#no idea why the writing is so strange

[cuties-in-codices]

underwater diving equipment

in a manuscript containing various technical drawings, germany, 1524

source: Munich, BSB, Cgm 973, fol. 135v, 136v and 137r

[ejsuperstar]

Imagine you live in pelican town. The new farmer has been here a couple weeks now and seems to be settling in, except... He's picking the weirdest friend choices. Like sure it's not weird to befriend the local fisherman, especially when he has an interest in fishing himself, but you're pretty sure you've seen him rooting through the Saloon's garbage with the local homeless man. As well, he keeps harassing the poor guy who works at Joja even though you KNOW he doesn't want to be friends with him.

And since you're on the topic of weirdness, isn't it odd he seemingly runs everywhere at a full sprint? Or just... Eats entire raw fish while fishing for "energy reasons"...

...

Despite all that, it's too early to call him off putting or anything... He has been engaging in town traditions, and he's started helping out with the old community centre. He's probably like the rest of you. Someone with a few quirks, that will fit in with the valley great!

Surely he can't get any weirder... Right?

[fatedroses]

Zenos viator Galvus and him trying to deal with actually feeling things for once (Even if he doesn't really understand how to handle the comfort he receives from others for it)

I am also giving this man a dad that actually cares, because this brainworm have gotten me and there is no saving me from them.

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Story Ideas I'm Never Going to Write #1: The Midnight Door

A mashup retelling of "Cinderella" and "The Twelve Dancing Princesses"

Main character is a young woman who is heiress to an estate and fortune that can pass down along the female line. Her father has remarried a woman with two sons of her own. Stepmother resents that Cinderella is going to get everything while she has two sons who get nothing.

Cinderella is in love with a seventh son who's also a soldier. An upcoming ball is going to be Cinderella's last chance to see him before he goes off to war.

Cinderella's father disapproves of this relationship, believing the soldier to be a fortune hunter. To keep Cinderella away from him, he forbids her from going to the ball and the family leaves her behind.

As Cinderella is mourning this, she is visited by a fairy who offers to help, giving her a ballgown and transportation to the ball (as well as magically ensuring that her family doesn't recognize her) so long as she returns by midnight.

Cinderella has a wonderful evening, bids her beloved a fond farewell after promises of everlasting devotion, and returns at the stroke of twelve. She thanks the fairy profusely, wondering how she can ever repay her.

The fairy says she'll think of something.

The next night, at the stroke of midnight, a door appears in Cinderella's room. When Cinderella walks through, she finds herself in a magical garden. The fairy states that the door will appear in Cinderella's room each night, which will allow her to come to the fairy's home and complete a few small tasks to show her gratitude for the help she received in getting to the ball. If Cinderella refuses, this will be proof that she is a wicked, ungrateful child deserving of magical punishment.

Cinderella has no choice but to agree. The door appears each night, and Cinderella spends each night completing tasks for the fairy--sometimes ordinary cleaning or gardening tasks that she doesn't want to waste magic on, sometimes on quests into the magical wilds to find items that are best retrieved by a pure-hearted human. Sometimes, the fairy offers magical help with these tasks, which only gives Cinderella more debt to work off.

This leaves Cinderella exhausted during the daytime, and eventually, her family notices. The stepmother thinks that this is proof that Cinderella is living a pampered, worthless lifestyle, and she convinces her husband that Cinderella needs to take up more responsibilities if she wants to live up to her role as heiress to the estate.

Cinderella tries not going through the door a few times, but time always stays frozen at the stroke of midnight until she goes through the door.

Cinderella's father figures out that she's going somewhere at night, but since the magic keeps everyone in the house asleep while she's gone, and keeps her from telling anyone the truth, he's unable to figure it out.

He recruits the help of some eligible young men in the area (hoping that this will also help her forget about the soldier and agree to marry a suitable man). Since the bonds of marriage are stronger than the bonds of gratitude that bind Cinderella to the fairy's service, the fairy gets worried that she might lose the best servant she's ever had, so she takes the precaution of stealing away the young men who try to solve the mystery, turning them to stone, and leaving them as statues in her garden.

The fairy has a brother who eventually comes by and learns about the situation. The brother doesn't approve of his sister's cruelty in general (which is why he interacts with her as little as possible), and he has a sympathy for humans after spending a portion of his young life as a changeling. He learns that his sister has no intention of ever allowing Cinderella to work off the debt, and he tries to force her to set Cinderella (and the stone suitors) free.

