#there was a version of this meme i wanted to put here instead but its technically fanart and i didnt wanna repost or anything

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The thing with the Mari Lwyd, though, is that it's being... I don't know, 'appropriated' is the wrong word, but certainly turned into something it isn't.

Thing is, this is a folk tradition in the Welsh language, and that's the most important aspect of it. I feel partly responsible for this, because I accidentally became a bit of an expert on the topic of the Mari Lwyd in a post that escaped Tumblr containment, and I clearly didn't stress it strongly enough there (in my defence, I wrote that post for ten likes and some attention); but this is a Welsh language tradition, conducted in Welsh, using Welsh language poetic forms that are older than the entire English language, and also a very specific sung melody (with a very specific first verse; that's Cân y Fari). It is not actually a 'rap battle'. It's not a recited poem. It is not any old rhyme scheme however you want.

It is not in English.

Given the extensive and frankly ongoing attempts by England to wipe out Welsh, and its attendant cultural traditions, the Mari is being revived across Wales as an act of linguistic-cultural defiance. She's a symbol of Welsh language culture, specifically; an icon to remind that we are a distinct people, with our own culture and traditions, and in spite of everyone and everything, we're still here. Separating her from that by removing the Welsh is, to put it mildly, wildly disrespectful.

...but it IS what I'm increasingly seeing, both online and in real world Mari Lwyd festivals. She's gained enormous pop-culture popularity in recent years, which is fantastic; but she's also been reduced from the tradition to just an aesthetic now.

So many people are talking/drawing about her as though she's a cryptid or a mythological figure, rather than the folk practice of shoving a skull on a stick and pretending to be a naughty horse for cheese and drunken larks. And I get it! It's an intriguing visual! Some of the artwork is great! But this is not what she is. She's not a Krampus equivalent for your Dark Christmas aesthetic.

I see people writing their own version of the pwnco (though never called the pwnco; almost always called some variant on 'Mari Lwyd rap battle'), and as fun as these are, they are never even written in the meter and poetic rules of Cân y Fari, much less in Welsh, and they never conclude with the promise to behave before letting the Mari into the house. The pwnco is the central part to the tradition; this is the Welsh language part, the bit that's important and matters.

Mari Lwyd festivals are increasingly just English wassail festivals with a Mari or two present. The Swansea one last weekend didn't even include a Mari trying to break into a building (insert Shrek meme); there was no pwnco at all. Even in the Chepstow ones, they didn't do actual Cân y Fari; just a couple of recited verses. Instead, the Maris are just an aesthetic, a way to make it look a bit more Welsh, without having to commit to the unfashionable inconvenience of actually including Welsh.

And I don't really know what the answers are to these. I can tell you what I'd like - I'd like art to include the Welsh somewhere, maybe incorporating the first line of Cân y Fari like this one did, to keep it connected to the actual Welsh tradition (or other Welsh, if other phrases are preferred). I'd like people who want to write their version of the pwnco to respect the actual tradition of it by using Cân y Fari's meter and rhyme scheme, finishing with the promise to behave, and actually calling it the pwnco rather than a rap battle (and preferably in Welsh, though I do understand that's not always possible lol). I'd like to see the festivals actually observe the tradition, and include a link on the booking website to an audio clip of Cân y Fari and the words to the first verse, so attendees who want to can learn it ahead of time. I don't know how feasible any of that is, of course! But that's what I'd like to see.

I don't know. This is rambly. But it's something I've been thinking about - and increasingly nettled by - for a while. There's was something so affirming and wonderful at first about seeing the Mari's climb into international recognition, but it's very much turned to dismay by now, because she's important to my endangered culture and yet that's the part that everyone apparently wants to drop for being too awkward and ruining the aesthetic. It's very frustrating.

[the-s1lly-corner]

I got an idea from the child reader request.

Like the same wolf in sheep's clothing concept but like FULL SWEET TO DARK PERSONALITY.

Wanna hear?

So basically child reader is like cute and innocent at first sight but IS A TOTAL DEMON, Having a very dark sense of humor, Sometimes out of nowhere walk up to someone of the gang and threaten to gouge out their eyes while they sleep, they are always with an cute expression but turns out that they like to cause chaos and havoc just like Jax but in a more creepy way.

For example, SOMEHOW reader is caught hanging from the ceilling scaring the fuck out of gangle just because its fun. Or staying in the dark waiting for someone so they can jumpscare them.

Basically child reader uses their cute-kid as an advantage to scare others off.

TADC x child!reader who is a menace! (platonic)

wasnt quite sure what to title this so!! some segments may be shorter than others since im still trying to get a hand of writing/coming up with ideas for certain characters (cough cough gangle) (i love her sm but shes so hard for me to write idk why) hope you enjoy! majority of this post is just me tormenting the cast TToTT

CAINE:

oh my god you kind of remind him of bubble but more... flkmddlvm

makes a time out rule when you keep making threats to the other circus members, that behavior is not family friendly!

he might even consider trying to go into the code and censoring your common phrases as well as some other words, if he has the capabilities for that

still tries to be a dad to you, though, wants to be a good role model and guide you in the right direction for the sake of everyone else

the first time you say something... morbid to him he just

slack jawed, stares at you before shaking himself back to reality and just

bro is astonished he was not ready to hear that today, let alone hear it from a small child

POMNI:

you know how in the other post with a child!reader i mention that pomni is vaguely uncomfortable around kids since she knows they can dish out some real cruelty

take this idea and multiply it by 10x

actually looks like that one sad spongebob meme with the big eyes and tear when shes put in charge of keeping an eye on you during an in house adventure

meek attempt to get you to behave

not much to say here imo, since its like an amped up version of the last post :O

JAX:

makes a joke about how youre already entering your edgy phase, he now has to watch his back lest some of his digital fur be shaved off

fear does not come close to describing how he feels when he discovers that you somehow found keys to some peoples rooms. he hopes you dont have a key to his room

and he thought he was hot shit, but no some random kid makes him fear the consequences of his actions

is this his punishment for his constant bullshit? what did he do in particular to deserve this?

instinctively looks up at the ceiling when he enters a room to make sure youre not about to drop on him

congrats, youve instilled fear into the funny rabbit

RAGATHA:

the 'nightmare kid' thing some babysitters go through at least once in their life, but instead of tantrums and such its just you talking about how you sometimes tear apart the dolls that came with your room. to the doll person

very uncomfortable by a lot of the stuff you casually say, even more so because its coming from a kid. though i think she would be uncomfortably be talk like that in general

SWEARS that one day shes going to blink and youll suddenly be right next to her or within her proximity

like on one hand she wants to try to guide you to be less dark, like caine, but i think she would need someone to back her up because she cannot get the image of the torn up dolls out of her head

KINGER:

poor man

like even if the things you said were empty threats, he would be scared shitless

if he isnt already in his fort, hes retreating to it the second he sees you around

kind of funny since kinger is in his late late 40s and youre a kid and hes terrified of you

anyways

less of a discomfort thing and more so scared that youre going to go through with the things you say

he walked into the common area one day and saw you literally crawling across the walls, he was with gangle when he saw it. you see his irises of his eyes shrink

doesnt even bother going to his fort, which is under where you currently are

he just

slowly

backs away, he can find refuge in his room... unless you have a key to his room

ZOOBLE:

less discomfort more annoyance with zooble, i think that while she would find it funny when a kid swears she finds people talking like that to be cringe; kid or not

the only one who isnt really scared of you. sure you threaten to disassemble them constantly and hide their pieces across the grounds to assure they can never be whole again, but they're just internally cringing while you try to make them turn away

in a weird way you two create an odd dynamic where you just go on and zooble just halfway listens, you kinda just talk at them

like while caine tries to be your dad, and ragatha tries to be.. something.. zooble is like a weird 'friend'

probably has the most potential to become a friend and get you to chill, but thats just based on my experience

like if its an attention/reaction thing, zooble isnt going to give it to you, which kind of. ruins the point of it for you, and you just

stop, or at least tone it down over time

or maybe thats just me seeing zooble having the potential to be an older sibling figure

GANGLE:

the gif is gangle when you get your hands on her

i understand that she cries easily, but like, you have probably made her cry at least once either on accident or on purpose

i think shes one of the few characters out of the cast who would probably start avoiding you for the sake of her emotional state, but she would feel bad about it since at the end of the day you're a kid

refuses to go anywhere near you when her comedy mask is broken, because otherwise shes a glum mess

you know how in poppee the performer, kedamono's mask sometimes just. pops off when he gets scared or surprised (well it happens regardless of expression/mood but yk)

gangle does that when she sees you LITERALLY CRAWLING ON THE WALLS LIKE A BUG

how are you even doing that

she doesnt wanna know, actually

"imma tie you up double knotted style" *high pitched crying*

[kheprriverse]

Another WIP coz I have a problem. Here's progress on a MonHun x LOZ au. Because I should totally be working on this instead of everything else I started this week (sarcasm).

