#my process (only sometimes derogatory)

[petricorah]

for @lesmiserablol​ and their great fic now that i see you 

so i was going to do what you suggested but this expression reminded me of the smolderTM and i just decided to uhhh tangled au instead

[elwenyere]

Hello! The conversation about careening had me wondering--how do you like to do research for your stories? Are there any topics or sources you particularly enjoy delving into or including in your work?

Hello, my friend!!! What a wonderful ask: thank you for these great questions.

After reflecting, I think I could describe my process as having two general categories: as-needed research and broader worldbuilding research.

The first category is a part of almost every fic I write, and it involves things like sourcing locations, verifying timelines, tracking down character names, and (very often) looking up what it feels like to receive various injuries. If it's a Star Wars fic, at least one Wookiepedia visit is a given (the raw materials page is a frequent hit). And there are likely to be a few other general internet searches I repeat several times ("aviation terms," for example, or "New Orleans plant life," depending on the fic and fandom).

The second category covers the exploratory reading and viewing I do for fics that involve more worldbuilding because they extend further outside (or completely outside) canon. The Codywan Pirate AU has me doing all kinds of targeted searches for naval ranks and sailing ship terminology, for example, but I've also been browsing maritime museums for descriptions of what life on ships was like from day to day (look at this cool page about sailor libraries and sailing literature!) and for images that give me a visual sense of the environment. I also love looking at digitized resources through academic libraries. When @festiveferret and I were collaborating on Citation Needed, an MCU professor AU in which history prof Tony is writing a monograph about weapons development during WWII, I used the online special collections at University of Massachusetts - Amherst to learn what the primary documents (enlistment records, ration cards, etc.) featured in the fic would look like. (Ferret then did incredible edits for the epistolary portion of the fic: this post has the collected documents.)

In a couple cases it's actually been the research that has come first and inspired the fic. The initial ideas for Separation, for example, which is a Top Gun fic that leans into the context of the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s, came from prep that I'd been doing for a queer literature class, so I was listening to music by queer bands in the period, reading poetry and essays about queer life in NYC and San Francisco (including this piece that discusses Nan Goldin, Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats, "The Fall of 1992" by Randall Mann, and Alexander Chee's essay "After Peter"), and watching the documentary How to Survive a Plague, about the ACT UP movement. Much of that research informed the choices I made in writing the fic, even if it doesn't all appear directly.

Finally, I should confess that I am pretty self-indulgent with my fic research: I spend a lot of time studying and tracking things down when it's a subject I find interesting and/or when having more information will allow me to texture the choices I'm making in ways I personally find compelling; but I am also very unfussed about leaving other things vague or about fudging some details in service of the story. It's not at all out of the ordinary for me to spend 30 minutes looking up the names of camera models that hit shelves in 1991 and then write a sentence that says "when he gets off the carrier in mid-July, he goes to the mall" without specifying which carrier or which mall, because I couldn't be bothered to figure out the military logistics involved. This is one of the joys of writing fic for me: freedom to pour energy into those areas where research helps get me closer to things I want to discover and describe.

Thank you again for the terrific asks, my friend!!! This was very fun to write. <3<3<3

[chronicillnesscaneffoffplease]

I hate how sleep and fatigue seem like they should correlate and yet they don’t.

I’ve been sleeping more recently (averaging about 90min more than usual) and you might think “oh, that means you’re less fatigued right?” Which would be a false assumption. Because just because I’m sleeping longer doesn’t mean I’m not waking up more during the night (from pain, or nausea, or palpitations or bladder urgency… or all of them at once), or getting more of the good stuff (rem and deep sleep) according to my Fitbit. Today I woke early and haven’t been able to get back to sleep at all. And yet I’m still so fatigued. And like yes I’ve I been diagnosed with mild positional sleep apnoea (which I’m managing) and a slight sleep latency but I was told unequivocally by the sleep doc that the severity and patterning of my fatigue was not explained by these findings. The only night I’ve slept through in the last fortnight or so is the night I took my strong pain meds for intractable TMJ pain. Which makes me think that pain is an element. But probably not the whole picture.

I try to figure out if it’s physical stuff, I try to balance probabilities if it’s depression (it’s been a rough couple of months when I think about it), is something else going wrong with me? Or is this just my normal, a result of all my various conditions.

At some point I think I need to accept that my fatigue is chronic, that I do experience some sort of PEM, and I probably need to pursue me/cfs with my GP again. She was the one who brought it up with me last year, but it fell to the wayside a bit with the hEDS and bladder/bowel stuff that took over last year. But even though I feel like I’ve too much energy to have me/cfs, I do experience the malaise and flu-like symptoms when I overdo it. And overdoing it can look different from week to week. I don’t know.

[andivmg]

My experience with Luke (Punz)

CW: toxic relationship, racism, dubious consent

I know in the past i said that i would no longer speak about him publicly, and when talking about my experiences with abuse and emotional mistreatment i begged to keep it anonymous but after reflecting on this for a week and seeing so many incredibly smart and strong women tell their stories. they have given me the strength to say his name.

this is really scary to talk about because of the copious levels of harassment i have received from his fans in the past so if this spreads or gets out of hand i will simply log off.

If you read my last post, i nicknamed him 1.

So aside from everything i said there, there were a lot of things i didn’t include because they would’ve made it obvious that it was him and it could potentially backfire on me so, i’m very afraid to post this. but i’m going to do it scared anyway, because it’s not fair that he gets to just go and live his life worry-free as if he didn’t practically ruin mine.

Because I already made a very lengthy post about him, i won’t include everything i said last time to avoid being redundant but if i repeat myself, please bear with me.

In our year long relationship i had to endure emotional neglect, gaslighting, verbal abuse, one instance where there was dubious consent, and much more.

Starting off at the beginning of our relationship, that’s when i was getting copious amounts of hate and harassment from his fan base (warranted or not), he decided that our relationship must be kept private. he said it was to “protect” me from his fanbase when in reality it was to protect himself. it was so he wouldn’t get all the backlash i was getting. this is funny because one of the things i got called out for was saying the B slur (derogatory term used against mexicans/latinos). I won’t get into the nuances of if i could say it or not as a puertorican because that’s discourse that does not pertain to this specific situation. But you know who definitely can’t say it? A white boy from Massachusetts. When i was getting cancelled for this and getting thousands of tweets calling me names, he decided that was the perfect time to say “I mean you are a b***** aren’t you? my little b*****.” Now, he said this completely unprompted. I was in the process of writing my apology and he just said that. I tell you this because i immediately shut him down and told him that there was no universe in which it was okay for him to say that word and especially not one where he could just call me that. While i was reprimanding him, he was smiling and laughing. he apparently found it amusing to call me a slur. regardless, he gave me a half-assed apology and said he wouldn’t do it again. and he didn’t. but this wasn’t the only time he was weirdly racist to me. this was my first time being in an interracial relationship so i was led to believe that this was normal by all the white people around me at the time. But, sometimes my spanish accent would come out and he would make fun of me and the way i pronounced some words. He also refused to visit me in Puerto Rico when i lived there or come meet my family when i really wanted him to because he “didn’t like the heat” or “it’s dangerous there isn’t it?”. Once, while we were watching season 2 of Bridgerton, he implied that the Sharma sisters were “too dark” for him to be attracted to them. This hurt me because they are brown skinned girls. I am a brown skinned girl. Then this, combined with the fact that he told me once he wasn’t attracted to me made me feel like my skin color was unattractive. These are only a few examples i can think of at the moment, but i’m sure there were more. Our relationship ended in 2022 so some of my memory is a bit hazy. But, I do remember feeling inferior to him throughout the relationship because he was white and I was not. I chalk that up to all the micro aggressions i had to deal with because i had never felt that way around white people before.

