#posts i make when i have to work on a sunday

[roguishcat]

Snippet Sunday Tuesday

Thank you very much for tagging me @kalmiaphlox, @lanafofana and @fangbangerghoul! Sorry for posting this late, my laptop was acting up, but luckily it was nothing major! Here is a snippet from a one-shot I'm working on.

Astarion stretched out languidly on Tav's bedroll, watching her as she looked through their magic trinkets to decide which ones they could do without. Ever since Gale came to her, confessing everything, telling her of his folly, Tav has taken extra care to set aside an item or two that the wizard could consume.

Now, if this was done out of sense of self-preservation, that would be completely understandable. It would be quite unfortunate for that orb in his chest to get so volatile it would just explode at random. Such a waste that would be. The world would lose its most beautiful creature! And just as he was starting to enjoy his freedom! And he supposed the wizard had his uses too.

Astarion blinked slowly and sighed. As nice as it was to have no one try to murder them for a change, he was getting bored. And his favourite source of entertainment seemed to have no time on her hands for him.

Now that just wouldn’t do.

He moved closer to Tav and lifted his hand to rest on her head, running his fingers through her hair and then lower down to caress the exposed skin of her neck. Astarion knew that he was distracting her, that was the whole point of the gentle, feather-light touches that made goosebumps rise on her exposed arms. And when that garnered no reaction, Astarion lifted himself up to press his chest against her back, snaking his arms around her middle.

“Darling,” he said smoothly, kissing her shoulder, making a move to lift her shirt enough with insistent hands to expose skin and trace slow patterns just above her hipbones, “don’t you think it’s time for a break?”

“As nice as that sounds, I still have to go through all the scrolls and potions.”

“Nice? I can’t promise anything that uninspired,” he scoffed. Nothing about him was even remotely nice. Such a bland, plain word that carried little to no meaning.

“Something wicked, however,” he drawled, his lips almost touching Tav’s ear “that I could definitely provide.”

It would be awesome to see what everyone is working on, but seeing as this is two days late probably everyone has already posted something. If you are interested in posting a snippet, consider yourself tagged! 💕

[laura1633]

Omegaverse short snippets - prompts and rules below

I am currently in the middle of writing some multi chapter stories so I am not posting as many one shots as normal. I thought whilst I am working on those longer stories I would like to write some short omegaverse snippets. These probably aren't going to be full stories, more in the 1000 word ballpark.

Rules:

Send me an ask with the prompt number and the name of two drivers (or three drivers if the prompt calls for three characters)

If you have a preference for who is the Omega and who is the Alpha please also specify this in the ask.

I won't be able to write them all so please don't think I am ignoring you if I can't get around to your request (I love you all, I just have limited capacity). I will be writing these and posting them Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week.

My favourite ship is Lestappen but I am open to people prompting other pairings for this game if people want. The majority of the ones I complete will likely be Max/Charles though (or at least have Max or Charles involved) but you never know, a certain pairing might spark my interest.

Prompts

An Omega asks another omega to teach them how to build a nest.

An Alpha discovers their clothing in an Omega’s nest and confronts them about it.

An Alpha gives another Alpha a courting gift. 

An Alpha goes into rut in public and possessively picks up their omega and carries them off to the nest. 

A possessive Omega makes sure their scent is all over their Alpha before they go out for the day.

An Alpha accidentally uses their Alpha voice and makes an Omega cry.

An Alpha somehow gets impregnated by another Alpha. 

An Omega can’t stop producing slick whenever they are around a particular alpha and it’s actually starting to become a problem. 

An alpha’s scent suppressants fail and they suddenly find themselves surrounded by omegas much to their actual Omega’s annoyance. 

An Alpha discovers an Omega is faking their heat.

An Omega steals an Alpha’s top because the Alpha’s scent makes them feel safe.

An Omega gets sick and is cared for by their alpha

An Omega is knotted for the first time and panics and their alpha has to pin them down to stop them hurting themselves.

An Alpha is so turned on that their knot does not deflate and they are stuck inside their Omega.