Though, feel free to pester me ab any of my aus or characters or smth. I'm always looking for a reason to info-dump or doodle smth for y'all.

Speaking of info-dump... below the cut is my brain vomit! Feel free to ignore it or idk read it if you want my over-excited brain garble.

His name is Sapphire (for now). And the au is kinda based around Worldborne but also has a lot of elements from the older (and even recent) games. This also does mean there's worldborne mechanics (like the slinger for example) or just general stuff the 5th gen as a whole introduced.

I'm still in the process of worldbuilding tbh. Smth smth Hyrule has changed a lot over the years. Smth Smth monsters everywhere. OR its a new section of Old World MH that was founded and named Hyrule. The urge to put it all in seliana/hoarfrost is way too strong and I feel like I'm losing my mind writing all this. I'm that guy from the Pepe Silvia meme pointing at the board trying to figure out where this au would take place.

Moving on to save my sanity (and yours) his armor so far. In case it garners interest: - Coral Pukei-Pukei Helm - Anjanath Braces x Viper Tobi braces - Coral Pukei-Pukei Waist - Brigade Legs

Most pieces are based off the female versions of the armor, except brigade which y'all aren't seeing here. Also the brace pieces are sorta hybrid-ed, combining the fluff from anjanath's braces with Viper Tobi's base. Combining them and making them work and look natural drove me nuts. But tbh I'm liking where it's going :)!

Sapphire has been in my brain for a few months now, so its refreshing actually starting his ref. But thing's are subject to change as always! I'll probs share more progress on Ko-fi if I can force myself to document it all for ✨the supporters™✨

[plenary-indulgence]

Okay so I know it was just a lil meme/joke, but out of curiosity if he WERE to get sent to silent hill what sort of emotional baggage wouldve sent em there and how well would he handle it?

first of all i HATE that u asked me this on anon b/cuz the fact that you a) looked at my post at all and b) took the time to ask me about it is making me insane and i want to send you a handwritten thank you note all tied up with like a ribbon and stickers and shit

anyway i definitely haven't thought about this at all clearly

ehehe had to get that out of the way it makes me laugh every time i look at it even though it's my own joke (i am one of like 7 people in the world who actually liked sh4)

i love the idea of silent hill aus and using them as a creative tool to really explore what makes your wol/oc tick in all the ugly ways but i personally feel like im not really clever or creative enough to do it well myself (kind of like konami after they fucked over kojima and made homecoming/downpour AM I RIGHT FELLAS!!) i can say with some certainty he wouldn't handle it WELL, there would be a lot of running away and panic and hiding and praying and swinging a lead pipe EXTREMELY INEFFECTUALLY because that's just how he handles things outside of silent hill too, by running away and hiding and praying. not so much the lead pipe maybe, that's a contrivance. :)

but i think primarily coconeja's biggest problem is his insecurity and his inability to really self-actualize and believe in himself as someone who matters in the world and how he just wants so badly to be what he thinks everyone else wants him to be, instead of just accepting himself for who he actually is. i think then some of the manifestations would be twisted versions of himself, or rather all the coconeja's he wishes he were but fails to be. and since it's a flawed premise to begin with, there is no "ideal" coconeja, they would all sort of be half-formed, misshapen things. pathetic grotesqueries. but with flavors!! the coconeja he thinks yshtola wants, who is clever and worldly - but physically weak and has to drag itself along the ground and oozes ink and has all the answers - but can only speaks backwards in riddles the coconeja he thinks thancred wants, who is quick on his feet and graceful and confident - but has no substance, and barely exists, and can only sort of shift ineffectually in and out of existence miserably the coconeja he thinks his parents wanted, which is just a sad little shadow who sits in a dark room full of dead fish all alone and counts, endlessly

you know!! stuff like that!! so on and so forth. a whole bunch of fucked up little coconeja ghoulies, so messy, so miserable, so gross.

oh and yea i guess there's the wedge thing; but joke photoshops aside he really deep down truly does not see wedge as anything other than good or as something that could ever hurt him. he loves wedge, and all the pain and the longing and the loneliness - all that baggage comes from inside, from him. he doesn't blame or resent wedge at all!! so if wedge did show up i don't think it would be as a monster i think it would be more conceptual. like something coconeja's searching for, or trying to reach, but can't. haunting this particular narrative in a way even though he's not dead.

although the more i think on it - while wedge himself is not at fault coconeja is REALLY AFRAID AND AWARE of how his status as the wol affects others, especially people he cares about, and how it can get them hurt or put them in danger. and i mean thats literally what happened with omega. compounding factor here that he thinks confessing or pursuing wedge in the way he wants WOULD hurt him and is wrong and like, not even doing anything but knowing he WANTS to - the shame and the guilt really do be eating him up.

mm like he really internalizes the fact that it's him, wanting wedge as something inherently wrong and hurtful and something to keep secret and locked away. in reality its BECAUSE he cares so much and would never do anything to hurt wedge, but has such a low opinion of himself and is terrified of the idea that just by having these feelings at all he's already ruined everything. idk im going in circles here. this particular aspect of coconeja is very stupid and hard for me to articulate lmao

i also think it would be dope as hell if there were just like, a giant godzilla sized flag. i mean you could make it relevant and say like "ohh well the giant godzilla sized flag is a representation of coconeja's inability to connect with people, his best friend is an animal because he's afraid of how he thinks real people won't accept his perceived inadequecies or whatever" and i guess like give him 3 heads and rusty muzzles and fucked up antlers that are just like a constantly twisting mess of human hands grasping at nothing hell throw in a bunch of rotting lunar tears all over him so i can even shoehorn the nier raid stuff in there and that's sort of coconeja's pyramid head figure, always just sort of looming off in the distance, watching, being a physical reminder of his fear and self-loathing and doubt

and of course as far as the actual silent hill itself, gotta go with the CLASSIC foggy town. or not so much a town, but the streets of uldah completely devoid of the hustle and bustle that defines it. it's cold and it's empty and it's rotting and it's quiet (aside from coconeja wailing his fool head off as he's running away from himself and swinging a rusty lead pipe at nothing)

anywho, thanks again for the ask!! thank you!! thanks!!

[vriskarlmarx]

for the Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme: homestuck. i've never directly interacted in it and all anyone seems to want to talk about is how unhinged the fandom is instead of anything about the thing itself >>

hehe oh boy

ok so anything i have to say about homestuck needs to be understood in the context that homestuck is probably the story ive engaged with that has most profoundly impacted me as a person, to a frankly hilarious degree. like from the way i tend to read stories to the narrative voices i will tend to use to my sense of humor to the Themes And Motifs that haunt me whatever etc. like i need to put up a disclaimer here and the disclaimer reads: ME AND SOMEONE I LOVE HAVE 5 SETS OF MATCHING HOMESTUCK TATTOOS ON OUR BODIES FOREVER.

that said here is a non-comprehensive list of things i love about homestuck:

- loads of interesting characters, the most interesting of which are all queer teenage girls. I could wax poetic all day about vriska (obviously), rose, roxy, calliope, kanaya, terezi, jade, jane and a few more but this would get super long super quick. they struggle with grief, addiction, social expectations (gendered and not gendered), narrative choices, fate, relationships with their parents and role models, messing around with their friend's bathroom, long-distance friendships, loneliness, clowns and harlequins, juggling different types of relationships, unrequited feelings, and pretty much everything else you can think about. and more generally, homestuck loves to confront different versions of characters with themselves, it's very interested in the ways that the self splinters, forms and re-forms.

- a huge huge diversity of storytelling forms. homestuck includes: images, dialogue portions written like chat logs, traditional narrative prose, narrative and conceptual flash animations, rpg-style games, musical compositions, fake documents (game faqs, book prologues, etc), format-breaking stuff on the website, etc. there are portions that retroactively went back and modified existing sections of the comic, which means that anybody who reads it now is 100% *not* experiencing the same thing that the people who read it a decade ago experienced. related: the fucky structure. homestuck has 7 acts, but act 5 has 2 sub-acts, and act 6 has 6 acts and 5 intermissions, but act 6 act 5 has 2 sub-sub acts (act 6 act 5 act 1 and act 6 act 5 act 2) and act 6 intermission 5 has 6 sub-intermissions and act 6 act 6 has 6 sub-sub-acts and 5 intermissions. like just the willingness to mess with itself in form and format, both for the joke and for narrative reasons, leads to a lot of really cool stuff.