Another thing i had to endure was him constantly making me feel like he was embarrassed to be with me. Because i was cancelled, he didn’t want to associate with me too much. He did defend me on multiple occasions, I’ll give him that. But, he only did it because his name was getting dragged in the mud along with mine. Excusing my actions made him look better for being around me. In reality he didn’t really care. Because he was such a big content creator and someone i looked up to professionally, I took his advice as law. He told me to tone down my personality, to keep a low profile, to change things about myself to be more palatable to his audience. The same audience that spoke about me like “The pussy can’t be that good punz please stop defending her”. So i changed a lot of things about myself and my content to better suit what his audience liked. He made me feel like if his audience liked me, he would be public about our relationship and stop hiding it. He told me the reason why he wanted to keep our relationship a secret was because he didn’t want to get hate for it. But this wasn’t true. On my 20th birthday he went to Las Vegas for a twitch rivals event. That night i asked to facetime him to say goodnight and he refused because he was at a hotel room with his friends and he didn’t want them to know that we were together. It was as if my mere presence or the utterance of my name was a source of embarrassment for him. And he didn’t let me forget it. It wasn’t just a public thing at that point. He didn’t want people to know we were together, period. This was devastating to me because I would talk to all my friends about him. I was so proud to be with him and I was just one more problem to him. He made me feel so small and insignificant just because his fans didn’t like me.

He would berate me a lot. Not just due to getting heat online, although he did do that a lot. But in general whenever we would get into an argument or a disagreement he would always call me names like annoying or weird or stupid. He would raise his voice at me if i did something he didn’t like and call me an idiot. And that really hurt, i felt like i couldn’t bring up anything or do anything without getting insulted. If I hadn’t seen him in a few days because he was too busy streaming and i asked to hang out he would call me needy, clingy, and annoying. Granted, he might not have been wrong, but that is not something you say to someone you claim to love. He also insulted me when i was in depressive episodes. I have BPD and at the time i was not being treated properly for it. So, I was all over the place emotionally and he was what i clung to for validation, reassurance, and love. I talked to him when we first started dating about my disorder and told him that if it seemed like something he couldn’t handle that he could opt out of the relationship. I guess he didn’t think it was that bad or something idk because whenever i had really bad depressive episodes, he would tell me I was too sad to hang out with. He said that my sadness was a burden to him. Which would be fair. But, once my mother had a conversation with him about me. She told him that i am someone who needs a lot of love and caring. She said that if he wasn’t willing to put in that kind of effort into a relationship to just leave me alone. He reassured her that he would be there for me no matter what. He told my mother that he would protect me and my heart. He did not. He took all the warnings I gave him and ignored them and then made me feel like I was the problem. And even worse, he would say that i was pretending to be sad to get his attention when he would neglect for days at a time.

There were also some smaller things like the fact that he made me feel really guilty whenever he would spend money on me. Also, he would be really mean about my eating habits. For context, i used to suffer from an eating disorder. I was anorexic and had a really unhealthy relationship with food during high school and my first year of uni. This relationship began when i was recovering from my ED. For me, eating was really hard. So i had certain comfort foods that, while sometimes unhealthy, at least it was something to eat when i didn’t feel like eating anything. He knew this. Yet, whenever i would crave some of these foods he would call me fat. Constantly told me I’d gain weight from eating all that junk food. Saying that to someone with an eating disorder is crazy. Other smaller things were that whenever I would post tiktoks where i was lip syncing or just looking good he would yell at me and say i was looking for attention. Same with Instagram or Twitter whenever i would post photos where I looked hot. He never planned out a single date for us. I would beg him to get me flowers and he did maybe once but i’ll get into that in a bit. He would make fun of me in front of his friends to make himself look better. He let his friends say really degrading things about me in his presence. For example, once when i was showering, i overheard him on a discord call with George and Sapnap and i heard George say “if you don’t go in the shower and have sex with Andi, i will”. Once, when i was really struggling with my legs (for those of you who don’t know, i have arthritis and it’s very painful. at the time i wasn’t diagnosed but i was in a lot of pain) I literally could not walk. I had to beg him to take me to the ER because i didn’t know what was wrong with me. He didn’t want to take me but eventually i convinced him, and while we were there all he did was complain about how long it was taking and that he would have rather been at home streaming. Whenever I would talk about my interests that i was excited about like shows or books he would be incredibly uninterested and say that those things were stupid and he didn’t want to hear about them. I know all of these seem very silly or superficial but cumulatively it was awful.

Now for arguably the most serious thing i’m going to talk about. I want to preface this by saying i am just telling my side of what happened. You can come to your own conclusions about this.

On April 25, 2022 it was our one year anniversary, and i had made a dinner reservation for us. I expected him to plan something throughout the day for us to do. He told me he was going to spend the whole day playing Valorant so I got upset and cancelled the reservation. After a very heated argument, we calmed down and i asked him to come over. He came over about an hour later with flowers and drinks (I was 20 at the time so I couldn’t buy the drinks myself). He brought Smirnoffs and Trulys. For context, I am a lightweight. I always have been. I literally get tipsy on half a cocktail. And that day, I hadn’t eaten anything because i was in distress over our argument. So we get to talking and drinking. I blacked out after my second Smirnoff. Apparently I drank 3 but I genuinely cannot remember anything after finishing the second one. The next morning i woke up naked in my bed. I woke him up and asked him “Luke, why am I naked?” and he said “Because you didn’t want to put your clothes back on.” When I clarified to him that that was not what I meant, he got defensive and said that he didn’t realize how drunk I was. He proceeded to tell me that I initiated sex with him and that i was very enthusiastic about it. He said he didn’t know i could black out on three smirnoffs. He made fun of me for being a lightweight and continued to make light of the situation. Then he mentioned that i fell off the bed at some point in the night and that it was funny how drunk I was. I then questioned him. Because if he thought that me tripping and falling off the bed because i was so drunk was funny, how did he not know that i was too drunk? He responded by saying that i fell off the bed only after we were done. That day I broke up with him. I’m still really confused about what happened that night. I don’t remember anything and all I have to go on is what he said to me. We were in a relationship at the time and he says he didn’t know how drunk I was so I’m not sure what to call what happened. A while after that day, his friend that hmu while we were broken up and I started talking again and i confided in him about that night. He told me to be careful saying things like that because they could get me into trouble. I spoke to some of our other friends about it and they told me it was no big deal and that it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know how drunk I really was. Because I don’t remember, I have been led to believe that this is not a serious matter. You can think what you want, come to whatever conclusions you want. That is just my side of the story.

