come any time soon. (In which Dark Pit ends up joining the Shepherds, and the world tilts.)

The original fic is @stonemaskedtaliesin's, but I like to consider myself its honorary godparent. We've spent a lot of time worldbuilding for it, and it's so good you guys. It's going to be amazing. There are long term plans.

I started the podfic because I wanted to listen to it as I fell asleep. The audio quality is definitely shakier in the first couple chapters as I figure things out, but it's been really fun learning new skills and doing lots of fun silly voices.

...still need to finish editing chapter 5.

Anyway, blanket recommendation to go read this if you know anything about Kid Icarus (Fire Emblem is a bonus but not necessary, iit's pretty well-explained in-story) and if you like podfic, hey! You're in luck! Fun fact: this is the only Awakening podfic as of right now. Yes I'm also surprised. Maybe if I ever finish this one I'll set out to try and change that. goat milk and oats Grima would be so much fun to voice.

Warrior Cats Smoofs | 8.5k | G | Gen | Warrior Cats

Okay I'm kind of cheating here but that's going to be a theme for these last few answers. I wrote these over a decade ago with my best friend at the time. She had internet, I didn't, so we had a joint account on the Warrior Cats Wiki and the Warriors Fanfiction Wiki, which are both Fandom now I believe. I archived them to AO3 because of that, and because even years later they would occasionally get a new comment from someone who really enjoyed reading them. And, as I said, I'm still very fond of them. My handle on most of the internet still comes from these stories and that account. They are simple, silly, dialogue and stage directions only parodies, and they were a blast to write. I still remember the melody we came up with for the ending jingle. I'm pretty sure these guys (plus the playwriting class I took) are a big part of why I tend to be very dialogue-heavy. I like fun purple-prosy descriptions, but sometimes a few spoken words can convey a whole lot of actions. Show Don't Tell taken to the extreme, I guess.

I'm pretty sure The Library was our most popular one back in the day (to the point we made a sequel)! The Auction was the first (though doesn't hold up quite as well...lol they're all 15 years old anyway). I'm very fond of Christmas Caroling because all the lyrics are singable and that is my PET PEEVE IF YOU'RE GOING TO DO IT THE METER HAD BETTER BE RIGHT OR AT LEAST CLOSER THAN A CATHOLIC HYMN. Most of all though, I'm fond of all the memories these have. I don't know where Moss is now, but I hope they're doing well. It is also fun to see where I've come from over the years - like I said, upon reflection it makes sense that I tend to default to pretty dialogue-heavy.

The Palutena Trap | 4.7k (Incomplete) | T | Gen (past Palutena/Medusa | Kid Icarus Uprising

Summary:

Kid Icarus meets the Parent Trap.

That's it, that's all I've got.

Ok now this one is cheating because it's not published anywhere yet except in snippets on tumblr. This was actually conceived at almost the same time as Turnabout's Fair Play, but I'm trying to only focus at one at a time, so this one won't properly see the light of day until TFP is finished. (We're getting there! We're almost at the end of Act 2 out of 3!!) That does mean that I'm going about writing it in a very different way - there's going to be lots and lots of editing once I finally set down to publish this. Which is probably for the best - I'm sure there are bits of tfp that would be better if I wrote the whole thing and then went back to edit.

My favorite part of this story is still the normal-people jobs I've given everyone, since this is technically a modern AU. We have an investigative journalist who lives on a yacht, mob boss, butler who's retired MI6, and front woman for a punk band which is actually a front for an eco-terrorist group, for example. I talk more about this story here and here. Aside from that, my favorite thing is exploring the relationship between Dark Pit and Lady Palutena, and between Lady Palutena and Medusa.

The former gets off on the worst possible foot in canon, and it's only ever obliquely addressed, so it's a lot of fun to play with and extrapolate from. In this version, Dark Pit is a child whose mother gave up everything to do with him (and said some pretty nasty things in the court record). So that's where we stand: how do you reckon with that? What does it mean that you still want some kind of relationship, or at least answers? What is family and blood, in the end?

The latter relationship is one that's...well, I wouldn't say it's canon, but it's definitely canon-compliant. It's rather like Narumitsu, in that I look at it and go "hm. whatever is going on between those two, they're not normal about each other." This is true in canon, and if anything it's less true in The Palutena Trap, since despite the name the story is not about getting the parents back together so much as reconciling a mother and son. But the more this idea ferments in my brain the more I want to have some kind of meeting at the end. Maybe it goes badly, maybe it goes less badly, but I have this mental image in my head: Imagine the messiest divorce you've ever seen. Ugly, dragged through the papers, all kinds of legal issues, you part ways never to speak again. You hate her guts, and you can't go a month without thinking about her because she's always got Yet Another Stupid News Article coming out. You find out your kids have been playing some switcheroo on you, and when you meet her again you're coldly civil, both of you clearly holding yourselves back from starting a slugfest in the local forum, and then you see: she's still wearing your wedding ring. The one you picked out, the one you put on her finger 14 years ago. I just. IDK they're not normal about each other and the complexity and ambiguity of it compels me.

Vaguely Remembered 2nd Grade Writing Assignment | like 2 pages maybe | G | Gen | The Land Before Time

Alright this one's definitely cheating but this has already been a lot of reminiscing about the past, so here's a toast to the very first thing I ever wrote: an adventure story starring the main cast of The Land Before Time. All I remember about it is it absolutely sucked to get started but once I did it was longer than it needed to be and I used the word Petrie-ball™. Yes, including the ™. The Petrie-ball™ was how they solved the big obstacle, I think. Like I said, I don't remember much of it, but I remember how proud and happy I felt when it was done. So here's to you, long-forgotten fanfiction adventure story. Here's to the first of many, with many more to follow after.