- very fun metanarrative stuff. homestuck is about many things, and one of those things is itself and the phenomenon that it created. like i don't know how apparent this would be to someone reading it now but especially after act 5 act 2 homestuck was like pretty directly in conversation with the fandom and what was going on in andrew hussies tumblr ask box at the time before they became a cryptid. which has its pros and cons but that meant that a lot of the meta stuff about stories and narratives in general also became like a weird spiral inward and at some point homestuck became kind of about homestuck, and in a way it looped back to being interactive (which at the beginning it was interactive, readers would submit prompts which could be incorporated as commands into the story. this didn't happen again but hussie was responding directly to the fandom with a lot of things she was writing so it was being formed in conversation with its readers again).

- it's so funny. especially early homestuck like the first 3 acts and the first intermission. the humor can be so stupid and simple and so effective that there are some gags and lines i will truly never forget. some really nerdy gags about data structures early on too.

- vriska gets her own point. character of all time. known for being controversial, and she was, but that happened because of all the different things that were going on with her as a character who is really important for moving the plot forward at different points in the story with very complex relationships with other characters and with herself.

ok this meeting is almost done i gotta go but i could be here all day

[bitegore]

hello, im currently making a sort-of remake of your Blorbo Bleebus template (both to make a higher resolution image, darkmode version and transparent versions) and am debating making some changes to it (e.g. changing fruity to queer). Are there any changes you would make nowadays if you could?

originally put this at the end but the post got long so i'm moving it up here. Anyway I really appreciate you doing this and I also appreciate you reaching out about it. If you think I'm full of shit on any or all of the lines, feel free to completely ignore it, I don't mind. I would love to see your version when you're done! Good luck!

Anyway. Honestly I'd probably change up a lot of it - all of the elements were from various memes, and not all of them are in fashion. The only reason fruity is even on there (I don't particularly like the word myself either) is because the original meme that spawned the entire thing (including the idea of it being a blorbo rating system) was from a wine-flavor label - and thus "fruity" was a particularly awkward choice of a word for it to try to say "this tastes like grapes" lol. I don't think almost anyone who saw the sheet had seen that, though, or knew much about wine tasting (no shade, me either), so like a bunch of the other jokes it falls flat to basically everyone lmao.

These are what I would change. You don't have to do any of these, of course. But it's the ones I'd do. Sorry for how much it bounces around, most of them are just "the first thing i thought of after looking at the sheet again" so it's kind of random and not well organized.

#1: "Flavor Container" turned out to be a much more niche thing than I thought it was; replace it with something that gets at the idea of a character being an "archetype" or "really conentrated" amount of that kind of thing that works better and has more broad-spectrum immediate understanding Or just like, some other type of character-describing meme, up to you

#2: someone pointed out (rightly!) that there is one gender-specific subtype (himbo) on there but no female-specific gender subtype, and that the cat meme i put in as placeholder text on the character box uses he/him pronouns, which both kind of push it toward being gender-specific even though that wasn't what I had wanted. I'd either switch Himbo out for a more recent and less gendered meme or add a female-gendered meme (eg: "girlboss", "butch fatale", etc) to even out the subtypes, and swap out the pronouns on the cat meme for they/them instead of he/him. Might also be worthwhile to switch the bar option for "just some guy" for something like "just some rando" but honestly that doesn't have the same energy; I don;t think there is a properly gender-neutral equivalent for 'guy' that i can think of that won't sound forced and as long as it's not directed at anyone in particular I think that one can be left alone. Tbh if you're switching fruity out you should almost definitely also do these.

#3. i'm pretty sure calling things skrunkly is on its way out, i'd come up with a more recent meme adjective for the name spot i think

#4. one of the bars in the middle of the page goes between "1,000 tools" and "1,000 weapons", which (because I expected at most 30 notes) I figured would be similarly comprehensible to flavor container. It's meant to reflect an outlook on life, ie, do they build things up to solve problems or do they attack and tear down their problems? I don't think this is a very effective set and also it's not a good joke, so it's probably best to put something else there.

#5. the "you want them to have" section is clunky and not very good, which is because that was the last part i did when I made it and I rushed it because I was bored of the project by then. I think there are a lot more interesting things to talk about than "do they have sex" "do they have romance" "do they have friends" and "did you hate their ending specifically" BUT also i have been informed that this is the shipping website and I'm not really a huge shipper, so my lack of interest in most of the contents of those boxes might not be reflective of everyone else's! Please use your best judgement here, if you like that bit then you can absolutely keep it. That being said I think it would be interesting to get into something like "tropes" instead, switching out the idea of like, desirable plot beats for the character with like, desirable common storytelling tropes or something to suhove the character into, or genres, or w/e. it would also suit the rest of the sheet better. i also think it would be more fun to be filling in boxes like "go in the dark" and "bonk on head with giant mallet" and "hunted for sport" than "more romance" and "less romance", if you follow me lol

#6. The idea of the slider bars is fine, but the shape is apparently kind of tough for people to work with unless they're confident drawing digitally in some way, so intead of doing a straight black line with a black line down the center, I would do an outlined bar with a black line down the center, sort of like the below. I think this will be easier for people to fill in with a paint bucket tool or w/e and hopefully save some wrists.

#7. I keep seeing comments asking for it to be a fillable PDF as well, which is like, not something I am capable of making if I'm honest. I don't do PDFs. No idea if you do, but if you do have the ability, it might be a solid plan to make it as a PDF first so it can be converted into a fillable PDF somehow. I took a stab at doing that yesterday but then i got frustrated and bored and gave up lol.

#8. tbh if you're making it a bigger resolution this might not be an issue but the text is really kind of small. I'd probably change the image ratio and scale a lot of the text up, sort of like this (sorry i am not working on a computer where i have robust photo editing tools or the original file so i am just sort of cutting it up in photopea with my mouse so it looks kind of jank). The reason for this is because the program I made it in just sort of opened with a printer-paper-sized page and i went "cool, I can work with that" and didn't change it. But when sharing and posting it, it becomes hard to read.

(this also doesnt really work... i'm not very good at optimizing things for post-readability ;-;)

#9. the slider between "stupid as shit" and "scary-smart" isnt that good, i'd swap it for "not the..." and "sharpest tool in the shed" respectively, because i think that that is more fun. or something along those lines

#10. I already said I would change this bit out entirely, but if you do keep the "you want them to have" section mostly as-is, the last eight or so don't really fit with what's already there - "freedom", "catharsis", "justification", "The Realization", "revenge", "conseequences", "sympathy" and "a satisfying ending" are about the writing the character is situated in, but "a better/worse time", "better/worse situation", "more/less trauma", "more/less healing", "more/less/different romance", "more/less/different sex", "more/less/different friends", "painful isolation" and "a family" are about relationships and emotional experiences the character is having in-universe. I guess you could leave freedom, revenge and consequences in there, but they don't really suit it well. I'd either switch the last handful for things that fit the theme (and also the more/less/different/none scheme), or make the entire thing center around the writing choices in the original narrative they're from.

#11. If you're redoing it from the ground up, you also get to pick a better font... I badly wish I had done all the titles in Impact (the meme font, you know the one) because I think it would've been funny. I probably would've put like, "bottom text" at the very bottom of the page too but that's probably not as funny to anyone who isn't me. I didn't want to bother tweaking it when I finished it, so it has NBOS's default font (I think it was Arial Black?) instead.

#12. I'd probably switch "soft and sweet" to "cinnamon roll", i've seen that one make a comeback recently and also it's so old that the fact that it's out of date brings some kind of humor to it along with it in a way that "soft and sweet" doesn't really do.

#13. "aspirational character" doesn't really do anything in the subclass list anyway - it's not interesting or funny and much of what it covers is also covered by "just like you fr" and "braincell haver", so i'd also replace that one with a more interesting recent character meme.

#14. tbh the checkboxes underneath the picture box were me taking a bunch of potshots at Batman specifically (well, besides murderer, but that was beacuse I needed another line). In the spirit of it, if you have a particularly common Kind of blorbo that other people keep putting on your dash nowadays, it would probably make sense to take their traits and put them in there instead until if you check all of them off you get that character instead. Keep it updated and fresh and fun and all that lol.