I want to add that I’m not proud of how I acted after the relationship ended. I felt really angry at all the shit he put me through and I guess a part of me wanted him to hurt even a quarter of how I did. So I started talking to his friend and got involved with him. This backfired on me because his friend ended up really hurting me too so ig i got my karma. But the thing that hurt the most is that because of what I did, some of our friends took his side in the break up. I was told that I did something terrible by getting involved with his friend that he was already insecure about and that he didn’t deserve that. These are the same friends who were witness to the dumpster fire of a relationship we had and all the things he did to me. They turned their backs on me because of this one thing I did. But stood by and watched as he treated me like garbage for over a year.

I will conclude this by saying that while this relationship has been “over and done with” for almost two years now, I carry a lot of trauma from it still. I still talk about him in therapy and have had to put in a lot of work to heal from what he did and i still cannot say that i am okay. I am very blessed to now have a patient and understanding partner who has helped me heal from that trauma and i just want to quickly thank him for that. Nobody deserves to go through what I did. While yes, it was a toxic relationship, and I had a part in that, it does not excuse all the awful things he said and did to me. This is my truth, thank you for taking the time to read it.

[linkedin-offficial]

is this anything . sky:cotl au

details (aka my rambling) under the cut

mostly set upon the whole idea that caine came from eden and tries to help everyone gain their wings (albeit doing a terrible job the entire time)

bubble keeps the name bubble!

they r a mantatee :3 suprisingly chaotic for a light creature and sort of has the "eat light and puff out candles" personality that caine should have but doesn't

i contemplated caine being called "the creature" just for shits and giggles (and eventually went with it) since im absolutely certain everyone who ever meets him ever would be terrified for a little bit until they realize hes sentient; he doesn't understand that the name is supposed to be sort of derogatory

caine is the only one with wings because hes the only one who can canonically fly/float!

(and yes his head is supposed to be a dark plant . i like to think im big brain for this)

the reason why his dark plant head is tinted red btw . my thought process was basically "ah yes. red = good bcus eden :]" even though thats convoluted since everyone hates eden but that makes it better in a way. i think

zooble > mismatched worksmith

"bows" given to them by ragatha as an identifier; not like theyd need one though ..

constantly making their own prosthetics due to growing boredom with their previous ones (autism™) and also carved the designs into their mask themself

kinger > reluctant royalty

same old kinger as usual .. when asked what he rules he doesnt particularly remember nor have an answer so hes usually treated with respect out of pity for being old and senile

second tallest behind jax , also the oldest (if you dont count caine i guess? whos sort of. ageless)

ragatha > plush friendfinder

matching bow with jax :3 sibling moment! (yes i like the ragatha + jax sibling dynamic . its amazing to me)

right eye does not glow and actually looks like a hollow hole if you get close enough to her face! also clothing making buddies with zooble :] she taught them how to sew without pricking themself

gangle > wrapped up theatre-goer (i had such a hard time thinking of a name .. and to be honest?? im not solid on this but WHAGEVER.)

shortest. obviously

likes to write plays in her spare time and reads them to zooble while they work

clothes are sectioned and Very flowy, and has a few (cracked and broken) masks she likes to use for play improv (and also uses for herself sometimes if she has a hard time expressing a certain emotion)

jax > towering tease (it sounds stupid but THIS is so fucking funny.i cannot resist this)

tallest OBVIOUSLY. like stupidly tall . has its advantages and disadvantages (like being able to steal things from gangle with no consequences . on the other hand. doorframes)

him being tall and having that be the only thing hes got going for him is absolutely hilarious to me and im leaning into that hard

he has a tail also, but its small and not visible from the chart

pomni > jittery jester (i had to look up "other words for anxious" for this.my intelligence is showing)

pretty much the only one i referenced real in game clothing for, which sort of fits! protag moment

this was all i really had, since other established things like their personalities and relationships arent really changed much. but this was fun to think about :3 input is appreciated !

[bettsfic]

Hi!

I was wondering how do you elevate or better flesh out a very vague premise (e.g. A man falls in love with his boss). But there are many ways to take vague ideas like this and it’s hard to make it more.

there are really only two paths: the easy, long road; and the hard, fast road. on extremely rare occasion you may hit the jackpot and find an easy, fast road, but in my experience that is like winning the lottery.

the easy, long road:

you write the idea down somewhere. you let it incubate for a really long time. you have faith in the universe that all the pieces will begin to click into place until you go, "i've got it," and start writing.

i call that moment "ignition." when your vague "what am i even trying to write" idea clicks into "wait wait wait, i'm onto something here" and your brain starts churning out ideas for scenes and plot points.

there can be a lot of false starts, where you try to shoehorn your vague idea into another vague idea and see if they make a less vague idea, but sometimes that doesn't work. you may also start working on something else and realize you're unconsciously writing that vague idea you had 3 years ago. but overall it's a passive process. you have to wait for specificity to find you.

the hard, short road:

you write the idea down somewhere. you stare at it until you get a headache, and then you take some ibuprofen and stare at it some more. using the "ignition" metaphor, this is like your car not starting so you just keep turning the engine until it either starts or you flood it.

if you brute force your vague idea, you can potentially ruin it for yourself, but if you're motivated to take this path, i think your first step is to get out a notebook and start brainstorming. if the premise is "a man falls in love with his boss," write a list of industries where they might work. then circle a few of them and start researching those industries to see if you can find a nugget of information that clicks with your idea until you get some kind of conflict churning.

if you can't find anything, you make more lists. list out potential endings, plot points, inciting incidences. character traits and arcs. countries, cities. for every item of every list, make a list of possibilities. if this, then this and this. if that, then that and that. and you go on and on and on until you maybe have enough to get some words down.

an example:

my sister, a copywriter, started doing social media for a welding school. she told me she was learning a lot about welding and that i should write a story about a welding teacher. this school specifically is one of the best in the country, and my sister said something to the effect of, "people come from all over the country to live in this shithole town for six months. that seems like an interesting story."

in my A4 rhodia, on december 19, 2023, i wrote,

story of welding teacher at best welding school in the country

lonely ISTP casey affleck kinda guy (that was my sister's idea; she meant it in a derogatory way)

being taken care of by his grandmother?

all i had was "welder" kind of in the back of my head. fast forward to earlier this month, watching season 3 of the Bad Batch and having a lot of feelings about Crosshair's shakey hands (i've also developed a tremor in my hands).

and then i thought, a welder whose hands begin shaking. that's a conflict, that's an inciting incident. his whole career might be in jeopardy.

i wrote this paragraph:

He'd never admitted to his wife that he wanted kids. They didn’t have any, though, for the same reason he never became a farmer—he didn’t want to raise something just to see it slaughtered. Who knew what kind of war the country would cook up in eighteen years? Turn of the century, sending kids out to god knows where, just the right number of years from Vietnam that everyone would’ve forgotten it, the way that by Vietnam they’d forgotten Korea.

i managed to weave this general idea into the bigger plot of a novel i started a long time ago, and it reignited my interest in that project, and now i'm feeling really good that this 200k monstrosity i thought i would just throw away now might have some potential, more importantly some focus, all because of a vague idea i wrote down months ago.