(Also, if you want to see more of TFP, Palutena Trap, or Peregrine Podfic, you can bother me in a few hours for WIP Wednesday! If you want more OG Peregrine you have to bother @stonemaskedtaliesin instead. Actually, make sure you do that, I know they've got chapter 8 waiting in the wings and I NEED to see how that scene with Pip and Lissa plays out)

[coldgoldlazarus]

.

Still not sure how to talk to the people from the d&d group about last week.

I wanna be mature and constructive about this, but the best I can really muster is "Yeah I kinda fucked up in some spots, not trying to downplay that, but on the whole I'm just frustrated with the situation, and how all of what went wrong is being put on me in a way I feel is unfair."

I felt like I was rushed into something I wasn't entirely ready for, right on the heels of several months of stress over making sure I'd have food stamps again. Yes I volunteered for this several months beforehand, but not as an immediate thing, and more with a broad vibe than a clear pre-planned... plan. I wanted to have the time to figure out the finer details and put maps and materials together before committing to doing this, but instead between being busy with IRL shit, executive dysfunction and heat exhaustion being an absolute bitch, and my own anal-retentiveness about getting everything just right combined with not being entirely sure where to start, that didn't happen.

I really should have just said no, but everyone NEEDED SO BADLY to play something during the break from the main campaign, (even though there is a minecraft server literally right there) and the whole "if you don't pilot the EVA, Rei will be made to do so again" thing was in play with the other multishot that could have filled the gap getting off to a false start and not being entirely ready either. Plus, I wanted to get this test run out of the way so I could work on the reboot of the big magical girl campaign again while the current main one was drawing to a close. Being told July was gonna be the last chance to do that before a long stretch without interruptions kinda made me panic. So I said yes instead.

I figured given my track record, having the deadline would be a good way to ensure I actually worked on it, but like, I think it really just did more harm than good, compared to if I had let it breathe. I also thought I was a bit readier than I was, with some stuff I hadn't even considered needing to figure out cropping up right on the day of, and having to scramble to get those hashed out at the last second. So yeah, while this was going on I spent the bulk of the weeks not working on this, and then having to do the rest day-of, causing the session start time delays. (I could give a detailed breakdown on exactly what those unforseen "invisible steps" were, so they have context for why the delays kept happening the way they did, but I've already been told to my face by at least one of the group that she doesn't give a shit, so whatever.) That was a mistake on my part, not gonna try to say otherwise. I just should have said no in the first place.

And I guess there's the communication issue. That I did mess up on too, the first few weeks. I tried to do better about it last tuesday, at least, after going radio silence the prior week. I felt I did a decent job of giving updates on my progress and saying "hey this is probably happening but don't assume it is for sure until I say I am Done and Ready." It's out of my control that people went ahead and assumed it was a sure thing anyway. I literally said at one point that I needed to take the bus back home from the library and that would be causing another delay in my prep, only for someone to say "okay this is happening definitely at exactly when she gets home" and I had to say, no, that's just when I'll be getting home, I still have more setup to do after that. And it's a hard fucking balancing act in giving ETAs because people get mad if you give too big a number, but then I also tend to take longer than I estimate...

I should have just called it off then and there tbh. Just didn't wanna let people down second week in a row. Not that that worked out anyway.

And of course the straw to break the camel's back was that A: There was another thing I needed to finish that I thought I had already done, but had in fact only half-completed, B: one of the other players dipped out on account of a migraine, and I hate leaving people out on principle but everyone else wanted to go ahead anyway, and C: on top of those, this was suddenly needing to be the last session before the main campaign resumes yesterday, so I'd have to rush to complete yet another session's worth of content while running one. And also I'd been up for 26 hours straight at this point. How the fuck was I supposed to react? I needed to remove myself from the situation and I needed sleep.

(I will readily admit that waking up still pissed the next morning and pouring all my complaints into a shitty meme format generator was not a mature course of action. Again, not pretending I'm blameless here.)

...

Anyway, my takeaway from where and how I did fuck up and why, is that I'm just not cut out for this.

After the first run of the magical girl campaign crashed and burned, I figured out a lot of the hows and whys, and found solutions to those problems to enact for next time. But none of that was even relevant to where this one went wrong, so that's a whole new set of problems to also find answers for, and Idk how to do that other than just having everything already ready to go beforehand. A luxury I just don't think this group would be willing to afford.

And furthermore, on sitting back and discussing both campaigns and my approach, I think the way I'm coming at this is fundamentally incompatible with what the rest of the group wants out of a campaign, and this would extend to trying to reboot the big one as well. I don't really enjoy TTRPGs as a medium in practice as much as in theory, because I just function better telling a planned story, not playing an improv game. It's a bit frustrating when it feels like the rest of the group doesn't care about my big grand narrative, but on having the time to reflect on it, I think that one's a Me Problem and a symptom of the incompatible approaches. There's nothing wrong with either, but the two don't exactly mesh well. And this is only one example of that clashing, same happened with me as a player. (The worst of which was when I tried changing my approach! It didn't work and backfired harder!)

(Literally the one exception where things did go well, was because that character I was playing was a super easygoing, down-for-whatever and in-the-moment type, and that campaign didn't last long enough for something to go wrong anyway.)

What happened on Tuesday was basically me ragequitting, but my decision to leave altogether is not. It's me recognizing that I'm the weak link here, and so it would just be better for both me and the group for me to stop trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.