Also - last things-

please don't write me in as the "original creator" or w/e - I was cribbing so much from so many other people and places that I don't really feel like it's worth crediting it all to me, all I did was grid it out. No idea if that was part of your plan but if it was like. don't worry about it, if it wasn't, then that's great because that works for both of us :D

understand if you're not interested or don't want it, but if it would be helpful, I can send you a probably way higher resolution version than is floating around on Tumblr if you like - the program I made it with was designing it to be a printable sheet so it's a high enough resolution that the edgtes would all print nice and crisply, I think Tumblr just has a maximum image size and my layout didn't work very well with it lmao

[whentherewerebicycles]

here is a scruffy little angel! ok I feel pretty fragile inside from a week of bad sleep & an especially terrible insomnia experience last night but I am trying to be brave about it. two of my grad school friends I haven’t seen in forever are in town this weekend and I am v excited about that!!! I always get weird homebody inertia around social stuff but then I have a great time (like last night I really dragged my feet on hanging out with M&A in the park/getting dinner after and then it was so much fun) so I just have to commit to stuff even if I feel like socially hibernating. when it comes to most social things my instincts are not a reliable guide to what will actually make me happy. so tonight I will meet up with them for dinner/drinks and then tomorrow we will hang out at the lake.

here are some things I’d like to do with the day:

finish young mungo which is absolutely gutting ughhh so painful but so good. I kind of want to put up my hammock and read somewhere without distractions but can’t decide if it’s too much effort. mm tbd.

work on writing meme prompts (this has been v good for me it’s forcing me to dig into scene writing/revision which for whatever reason is the thing I’ve built up the most writer’s block anxiety around)

the house is a tip right now it’s not dirty really just super untidy and the clutter is making me feel on edge. I think I need to do a few song-timed bursts of putting stuff in its proper place and ugh I might actually start with that so my brain feels calmer about other stuff

fold laundry

long walk with dogs because I didn’t walk them at all yesterday… I can tell I am avoiding walks partly because it’s a bit hotter out and partly because I’m getting Walk Boredom with our usual route. I think I’ll drive them to the slightly farther-out forest (4 min instead of 2 min haha) because it’ll be cooler and kinda interesting/new. also if I’m feeling really motivated I could do a very short run after I drop them off at home—I’m talking like, 3 min run / 3 min walk times 3 short haha. gotta ease back into it somehow.

pick something to wear well in advance of leaving. otherwise I will get so stressed later on and will end up running way later than I mean to & being way more amped up when I leave. why are clothes so stressful to me literally no one cares and I feel like people care even less in this city than anywhere else I’ve ever lived lol

shower around 3:30/4 so I can be ready to leave between 5-6ish

mm okay that all seems good. I think now it’s time to get up and do my first burst of song cleaning… maybe I will do all too well 10 min version + I can see you.

[feyariel]

I'm so fucking sick of the lightbox preview.

On the app, you have to open a photo in lightbox in order to download its original size. If you don't, you get some weird, random resized version that will be shrunken and might not be clear.

However, loading the lightbox is risky. Half the time (literally), it doesn't load. Sometimes, this will go in spurts; just now, I tried to load the same photo in lightbox twenty times and only got a black screen. I had to reload the app twice to get the lightbox to work. Conversely, if the lightbox does work, there's a chance that the app won't return to normal when you exit out of it; it will instead be black, won't load anything, and won't respond at all, so you'll have to close out of the app and reload. This, of course, resets your feed (because we can't have nice things like FEEDS ONLY RESETTING ON COMMAND), which can mean scrolling through hundreds of posts (depending on how many blogs you follow, how frequently they post, and how often you check) to get to where you were.

Some photos won't load properly at all on the app. I don't know why.

On desktop, the issue is similar. If you want to download a photo, you have to open it in its own tab. However, you also have to get it to load in such a way that it isn't in Tumblr's (relatively recent) photo display tab style, which will only allow you to download a shrunken, often distorted version of the photo. It used to be that you could open the photo in a new tab without a problem.

"But art theft!" Bullshit. I have absolutely no sympathy for this. First, if you're worried about your art getting stolen, don't post it to social media that doesn't have strict protections for such. And 90% of the photos on here aren't the blogger's art. They're selfies or porn or memes or otherwise taken from other websites. More importantly, if you want to, say, throw an image into a reverse image search (Yandex, TinEye, or Google Images [using the proper exploits to the latter anymore]) to find the original, you're likely barking up the wrong tree. Yandex no longer allows you to link directly to a Tumblr photo when it's in the lightbox on desktop. The resized versions often won't get IDed properly because they're screwed up somehow, while the ones that are direct file transfers of the original upload very well might. Plenty of "artwork" (though not often called such outright, it's presented as it) on here is putting someone else's full-color photos of people into grayscale (another peeve of mine) or cropping photos, almost always without credit, neither in a way that does anything meaningful to the original itself.

You should be able to tap (on the app) or right click (on desktop) a photo as it appears in your feed and download the original uploaded version directly from Tumblr. If you're worried about people stealing your art, you should have an option to disable this for your blog's original posts.

[chalkrevelations]

Tagged by @belladonna-and-the-sweetpeas, and this was a fantastically fun, low-pressure thing to spend a little bit of time doing, so thank you for the enrichment activity! I probably talked too much, but here we go. Song links are to YT.

Put my On Repeat playlist from Spotify on shuffle, and here are the first 10 songs that came up - and ... oh, lol. This is maybe not as cool and edgy as I’ve managed to look in similar memes in the past? otoh, I'm finding it kind of interesting how many of these have actual dance associations, this time around.

1. Rabbit Hole, Natalia Kills - I had to laugh when this one popped up first - this one's on my Only Friends playlist, although I had kind of forgotten quite what a banger it was, until I dug it out again. If only I knew how to vid, y'all would absolutely get a full-length OFTS vid to this.

2. Before He Cheats, Carrie Underwood - Ha! This one is ALSO off my Only Friends playlist. This was the first one that went on the playlist, in anticipation. I figured the unhinged energy would be appropriate before we were through.

3. Girls In Their Summer Clothes, Bruce Springsteen - I have loved Bruce Springsteen with my whole and entire heart ever since a friend’s older sister introduced us to his music when I was in middle school, and I knowingly and deliberately imported my own experience of discovering Springsteen into “In Ordinary Time” and imprinted it onto Ray Mukada with very few changes and without the least bit of shame. There are a handful of Springsteen albums that hold a particularly special place in my heart, and Magic is one of those. This song’s actually really light, comparatively, but it’s gorgeous and breezy while still being full and rich in that way the E Street Band can’t really miss, and it feels like summer. I’ve been enjoying it so much in the waning days of heat with that cooler air edging underneath the night breeze. It … makes me want to shag, even though it’s not beach music. It's clearly a creation of the boardwalk, even if its accent is Jersey, instead of Carolina.

4. Work Song, Hozier - The MV for this one - choreographed by Jillian Meyers - is fantastic, and my obsession with the song was really cemented after seeing Lex Ishimoto and Gaby Diaz dance to it for SYTYCD - a piece choreographed by Mandy Moore and clearly influenced by the MV. I must have watched that particular performance 100 times by now. The show used a cover by Luke Wade, but I do prefer Hozier’s original version. It will sometimes drop off the On Repeat playlist, but as soon as it turns up again in the shuffle, it ends up back on repeat.

5. lovely, Billie Eilish with Khalid - I have not been the same about this song since I somehow stumbled across Ten and Winwin's choreography to it on YT. I have no idea how I found it - I know literally nothing about WayV, NCT, Ten or Winwin except this choreographed piece (which you also have to see the live performance of, because while it's not as clean, it gives a better view of how Ten appears to be almost, kind of, puppetting Winwin in one section). I would poke someone’s grandma in the eye (ok, not really) for a chance to get my hands on the “ring and portrait” remix they use, but meanwhile, the original version will do.

6. Lyfjaberg, Wardruna - Healing Mountain. So, my morning routine, on the days I work, is to get to the hospital about 20 minutes ahead of when I actually need to be there, so I can sit in my car and breathe and meditate and do some self-reiki right before everything starts. I usually don't listen to anything on my way into work, but on the days I do, the days when things are going hard, like the past few weeks, with heavy patient loads and high acuity - this is the song I listen to on that drive in, on repeat. (The weeks I'm working with end of life patients, I tend to use Helvegen for this, instead, or alternate them.)

7. My Silver Lining, First Aid Kit - Thanks, The Umbrella Academy. I downloaded this one on Spotify about 12.6 seconds after hearing it on a S3 ep of the show, and I don't know that it's ever left the On Repeat playlist since then.