An Omega finds an unknown alpha’s top and instantly falling in love with the mysterious alpha's scent. 

An Omega goes into heat in a public space and panics until an Alpha helps them get somewhere safe. 

A young Alpha is nervous about their first attempt at trying to court an omega. 

An Omega suffers from separation anxiety after their alpha breaks up with them. They are comforted by another alpha. 

An Omega is insecure about the way they look and tries to make themselves look pretty just like the other omegas. Their alpha reassures them they are perfect as they are. 

An Omega  wets themselves when they get a little too excited around an Alpha they like.

An Omega seeks out and clings hold of a familiar alpha when they get scared.

Rather than get aggressive or aroused during his rut an alpha get clingy and wants lots of cuddles.

A pregnant Omega suddenly starts getting pregnancy cravings but its not for food, they are craving the scent of an alpha who doesn’t belong to them.

An Omega has been successfully hiding their secondary gender for years but accidentally lets it slip during a moment of weakness.

A young Omega gets teased when they present as an Omega for the first time.

An Alpha loves being dominated in the bedroom by his pretty little Omega.

An Omega is so happy when they kiss an Alpha they have had a crush on for the longest time that they literally can not stop purring for days. It’s actually rather exhausting.

An Omega who gets pregnant in a poly relationship finds out which alpha the pup belongs to and is nervous about breaking the news to the other Alpha.

An Omega tries to protect their Omega mate when they are attacked by an Alpha but ends up getting hurt themselves. 

Other - feel free to request something different but keep in mind these are going to be short little drabble style stories so nothing plot intensive. 

If this works well then I might try the same thing with non-omegaverse and alternative universe at some point. ❤️

Alongside this I will also be finishing off the second chapter of "Pretty Little Monaco Race Winner" which will be posted soon!

[batsplat]

I saw the post about assen 2016 and Marc cutting the chicane and was wondering if Marc did that a lot to his competitors like the imitation of mind games. Cause I’ve always thought of Vale as the one who used the mind games more. Did Marc use mind games a lot and was just more subtle?

(assen '16)

if you're interested in reading more about marc marquez mind games, then boy do I have a post for you

anyway, I can't really think of anything that's all that similar to assen 2016 because that's such a specific situation... not every day that you have something as memorable and as easy to visibly imitate and as controversial as cutting the final chicane. of course, if we're talking about imitation, it's pretty hard to avoid mentioning how marc did infamously copy two out of valentino's three most well known career overtakes within half a year of joining the premier class, and was also pretty shameless about the whole thing. but at least there you can say it's all about the race situation marc happened to find himself in - and there will only have been so much premeditation possible with both incidents

more broadly speaking, then, targeted behaviour where he's trying to send a message to one of his competitors during non-race sessions... well, that's fairly common. he loves using non-race sessions to study and stalk and at times deliberately harass his competitors. I'll give a little more details on one specific incident here to demonstrate what I'm talking about. it's related to towing, as it so often is with marc, and I ended up only briefly mentioning it in the post linked above. for context, marc spent a fair bit of time in 2019 trying to mess with the rookie revelation fabio quartararo, sometimes during the races themselves and sometimes outside of them. nothing wrong with hazing your young challengers, right? so one of the more widely discussed incidents took place in sepang 2019 qualifying (tw crash):

big fan of how the article very strongly implies that when marc says the words "honestly speaking", he was not, in fact, honestly speaking. did a single person on this planet believe marc when he said he just happened to end up right behind fabio? who knows, maybe there's someone out there, who knows...