The sister is enraged, and with her stronger magic, she casts her brother out into the human world, leaving him weak and nearly powerless .

He's in this weakened state when a soldier comes by and offers help. Taking food from a human will leave the fairy in a debt to him similar to the one that binds Cinderella to his sister's service, but he's too weak to care much.

A conversation with the soldier reveals that he's actually Cinderella's sweetheart, newly returned from the war. The fairy is unable to directly tell him what's happening to Cinderella, but since he's now bound to the soldier's service, it is totally legal for him to set up a situation where the soldier can figure out what's going on for himself.

The fairy gives the soldier an invisibility cloak, and advises him to go to Cinderella's father and offer to solve the mystery. The father figures that this is a win-win situation--either the soldier solves the mystery and they resolve the situation that's harming Cinderella and stealing away these young men, or the soldier will get stolen away and her father won't have to worry about this unsuitable suitor chasing after her.

The cloak and the fairy bound to his service protect the soldier from any detection by the sister's magic, and he follows Cinderella and figures out what's going on. They could break Cinderella's bond of service by getting married, but Cinderella refuses to free herself until she can free all the innocent men who've been caught up in this.

The three of them figure out a way to save the suitors and defeat the evil fairy, Cinderella's father learns the truth and agrees to let Cinderella marry her true love, and everyone lives happily ever after.

[demodraws0606]

You know I think there is something interesting to say in terms of where the fuck WxS is going because like

I think WxS is the only unit where the end goal or overall progression is probably the most unknown out of all of them ???

MMJ and VBS are extremely obvious, they both have the most explicit goals that are said to us in a straightforward way

25-ji, in the end we know the main goal at the end will be for all of the characters to go over their hurdles with Mafuyu finally being able to find herself and move forward

Leo/need is probably the closest in terms of vagueness but we know the end goal is clear for them to grow as a band, probably ending in a big concert or something along those lines

But with WxS...like I guess the closest thing I can see to an end goal is all of WxS preparing a show together with everyone playing their part but that definitely doesn't feel like something you'd build up for an entire arc and definitely not something that feels fitting after the emotional turmoil that was the disbandement arc ???

In terms of physical achievements as well they literally revived an entire parc through one gigantic show, so it just comes into question what they can do now.

Then you look at their first few event for this arc considering usually the first event kinda set up what will be planned for the future but it's...weird.

Yeah, Tsukasa and Rui's events set up they're inexperienced and how they will grow in the future but also there is this weird feeling of something feeling off ?

The plays/scripts all are strangely depressing, the play in Tsukasa's event being about a failed writer planning to drown himself (which I believe is one of the only undeniable explicit description of suicide ever in the game?????) and the second being someone whose given up on life meeting their estranged sister only for her to become ill.

We even have Emu's side story in Rui's event where they watched the movie Rin was watching during the event made by the same producer and Emu herself note how depressing the story is (meanwhile the main character of the movie clearly parallels Rui)

We don't see the conclusion of these in-game stories as well, lingering on their worst moment never really seeing the presumably happy conclusion.

THEN we also have Emukasa fes which....again strangely different in tone from what you'd expect a WxS fes card, they're not really all that conclusive either. Tsukasa never aknowledges how he relates to the brother in the story and Emu doesn't really get a conclusion on her grief.

Then we also have Rui's entire fuckign event with the cards and his cyberpunk deadbo-YOU SEE WHAT IM SAYING

The closest we fucking have to knowing what WxS's fucking endgoal towards the story is, is fucking WL which....TELLS US NOTHING

At least with VBS we know that they're goal is to go even further beyond and conquer the whole world, that is a developpement of their goal.

What I'm saying is I don't know what the fuck colorpalet is cooking wiht WxS but I feel like i'm a fucking twilight zone reading the way they're writing WxS now because I can't be the only one feeling insane at how weird all of this is

[poebrey]

strange new worlds is not doing enough strange or new for me

[popcorn-plots]

who you say you are

i feel like shit so here we are

possible TW for discussions of periods and everything that happens during them, like bleeding through three layers of clothing (that was a wonderful night)

Stephen hated his periods. He hated the general feeling of unwellness during that week, and he hated having to clean blood out of everything after he inevitably bled through.. everything. The worst part about it, however, wasn't even the blood. It was the dysphoria. It was the fact that every month, his period would bring the lies of his mind, telling him that he wasn't a real man and never would be. That he was weak for whining about it.

That he was never Stephen and he never would be. That he was too feminine, or that he was never 'good enough' to pass as a man. The worst was his mind telling him that he'd always be a girl, that deep down... he was never Stephen in the first place. He was just little Lucy, trying on her dad's shirt.