8. Letters From The Sky, Civil Twilight - Huh. A couple of weeks ago, about three bars from this song wisped through my mind, and I was haunted by them until I could finally manage to get my fingers in them and hold them down long enough to trace them to some lyrics in my memory, and then I had to google those couple of lines to finally pin down the actual song. And then I went and dl’d it and have listened to it A LOT, apparently. It was used for a fanvid that I watched obsessively a bajillion years ago – so long that I’m not entirely certain who it even featured, although I’m … pretty sure? … that it was Agron x Nasir from Starz’s Spartacus. I might have even first seen the vid back when I’d only watched a Nagron supercut, before I saw the full show. I can't for the life of me find it anymore - there's a Spartacus vid on YT now that uses it but it's a more general S1 vid, and that's absolutely not the one I remember, which included footage of the operation on Nasir in the abandoned temple.

9. Threat, WEARETHEGOOD/Frank Bentley/Skrxlla - Loooooool, THANK YOU, LITA. I picked this particular song up off of one of the eps of Love In The Air, one of the ones in the middle – this gets played over Payu and Pai having a practice race at the track. I was like, “waitaminit,” paused, went to google some lyrics so I could find the artist, and came back with this on dl’d on Spotify. It's another one that probably has not been off the On Repeat playlist since.

10. Sacrifice, The Weeknd - So, Vinh Nguyen choreographed a piece to this at Offstage Dance Studio that is totally and completely responsible for the way this song keeps popping up on my On Repeat playlist. I think I first ran across the choreo in a set with Baily Sok, Kinjaz's Jason Lin and Lex Ishimoto, but there's more than one version out there.

OK, if you've already been tagged or don't want to do this, don't worry, but tagging (hm, looks at recent notifications) @yagirlyacchan, @henpeckedho, @elementaldrop, @jill-question-mark, @liathebookwyrm. Go!

[talenlee]

MTG: Hating Lord Of The Rings

I can’t seem to put words on paper that aren’t about this, so here. Let me exorcise this foul spirit that haunts me. I am deeply, abidingly sick of everything to do with Lord of the Rings, and actively hateful towards the Lord Of The Rings magic set that I want to see fail. Again.

In 2023, Magic: The Gathering released a new Universes Beyond product into Modern, with the set Something Something Lord Of The Rings. It’s a totally new kind of product, in that it’s the first time a universes beyond product of this scale was made and put into the Modern format. It’s also not a totally new kind of product, because it is once again, a thing where the official Magic: The Gathering game system of systems is used to instead show off the aesthetics, lore and concepts of another universe, a tradition that started off with Secret Lair Drop Series: The Walking Dead a 2020 release that introduced five cards to vintage and legacy and was largely decided, at the time, to be something of a bad idea.

Not by me, I like Universes Beyond, especially when it brings Universes Within.

I was pretty heartless about this printing because it was printing cards that probably weren’t a big deal into a format already priced so preposterously there’s no point complaining about the onramp into it. Yeah Legacy is a fun looking format, I love looking at it on Magic: The Gathering Online, but it’s also a format where Volcanic Island, a land you need four of in the #1 deck for the past forever, runs at around $700 for the cheapest version and you need four of them and that’s where the deck’s price starts and by the time this article goes out it will be more. Legacy is history’s sewer of Magic: The Gathering and if you like it, and you want to play it, it’s great, I love it too, but arguments about its health are fundamentally meaningless.

And also, it’s five cards, and the best of them have almost nothing to do with the game at large. One of them is a pretty strong Human Lord, one of them is a pretty interesting piece of equipment, but both of those things have been outmoded and neither is that big a deal in the first place in a world where people can attack with Emrakul, The Aeon’s Turn on turn two.

Point is, I didn’t care about The Walking Dead cards being introduced. I did not care. Bear in mind: I did not like The Walking Dead as a franchise. I think it’s quite stupid. I think everything that’s been communicated about the kind of media it is is tiresome and boring and only interesting if you’ve never read anything of its type before. Antipathy towards the source material already existed for me, but I did not care about the introduction of the cards and certainly not enough to hate them.

Okay.

It isn’t enough to just dislike the source material though. I already disliked Forgotten Realmsing: Gathering Magics, where the Magic tools were brought to bear on twenty year old memes of Go For The Eyes, Boo. I didn’t like the way that it turned the story space of the Forgotten Realms — a world that I hate — into a flattened band of things that could interact like Owlbears killing Dragons, and I didn’t like that it forced the characters of the Forgotten Realms into prominence — because a lot of them are cat-piss men, with all the charm of the OCs of wannabe date rapists.

And they did it again!

It’s hard to grapple with this feeling, because the thing is, I know I’ve been unhappy with Magic: The Gathering for years, but at no point does that unhappiness translate to a disinterest in following the product. I don’t like Urza. I think that Urza, a eugenecist who relies on being the smartest person in the room and whose edgy solutions against omnicidal threats, presents a sort of worst kind of Edgy Nerdboy archetype, and I think he needs to be left in Magic’s history, in the past, where we can stop acting as if he was a good or engaging character. Give us distance, let us forget him, let him stop fucking mattering.

In May 2022, Magic The Gathering released Streets of New Capenna, a set I liked, which took us to somewhere new. Okay, yes, the plot wound up being tied into the Phyrexians, but okay, fine, whatever, the set was still able to present as a foreground element something new that wasn’t tied, endlessly, back to Magic’s inability to stop huffing its own farts. The next release was Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate (hated it), then Dominaria United: This Time It’s More Fucking Dominaria (hated it), The Brother’s War: Remember Urza, Everyone? (hated it), Phyrexia: All Will Be One (hated it), and Phyrexia: March of the Machine (hated it). This means it’s been a non-stop content churn from a system that promises endless novelty and regularly refreshing content so that you always have something fun and cool to engage with, and it has been a year of non-stop release of things I hate.

But my reaction to all of those things was: Oh well, something better is coming along, something else will happen, something that interests me might come up next. Who knows, I’ll look at the next thing.

The next thing was Lord of The Ringering.

There are too many axes for me to hate Lord Of The Gathering.

First, there’s the core text it venerates. Lord of The Rings just isn’t a very good book and it’s just not a very good movie. I read it in high school and never read it again because I didn’t like it. It was partly poisoned by dint of my having already read all the Narnia books, I guess, because it meant turgid self-important traumatised Anglicanism glanced off me. I’d also played videogames and read books with fantasy cultures like elves and dwarves in them, cultures which had interesting ideas and varied cultural outlooks. Particularly, I’d read Discworld books, and when you have these vibrant explored cultures with different mythical connections to them, Lord of The Rings is a lot like licking Catholic prayerbooks looking for personality. Like, one of the big gags in the first part of The Hobbit is about how interchangeable the personalities of a bunch of dwarves are!

And okay, yes, it’s very important that without Tolkein, we would never have had anyone to codify the myth of the Dwarf as a stubby Jewish jerk who loves money and can’t go to heaven, or an elf as the whitest people in the world who get extra special heaven and isn’t it sad that the culture of the world is fading. It’s some people’s first discovery of an outcast prince roaming the land under a secret identity, but Narnia had one of them, and his name was Corin and he punched a bear.

Simply put, Lord of the Rings is classic literature, and much like classic medicine, has a lot of bad to go with whatever respect you want to put on its name.

It doesn’t mesh well with Magic: The Gathering, of course; there’s a message in Lord of the Rings about how power will corrupt and ruin you (unless you’re a good king, which means you’ll do a good job and everything will be fine, so good job we have a good king in reserve), which means it’s a great fit for Magic: The Gathering where one of the five philosophical outlooks is about how yes, it’s worth it to do that and there’s a fundamental nobility in recognising your own independence and gathering power to support that is a reasonable way to live your life.

Also, and not to sound like a big blousy feminist boy here, but this is a set with 120 legendary cards, which between all of them depict ten women. Those ten women, by the way, include one of Samwise Gamgee’s children mentioned in a postscript, a bit part healer who shares an anecdote with Gandalf, Aragon’s dead mom, Tom Bombadil’s wife, the mean aunt in Bag End and Shelob, a fucking spider, so I’m giving partial credit there. Oh and I guess you can count the Watcher in The Water as the single nonbinary character in the story.

Also, y’know, the movie Arwen who did the tiny bit of stuff she did in that movie was controversial at the time, because she doesn’t do much in the books. She was fighting for a pittance! And I get it, it’s hard to present women characters because there just aren’t many in this book and that’s probably a problem and a reason to do something different.

But nope, you gotta care about the book and the text! Because a bunch of the flavour in this set is just ‘here is a quote from this book’ and if you don’t recognise it from the time and place it shows up, then what the fuck does it communicate? It’s all just saying Hey, remember this thing you like?

This is Family Guy The Gathering.