[wellntruly]

Blogging, vol. v

I’m having surgery tomorrow. Why this is always happening in November is beyond me, but it sure is an aesthetically kind month to not work and be extra-grade cozy in soft knits, sipping soups, while outside it rains grey on amber.

Unlike my gum surgery last year, this one I had no idea was coming for me, and the weeks getting up to the point of finally knowing what was going to happen were, not to exaggerate, not good. It's odd that it's better now, since it was indeed something you don't want to find. But then you can start to process. Process, process.

I actually tend to do quite well with surgery, both as a concept and a thing to heal from, even before I spent my recovery from the previous one watching a 50 year old TV show about surgeons. I find the kind of pain engendered by things you need stitches about to be quite reasonable mentally; it hurts, it hurts there, for this reason, you have pills to dull it, and it will gradually heal. Simply “feeling sick,” or worst of all nauseous, that’s what can make me wonder what it’s all even for. Miserable, derogatory.

So the fact that it really seems a predominantly surgical approach is going to be most of what we need to take care of this problem has me almost overwhelmed with gratitude. It could have been far, far worse for me. But I have all the most treatable metrics for this, even being rather young for it has the silver lining of meaning I should heal well. And I’m so lucky to have a warm, funny, exceptionally skilled surgeon who actually went through the same thing when she was also my age, and that honestly, I’ve absolutely the Edward Gorey illustration body type to probably even end up looking pretty chic going down to just a bit of an A cup, which is what she's going to be able to do, not to bury the lede. Surprise top surgery, is what I’ve been calling it, and thank you to the boys for the re-contextualizing dream that is the phrase ‘top surgery’, a concept of such positivity; life-affirming, life-saving.

It is a strange, swift-approaching change to reckon with though, impossible to avoid that. I've always tended to dress as if I don’t even have the actually, admittedly, great boobs that I've had up til now, but it is still the body I know. I’ll roll onto my stomach in bed and think, for one that I soon won’t be doing this at all again for a while, and that when I do, it’s going to feel different. Fascinating to consider.

I'm leaning into a sort of Orlando-like curiosity about it, this vague physical transformation just spontaneously befalling me in my adulthood. How will this be. What sort of opportunities might this actually grant. I’ll be endeavoring to hardly ever wear a bra again, I’ll tell you that for certain. Should I use this as the push to finally get a bespoke suit, soft and wide-legged, with a jacket that can fall in just a clean draped line from my shoulders? Will I be able to wear suspenders? I think about watching Margaret Qualley in The Stars At Noon this summer, how I watched her just drop a loose sundress over her bare body, entirely backless, and walk out the door. I think, of course, of "Keira Knightley Atonement," as my inspiration board folder is called.

I’ve also been thinking about this blog, what I think Tumblr user sashayed once called her secret public journal. Sometimes what I or others will post can break into the very real & personal, like this, for the benefit that comes from just releasing, sharing the large challenging things in our lives. I think about a long-time mutual who posted about some of the strangeness she felt during hospitalization for an accident, how recalling some of what she wrote about has brought me a feeling of solidarity in this.

But there’s also how I’ve actually been blogging about this for weeks and weeks, it’s just only been for me. Another kind of secret public journal. This butterfly coming out of a row of cocoons in a window: this was for how I was, fully insanely yes, watching A Zed & Two Noughts while I was wracked with anxiety over what might be going on with my body, but/and the idea of emerging after this surgery new and striking and light. This is self-explanatory. This tiny-chested witch vaulting skulls is “literally me” goals this time next October. This was actually exactly, exactly my vibe getting my biopsy, with the sweetest nurses.

And now at last it all comes together, the public and private journal, on the eve of really what we’re all waiting for, oh god me for sure: the return of painkiller diaries. Painkiller diaries is a lifestyle, actually, it’s an ethos. I let myself so wholly rest after my gum surgery last year that the rest of November was the happiest I’d been in years. Please, again. Return to cashmere convalescence. And would you look at this beautiful soup sippin' mug I’ve gotten since then:

Oh I think we’re ready.

[thegeminisage]

i decided to make a list of 15 of my favorite plot devices

i think they're mostly in order but all things are subject to change. time to explain my passions

1. asexuals - self-explanatory. the best number one joy of all time is when there is an asexual person, canonically, and not just in my mind palace. so far no show has managed to do this except fucking shadowhunters (and bojack horseman ig but it's not my thing). i know there are people out there who can write way better than the shadowhunters writing room but i don't know why they aren't getting on this. tick tock. example: raphael shadowhunters

2. amnesia - notably different from dementia, which is depressing and bad (thinking about you, dean winchester). amnesia is only good because eventually they get it back. the best thing about amnesia is that it shows you who your Little Guy (gender neutral) is with everything stripped away from them including their sense of self. do they still go for the same kind of coffee? do they still click with the same people they used to love? can they still fight? what do they stand for? it's very rewarding when your little guy acts the same way without knowing why. it's also especially cool for action heroes bc they'll still be able to win a fight and it's like wow <3 fight scenes with emotional stakes!! also i love that it gives us a mystery to solve. sometimes a partially amnesiac character is amnesiac because they did a terrible crime. and they've got to solve it while accidentally working against their past self. fun! examples: fang from ff13. wolverine. why, who did you think i was going to use

3. brainwashing - for the same reasons as amnesia. it's the same concept: take away everything and who is your little guy? the real little guy is in there and they are working so hard to get out. also they will be sooo sad about all the crimes they did later. example: fenris dragon age. d'avin killjoys. and okay fine one other guy we're not talking about

4. enemies to lovers - what's better than two people wanting to murder each other until they don't......always a good side of bickering with this as well. main draw tho is the process of simply two people getting to know one another in the way that you can tell strangers things you can't tell your friends. it's more work to love someone when you hate them and with more work comes a better reward. also, sexual tension. example: so many. fenris/hawke. fenris/anders. botw link/zelda. john/aeryn. bonnie and damon if the cw weren't cowards and i don't even like damon i think he's unforgivably horrible (derogatory)