obviously, marc and his team weren't really trying to hide what they were doing, which makes it even funnier that marc just goes for this completely shameless 'oh it was all just a coincidence' routine. and of course, this entire episode ended on a pretty sour note for marc. even though he tried to shrug it off in the moment, this incident did come with consequences for him:

which, yeah. lot's to be said here, lots to be said. but let's return to the actual point of the post, the mind games

in the end marc did do a rather nice salvage job in the race, p11 to p2 - and fabio didn't win the race, which I'm sure was appreciated. here's a nicely in-depth description of the incident that I'm going to liberally steal excerpts from. it's a good bit of extra insight on both the episode itself and what it represented in the broader context of the dynamic between the pair of them

it's part of the established playbook when it comes to dealing with promising young talent: you try to rough them up in the races and you try to rough them up outside of them. you try to make them nervous, maybe you even try to scare them. and so the cycle continues

this is the thing, right, marc really does view all on-track sessions as time to 'work' on his rivals. he's never been focused solely on himself during these sessions - and the towing thing has never just been a matter of practicality for him. 'the race doesn't just happen on sunday' 'great riders, champions, are bullies' 'they don't just want to win, they want to rub the rest of the world's noses in it'... marc has always adopted that philosophy in his racing (and he learnt from the best). he's never been shy in his tactics of intimidation - in his efforts to undermine his rivals' confidence and make them suffer. it's all part of the game

and then, of course, there's the bit of insight we get about how marc was reportedly worried about fabio because of his talent and fearlessness... a rookie who hadn't even won a race yet. and yet marc's "been doing his best to instil fear" into fabio. unfortunately it's not always easy to spook young talent, especially when they're so very brave... it's a tricky line to toe - by marking out your rivals like that, you are also letting them implicitly know you see them as a threat. which if anything can help motivate them and make them more confident. inconvenient

anyway, l'll include some more of the description of the incident, which helps illustrate just how little effort marc was going to in attempting to hide his underhanded behaviour (and how that may have been the whole point):

inherently, right, this 'battle of nerves' is a really important element of the whole towing strategy. it's about your read of the other rider, your analysis of their character, how you think they will play the situation... how much you think they're willing to risk, how much you think they'd be motivated to just fuck you over regardless, how prepared they will be to call your bluff. and in the context of sepang 2019, with that year's title very much sealed up, marc decided that he was prepared to play this game for as long as he had to. marc had won the last five races, fabio was still searching for his first ever win... marc knew young and hungry fabio would blink before he did

which, yeah. less than ideal to engage in mind games in a way that ends up getting you injured. this whole incident does serve as a good illustration of marc's overall approach, but obviously this specific episode wasn't particularly successful or indeed wise from marc's side. all in all, it probably wasn't all that intimidating for fabio when marc crashed behind him

anyway, here's some more bits talking about how marc was perhaps not being 100% honest in his post-qualifying interview:

even though in this specific example marc did admittedly fuck it, a lot of this kind of behaviour isn't bad long-term investment because it's meant to be cumulative, where you're just consistently putting pressure on someone... as it says above, "every ounce of energy spent worrying about you is one which can't be spent on trying to go faster". so you're hoping to distract your opponents, you're hoping that this constant tension will eventually unsettle them - or that you've spent so much time studying and analysing them that you can figure out how to bother them more effectively (*coughs* 2008 *coughs again*). or maybe you just can't help yourself in messing with your opponents and sometimes it is counterproductive because you've shown them how seriously you take them as a rival. maybe sometimes it's a bit of all of those things!

on fabio's reaction:

which is a pretty friendly response, it has to be said! but anyway, of course 'if he wants to follow us we are doing a good job' is probably the most healthy and useful takeaway from the whole thing. that's the thing with bullies, isn't it, you do have to figure out a way to stand up to them. fabio might have been annoyed while marc was picking on him, but he's not picking a fight with marc after the fact. he's just making it clear that he's not been intimidated - and has bagged himself pole in the process while marc started from eleventh place. as fabio says, "it's a little bit part of the game". but it is a game, and it's one that marc has always been more than happy to play

[forerussake]

six sentences sunday

not sunday anymore askjhfdjhls but @hideyseek tagged me so i MUST POST A SNIPPET

i'm now also working on a little fill for the first guardian bingo bonus round prompt, but this snippet is from the casefic i'm working on that the last snippet was also from:

“You asked me,” Shen Wei explains, “why I have a printed copy of that journal, when I could also read it online, and the answer is simple, Yunlan.” He whirls around, one hand resting on the kitchen counter and the other tugging at his collar, and in the low light Zhao Yunlan can see the dark energy sparking from his fingertips. The overhead lights flicker ominously, the ambient temperature dropping in increments and the endless humming of the fridge stuttering and cutting out for a moment, and Shen Wei’s eyes are glowing with a light of their own as he speaks, his hands curling into fists at his sides, jagged lines of light crawling across his skin, like cracks in porcelain. “My laptop doesn’t like me, and it makes an annoying whirring noise that makes my energy feel all scrambled, and I prefer to read relevant articles on paper so I can actually concentrate on reading them!” “Woah,” Zhao Yunlan exclaims, throwing his hands up, the feeling of static electricity washing over him in a rush. “Woah, hey. It’s okay, I get it.” And Shen Wei actually bares his teeth at him.

that is technically seven sentences but i thought you might enjoy that seventh sentence heheh. this may feel out of character without context but i promise it'll make sense in the context of the fic. shen wei is just having some issues! and i like giving him more issues on top of the issues he already has!

i'm not tagging anyone today but if any writer friends see this and want to post a snippet of something, consider yourself tagged <3

[utilitycaster]

we need a druid class themed around the four fundamental forces

[royalarchivist]

Green Gay Ninja's "team full of strong opinionated leaders" ran into a lot of communication issues on Day 1, but nobody has more experience wrangling loud rowdy people than FitMC.

[thatbuddie]

tidbit tuesday/wip wednesday

it's technically still tuesday in new york but wednesday in many other parts of the world and the lovelies @doeeyeseddie and @sibylsleaves tagged me, so i am doing a tidbit tuesday & wip wednesday mash-up!!! here goes the beginning of my next prompt fill <333 (which is actually one that pia herself sent me!!!)

“What do you mean you don’t like kissing?”  The girl handing them their order at the coffee shop gives Buck an amused glance before moving her eyes over to Eddie and raising her eyebrows. With his cheeks bright red as a firetruck, Eddie grabs his coffee, mumbles his gratitude to her, and then spins on his heels, moving faster than Buck has ever seen him do as he heads towards the exit. Buck accepts his own drink from the barista, sends a half-sheepish half-apologetic smile her way, and follows Eddie as quickly as he can, taking advantage of the fact that, despite their height difference not being that pronounced, Buck’s legs are a lot longer than Eddie’s, allowing him to catch up with him in only a couple of seconds despite Eddie’s headstart. “Hey, Eddie, hey,” Buck says once they’re shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk, going towards an unspecified location at a very rapid speed, like Eddie is trying to leave his embarrassment as far behind as possible. “What do you mean you don’t like kissing?”  Eddie’s cheeks redden impossibly further, the color spreading down his neck and up his ears. Buck wonders whether his skin would feel warm to the touch, whether he’d get burnt if he rested his fingertips right on Eddie’s pulse point under his jawline. Buck has to clench the fingers of his empty hand to resist the temptation find out for himself. “I didn’t say I don’t like kissing,” Eddie clarifies, his eyes shifting around like he’s making sure no one gets too close to them and hears their conversation. “I like kissing just fine, it’s… Kissing. All I said is that I’ve just never gotten the fuss about it.” 

i'm tagging @hattalove @clusterbuck @capseycartwright @bibuddie @usereddie @wh0re-behavi0r & @transboybuckley in wip wednesday if they so like to share.

[sexynetra]