But then there’s just little pet peeves. Like white got remand in this set. I wanted that. Why’s it fucking here? It would have been a perfect simple, approachable core set card! We got an inevitable appearance of Do White Thing, Draw A Card, The Card, in The Gaffer. We have another example of a Extra Game System introduced in the form of the Ring Tempting You, which encourages you to keep getting tempted and nothing bad ever happens to you. The rules change to Amass are fine I guess, but now they’re colour-locked, and a second change to them is less likely! Oh oh and Orcish Bowmasters, who are absolutely absurdly powerful and now mean that I’ll probably never not be dealing with this set in casual games because why wouldn’t you run that card if you want any of what it’s offering.

Oh well, we’re getting Wilds of Eldraine. I like Eldraine. It’s a world with some interesting potential that was overshadowed by shitheads. It’s got cool fairy story vibes and it got us our first round of Food token mechanics. That’s cool.

Then after that, we’re getting Universes Beyond: Doctor Fucking Who.

Christ, the nerds that pay for this game have shit taste.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Games #Magic:TheGathering

[loquaciousquark]

Domesticity meme, 9, 36?

Nuts, I should have glanced down the line! I just answered 9 here, so for you I'll do 6 and 36.

6. do they get married (or equivalent)?

Yes indeedy! Barring plot device in various fics, with the WIP being the current and most egregious offender, they get married right around the time Leda is born. Neither of them particularly needs the formality, though Hawke is very fond of being Fenris's wife; instead it's a more practical concern regarding Leda. Given that Hawke is incapable of a quiet and peaceful life, and that an early death is highly likely for at least one of them, they wanted the legal protection for Fenris in case something happened to Hawke.

While neither they (nor I) think it's likely someone in power would care enough about a random half-elf child to try to to take it from its widower father, I can definitely see someone caring that much about the Champion's child. Fenris could certainly kill anyone who tried to take her, and I don't doubt he would, but after a murder or two you suddenly have a whole new fugitive situation on your hands, except this time with a motherless baby thrown into the mix. Not exactly the most stable environment in which to raise a child, and I think Fenris would do a heck of a lot to give his kids everything he never had.

So: it would be better for Leda if her father's legal marital status were unquestioned; therefore, they get married. Really have a good time with it, though. (I always thought a small Chantry wedding in the country somewhere would be most fitting, but a big party at Skyhold could happen later.)

36. who cusses more?

HA! Hawke cusses by far more on a day to day basis, but it's like pellet scattershot from a toy gun, lots of little stings without much skin breaking. Fenris curses more rarely, but when he does it's with an elegant, lethal vehemence that does as much damage in one blow as all Hawke's daily mutterings put together.

They're basically like walking versions of those maps of precision vs. accuracy. Hawke on the left, Fenris on the right.

I think he takes pride in it, honestly.

[nyctarian]

My Favorite Books I Read in 2023

(In a rare event this year I gave up on any kinda bad book so quickly that this is just a best list for once. As such i have just put the list in order of when i read the book. In addition to this specific list Here Are A Few Other posts about books from this year)

[These reviews are not spoiler free be warned!!!]

This list is as of yet incomplete!!! I have most of the books that will be on it listed, thought I did just go through everything I read this year and not just the ones I saved to an endofyearlist shelf as I finished them and found a few more that reasonably stuck with me enough to warrant a note on here. I have not added them yet! Also although I did say in the literal first paragraph that this is just a best list there were some books i saw as I went thru that were like, oh I wish those were better than they were they had such potential, so I may also add those at some other point

Trust by Hernan Diaz: Putting this list in order of when I read it means that the first one is the one that :) i may or may not have actually finished before the year ends :) [NOTE: I have not.] BUT it is good enough that i am Adding It Anyways! Trust is written as a series of excerpts from books about Benjamin and Helen Rask some 1920s rich people. The book manages to present the couple from a series of differing narratives (starting with an in-universe novel about a fictionalized version of the couple before going forward with the "non fiction" books about them, increasing the revelations as you go. This was one of the ones i went into before i engaged any online hype about it bc its cover caught my eye on the new arrivals shelf of the library i work at, and the actual premise was so intriguing i had to check it out. It took me as long to read bc I prefer to listen to nonfiction and this book manages to meat that tone so closely that i kept wanting to listen to the audiobook instead, but also this year i kept not being able to engage w audiobooks and podcasts so i didnt want to actually spend the money on buying it!

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri: This another book that I read because I stumbled across it at the library I work at. I spent a lot of this year looking for things that were similar to my standout favorites from Last Year, specifically Cook, Pure Colour, and No One Is Talking About This, and this was one of the first ones that I pursued of that ilk that I really liked. The story is about a writer and how she is living and has lived her life. If you are looking for more plot or a character who is either nicer or nastier this probably isnt for you, but for a look into how a woman has lived her life, what she regrets and how she find hers joys, i thought it was really really engaging. Here are some of my GR progress updates as an indicator of how the experience of reading could be ehhhhh but also was still one of The Books Of The Year To Me

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh: This is 2010s tumblrcore millennialbait. Once more, at the library I work at, I found this book. We did a display of our graphic novels collection and we had both the first book collecting the hyperbole and a half webcomics and this one. This was during a winter break period in january when the library was basically empty, so i basically just grabbed both books and, despite having read the original webcomic back in the day (and its ubiquity to this day in some memes) i had spent long enough away from the original material that they both managed to make me laugh a surprising amount. Only the second one is on here bc speaking of 'surprising amount' the first one had a surprising amount of times the R word was used, which while is Of Its Time having been published in the early 2010s, made me uncomfortable! it wasnt an egregious amount to make me not read the sequel, w the knowledge that the sequel was intended to be at times an emotionally heavier read and also was published in the 2020s, but i still wanted to note it here. my enjoyment of this book also was aided by the fact that i started it in january and finished it in april, just reading a bit at a time to get some laughs in. These reads also did spur me to checking out more of my libraries graphic novel collection, and then this plus my interest in reading more translated fiction lead to me giving more of a chance to misc mangas etc this year.

One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun: Hey everyone have I mentioned that One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun was the best book i read this year. Because this was the best book i read this year. This is a book about the romance between the two leads, with a background story of a fantastical magical realism plot, that is centered around modern gentrification and classism. It is all of those things in the quietest way possible. The central relationship is so much of the two characters spending time together and talking. The Magical realism is the occasional thrum of the idea of shadows rising. The discussion of gentrification and classism is the background worry about where they work being demolished. This is the best book I read this year. I spent the entire year the minute i finished this book desperately trying to find another book like it. This is the best book For Me this does everything i want a book to do and it does it in the best way possible. this book ruined my ability to read novels about romance because they were too Loud and could never meet this books high, quiet standards. [NOTE: I actually do not believe everyone should read this book because seeing bad takes about this book would make me insane. Only read this book if you are going to experience it the exact same way as me and have all my same thoughts and emotions!!!!]

Soft Science by Franny Choi: April is national poetry month, so my library did a display about it. I didn't read this because of seeing it in that display, but part of the display we did was us recommending short poems we liked, and one of mine was Choi's "We Used Our Words We Used What Words We Had" which lead to me realizing I had never read any Franny Choi poetry collection in full despite already liking a number of her poems, so I read several poetry collections and this one was my favorite. Bodies and Technologies and the ways they are and are not the same things and are at odds with each other and in conversation with and an aid to each other was a theme i was interested in this year in a specifically poetic way so this book was perfect for that

Mona by Pola Oloixarac: I was able to enjoy this bc i have been terminally online twitterbrained in a leftist internetsphere way for a while now. As I note in the attached goodreads progress updates my first real Thought about the book was to compare it to "Nobody Is Talking About This" which was one of my best books i read last year and also a book that i found Very Very Very Frustrating for much of the time i was reading, and also was in conversation with terminally online stuff in a way that didnt always work but still managed to feel Of The Moment in a way that wouldnt be (too horribly) outdated in the future. Mona is about author and professor Mona, a peruvian author who frequently reflects on what it means for her to be a Woman Of Color working in an american college system, with much of the plot focusing on her leaving the country (and also leaving her responsibilities and the expectations people have of her and the violence that just happened to her behind) as she is nominated for a Very Prestigious Literary Award, as she mingles with other international authors. I hated large chunks of this novel, it frequently had discussions of sex that i found frustrating to read because of the verbiage used, the ending was jarring and it was inarguably one of the best books i read this year. The juxtaposition of the frequent flashbacks to the main character's recent experience with sexual assault and intimate partner violence which she is only vaguely aware of happening. Despite being very different books i found the way this book ended and the way Piranesi (next on this list as i finished them at the same time) ended to be similarly frustrating but understandable.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: Ok i found the ending frustrating BUT the incredible prose and the amazing descriptors made the journey to get there good enough that i was okay with it. I spent a very long time working on reading piranesi. Sometimes when i want to finish a book but know that i probably won't i do a trick where i read the book backwards. i go to the last chapter and then i read it, and then i go to the next to last chapter and read that one, and i do that until i either can go back and continue from where i left off at the start of the book, or until i just join up with that part and have finished the novel by making it to the middle. I ended up doing that with piranesi and let me tell you it was confusing! and as someone who semiregularly (a time or two a year at most) i know its my fault for doing it but it isnt normally THAT confusing. The book was still very good. The ending (spoiler) jolts what i had assuming to be a straightforward fantasy into the real world in the same way that Mona's ending seemingly thrust that book into a fantastical narrative when it had been a more straightforward contemporary novel before then. Reading these books at the same time made me think about those choices a lot! Oh the plot of this book is that its about a man and the magic house he lives in. It was beautifully written and that was more important than the plot, which wasnt BAD persay, but i liked Mona better.

Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda: This was a book about vampires that was actually about food culture gender family and being mixed race. The book was one that as I was reading it I knew it was going to be on this list. At times the womanhood aspects were a little Too universalizing for a story that otherwise was really good about centering its main character as a singular figure moving through the world. Genuinely incredibly well written prose, and the way it reaches its climax was really excellent.

Inheritance by Taylor Johnson: Another book of poetry that I found incredibly striking. Another book that I found by happenstance in the library I work in. I read it long enough ago now I can't really describe it but multiple of the poems stuck with me enough to repost here. Never one note or repetitive while still having a tonal and narrative consistency tying it all together.

Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin: I didnt like that in the end this became somewhat of a standards "those strange creepy kids are strange and creepy and evil innit" type story bc of how genuinely strange and captivating the narrative was for most of the book. It was a little bit of a let down but despite that it was Still Excellent. The whole time I was reading it it was a very anticipatory experience letting the story unfold, even if I found the conclusion somewhat lackluster it made me want to read more from the author.

Mr. Salary by Sally Rooney: I never finished Normal People but i found this weird novella interesting. Just this side of safe from being problematic with a very intentionally smash cut-y conclusion of the story. It was very interpersonal and character oriented without going too unnecessarily deep or staying too safely shallow. If it was longer or more detailed it probably wouldnt make the list. That's all i really can say about it.

Heaven Official's Blessing by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù: This series. hmm. how to explain my mental illness. This was the only thing i got as insane about as i did one hundred shadows, but because this was an 8 volume/1400 page light novel with a thriving fandom, my mental illness was encouraged more than with one hundred shadows. It was a little up and down with the beginning being a little slow to start, and the flashback arcs being a little drudgery-y, but whenever xie lian and hua cheng got to have chemistry together it was a homerun, and the fact that the story was basically a mystery series with an overarching big bad villain but in a world inspired by chinese mythology made it great. It wasn't my only light novel this year (after checking out some of the guardian cdrama i started reading the fanslation for that which was my first light novel this year but the fanslation is imperfect so im still working on it s l o w l y) but it was my favorite that i read and my other favorite of the year with one hundred shadows. If one hundred shadows was my like, litfic Genuinely Good Book fave than tgcf was my lightreading Genuinely Fun Book fave. Someone should write a tgcf!au of one hundred shadows and a ohs!au of tian guan ci fu just for me.

Temporary by Hilary Leichter: This was a weird one! The narrative structure of the sort of work drudgery surrealism is something that both kind of bores me a lot but I find endlessly fascinating when done well. This one at times edged too close to the sillier end of things but was grounded enough to be very enjoyable. The end of it hit somewhat similar to Pure Colour in a way I wasn't expecting, but I found the strange worldbuilding very enjoyable, even if narratively it never quite seemed to do what I want a book to do.

Manga Catchall: As noted above, I did read some manga this year but most of them had some substantial flaw enough to not make the list. Of specific note I would say Yubisaki to Renren (volume three being my favorite volume of the not-yet-completed series which is why its specifically the one in the cuspies screenshot) as the most well-rounded highlight, and the incomplete series I am most excited for more volumes of. The other manga in the screenshot was either stupid fun but very flawed or almost very good with one or two big "oh come on's," especially in regards to either tonally inconsistent cringe or unnecessary (for me) graphic content. The only one that I didn't finish reading the (available) volumes of was boys run the riot which i stalled out in the middle of vol 2 for being just a little too YA for me not for any other real reason, but it had diverse rep and is something I could see being important to a younger queer reader. The cat proposed could have been really excellent, which it was for most of the story, and then inexplicably the epilogue was like about 3r3ctile dysfunction? which kinda affected the whole thing. Semantic error i read because i broadly enjoyed the drama even if it was flawed but the manhwa was hmmm kinda insane and wayyyy toooo hot and cold unnecessary conflict-y. Very much the "you too are insane but just dont involve anyone else in your shit and youll be fine" meme. Fangs was an interesting plot intriguing worldbuilding good slowburn(ish) romance but uhh more graphic than expected and the plot really kicked off at the very end of the 2nd volume..of 2 published so far lol. I Married My.... was fine but the chemistry wasnt really there as much as it should be even as a friend thing, but the main characters sort of internal monologue about what is my place in the world was good. Sasaki to miyano was good chemistry but a kind of silly main plot for how they orbit into each others lives, but the characters are an enjoyable enough bunch and it was an easy read. something that i think will be better as a sit down and finish in a row once the series is completed.

Other Cuspies Of Note: Something New was an enjoyable read I previously read the authors other book Relish which I think was better but this one was also good. The author is friends with and mentions in the book ojst!erika who is like a noted insane problematique weirdo lol. Scholomance as with many novik books I had a lot of issues with and didnt enjoy the whole time but she is good at writing a main character of a really strong personality and interesting magic systems. As of right now ive stalled out early into the second book and likely will dnf instead of getting to the third, so my critique as with many fantasy series is "wish it was a standalone" lol. There were some side characters of note in this first book w/openended endings who i checked the other books and they dont really get mentioned again which was a bummer lol. Portrait of a thief I started last year and finished by reading backwards around the same time as piranesi. I enjoyed the writing and that the characters had distinct pov's but I wish the heist had been centered more somehow? and the character conflicts a little less rote although I did broadly enjoy the characters themselves. mainly it made me excited to check out the authors next (as of yet unreleased) book. One Good man was a novella I was interested in reading for ages and if it was longer than a novella I likely wouldnt have enjoyed it as the romance was a little too hot and cold and the characters a little unncessarily dumb at times but it was pretty good, and while ambitious in its setting of vietnam era france it largely managed to hit the right mark for me.

ok its jan 21 2023 im prob not gonna finish this rn!!! but here are the cuspies that could have made the list + the mangas/manhwa that could have made it (if its a volume of a manga it just is a catchall for the series) (eta: 2/6/24 I did end up baaaaaasically finishing the unwritten entries but am leaving the screenshots for clarity as i mentioned them in some of my reviews.)

and while i didnt have a worst of here are the disappointments that i had high hopes for that range from i dnf'd bc it was bad to disappointing whole to store to stumbled at the ending

[a-student-out-of-time]

Tbh, I do agree with your theory about David being the blackened of this chapter, only because he can't really 'do antagonistic things' from here on out. People say he was set up to be a rival character, but now that everyone knows he's a manipulative scumbag, he can't manipulate anyone in the future. So I can't really see how he can be an antagonist other than just being a pain in the ass for Teruko (and everyone else ig) cause I really don't think you can manipulate someone that knows you are manipulative. I don't even want to say he's extremely well written, nor do I want to say he's poorly written cause it's only been 15 minutes that we've seen this 'new David'. Don't get me wrong, I do think there is more to him than just 'lmao I'm evil' but if people think that he's going to be the main rival? Nah. We already have Teruko playing both the protag and antag

//The thing about opposition to my theory that really perplexes me is that people will say "We can't predict where the story is going" (yes we can), but then they'll fall back into the same formulaic tropes as old DR for characters, like David being the rival.

//Except, as you've pointed out, nobody is ever going to trust David again after this. You're right, we've only seen a fraction of this version of the character here, so it's hard to say what he's really like, but even just from a logical perspective, I don't think he really could serve as a good rival.

//Even with characters like Kokichi or Nagito, who nobody in-story liked, they still served a thematic role as a continuous part of the narrative. Some people forget Nagito wasn't just the funny meme man, he was an antagonistic force that represented the polar opposite of Junko: someone being so obsessed with hope that he was willing to kill for it. That came to a head when he found out he and everyone save Chiaki were all despairs.