5. monster under the bed character - i don't know if this has a real name. it's like the One Guy (again, gender neutral) who has shaped the protagonist's whole life who is threat number one in any given situation. Primal Fear of this guy and all they represent is similar to how little kids are scared of the monster under the bed hence the name. it's not JUST an arch enemy or an antagonist it's like. the only enemy that matters. not a bad guy but THE bad guy. if you can boil someone's issues down and stuff them all into a single person and then also make that person scary. and then also they can fight!! fuck yeah fight scenes!!! if you're really lucky this will overlap with either somebody's parent or somebody's ex. examples: AUGH SO MANY. for dean winchester it's yellow eyes. for sam winchester it's lucifer. for fenris it's danarius. for jace wayland it's valentine. for dutch killjoys it's khlyen. for anakin skywalker it's palpatine. for derek hale it's kate argent. going nuts just thinking about it

6. reluctant assassins - crucially if they don't care about being assassins it doesn't work for me (sorry kassandra asscreed). i went into this in more detail here but your assassin simply Must be compromised in some way so they can regret all their little crimes later. otherwise what's the point?? this overlaps so thoroughly with brainwashed iedk if it should count as its own entry but whatever. examples: fenris dragon age. dutch killjoys. d'avin killjoys. elliot leverage. and the other one

7. two-person love triangle - this is a very specific sub-example of secret identities in general which ARE good except they're usually in superhero media and i am really just so totally fucking over the entire CONCEPT of superheroes. anyway it's when one person has a secret identity and the other person forms a relationship with their "real" identity and their "secret" one. and then they feel conflicted about loving two people at once and having to choose but SURPRISE it's the same person! i like this because it has anti love triangle energy. lots of romantic tension and none of the dumb fucking YA bullshit. (apologies to YA.) example: arthur and merlin (who is also "emrys" at least in fanfic)

8. 4th wall shit - when the piece of media is in your house with you. i don't feel i need to clarify further than this because dr gaster is probably spying on me as we speak. examples: everything toby fox has ever made. s*pernatural, sometimes. i also had a deeply haunted experience with final fantasy x.

9. last guy (gender neutral) standing - part of a team or group that got tragically mcmurder prior to the start of the story and this person is so terribly sad about it. crucially this has to be a side character whose relationships with dead people are more important than or equally important to their relationships with the current living cast members. character deaths you almost agree with because then at least they can be with their fallen buds. examples: auron from ffx, noel from ffxiii

10. immortal characters - for the same reasons as above but also they CAN'T DIE EVER so they don't even have that to look forward to. also sometimes they wind up being science experiments. examples: jesse turner from @cambionverse (sorry jesse)

11. evil doppelganger - usually this is in video games where they just take the sprite or the polygons and recolor them to be black but also you have some mirrorverse/au shit going on sometimes and then there's evil twins, and shapeshifters, and clones...i love when everybody gets tricked into thinking somebody is doing crimes but actually theyre just out here and it's their evil double causing problems on purpose and not even being the one to go to jail forever because of it. also, when the evil double has mind-reading powers or whatever b/s to 1. make them a better trickster 2. to make them better at precision-point roasting of whomstever they look like. also acceptable: when you little guy just suddenly turns fucking evil and/or gets possessed and you have to cure them to get them back. idk maybe that should go under brainwashing. examples: dutch and aneela. link and dark link. zelda and the puppet. soulless sam. demon dean. hullen johnny.

12. fire powers - WHO doesn't love a little arson...i feel like this is the same concept behind werewolves which boils down to "fear of anger" bc with anger comes the loss of control and the devastating fallout... your fire guy (gender neutral but idk any fire girls) has to have a lot of self control or they'll fuck everybody up. they're very dangerous! not unlike assassins. also, fire is pretty. bonus if they have done crimes before either on purpose or on accident. examples: jesse turner again, roy mustang aka the OG fireguy, prince zuko

13. big damn reunion - when two people are split up with little to no chance of ever seeing each other again and then they do anyway. this is why i'm never mad when they bring characters back from the dead. examples: i'm actually totally blanking on these, i feel like it tends to happen in fic so much more often. also i've been writing this list awhile

14. time travel - i love! time travel! i love when people see an apocalyptic future and go back and fix it (chrono trigger, ff13). i love when there's a stable loop (tears of the kingdom) or a paradox (song of storms in ocarina of time). i love visits to the ancient past (skyward sword). i love when there's just an actual fucking timeloop (s*pernatural). it's really good!!! examples: oops i just listed them all

15. body swap - last but not least i think it is so fun when two people wind up living each other's lives. it's more fun in tv when people get to switch which character theyre playing but it's good in any form because what a way to get to know someone and also the endless potential for shenanigans. examples: dreamless (webcomic), your name, various episodes of tv shows many of which are bad (s*pernatural's was extremely bad).

ok, that's the list. originally it was 10, then 13, then 15, so i think i'd better stop here.

[hellsvestibule]

It makes me think of how disappointing it is that the way varying thought processes have been conceptualized for so much of modern history is as “disease” or “disorder” rather than studying these things in a less limited and derogatory framework. Bc in so many ways it’s just like yeah idk, it’s clearly, just the way your brain handles various processes and works around your various skills or deficits. Theres obviously going to be pros and cons to any type of thinking style, and if yours is one which is poorly understood i think there’s a greater tendency for “disorder” to form around you attempting to compensate for all the ways you are being forced to bend to match the most readily understood array of thought processes. In this case ability to visualize. and people’s disbelief that you genuinely struggle with things they find easy. I.e. these, “no chicken scratch” teachers who think only unprofessional artists do that, but it’s like, nah, I can work up to professional quality clean looking work with careful application and layering, because I have literally been drawing for decades and know what decent art looks like, my brain simply does not innately understand where lines go, and so while I appreciate gestural work, for me making a nice line is sometimes just fucking frustrating bc it’s probably still in the wrong place and will just have to be redone later, so why would I bother wasting time on things I’m just going to destroy. This is, to my understanding, not something people at my skill level generally struggle with, which makes it frustrating to explain to people who don’t believe me, bc I don’t think it’s ever occurred to a lot of artists that some people can’t visualize well, or that some of us might actually work around this to make art as compensation for lack of inner vision rather than as an expression of a clear and distinct inner vision. Wild!