SIX SENTENCE SUNDAY

I was going to work on this more during my shift but then I remembered it is Oscars day and I’m chronically addicted to awards shows 😔 anyways here’s the intro to my grandekofi bar au <3

~~~~~~

Two drinks. Just two.

That was how many drinks it took for Dame to admit she was in love with Tia. Well, admit it to herself at least.

She stared at her reflection in the grimy bathroom mirror of the bar Hannah had dragged them all out to for her birthday. Even with the dingy lighting, Dame could see the flush of her cheeks, left over from when Tia had wrapped her arms around her waist as they waited at the bar. It wasn’t long after that that she had excused herself.

[jichanxo]

how different is your creative process between writing and drawing (and in which areas)? do you have a different approach in each artform? if you have an idea, you first think how you'd write it or draw it?

This is definitely going to be long so. Cut.

Just to preface, obviously both writing and drawing are a form of art, but I tend to use the word “art” when I mean illustration or drawing, so that’s what I’m going to do here. And of course a disclaimer that I’m only speaking to my subjective experience.

Tbh I don’t think my approach to both is that different from each other, which is odd, because I’m used to thinking of them as very different processes. Probably because the mediums themselves are so different. But like with my writing, I tend to improvise. Feel it out, see how things go, throw ideas at the wall. I would probably say that I’m more willing to experiment with/scrap my art than my writing. Probably because I’m more confident with my art than my writing, so I find it easier to make judgments like that, or because I’ve made so much that throwing stuff away when it isn’t working is very easy. I get a bit more precious about my writing. I always want to keep it or at least try to adapt it into something less bad, lmao. I’m also just not as confident in my ability to judge what writing is worth keeping or worth permanently deleting. I just haven’t polished that skill for writing as much as I have for art.

With regards to planning my art – I definitely do sometimes, because I consider art my Serious Hobby, which means I do like to have a go at more serious projects as opposed to just improvising all the time (a contrast to my writing where my only “serious project” is senseific, and I fell into that by accident). The things I plan out are the idea/s I want to convey, and what imagery would express that. (like this IW art, and the second one in this umineko post) Or sometimes the imagery gets stuck in my head and I work from that. (yagami’s hair clinging to his neck here)

I actually find that planning too much can be detrimental to my art process. That is to say, not in terms of figuring out ideas/themes, but doing too much drafting. I find it very difficult to do things like clean lineart unless I’m having a Weirdly Good Art Moment, so I just don’t. Hence a lot of my art is very sketchy. I’m just not good at capturing the same looseness with “proper” lineart than with my sketches, so I keep them. Not worth fussing over. This is what works for me.

(even in this, and the first image here, you can see a lot of breaks and incomplete looking lines. not to say necessarily that this is a bad thing of course, but you can see that even in what I consider my “polished” work, I won’t use “proper” linework, but instead a high quality/detailed sketch. I imagine some other artists would have their proper linework stage after these sketches, but i choose to stop here)

this probably reads like I’m talking myself down, but that’s not really what I’m meaning to say – my point is that I don’t figure out details even for my bigger pieces, and that with drawn art I have a better time judging where my time is best spent. I don’t think I have a strong understanding of my writing by comparison, so I can’t decide how to play to my strengths or anything like that, I just have to see how i go.

For writing, either it’s “i’m in the mood for it” or “i’m not in the mood for it”. For art, it’s “today is a good day/bad day”, “today’s a painting day”, “today feels like masking”, “today I just want to sketch”, “today I’m too loose for what I want to work on”, “today I’m too stiff”. You can see the difference in my ability to judge, yeah? So a big difference is to do with just my own (relative) inexperience with writing as opposed to drawing.

I think the other major factor is the differences in the mediums themselves. A fanfic is sequential. There’s a change in time. Illustrations are by nature a single moment in time. Big difference there. Of course, there are comics and animatics and other art that’s both drawn and sequential, but since I don’t do a lot of that, just count that as exceptions for now (and in a way, those are kind of like a combination of writing and illustration, aren’t they?) I find there are some ideas that are conveyed easier or better through writing, and others where the better option is art.

So to answer your last question, often ideas come to me pre-packaged as a “writing idea” or an “art idea”, rather than having to decide that separately. In the case that a sequence is better conveyed with a visual element, that’s when it’s comic time. The gorillashipping comic is a great example of this. The punchline is at its best when it’s not explained in words, and the expression of the final panel does all the heavy lifting. I pitched this idea initially in words (as a joke on discord), but the comic version has more punch.