But of course, it seems at least some of them are mad at me over that, too. There's no winning.

So in the end, I don't really know what to say. Yeah, I fucked up. But no, I don't feel I fucked up badly enough to warrant this level of vitriol. I tried to learn from what went wrong and communicate better instead of shutting down, but that only does so much when people just decide what I said differently like with the bus thing, or change plans on me at the last second. I'm frustrated as hell, but not mad at the people, I'm just upset and annoyed that they're so mad at me.

I tried to do my best in time, but the timing was all wrong, and my best just wasn't good enough. Sorry.

[fordearlife]

Let's talk about Felice in terms of queerness and racism~

I posted this screenshot of Felice with a rainbow key chain earlier, which showed up toward the end of S2, and today saw a tweet speculating about her potentially being a lesbian, and I got thinking–

Wille's speech is going to change social dynamics in Sweden but also at school in a big way because he, as the most high-profile among them, just came out to the world, which will likely inspire others to come out or start to question their sexuality if they weren't already. He added an element of safety for them to do so. Nils seems the most obvious – he said he didn't want to be the first out CEO, but with the crown prince coming out first, it's more likely that he'll just say f*** it and stop hiding that part of his life so intentionally.

The writers haven't shown us Felice questioning her sexuality, but they HAVE shown us a few things: the key chain (imo the scrambled colors of the rainbow could symbolize her confusion or hint at her piecing it together in the future), and now one of her best friends is out (to some extent) to the world and she has at least one other best friend who might feel more comfortable coming out in S3, even if Stella doesn't profess her love for Fredrika for the same reasons she told Sara. Especially because Felice doesn't feel close to her parents, these people would be her support system if she were to start questioning.

But I don't believe she would have her queerness challenged in a *season conflict* way by those around her – I think the conflict she faces will be racism. Madison, one of her other best friends, has shown culturally appropriative tendencies (possible use of sage for the ritual in S1?). I kept that feeling to myself when we only had S1 because I thought the writers were perhaps just misguided in presenting her as the "spiritual, witchy" friend, but S2 has me thinking it was intentional (which I'm stoked about). This always struck me as more of a US issue, but some of her hairstyles in S2 (the one below is from E1) are not ones usually worn by white people, and Madison is from the US or has spent a lot of time there, so we might expect her to know better. I would.

The reason I think this will (/should) be a theme of S3 is because the writers made a point in S2 to show Felice 1) expressing discomfort about the wig she was supposed to wear for the Valentine ball and being dismissed by her friends (including Madison) and then 2) being singled out for having her hair down at a meal while Stella and another girl were not. Everything is on purpose in Young Royals! Paralleled with Vincent looking down on Simon in S2 during the rowing team scenes, it seems like they're planning to bring racism, microagressions, etc. more into focus moving forward.

So, this leaves Felice with a possible significant self-discovery arc in which she questions her sexuality and/or chooses/is forced to address the racism she faces as the only (?) Black woman at the school. The show clearly takes on the responsibility of showing the nuance in many issues that other media tends to portray rather simply, such as mental illness, neurodivergence, queerness, and expectations, and as a setup, this would match that energy given that Madison is otherwise an excellent friend and would likely fully support Felice in coming out but be resistant to anyone questioning her character.

[thyandrawrites]

The thin subject about Dabi... kinda thinking of him being subverting expectations yet again. Thinking again... I think Hori is purposely doing this because the "Dabi is a Todoroki" theory was running around for the past years, other than Dabi's real identity there should be something surprising or shocking about him.

Mmh, I understand where you're coming from, but I disagree with the reasoning behind it. Major plot points don't have to be surprising or shocking by default. They especially don't when it comes to narrative setups and payoffs, like the Dabi reveal of this example. Writing a story from the premise that any major plot point needs to shock and surprise the audience—by offering something they never even considered speculating about—is the kind of flawed storytelling choice that made the last season of Game of Thrones crash and burn, alienating the vast majority of its fans. That happened because the need to do the unexpected brought the showrunners to sacrifice any internal coherency, foreshadowing and narrative set ups the story had already established in the books and show alike, all in favour of shock value and a cheap "gotcha" moment. Did it make the story better? Not really. It actually made it worse. Most of the main characters had their arcs and growth sacrificed to make that plot twist happen. If D&D went with it was for purely capitalistic reasons. Shock value makes for extremely cheap storytelling, but it's useful when your purpose is just to make a big audience talk about your show. There's no such thing as bad publicity if the point is to create something that only needs to be consumed once, and generate profits as quickly as possible.

But if we're approaching it from the perspective of an author needing to make a predictable plot twist more interesting... That's a whole different story. What makes a story interesting in the long run, past any quick and profitable hype, is tailoring a narrative that will drop off crumbs that the readers will pick up one by one, speculating about each new piece of info and creating expectations for the eventual reveal. That's what Horikoshi has done with Dabi. The crumbs begin before Dabi's official introduction on screen, and they proceed throughout the story, until the eventual payoff.

Horikoshi isn't a particularly subtle storyteller, by the way. The foreshadowing and the crumbs are so obvious at times that none of his plot twists qualify as twists anymore. Yet all the major reveals are still the best parts of the story anyway because he spent so long working on those buildups that fans became invested in that eventual payoff, and it made their day when it became canon, even if it was what they expected all along.