[snow-and-saltea]

i know that in media you're constrained with things like budget, time slots and stuff, but sometimes i'm just like. my god. the insane shortcuts people take to write "smart / intelligent" characters, especially in plot-heavy stories, always pisses me off. they write them like they're sherlock holmes (bbc version, derogatory) but they fail to realise that even sherlock holmes (arthur conan doyle) was written with a lot of thought, suffered his own subconscious prejudices and had to learn from mistakes.

i guess what i'm trying to get at is—"smart" people don't magically get good at things overnight, the only difference between them and others is how much they're willing to go through to hone their mental acuity. which means when they try something new, they're going to make obvious mistakes, not understand how things work beyond the surface level, and make mistakes in judgements (like when you don't understand something well enough, your analogies and metaphors aren't 100% accurate or concise).

but it feels like there's a assumption hanging over our heads that, as readers, we don't WANT to see the smart one go through the entire nitty gritty of the learning process. we just want to see them do cool things, piece the puzzle together with a flourish, and clap our hands at the end. and in some parts, yes! that is what i want to see! but i am also interested in how they pieced it together. the joy of mysteries is, to me, that everyone is exposed to the same pieces of information, and we're given the chance to try to piece it ourselves. but then the smart character comes along and interprets those pieces of information in a not-obvious way to us, and it's cool!! years of living with a mind that is primed to turn things over in their head, to make sense of things, reveals to us how differently we experience the same reality, and it's wonderful. i'm able to learn from someone who sees life differently than me, and interpret information differently than me!

but right now i'm often left out feeling flat and confused in the mystery-type plots i've seen. the smart person will have been exposed to information we didn't even get the chance to see and interpret, and then they piece things together and everyone in the story claps their hands at the artificial pedestal that's been propped up under that character's feet. explanations of in-setting magic that can be retconned in and out at any point in time, so there's no logical consistency for us to nitpick or understand, so there's no basis to stand on that the story should be taken seriously. plot twists that make no sense as a gotcha. so many things!!

like. this particular example just my beef with g*nshin, so ignore it if you don't agree or smth. but the use of red herrings in the stories piss me off. the red herrings are either too obvious or nonexistent. they always use some random guy acting suspiciously and have the other characters react to it, as if we can't understand it on our own? but like. these red herrings, in the real world, aren't even red herrings. sometimes people just "act suspiciously" just by virtue of being human, not because they're complicit in some bigger overarching plot. sometimes people just stutter because of their anxious disposition, not to hide a guilty conscience. sometimes people are just defensive and irritable because they're a defensive and irritable person, it doesn't mean they're the ""bad guy"" who you need to crack down on and interrogate even further, especially if there's literally nothing that indicates this character is guilty other than their outward appearances.

but like. the smart characters/protagonist almost never get proven wrong. the stutterer was guilty all along and they're just a bad liar. the defensive guy is selfish and obnoxious, they're defensive because they're hiding something, not because it's a natural reaction on having one's sense of privacy and personal space violated.

the game sure loves trying to do nuance with "not everyone is 100% good or bad, we're all Flawed" but they can't put their money where their mouth is. everyone who is not guilty acts in completely transparent and "good" ways. everyone who is guilty acts in completely opaque and "suspicious" / "bad" ways. end of story. how the hell am i supposed to think anyone in this game is smart when they don't even have to use their brain to sift through, critique, weigh and interpret information? what use is there to do so? just use your eyes and ears. the stutterer is nervous for hiding a secret. the anxious is guilty. the angry is scornful.

there's also another rant here about how g*nshin fucking sucks at writing unique and flawed characters, because they like to make everyone the Specialest Guy In The World, but that's for another day.

[smilingformoney]

MAJOR trigger warnings below for rape/sexual abuse.

My response to @idioticconsultingdetective’s post.

When I was 15, I was raped. It has, naturally, left me with a lot of trauma. I still get intrusive memories sometimes, when my brain pushes traumatic moments to the forefront of my thoughts for no apparent reason.

It doesn’t happen much. Once or twice a year maybe. And yes, it has been happening today.

Every victim of trauma has their own coping mechanism. Earlier this year I found a fic on ao3 that I found actually helped. It was gross, disgusting (NOT romanticising anything as @potionsev has suggested) and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Somehow - I’m sure a psychologist could tell me why - it helped me to compartmentalise my intrusive memories. I’m now more able to make myself believe the memories are just scenes from a story. Now, on the odd occasion it happens, I can go to that fic and convince myself I’m just reading a story.

I have never actively promoted that fic to anyone. The only reason it was discovered, someone looked at my ao3 bookmarks and found it. I should have made it a private bookmark, but to be quite honest I didn’t even consider something like this would happen.

When Twitter user ols7en asked me why, what was I to say? Was I to tell a 15 year old stranger, in 140 characters or less, that I was raped and the fic helped me process my trauma? Perhaps I should have not responded at all. I made a mistake in trying to brush it off as if it was nothing. I hoped they would move on, but perhaps I put too much stock in my irrelevance.

But at the end of the day, none of what I just said should matter. It shouldn’t matter why I read something. Policing what people read in fiction is policing thoughts, and as we hopefully all know, that’s a very, very slippery slope.

I don’t owe anyone this explanation. I’m giving it anyway because I know communicating my feelings helps me calm down from the near on 12-hour anxiety attack I’ve been having today.

Now, why did I delete my twitter account? Well, I’ve been close to it for a while now and this triggered my final decision. I’ve tried hard, for months, to fit in with the twitter fandom. It’s never worked. I’m not sure why - is it the generational gap? Is it the character limit restricting nuance? I’m not really sure. I’m the same person here and there, and here I seem to be vaguely popular. So there’s got to be something different between the two platforms restricting me from bridging the gap.

Pandora pointed out two things.

1. Sexualising Snape and Alan Rickman. We all do it here (mostly). Not so much on twitter - why? Again, who knows. Maybe in hindsight I should have restricted minors from following me.

2. ‘Attacking’ other users for developing minor characters. Not at all what happened, again perhaps this is due to the character limit restricting nuance. I tweeted in response to someone else that I found it confusing to log on and see people talking about characters I’ve never heard of. It certainly wasn’t an attack. Some people took issue with my describing them as ‘original’ - as if this is something I, with my 200k-word OC fanfic, would ever use in a derogatory sense.

What has really saddened me is the way Pandora has made this a personal goal to… whatever her goal is here. It’s sad because I liked her. I thought we were getting on. Then to be told I was never liked - that hurt. Why follow someone and interact positively while harbouring resentment? Why not simply not follow, not interact? I feel silly being personally hurt by a stranger on the internet, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.

Finally, to end on a positive note, I want to say a great big THANK YOU to everyone who has been kind to me today. I have told my side of the story to friends and they’ve comforted me, but more than that, people I don’t interact with have come to my defence. People who don’t follow me, who don’t know me or my side of the story. They’ve seen Pandora’s post and defended me. That, to me, is the true nature of the Snape fandom. 💚🐍

[nerves-nebula]

me and raph (shaking hands) _. having intrusive thoughts

(tw for intrusive thoughts)

My parents never told me anything about how to regulate them or whatever, if I mentioned them my parents would be like "HA you're weird. leave me alone". I tried telling someone at school once or something but they stopped talking to me because it was "too bad" smh. Never really talked to anyone about them after, even though I get some really bad ones.

Mine are all about death and injury and basically just people or things getting hurt, or me suddenly dying (oh no you're crossing the street! let's imagine your process of dying now :] <- an example). And I have this weird thing where usually I can't visualize anything in my head, BUT intrusive thoughts do not follow that rule so I could be just chilling and get the only visual thoughts of that hour/day/week and it'll be all messed up and make me feel ill and like a horrible person.