Comics are also great for when you want to avoid explaining context, and for when you want to force the reader to take a specific pace. Here’s the example I’m thinking of.

The visual space dedicated to the fighting forces you to take time to process, and that time is important for the buildup to the punchline. This wouldn’t work as well if we cut this down to, say, the four panels of the last example. So yeah, timing. And then my other point – context – why are these two fighting? I don’t know. Where are they? I don’t know. It’s not necessary for the joke. The same is true of the gorillashipping joke. How did the relationship between kiryu and kaito happen to make this even remotely possible? I don’t know. But I don’t need to explain it in a joke comic. With writing I find that it feels more necessary to make context clear to the reader so they understand what’s happening, but with illustrations, it’s a lot easier to skip over that. Obviously this isn’t impossible in a written format, but that’s just my personal opinion.

Admittedly I think this second example is doable with just pure writing (replace all the panels with descriptions of the fight that take long enough to simulate the time it takes for the reader to digest the build up, then make the punchline a wham line, yknow), but it varies on a case to case basis. Also I would not want to write fighting. Lmao. I’m not… any good at that. So I guess it is also just in part about playing to strengths.

Anyway, enough comic side tangent. I’ve already started talking about it there, but was going to do a comparison between writing and art as mediums. The main thing, I find, is that they have different strengths. More than strengths/weaknesses though, the mediums themselves convey some things with ambiguity, and other things with detail.

Like I first mentioned, time: it’s easier to convey the passage of time with writing than with illustration. And like I said before with comics – conveying context – because an illustration captures a single moment in time, it’s a lot easier to avoid context entirely, while it’s harder to avoid in writing. I’ve drawn kuwagami cuddles before, and there’s no background, nothing discernable as to the lead up or any other detail. And that’s great! I don’t want to have to invent a plausible reason for them to end up hugging. I can just do it, right? But sometimes it’s the context that makes things significant, so you do want it there. A better job for writing. Writing allows you to be detailed with your context, while illustration leaves it ambiguous. Different strengths. You just pick which best fits the situation.

It’s a similar case for a lot of different factors – they're conveyed differently through both mediums, and depending on your idea, some results are more desirable than others. Rather than explaining, it’s probably better to do a direct comparison. (If it makes any difference to your curiosity, I did the drawing first then the writing. You’ve caught me on a good art day, what a nice sketch…)

I’ll try not to talk too much because I think the comparison and table say enough, but you can see how, despite depicting basically the same thing, these two things feel pretty different from each other. The mediums do different things. The mood of both is similar, but not quite the same. It’s these differences that inform the choice of mediums instinctually. (but again. points at disclaimer. as is true with all “rules” about art, none of these are absolute. you can make an illustration that conveys a strong context. you can write fic that favours describing facial expressions and leaves the intended emotion ambiguous. i’m generalising to make a point here.)

I guess the other thing is that it’s pretty easy to do writing in bed on my phone compared to my art setup, lmao. Convenience and timing also play into it probably.

[mariemariemaria]

Does anybody else feel the waves of history crashing over them constantly and like they can't escape the generational trauma that permeates and poisons every interaction they have or do I just need to chill and have a drink lol

[torchickentacos]

ok i slept for uhhh seventeen hours on and off since last night bc chronic illness <3 BUT that means I'll be up until like five am tonight. sad. BUT!!! that gives me time to read fics that i've meant to for months, and reading fic in general is something i don't do often so i'm kind of excited for my accidental all nighter era.

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: May 3

"Life Less Frightening" by Rise Against

[lesbiancressidacowper]

also fun fact. you can effectively punch holes in plastic glow in the dark stars using a push pin and a rock and just pressing it really hard into your carpet or something so it doesn’t damage anything once it penetrates the plastic. in case you ever needed to know that

[potentiallypolyglot]

It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done...

[crimsonblackrose]

Listen YT you're going to get mad because I have an ad blocker, your little pop up is going to make me mad. you're going to give me a countdown until you shut off my ability to access your site. I'm going to get mad because I'm working and I'm checking stupid links for work so I have to use you and I'll just pop over to incognito mode, but know this, I will figure out a work around and I will just hate you all the more.

[j-esbian]

so so so fucking tired of people who perceive working in an office as the only “”real”” jobs