Imho Horikoshi isn't really great at this whole "unoredictable" thing. Most of the things he writes are transparent. I predicted that Enji's resolution to be a better dad after he gets n1 would fail a whole year before it happened, simply because I paid attention to the way the story was built. Even some of the less blatant details aren't entirely surprising. The "Ujiko was Touya's doctor" theory was a thing months if not years before it became canon. And I think that's okay. Honestly, I'm tired of stories hinging on shock value. I'd much rather consume something that feels organic, that is planned all along and that you see coming, but that still manages to pull on your heartstrings anyway because of how it's executed, rather than because it comes out of nowhere and it surprises me

[pizzapasta23045]

Sending another ask so the psot doens't get too long but YEAH I SPENT. A REALLY REALLY LONG TIME ON THAT MOUNTAIN. Actually back pre-sumeru when I had more time and energy (less school) I was extremely intense with my gameplay. I'm talking the Chasm 100%ed within give or take a week after it's release. Hours upon hours spent getting the map to full completion. It was actually INSANE.

ALSO. Also also. Opinions on the organization setup of Khaenri'ah/related groups bc like I KNOW that so far the only DRECTLY Khaenri'ah related groups are the Hexenzircle, Fatui and the Abyss Order but I have. A reallllly really strong feeling that there's a fourth group and that's the one Kaeya belongs to BUT. I am very curious as to what you think :3

100% chasm??? You are so fucking real for that, I could never!

Well, about the different organizations, i sure have some thoughts... There are probably innacurate to some oscure lore but hey, whatever...

So, the Alberich are definetely not connected to the fatui, but that should be a given at this point. The ideologies are just different, one wants to restore the homeland or some semblance of it, the other (Pierro) is described as a traitor to Khaenri'ah, does not seem to care for the restoration and his organazation mostly focuses on ending destiny and destroying celestia. Moreso the second than the first.

So the Alberich. I have a feeling that Skirk is an Alberich (you know Skirk, right? Childe's master in the abyss), because she is incredibly misterious, described as looming in the dark, ridicoulusly powerful and in the Abyss where it is speculated Khaenri'ah's survivors went. She's also speculated to be part of the Herzenicle but i don't think so becase she's only describe as a swordwoman and not as a witch.

Dain's also an alberich, imo. Since he's against both the abyss order and the fatui and he can't be part of the Herzickel.

My theory about the Alberich is deeply connected with my theory on the abyss sibling. Which is that the sibling went through the entire journey just as we did and challenged the Heavenly principals, who, since they were loosing, basically reset the entire timeline, choose the traveler as the new descender and pushed the sibling into the role of leader of the abyss to fill in the blanks.

This is because the only, as far as I'm aware, time we can hear about our sister's journey, like really and in detail, is through the Aranara who call them by a nickname and talk in riddles. Which would bypass Irminsul

There's one time from the fatui, i think, but I can't find it and it doesn't seem specific enough to be erased, plus pierro may know how to avoid Irminsul through codes and written "fake" languages.

Now, back to the Alberich. My theory is that the place the alberich had in the world is the equivalent of the fatui in our timeline. So all the fatui's plans are similar to the Alberich's, which would explain why Pierro seems to be able to tell the future. In this case Childe would be Skirk (since I think it'd be funny) and dottore would be rhinedottir (since, you know, insane scientist ect,ect)

Now, after the Alberich's plans failed (since they were using the sibling to defy the world) the intelligence network divided into two groups. Kaeya's father and company basically form the most insane case of maliscous compliance.

Like "technically" they follow the heavenly principals while slowly making sure that the heavens still are defeated. Pierro doesn't like that so he creates the fatui to continue the revolution.

Now the Herznickel I'm not sure about, haven't researched it much to be honest, but my gut tells me they are associated with Celestia. Not sure why, like I said, Haven't researched it, but i'd be glad to listen if you can disprove it or something.

And the Abyss order seems like the farthest away from Khaenri'ah, oddly enough, maybe because most of the people that are part of it are just... mindless monsters trasformed by the curse. Also, any faction (the fatuii, dain, Kaeya to an extent) all seem to hate them or want them gone? We know that Khaenri'ah used to use the field tillers to cleanse the abyss beasts so it may because of that but idk...

Honestly, this is the first time I've externalized any of this so it may not make sense at all. But I'd be glad to hear your theories in turn oh wise sage from the old times (1.3 lmao)(non making fun of you btw, we're both just as insane.

[chadsawyerphotography]

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SHOOTING THE NIGHT SKY: Part 1

This is the first in a series of entries covering night sky photography for beginners. If you're just starting out in Astrophotography, this session will covers what gear you'll need to have a successful, and enjoyable, session.

Before getting into the camera setup I used to capture star trails and the Milky Way, let's first review what items I use to capture my night skies.

THE RIGHT WEATHER

Okay, so you can't bring this with you but there's no point in venturing out if it's going to be cloudy, or worse. Be sure to check the hourly forecast in addition to the daily. Just because it's cloudy at sunset doesn't mean those clouds won't move out of the area before the stars come out (and, if shooting the Milky Way, you may have several hours before it rises, well after sunset).

THE RIGHT CAMERA

I use a Sony a7r iv, a full frame, 61mp camera body. You'll want a body that can handle higher ISOs without adding a lot of sensor noise, especially as you'll be taking potentially hundreds of shots for star trails and building up some sensor heat.

THE RIGHT LENS

Generally speaking, you're going to want two things out of your lens for astrophotography: wide angle and fast. I usually take two lenses with me. Since I'm shooting with a full frame and not a crop sensor (APS-C senor). I take my Sony 16-35 2.8 GM and my 14mm 1.8 GM primary lens. If you have a crop sensor camera and lenses, you’ll want to bring your widest lens with the widest aperture, preferably 2.8 or wider.