The worse ones I had was when I was about 13ish where I'd get routine thoughts of drinking blood and stuff. Like, I don't know why? but sometimes I'll get intrusive thoughts about that and eating raw meat <- this does not help the accusations held towards me that I am a vampire. Partly why I never have told anyone, because I've been called one (derogatory) by many people for most of my life.

I used to also get intrusive thoughts when I was really young that would turn into nightmares, but those nightmares and intrusive thoughts would gang up and for a few days after the nightmare I'd be completely terrified and barely able to do anything without having a panic attack. I have NO CLUE what that was but I'm well acquaintance with the horrors .

Honestly the worst part of intrusive thoughts to me is getting to that point where you recognize they're getting worse/darker because you're getting almost desensitized to the intrusive thoughts. Like I don't want to hurt people or see people get hurt but my brain!! for some reason! does!??

ANYWAYS that's a long way of saying "I appreciate Raph having them and not being treated like a terrible person because of it"

YO I ALSO IMAGINE DYING NEARLY EVERY TIME I CROSS THE STREET!! except for that one time i wasnt paying attention and got hit by a car. it's either "no thoughts head empty" or "what if you died violently?'

mine are mostly about sexual abuse and sexual acts & all that. That and violent deaths/accidents. (first year of college wasn't great for this cause I had to use a lot of power tolls and would be afraid that I'd zone out thinking about my skin being torn off and my bones being cut and then it'd ACTUALLY HAPPEN it was awful)

but some of the elaborate ones are about me being alone forever because I am an unpleasant person to be around, and a Disgusting Beast of a creature :)

REGARDLESS: glad my AU can help you! The brothers are nice to Raph about it cause for the most part, they understand. Splinter probably wouldn't be so kind... good thing he doesn't know about it!

[bermudianabroad]

So after talking with @amreekiyakasuula about accents, I figured I do a little summin summin about Bermudian accents and phrases. Also because Cup Match is coming up (click for cultural context: tldl version it’s a cricket match between east and west ends of the island in celebration of Emancipation. Four day weekend, people camp*1, you can gamble*2 and much swizzle*3 is drunk). It’s been yuuurs (years) since I went and I guess I’ve just been bit by the nostalgia bug (go St Georges btw; I’m a east end girl, true blue on blue). And one more video for a range of different voices. It is 8 mins long and about local cricket so don’t feel you have to watch any of it the whole thing lol. 

 Anyway. Here we go.

First of all you can’t get by without ya acebye/acegirl. Nothing to do with sexuality, your acebye/acegirl is your main man (genderneutral), your best gal pal, platonically speaking. The person that will alway have your back. Term of affection, also scathing and derogatory when speaking of a stranger whose behaviour you do not condone: for instance,‘What you doing, acegirl?’ you might say to someone driving erratically, you voice dripping with condescension. ‘Acebye is getting on my last drop of nerve,’ you’ll say when the electrician fails to turn up when he said he would for the fifth time in a row. Not to be confused with ‘bye’ which is a kind of Bermudian filler for ‘man’, ‘dude’ etc. ‘Those guys over there,’ would become ‘Them byes over there.’ (or ‘dem’ and ‘dur’, since “th” becomes d or f but let’s not go into that right now.)

Onliest. More than only, profoundly only. ‘I was the onliest one at acebye’s comedy show.’ For a completely random example, not at all based in reality. (A lie: this happened to me at the Edinburgh Fringe one time. It was awkward. Being the onliest one there, I couldn’t leave lol).

Well, (but said drawn out like vooow). Gooder than good. Usually in the context of delicious food. ‘Bye, she tastes well,’ you say, monching down on your fish sandwich. Delicious food, like a ship, is always female.

Mug. So shit it’s beneath your contempt. Not worth the time or effort to even explain why it’s shit. Also anything that’s a hassle or a minor inconvenience.

The Other Day. A period of time that could span 24 hours or 70 years. ‘Oh I went to the supermarket the other day (day before yesterday)’; ‘Oh, I was in New York the other day (27 years ago)’.

To mice. To daydream, to lack situational awareness. Micing or Myscing. Take your pick of the spelling.

Full hot (and fullish); to be inebriated (and foolish). See also half hot, for when you still retain some semblance of sober propriety. See also three sheets to de wind.

[A brief note on letters when speaking:  sometimes ‘e’ becomes ‘a’; ‘w’ is swapped out for ‘v’; ‘th’ can be ‘d’ or ‘f’ (Vans-dee for Wednesday; Furs-dee for Thursday; ‘de’ instead of ‘the’). ]

Vexed. Not best pleased. Grumpy as fuck. (thickest accents would say it like ‘waxt’ lol.)

Fack. For when you’re in polite company and can’t say fuck. Also chingas/cheekumburgers for when children are present.

Ax. the process of inquiring to ascertain an answer. As in, you axt me about Bermudianisms and I answered. :) 

*1. camping = put a tent up by the side of the road and drive back home to shower and use the toilet, get in a little sneaky AC use when it gets too hot.

*2. gambling is illegal, but during cup match you can play Crown and Anchor which is a dice game based solely on luck. No skill required which is great considering everyone is full hot on...

*3. a truly leathal rum based fruit punch. It goes down easy, and bye she tastes well. I’ve linked you lot a recipe here. Not responsible for any decisions you make make whilst three sheets.

[witchcraftingboop]

Hello, I love your blog!

May I bother you ever so much and ask: were there times, at the beginning of your spiritual journey (or however you call it, I really didn't find a better way to express it), where you started to question your path and beliefs? That you wondered if it even made any sense what you were doing and that maybe you were only talking to the air?

I've been in and out of my own path for long as I can remember, bc it never felt like there was something there with me (if that makes sense). I do know how to read tarot and, whenever possible, I try to read Agrippa's book and every other book I have (tho I still find The Witches Bible a little off for me, but still a cool source of knowledge)

But it feels like I miss something, like a spark or whatever. So sometimes I can't help but question myself on "why am I even doing this?" or "why do I light this candle and make offerings if I don't even know if whoever I lit this candle for is actually here?" and so on and so forth.

I don't have a anyone irl I could ask this for so I hope you don't mind you ended up being the one to read my rumbling (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

Have a wonderful day/evening/night (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)

Hey, anon, thanks for the love and the intriguing ask!

My path might be a bit different from yours, as I grew up in a family that was openly spiritual on either side and was taught a fair bit by my mother, aunts, and great grandmother. That being said, I think doubt and skepticism is extremely healthy to have in your craft. Rather than look at your doubtful thoughts as impediments, it may help to view them more as reason to further your research and self-reflection.

When you doubt your books or actions and treat it as a challenge or prompt to deepen/investigate your investment and thought process involved, I think you'll find yourself engaging with your path and motivations in greater depth.