On those days, Stephen would curl up on his bed, clutching a hot water bottle. Cloak would hold him as he sobbed, telling himself over and over again, like a mantra, that his name was Stephen Strange. On those days, he would ask Wong not to bother him, despite every fiber of his being yearning to be held, begging for someone to call him handsome and take away the pain.

He didn't think that Wong knew. He was near-positive that Wong had no idea that Stephen was trans. As far as the other sorcerer knew, Stephen was just another man. A man with a broken soul to match his broken hands and scarred chest.

~

It was one of those days (Dark Days, Stephen called them) when Stephen was in his room, clutching a pillow to his chest. A second was between his legs, pressed to his crotch. It was surprisingly helpful when dealing with cramps, the pressure on his lower abdomen easing the discomfort. Unfortunately, he had forgotten his heading pad in the library from when he last used it and when he finally needed it again, he was too comfortable to get it.

Magic was out of the option as well considering just how horrible he felt between the pain, dysphoria, and his hands. It was a bad hand day, because of course, and he really didn't want to move. Which, unfortunately, meant breathing through the pain and trying not to cry.

Eventually, he managed to fall into a light sleep, nodding off then jolting awake again. He woke up in a way that jarred his hands and he groaned. It might be time to sacrifice his comfort for some much-desired relief.

He was mentally preparing himself to climb out of bed when there was a knock at the door. "Stephen?"

Stephen blinked. "..Wong..?"

"You left your heating pad in the library." Wong announced.

Stephen sighed. "I know. Leave me alone."

"I warmed it up for you. I thought you might need it. May I come in?" Stephen didn't respond. Wong had found his heating pad and warmed it up for him. For a second, Stephen wondered if Wong knew, but he had hidden it so well-- "Stephen?"

"...yeah. you can come in."

There was a click as the doorknob turned, then Wong was walking across the room in brisk strides, stopping in front of the nest of blankets that was Stephen Strange. "Here." he set the heating pad down near Stephen's hands. "I also have tea and some of your painkillers. It's raining today."

Stephen let out a shaky breath. Maybe Wong was just looking out for his hands. That would explain it, right? But Wong was never so... caring. Aside from his the week after Everest and his usual quiet help when Stephen needed to handle large stacks of books.

"You're paler than usual. If you turned yourself into a vampire on accident, I will kill you again." Stephen huffed.

"I'm not a vampire."

Wong reached out a hand and felt Stephen's forehead. Stephen nearly froze at the contact, but didn't say anything. He tried to look anywhere but Wong until the hand was gone. "You're not running a temperature."

"I'm trans." Stephen found himself blurting out.

Wong looked at him. Blinked. "Do you need any supplies?"

Supplies...?

"Pads, tampons? You disappear in your room once every four weeks, only coming out for food and when you do, you look horrible. Deathly pale, hunched over as if in pain, it wasn't hard to figure out."

Stephen looked up at his friend. Wong had taken a seat in the armchair next to Stephen's bed -- one of the large library chairs that had found itself in Stephen's room after a few too many vigils of Wong's when Stephen found himself injured.

"You... you never said anything."

"If you wanted me to know, you would have told me when the time was right."

"You... always made my favorite meals."

Wong huffed a rare smile. "I have never menstruated, but I can sympathy. I have a sister. She was always... vocal with.. everything. I did what I could to make her feel better."

Stephen smiled. "It sounds like you love her."

"Very much." Wong was smiling ever so slightly. Stephen found that watching Wong smile seemed to take the pain away.

"What's her name?"

"Li." It was soft, spoken just above a whisper. "You'd like her."

"Li. Pretty name." Stephen sighed. "Mine was-- is--"

"Stephen."

Stephen paused. He stared at Wong. Wong stared back. "Your name is Stephen. You are Stephen Strange. Do not give me your dead name. It is dead for a reason. You are who you say you are, not what someone else wants you to be. You told me on your very first day that your name is Stephen Strange. That is who you are. If you wish for me to use a different name, then I will. I respect you, and I will respect you, whoever you decide to be."

Stephen swallowed, tears pricking his eyes. He refused to let himself cry in front of Wong, of all people. Wong looked at him again and nodded. "You are Stephen Strange. Remember that."

Before he knew it, Wong had closed the door behind him and Stephen was sobbing into his pillow.

A few hours later, Stephen woke up feeling a hundred times better than before. He decided to find his way to the kitchen for dinner, now that the cramps had disappeared.