THE RIGHT TRIPOD

Be wary of relying on a light weight or flimsy tripod as you don't want your camera shaking during longer exposures (or, even worse, falling over). Ideally, you'll have a model that has a center hook from which you can hang your camera bag or tripod weights to help with windy conditions. I prefer and use SLIK Tripods and ball head. You can purchase directly from Slik Tripods website or on Amazon.

THE RIGHT APPS

I used PhotoPills to identify when and where the Milky Way or Polaris if I’m doing circle star trails, moon phase and position, and much more. It also has built in tools to help you: calculate your maximum exposure time to avoid star trailing (accounting for your camera's sensor size and your lens' set focal length), plan for time lapses, find hyperfocal distances… and a ton more. There is a lot to absorb and play around with and, fortunately, the developers provide tutorials for using all the tools (I spent about 90 minutes watching videos the night before the group outing). The mode I found most useful, however, is the night AR (altered reality) mode. Click on this and you're taken to a live view of your surroundings with an overlay of the sky. You can use this view to scroll back and forth through times and dates to preview where the Milky Way will be in the future; a great tool to plan your shot well in advance, especially when it won't be visible until 3am! Additionally, you'll likely discover that a star finder app will be useful, if you're trying to find/identify constellations or just need help finding the North Star (and can't remember your basic education, like me).

THE RIGHT STUFF

Jump past the Milky Way for a rundown of some other items you'll need, or should consider, for night sky sessions.

TRIPOD WEIGHTS

If wind is in the forecast, consider some weighted bags for your tripod. I found some on Amazon for a good price and filled them with play sand from the local hardware store. The set I ordered has four bags, enough to place one on each tripod leg and to hang one from the tripod's center hook. If you don't want to use weighted bags, or forget them, you can always hang your camera bag from the hook in a pinch.

EXTRA CAMERA BATTERIES

More important for star trails than shooting the Milky Way but you'll want an extra battery or two. Shooting 240 30-second exposures for star trails chewed through about 70% of a fully charged battery for my Sony a7r iv, and I ended up using all three batteries I brought for the overnight session (only one was completely drained, the other two each had roughly 15-20% left). The next worst thing to not checking the weather forecast beforehand would be having perfect conditions and running out of juice halfway through your shooting.

INTERVALOMETER/WIRED REMOTE AND EXTRA BATTERIES

Another must-have for shooting star trails. Yes, you could shoot manually but who wants to stand or sit next to your camera for 2-3 hours hitting the shutter button every 30 seconds? I also discovered that the built-in interval timer on the Sony a7r iv allows for up to 9999 shots, but some cameras only allow up to 99 shots. As for batteries, the intervalometer/remote probably doesn't draw much power but, again, you don't want to get halfway through your shots only to have the batteries unexpectedly die. I always bring spare batteries and a portable battery charger just incase. It’s always nice to be prepared then not have it.

RED FLASHLIGHT/HEADLAMP

A headlamp is a must. Make sure it has a red lamp mode. Also I always carry a compact flashlight just incase- for light painting, getting around, and for emergencies - and a head lamp that has a red light option. I only used the flashlight a few times to sweep the foreground during long exposures of the Milky Way but I used the red headlamp frequently as I walked to and from my camera and my chair or car, or as I needed to check various things on my camera or intervalometer here and there through the night. Remember, ideal shooting conditions are during the new moon; between that and (hopefully) being far away from light pollution, it will be much darker than you expect!

OTHER ITEMS TO CONSIDER

Chair

Snacks/Drinks

Bug Spray

First aid kit

Balaclava (best purchase I've made for chilly nights!)

Blanket

Pillow (I caught a snooze in the back seat of my car... the pillow helped... some)

Extra memory cards

Lens cleaning tools

And a lens warmer. This is needed for those long cold nights or high humidity nights where frost or dew can form on your lens over time. There’s. I thing like shooting a 700 image star trail or time lapse and seeing the last 200-300 images are hazy due to frost or dew.

This covers what I typical bring and equipment I use for Astrophotography. You can always add to list as the nights are long, or you can always kick back while the camera is clicking away and read some more of my blogs or checkout my tutorials and adventures on YouTube. But keep that screen light away from your camera, you don’t want to introduce any unwanted light pollution!

Don’t forget to subscribe and stay update with new blogs and more!

[boingolungs]

I've been in the hotel for the past two days and I remember thinking of some deep shit. Completely forgot what it was. So I'm gonna guess

I think I was questioning why I get attached to dogs and animals in my mothers home town that might die months later and why I get pets at all when I'm gonna out live them. The answer that I got or remembered was that they might be small in my life, but I'm so much in there's. I am the difference between them having a shitty life and a good one. I remember when my Golden Boy died I immediately thought I should have spent more time with him, got him a bed, and been a better friend to him. And then I remember I did buy him a bed and he never slept on it. I remember I'd play with him on most days when I fed him or came back from school. I also remember on the day before he was put down I spent hours with him in the garden sitting with him and holding him down because if he got up he'd hurt himself. We just sat there enjoying some music and me just saying I love him and it'll be alright. I still feel that way though ya know I should have spent more time with him and pamper him. But to kinda ease myself I always remember when I leave for whatever reason and come back he'd start jumping at the gate and when I open the door he'd be there or rushing inside to greet me.