Ask yourself: why am I performing these actions? And then turn to your spirits, spells, or books for an answer. If you change that action, will there be a change or difference in what occurs after? Or you could turn instead to yourself and interrogate why witchcraft at all. Not in a derogatory way, but with the genuine intent to be more introspective and thereby connect to your own motivations and drive.

Personally, I haven't read "The Witches Bible," but Agrippa can at least help build the foundations of why magic works. It may help to expand your research and look into other traditions and ways of practicing, even if not applicable to your own. By looking outward and exploring how others engage with spirit, you can often be inspired by new connections and odd instances of familiarity that you weren't expecting. Sometimes our mind can understand a concept and not necessarily know how to express it in concrete words until we view a broader picture or are exposed to something that gives us the words, or pieces of them, we didn't know we were looking for.

Imposter syndrome in spiritual circles isn't unheard of. How you deal with and face those instances matters more, in my opinion, than the fact that you experience them.

Another way to reconnect yourself to the occult and witchcraft in general is to perform anyways. Perform spells and rituals and set a deadline by which you expect to see results. If you keep a record or journal of what goes on around you thereafter, it may be easier to discern whether what you were going for actually occurred or if something barely related changed/reacted instead. As an example, when I find myself doubting whether a spirit ally is still with me, I'll sometimes call on them for divination and, if that goes moderately well, follow it up with a money working - money is pretty easily tracked. In the end, having concrete results that you can look at and know without a doubt came from your efforts is sometimes the best way to quell doubtful thoughts.

On the opposite end, it's a good idea to check in with yourself if you start thinking that what you're doing isn't real or "in your head." Have there been any external influences (negative or positive) in your life recently that relate to the spiritual or religious aspects of your craft? Have you started tuning in to a creator that posts derogatory comments about the things you believe in? Have you done any personal protection/cleansing work recently? Reviewing the external factors around doubtful times in your life can be especially helpful if the thoughts become overwhelming, repetitive, etc.

Hope this helps! Also, just so you know, y'all don't bother me by asking things, so feel free!

[teacupsandcyanide]

no spoilers below for Glass Onion I am just making a group suggestion for fun times

I think it’s genuinely atrocious that there has been only a one-week cinema release in relatively limited theatres for Glass Onion, and after that it won’t become available online for another month, and even then ONLY on Netflix. To my understanding there's not going to be a later, longer conventional cinematic release. I ... do not like the sound of that trying to become a thing, buying up streaming rights to the point of drastically limiting the cinema run, and then slapping "Netflix Original" on it to make it sound like they have the creative or intellectual rights/involvement for that to all be reasonable.

And yeah, once it’s online people will start streaming it, but in the intervening weeks the film is going to be picked apart and digested online. That in itself isn’t inherently bad it just means that so many people are going to be spoiled for it and it’s a murder mystery. If you're the kind of person who doesn't mind spoilers that's all good, and if you're a sicko like @goldenaltar who likes getting little appetiser spoilers then that's great, but there are many people who hate spoilers and who find that their experience of a piece of media really gets affected by them.

Usually online etiquette is to be open from the get-go about what you're going to tag and not going to tag. But also sometimes the way you find out that That Thing you were interested in has come out and you need to block tags for it is someone on your dash casually dropping a huge spoiler about it. Sometimes your friend or a tumblr you like just doesn't have the capacity to tag for spoilers, and that's not their fault at all, but also it means you have to either unfollow them for a bit or stay offline entirely.

For me, with ADHD I can't rely on my brain to remember to refollow mutuals and blogs I like after I've seen The Thing, and spoilers really ruin my motivation to watch/read The Thing, so the option I take is often to stay offline entirely because it's the easiest and most secure option. And during that time I feel really pressured to watch or read The Thing so that I can go back online, and that makes me dread watching/reading The Thing, and I feel forced to get into The Thing when everyone else is rather than when I feel ready to. This may be another ADHD thing, but I get stressed to fuck when I'm forced to watch/read The Thing when The Stars Aren't In Position because I feel like I can't process it and aren't getting what I could get out of it. (This phenomenon accidentally ruined ofmd for me, and it's no one's fault it's just what happened, but it's probably going to be a long time before I can rewatch the show and actually enjoy it this time rather than view it as Task Item 47.)

And I feel like I'm not the only person who feels that way. I've seen so many friends/mutuals and other people on tumblr saying things like "I am so fucking tired of watching The Thing as fast as I can as soon as it comes out. It exhausts me and sometimes negatively impacts how much I end up enjoying it. But I feel like, for many many reasons, I have no other option."

When the play The Mousetrap written by big name murder mystery girlie Aggie "Baby Girl" Christie came out (stay with me I promise this is relevant) in London's West End in 1952, Baby Girl (this is a semi-derogatory (for the bad stuff) and semi-affectionate (for the good stuff) thing I call her, it's like our thing don't worry) was very concerned about the plot twist being revealed in reviews. She was already very used to her murder mystery plots getting spoiled by reviewers and Baby Girl did not like it. So on opening night and onwards elsewhere traditionally, performances of The Mousetrap end with the audience being asked not to spoil the plot twist for others so that other people can enjoy the play too. It's kind of cool because no one has to and many people don't, but bringing people into a secret makes something that is ultimately just a nice and kind thing to do also sexy and fun.

And I think. It would really sexy. And really fun. If we kept spoilers on tumblr under readmores. No one has to and many people won't. That's all good. But I really hate Netflix right now and the entire system they're trying to set up, of giving people one week to catch a limited release film and then stranding them in a wasteland of spoilers until December, at which point the only place to watch it (haha. theoretically) will be on Netflix. I would very much like to not be part of that system as best I can while still supporting an amazing film which I loved and a series I would like more of.

So absolutely, if you're thinking about catching a cinema screening today (or tomorrow if you're further away from Thursday than I am), I say it's well worth it, it's fantastic film. My partner and I drove an hour and a bit on a weeknight to see it and it was 100% worth it imo. But we were lucky to be able to do that, and I would like to ensure that other people get to experience the film the way we did – on our own terms, at a time when we were pumped to see it, and without any spoilers we didn't want. So my thing from here on until early Jan is going to be keeping anything spoilery under readmores. No one else has to do it and I think most people wouldn't. But it's nice, and it's kind. And it's sexy and fun.

Also I'm not gonna make any comments on whether you should stream directly from Netflix's tit but I do think they should go fuck themselves for this one. yeah it's just a movie but I will hiss at people who try to pry my small tender joys from my anxious depressed little hands

[vahre]

I’ve gotta say, I think one of the weirdest (derogatory) things about having vasovagal syncope is the fact that thinking about how I have it can sometimes trigger it. Because it’s such a big part of my life and I’ve only been just recently diagnosed with it (real A+ on doctors part for taking so long to realize something is up), I tried looking up some more information on it and nearly passed out in the process. I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain why that sucks royally.