He found Wong at the stove, making friend rice. Wong's go-to comfort food that had quickly become Stephen's as well."

"Thank you." Stephen whispered. Wong responded by dishing Stephen and himself a large helping of rice.

"Of course, Stephen."

[self-spaghettification]

i love being fixated on viravos and having the most fucking wacky kink associations / fic ideas and being fucking insane about them and them being toxic ane insane to eachother but also kinda good for eachother i love it when.

my silly little villain duo.

i love how creative the community collectively is when it comes to them as well like nice to know im not alone in being fucking insane <3

[aerodaltonimperial]

woke up feeling weirdly grateful to fandom (must be pride month lol) so just wanted to toss out a big thank you to anyone who has ever read my fics. you really make me feel like i matter when i hear that my words make people happy or flaily or screaming or what have you. it honestly means the world to me knowing that people take their own free time and use it to read things i have written; given everything, i can't overstate how much this helps to heal over the big me vs. writing/publishing wounds. 💚💚💚 i had really truly considered leaving fandom the past few weeks, but i don't want to any longer, and a huge part of that is you wonderful folks for being here.

[roseluwakcoffee]

Okay I know v3 leaves a lot up to interpretation but the idea of it is actually just insane. So you’re telling me there’s a world where danganronpa becomes so fucking popular and widespread that it turns from a video game to an anime and gets so many seasons and different types of adaptations that 50 seasons in its now an actual real, live killing game where people volunteer to have their memories wiped and turned into fictional characters written up by someone like tsumugi and pitted in a real-life killing game set up in which there is a very good chance that you will definitely be murdered or executed? And just everyone tunes in to watch and participate, even your friends and family? And don’t get me started on what the fuck they even mean by ‘ultimate real fiction’ like

[birlwrites]

like when i was in 6th grade i started an original novel that i then abandoned mostly-complete, came back to a few years later, and finished it, out of SPITE because i didn't like seeing it in my drafts and knowing it wasn't done.

and was it cool that i'd written a whole novel? sure! do i wish i'd, like... enjoyed it more? ABSOLUTELY YES. but at the time when i began the story, i had no idea how to write something that would feel like me. when i returned to it, proofreading was a massive pain because i was constantly cringing at what seemed like sixth-grade-me's embarrassingly clumsy attempts at writing something Cool™. i didn't see any way to salvage the story. and that was because all it had originated in was that desire to write something Cool™. that goal drove every creative decision. not a shred of it was genuine. there was nothing to salvage. so i just slapped together an ending, out of a sense of obligation, and that was that.

in 8th grade, i wrote a psychological horror short story about someone trapped in a room full of unsynchronized clocks. i think i'd just read the tell-tale heart. it creeped out everyone who read it. it wasn't at all Cool™. it was leagues, LEAGUES better - more sincere, more committed, more impactful - than that novel i'd started a couple of years earlier.

fanfiction isn't Cool™. fandom is still often cringed at in the Mainstream™. but Coolness and the Mainstream are the death of creativity. if all you're doing is imitating whatever's recently achieved commercial success, it will feel empty. a pastiche of booktok buzzwords is just that.

but if you allow yourself to create something ~cringe~, fully and wholeheartedly, then you can connect with your readers. you can figure out how you want to write. and you'll enjoy the writing process, instead of staring at a draft you started years ago, wondering how to finish it with the minimum possible effort so you can cross it off your list.

[gifti3]

Would like to add fae to the obey me universe

But like the ones that steal your face if you dont follow some unspoken rule they have

[not-poignant]

You have a very broad readership; do you still, like most ao3 writers, use writing as a way to make friends? If so, how do you manage both to make connections and keep from uncomfortable parasocial engagements?

(admitting: I like your work a lot, I have a similar interest in writing trauma and recovery, I would like to befriend you, but I don't want to bother you bc lots of people want to be friend with writers they like and there's no way you'd have energy for all of them!)

Hi hi anon,

So...this response might be disappointing, but I didn't use fanfiction writing as a way of making friends. That's not why I started, and it's never been the reason for me to be in fandom.

(Thoughts about friendship and stuff under the read more, it's pretty personal so no obligation to read. The TL;DR is I am bad at friendship and I also am not like 'most AO3 writers' (is that really why most AO3 writers write?) in the sense that I never wrote fanfiction as a way to make friends and it's very weird to me sometimes that people actually do this as a motive).

When I turned up in fandom, it was a very private experience for me. I didn't know anyone else locally who shared the same fandom/s I do. When I shared fanfiction on Livejournal, I did so to complete strangers who I never got to know better, or to people who were already friends through other interests.