I wondered what would happen if I'd actually get a boyfriend you know. I have no actual idea what I actually am. Like I saw gals I'd say are cute and would like to know more about in college and felt the same for guys. And then I realized holy shit did I not feel anyway about that in highschool or years before. And then there's the whole trusting someone enough to be a relationship I and again if I get a good guy to be a leach to how would my family react. My sisters cool with it and out of anything all she's been doing is being supportive and making lame jokes but that's normal. Parents, the only uncle I'm close to, and hell I'd might even be shunned by everyone else. Then again I'm not to close to my extended family and if my parents and uncle shun disown me hey fuck em!

God I hate romance anime's. If the relationship doesn't start at the end of the first season and it doesn't have anything else my ass is dropping it. Also fuck love triangles or love right angles.

My parents keep saying that when they retire they'll go back to Mexico and they think I will too. Fuck that I am not! America may not be perfect but I won't retire there. If I make it that long and have the right amount of money to retire I'll see there the winds take me. And I don't like traveling. I'm really only interested in going to three countries overseas. Scotland, South Korea, Japan, and maybe Mongolia. Only those and that's it. Also knowing my parents they'd probably get tired of Mexico in the first two weeks and then comeback. Really depends if they have internet connection and how irritating the nearby relatives are.

My sister asked me if I plan on moving out of the house at some point. She didn't ask me in a irritated way. We were talking about a dream I had once where I was in a nice apartment. I had a boyfriend who cooks, a gaming PC, TV, drawing setup, lemon fruit wallpaper pattern,a nice couch, my dog who at that point was dead was there, again a cute cooking bf who I think wore the pants, and I HAD A FUCKING APARTMENT! It was the best dream I ever had imagine how pissed I was when I woke up! Anyway she asked me if I plan in moving out at some point. I just gave her a look and said in a posh voice "Ohhh But the economy" and she then agreed and told me that rent basically cost her whole paycheck. I then said please don't leave me alone with mother as a joke. We'll probably still be living in our mothers house and see what happens when she goes back to Mexico.

[audiovisualrecall]

Instead of working on anything else or even writing the story, I spent most of the day again just working on the clan allegiances for my warrior cats/marvel AU. It's fun and feels like I'm getting something done, and it is good to know what characters are where, even minor characters to the actual story, bc I need to be able to refer to other cats not just the main ones. But it also feels like a waste of time. and I got to rewrite them multiple times to be as neat and organized as possible which is part of the fun but not necessarily necessary, you know? So part of that is going wait holdup it's 3pm and I've done Nothing else with my day besides helping change some stuff back to non-passover dishes, took out the garbage, and fed the cat (which I did late!).

Like... I might want to do laundry? Or go sit outside and enjoy the warm weather? Or watch the video on transferring indoor seedlings to outdoors and then use the containers I bought ages ago to start that process? Or work on the last 2 linearts for steph's book and maybe start doing the colors? Or work on some other art like a painting? Or try my hand at mermay this year?

But no... i did the allegiances and now it's 3pm and that means I get like 2 hours to do anything else with my day before we have to start planning dinner. And there's too many things I could/should/need/want to do and I don't Want to pick just one. None of them feel like the right choice. Or they'll be too complicated/fussy to setup like for digital art I have to move the whole laptop+tablet setup to the table and futz with all the cords and the easel thing I put the tablet on. Plus if I work on that I won't do Anything Else I won't be able to pause or take a break or I'll take a break and never go back to it. And I'll have to move it all off the table tomorrow or Friday for friday night dinner. And I probably should do laundry but idk if ma has anything she wants to add to whatever load I'll do and she and dad are at the doctor right now and I can't wait and do nothing till they get back but if I start anything without starting laundry first I won't remember to do the laundry/won't want to stop what I'm working on to do it.

Remembered another thing to do which is reply to messages on etsy and make more of some stickers and put things back on stock that have sold out. It should really alert you when stuff goes oos if it's one item in a listing of multiple items, imo. Need to do but also complicated and need the laptop for it which means moving it with the tablet anyway too, and then maneuvering the tablet to be out of the way, bc I don't want to have to unplug it. What I need is an office with a desktop computer, or this laptop set up as one, with the tablet stationed next to that where it can stay permanently, and then a smaller laptop or this one I guess to use for non-specifically-art stuff that I can sit wherever with it. But that's not achievable right now despite having the extra room, bc idk how to make the space work. There's a lot of stuff in there, and I want everything in one place but I also like to work at the table sometimes too, and I have some art stuff in my room and idk if it should stay there or what, and idk what I need the desk in my room for when I don't use it and dont want to for the most part. I like my room to be for displaying my collections, for keeping my books in my bookcase, for clothing obvs, and for sleeping/relaxing in bed. And for some storage I guess. Idefk. Would I even use the office if I made the other room into one? I want to set up 2 desks into an L shaped one facing the door to the bedroom, I want better lighting, I want a space for my easel/for painting, and storage for artwork and supplies, and a place for etsy related stuff, and I also have craft stuff, and bookbinding stuff, and my b+w laser printer for fanbook printing......... anyway I can't do anything about it right now, I would need like a full day just to try tackling that, possibly a few days. Let alone touching on the mess that is my room at the moment, or the crawl space situation which is a mess...

I also need to take some books out of the new bookcase and put in the last (moveable) shelf. Dad gave it to me ages ago and idk if I can find the right pegs for the shelf anymore oops. I didn't do it then bc I'd put my books in it temporarily. Idk there's just So Much and some of it is entangled in or complicated by something else that needs to be done and it's frustrating.

[dojodgtl]

Passive income and affiliate marketing for beginners

Introduction

For some people, the idea of passive income is a dream come true. For others, it's an impossible fantasy. But there are ways to make money online and earn passive income that can change your life forever. The first step to making money online as a beginner is learning how affiliate marketing and passive income work together.

What is passive income?

Passive income is money earned without actively working. This can be a great way to make money online and it's not as hard to start than you might think.

The first thing you need to know about passive income is that it comes in many forms, but they all have one thing in common: they require little or no work on your part after the initial setup has been completed. Passive income streams can be automated, meaning that once everything is set up (and paid for), your earnings will continue rolling in without any additional effort on your part!

"Don't be a victim of negative sef-talk. Remember, you are listening”

 - B. Proctor

Why should you consider passive income as a viable option to make money online?

In case you're not sure what passive income is, it's basically income that comes in without you having to work for it. In other words, your time isn't directly spent working on getting paid.

One of the biggest reasons why people want to make money online is because they don't want to spend their days in an office or at home doing something they hate. If this sounds like you, then passive income could be a viable option for making money online!

How do I get started with passive affiliate marketing?

Building a website is the first step to getting started with passive affiliate marketing. There are many resources online that can help you set up a basic website, such as WordPress and Wix. You can also hire someone to build one for you if you don't have time or skillset for it yourself.

Once your site is live and ready for content, start writing articles about topics that people are searching for on Google (and other search engines). The more targeted your articles are with keywords that people use when looking for information on this topic, the better chance they'll rank high in search results so people will find them when they need answers to their questions!

Next come finding affiliates programs - these are companies who want their products advertised through other websites like yours. These companies will pay commissions (a percentage) based on sales made through links provided in their affiliate program; this means once someone clicks through one of those links onto their site where they buy something from said company then both parties win--you get paid some money from whatever sale was made while also helping out another business grow bigger because of increased traffic coming from yours!

" Success is going from Failure to Failure without losing your enthusiasm". W. Churchill

Can I actually make money with affiliate marketing?

Yes, you can make money with affiliate marketing. The key is to find a niche that you are passionate about and that has a good chance of converting. If you don't have your own website or blog yet, then I recommend starting one as soon as possible (see "How do I start an affiliate site?" below).

When it comes time to choose which products/services/niches to promote on your site(s), keep in mind these tips:

 Find something in which people are interested enough to search for answers online but not so much so that there's already tons of competition out there selling similar things. For example: if someone wants information on how they can lose weight quickly without exercising or dieting too much (which many do), then there may only be one or two companies selling weight loss plans online--but if someone searches Google for "best way lose weight fast" then thousands more companies show up offering everything from diet pills through exercise programs all the way down until we get down into extreme diets like liquid diets where nothing but liquids pass through our system all day long until we lose weight fast! The key here is finding gaps within niches where nobody else has yet filled those gaps with content-rich websites full of helpful information

"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door" M. Berle

This guide will give you a basic starting point and some tips for how to get started with affiliate marketing.

·       Passive income is a great way to make money online.

·    You should consider passive income as a viable option for making money online because it's safe, easy and can be done from anywhere in the world.

·  This guide will give you a basic starting point and some tips for how to get startedwith affiliate marketing.

Conclusion

There are many ways to make money online, but affiliate marketing is one of the best. It's easy to get started and can bring in a decent amount of money if you work hard enough at it. If you want to learn more about this business model or how to get started with it, then Check out this Free Training to learn the: 2-Step System for creating online income.

[fort-no-more]

if you're still taking rant topics? Fashion. teach me how to look COOL, you funky funky sea monkey.

...Right, okay, that nickname is NOT sticking. Fashion. Wear what's practical and affordable, but still makes you feel good. That's it. Next- No, I'm kidding, of course I have more to say. I cannot begin to understand fashion. Like, designer labels. Why are you paying money to be a billboard? They should pay you! Take it up with Sealand's Advertising Agency once we get around to making one! And even if they don't have the name plastered all over them, you've got clothes you can't do anything in. You're too worried about ruining something you spent loads of money on, so... what? You sit around, twiddling your thumbs and hoping someone notices you have Fancy Clothes? Never mind that most of them look and feel no better than the cheap stuff. Which reminds me: distressed clothes. Why are they more expensive. If I walk around with holes and rust stains in my clothes from doing repairs or playing in them, it's sloppy, but if a brand does it then it's edgy. It feels like... like mocking actual hard work, almost. Like "mmmyes, we paid extra to look like this because it's quaint and charming. Can you imagine actually wearing down your belongings through hard work? Hu-tut-tut!" I swear to you, from as much as I can remember, no one cared what brand your clothes were in the 80s and 90s. They cared about the style, sure, but cheap knockoffs weren't a problem! I don't think I could even name any designer brands back then. But now, I hear other kids talk about it all the time, because it's some sort of proof that you're successful, but like... You're a kid. All the money you've "earned" is your bloody allowance, not some "proof of the grind." But they still judge each other for it? Oh yeah, Ev's mum can barely afford to buy her food every day, but let's make fun of her for buying a used jumper, apparently. It's like a club, and I think they see all these YouTubers with it, and... And, again, you can't do anything in those clothes! So I'm stuck having to rework our plans because Louis over here brought his 450-quid GUCCI scarf to play in the snow and is whinging about mud. Mad. Absolutely mad. How does a scarf cost that much, anyways? What the bloody hell is that thing made of?! Do you know how much needed supplies I could get with all that?! ...The only fancy brand I may buy someday is Versace, solely for the irony of wearing the brand made by the man that my country was accused of murdering. We didn't do it, to be clear. It was a setup.