I've never gone to fandom conventions (there's few here, and I have severe social anxiety. By the time I thought about going I was in my late 30s, and just felt like I'd be too much of an outsider even among fellow outsiders - again, I shared almost no fandoms or ships with anyone I knew locally, and no one I'm friends with / know in person reads my fanfiction). Fandom was always an incredibly isolated experience for me.

When I joined AO3, it wasn't with a view to making friends. I was extremely burnt out, I'd quit my previous job as a professional artist because I couldn't see a way of making the income work out, and I just wanted to write a very angst-filled story that would help me deal with my loneliness which I didn't see as something that would ever change. Writing about a character who's experienced centuries of loneliness was like 'cool, yeah, I'm gonna write about him.'

I did end up making friends, but it was kind of by accident! And not all of those experiences were positive. One person in particular became quite toxic and cruel towards me, and I experienced my first kind of encounter with...I guess what I would call the uglier side of fandom life and also just friendship and relationships. It took me a long time to recover from that experience (and to learn what emotional abuse is), and after that I shut down and stopped kind of making friends on the internet.

I have made friends through the writing since (they're usually the mutuals I also have on Instagram, or here, or people I've DMed in Discord etc.), but I haven't really sought it out actively and I think anyone who knows me well enough that we've private messaged a few times, also knows that I'm quite aloof and reserved, and that I will engage quite deeply sometimes but then disappear for a few months (or years) re: communication, which is a remnant of a period of time where I used to get sometimes 200 Whatsapp messages in 5 minutes from someone who expected me to be accountable to her every second of every day when she was awake and wanted me to be.

On top of like, severe social anxiety + PTSD, and being very reserved in general, I would also say I'm very time poor. I don't have much time for the friends I already have and care about. I often view myself as quite a poor friend, who is not good at starting and even worse at maintaining connections. I'm also very private. As in, I will happily tell the world I have PTSD. But I won't tell my friends in a private conversation when I'm having a bad night, and I don't give friends many opportunities to connect. Even with really close friends, this is an ongoing issue that I'm working on.

So as for befriending, that's extremely sweet of you anon, but who I am in my personal life is sometimes very different to like... the way I can respond in comments or to anons, because it's actually easier for me to talk to strangers sometimes than it is for me to talk to friends, lol. I honestly think some of the people I consider my friends don't even know that I do, because I don't really behave like one. I chat online regularly to one person only, and one other person intermittently (and they're a romantic partner) and that's it. Everyone else I chat to pretty rarely in DM. But I do turn up in the Fae Tales Discord every day.

I don't actually think lots of people want to be my friend, tbh? Not in a 'woe is me' way, but simply because I think some people do grok that kind of... polite distance or that sort of warm 'I care for a lot of people but I am also quite personally walled off' kind of way. The good news is a lot of the folks in the Fae Tales Discord also share a lot of interest in writing trauma and recovery, or have those experiences, and I know a lot of good friends have been made within the like...faedom itself. A lot of neurodivergent, trauma-focused folks have met each other through this writing, and it's really cool seeing the different friendships that have sparked up between people. There's a lot of extremely like... skilled, talented, interesting people that I've met through this job, who I admire, respect and want the best for, and am very happy to talk to.

But yeah I'm a bit difficult to befriend, anon, and that's been an ongoing thing all my life, tbh. But it did specifically get worse in fandom because of some early fandom experiences when I started out in Rise of the Guardians fanfiction.

[toytulini]

you know whats more annoying than dems calling vance and trump weird is all the condescending posts justifying it actually. like im a bit annoyed about "weird" being used this way but also like man if it fucking works i guess

but do i have to keep seeing daily posts exhaustively justifying how normie midwesterners use weird different or whatever the fuck man just shut up and call them weird then, stop justifying it to me

[total-serene560]

Me, 5 days ago: I'm just gonna go over my outline again, I feel like I'm getting stuck.

Me, today, exhausted and covered in blood: So I restructured the entire plot and changed the timeline and half of the conflict. Also it's a trilogy now.

(Guess who is now actively working on a rework of ASE... this guy.)

[tangerinequeen19]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/louis-tomlinson-grows-close-again-31822843

Hadn't seen that. These tabloid non-articles are so weird. Especially since no one knows who eleanor is and no one cares one way or the other (and I mean that non-snarkily lol). However my cringe levels simply cannot take another pinterest rockstar bf episode so this is promising at least😩