[lovecolibri]

SaL anon here friend after my long and grueling week of moving and renewing the vow i make every move, don't accumulate more than two suitcases worth of stuff. Anyway the timing was good, I didn't miss anything on the RNM front except 2 synopsis that fail to mention either Alex or Michael, only mention Kybel once, and hint at what's sure to be positively scintillating Echo drama *deep yawn*. Can't wait. Oh and M*ria's doing something I'm sure is utterly pointless and self-serving but we'll be

told is super important even as future events show it isn't. And Bonnie will apparently be allowed to interact with other members of the group in a way Alex never has been allowed to. Oh joy. As usual the promo dept is working hard to show viewers the things they actually care about. Anyway, loved your salty thoughts this week, particularly on how every couple in this so-called soulmates show is so badly written. Unlike say 911 you cannot tell me these writers plan out things seasons in advance (not to say 911 plans everything, but they certainly execute storylines with past events in mind *ignores parts of S5 while typing this*). The way the Kybel has played out is a harsh reminder, but it also shows in the way they keep recycling Echo's "conflict" from season to season. Kybel should have been set up ages ago if they planned it all along (which they didn't, S2 clearly is trying to set-up some sort of Greg/Isobel story but then they needed to *Tumblr stop eating my asks challenge* SaL anon here bestie and oh boy, me trying to remember where I was in my salty rambling will be a challenge. I think by part 4 I was going off on how the show was clearly setting up the Greg/Isobel storyline (Isobel meets soft teacher Greg in the same episode she talks about wanting kids someday, it would even work with the soulmates setup but the opposite of Echo since Greg had clearly thought about her despite it being a decade ago) but the writers chose to take a sharp turn from that in S3 so they could use one of the only things people liked about S2 to prop up an unlikable character, even though it made no sense. RNM does have this ongoing habit of using things that people like to try and make their mistakes more palatable (Greg and now Dallas to prop up M*ria, Max's softness towards Liz to excuse him being shitty to Michael). Anyway, let's place bets on if Rosa or Alex gets mentioned tonight ONLY because the people that love them miss them, i say a 10% chance

Bestie hiiii! I missed you! Moving is The Worst but I hope you’re settling in well! And yeah, good timing because you didn’t miss anything important!

I can’t say I’m surprised that Echo is going to have exactly the same argument they’ve been having every time something comes up they need to deal with but like, really? Can’t shake it up at all? Then again, I made this post with a list of like, 23 kidnapping plots over 3.5 seasons so 🤷🏻‍♀️ I can’t wait for m*ria to start throwing things because she can’t connect with her mom now that she’s dead. Maybe she should have spent less time trying to get in the pants of Alex, Michael, and everyone connected to them she possibly could, and spent more time trying to get info from her mom while she was alive. 🙄 You would think after learning what she did in s2, and her little mind journey as Patricia, she’d have wanted to know everything and tried to use her powers for that, but nope!

Also, the way Bonnie, Anatsa, and Dallas are already integrated into the group more than Alex even though Anatsa wasn’t sticking around and Bonnie has been here for 4 episodes is ridiculous. And I love Dallas! I didn’t hate Anatsa when she wasn’t getting people drunk and convincing them to jeopardize their careers, and I think Bonnie has a fun energy. But it just makes it even more glaring that people like Rosa and Kyle and especially, especially Alex are missing from the group dynamics.  

I sooo agree that Kyble should have been set up ages ago if that was the plan all along. You never know how many seasons you’re going to get, and oh look! Here we are. I agree that it looked like they might be setting up something with Greg and Isobel which I would have loved too! They had ONE scene and it was just crackling electric chemistry! Plus, that indicated a history there that caught and kept his attention for all these years which would have worked with the “alien soulmate” set up. Her ending up with someone who loved kids and took care of them all day would have been great and it was one of the things people liked so much about him. So of course it had to be erased in order for him to be with m*ria “why are kids always sticky” d*luca 🙄 Them re-writing his character and then never letting him have scenes with Alex again except for the one where they talk about m*ria was a crime actually. 

Clearly the show has never once learned from it’s mistakes because the pacing issues, the “telling” instead of “showing” issues, the plot holes, the passage of time making zero sense, sacrificing other characters, plots, and time to prop up m*ria for....some reason, who knows, taking fan fave characters and shoving them with m*ria to try and make her likable, and the inability to handle the missing episodes for characters in a way that makes sense (mentioning them when they aren’t there, but also making sure an episode they are missing doesn’t have a scene it makes no sense for that character NOT to be involved in, unless they also give us a good reason why. And no, yet another kidnapping or coma for that character is NOT a “good reason”), NONE of it has ever worked and have been continually brought up as issues that the show refuses to address.

You’re optimistic with your 10% there! 🤣 I’m hoping for at least a mention though I’m sure it will be because he didn’t call m*ria back or something but also hoping we get to at least SEE him and where he’s currently being held! But also not holding my breath for that either. They did mention Rosa coming back for one of the later episodes in the synopsis so it would make sense for her to pop up before then to remind the audience who haven’t seen her since last year who she is and why we should care about her, but again, not holding my breath. When is m*ria missing an episode again? Because I don’t know how much more of this nonsense with her and Dallas I can take.

I’ll be trying to watch tomorrow so cheers everyone and good luck! Lets manifest Alex at least being in a prison of some kind and working on his escape instead of just still breathing dirt in that hole. It’s been a MONTH since we’ve seen him on our screens. Get it together RNM.