//Same with Kokichi, who was the walking epitome of a liar and thus was the total opposition to people like Kaede, Shuichi and Kaito. While he was usually just a gremlin for most of the game, he wound up poking holes in their camaraderie and nearly drove the survivors past the despair event horizon in Chapter 5. And ultimately, he played a role in bringing the game to its end by revealing it was all a lie.

//Even Byakuya served an effective rival role because he was clearly far more invested in the game and outmaneuvering everyone else, while Makoto and Kyoko were far more focused on trying to put a stop to it before everyone died. He finally got the picture after Sakura's death, especially when it was made clear his inability to comprehend sacrifice or altruism nearly got him and everyone else killed.

//They all had a major role in the story which counterbalanced that of the protags. They were in thematic or ideological opposition and could challenge them on some level.

//By contrast, Teruko and David already share many of the same views. They're both distrustful and have a low opinion of others, only looking out for themselves. The difference is that, while Teruko keeps to herself, David uses people to get what he wants. Yet both of them are ultimately resigned to their fates from the sound of it.

//Instead of a rival, I think David would serve a better role as a foil for Teruko. She gets to see the logical outcome of her choice not to trust others, leading her down a path of nihilistic fatalism and misanthropy, where all she cares about is protecting what she has. When you lose that, you have nothing left and you no longer care.

//David is everything she could become, but if this trial goes where I believe it might, him being the Blackened would be a major object lesson for her.

[fishoutofcamelot]

Thoughts on mercelot

So they have thots on them now?

Gay. One of the gayest things to grace my screen. People who think Lancelot was straight make me laugh. Mercelot has all the chaos and mutual pining that any good ship should have. And if the BBCM writers weren't cowards, this could have been their post-Darkest Hour dynamic:

Thanks for the ask! <3

[finelinevogue]

for tour content, maybe you could do an imagine that’s like a series of small moments like little interactions on stage or picking tour outfits or nights in the tour bus/airplane ! just little domestic things <3

i’m going to do this because i have so many weird ideas and just no way of putting them all together ! ;

Grilled Cheese Conversations

The tour bus smelt like it was on fire.

You had been sitting in the living room with Harry for a couple of hours, both of you just skimming through photos from the Met Gala together - judging obviously, before Harry announced he wanted to make himself some food and so left for the kitchen.

He’d been in there for 45 minutes now and the smells that were diffusing from their smelt bloody awful. Harry could cook really extravagant foods, like caviar and lobster, but when it came to something as simple as making a sandwich he was absolutely terrible for some reason. The point was proven when he walked back into the room with a burnt coal looking sandwich.

“What, is that?” You laughed, still sitting with your phone in your hand and waiting for him to come back so you could continue judging these Met outfits together.

“It’s a grilled cheese sandwich?” He spoke as if you were dumb and you should have known that instantly. He walked over to you, sitting down next to you and resting the plate on the table in front of him.

“No, that’s a piece of char.” You raised your eyebrows disapprovingly and watched as he scowled at you for being mean to his culinary skills.

“Well i’m sure it’ll taste great.” He looked smug, up until he took a bite from the cheesy melted - burnt - bread. As soon as the food touched his tongue he was quick to spit it back out again, you groaning in disgust. He pushed the plate away and looked at it in anger. “45 bloody minutes and it tastes of burnt wood.”

“I’m not even going to ask why you know that.” You raised your hands and laughed, watching as he turned to scowl at you again. He had quite the angry face when he wanted to. “Sorry, alright! Do you want me to go make you one?” You asked, sitting up to go and make him one if he wanted.

Harry pulled you into his lap so you were sat with your back to his front, his arms looping around your waist tightly to keep you with him. His chin rested on your shoulder and he kissed your cheek because he could. “No. Stay w’me.” He got all cuddly and soft and you loved it when Harry was like this. He was like a life-size version of your stuffed teddy bear you used to sleep with at night - all cute and cuddly.

“Okay, okay.” You calmed him when he thought you were just going to get up and go. “Let’s judge some people again.” You pulled out your phone and opened it to a twitter account which had posted all of them.

“Where did we get up to?” Harry asked, fiddling with the skin on your stomach as his hands snaked beneath your hoodie.

“Um, Kim K.” You clicked on the image of her and tried to hold back the laugh. It was a dreadful outfit and highly meme worthy, so you’ve heard.

“Well…” Harry sighed, reaching his own hand to swipe seeing as he didn’t have anything more to say on this particular one.

“Billie looked beautiful.” You smiled as Billie’s huge dress came on display, looking a fluffy pink marshmallow dream. She looked very Monroe with her makeup and you were always so shocked when people told you her age, because she looked so mature.

“She must’ve taken inspiration from Marilyn Monroe.” Harry added, nodding in approval of Billie’s outfit.

“More so than bloody Addison Rae.” You laughed, thinking about how far that had been from the truth.

“Addison who?” Harry asked and it made you smile and turn your head around to look at him. He looked down at you, noticing the cheeky glint in your eyes and couldn’t help but steal a glance at your beautiful lips.

“This is why I love you.” You sighed happily and gave him a kiss on the lips, cupping his cheek to direct him better. You were only going for a peck, but Harry made it that you got the full taste of him and kissed you for a minute longer. He felt perfect against you and you really did just simply love him.

“Yeah,” Harry broke from the kiss for a brief moment to tell you something important, “and I love you.”

••••

All Things Sparkles

It was an hour before the Dallas show and Harry was getting ready for another big show.

Dallas were known for being crazy and you were so excited for the energy they’d bring for Harry tonight. Harry always enjoyed the shows more when the crowd was actually ecstatic to be there and he knew Dallas wouldn’t let him down.

He was putting on his silk trousers, Lambert just to the side as he was ironing the shirt to get rid of all its crinkles. Your Harry currently looked so funny in his Gucci silk trousers, his bright yellow socks with bananas all over them, his suspenders hanging down by his sides and no shirt on as of yet. It was the socks that really pieced everything together. He had just had his hair and makeup done, just needing to get dressed before he was completely ready.

He was really glowing tonight. It made you happy to see him like this.

You were watching him through the vanity mirror as you touched up your own makeup, adding highlighter to the areas you wanted to shine a little brighter. You also started adding some gems around your eyes, wanting to be a bit different tonight along with your glittery eye shadow that you didn’t normally do. You were glueing your gems when you felt your boyfriends presence behind you, the heat of his bare chest radiating against the skin of your back.

“You look stunning, m’love.” You looked up through the vanity to catch his gaze, he smiled and you smiled back.

“Thank you. Not too bad looking y’self.” You cheekily replied, motioning towards his bare chest. “Are y’going to be keeping that out all night?” You asked, being hopeful that he would, because fuck it was hot, but also wouldn’t, because you wanted this part of him all to yourself.

“You’d like that wouldn’t y’yeah.” He squinted his eyes at you and nodded, a clear sign that no his tits were not going to be out for Dallas. “Up.” He spoke, lifting you up from under your armpits and walking around the chair so that he could sit down himself. He plonked you right back on top of his lap and watched as you leant forwards to add another gem to the corner of your eye.

“Y’putting me off.” You whined, your ass leaning right back onto the hard of his cock. He couldn’t keep soft around you, that was his kryptonite.

“Oh i’m sorry. It’s not like m’girlfriend is just sitting there looking ridiculously beautiful and yet so innocent.” He leaned forwards to whisper the rest of his words, because they were only for you. “Just look so fuckable right now.”

You had to bite your tongue from turning around and shoving it down his throat, because god did his words make you want to jump his bones. “Shut up, before y’get us both in trouble.” You wiggled your ass back over his cock as you sat back to admire the work of the gems brightening up around your eyes.

“Then stop being a fuckin’ tease.” He grabbed your hips and stopped your from moving anymore. You just smiled and put the lid back on the glue before it went everywhere, especially over Harry’s expensive clothing - even the banana socks were £17.

You looked at him through the mirror to find him already looking at you. You blushed quietly as you watched him take in your beauty. It was quite hard to get over just how ethereal he looked tonight and it made you so feral knowing he was all yours and only yours. Looking down at the gems you got an idea.

“Do y’want me to put some gems on y’too?” You asked, pointing to the ones around your eyes and thinking that he’d looked even prettier with some around his.

“Only if i’m matching w’you yeah.” Harry nodded excitedly. You got up from the chair and swizzled yourself around until you were sat back on his lap, only this time straddling him. You were so close to him now that it was getting ridiculously harder to stop yourself from taking him here and now. You leant down, instead, and gave him a lasting kiss on the skin covering his heart. Your lips lingered there for a moment, before you moved back up to see him already staring down. He smiled when he saw the stain of your lipstick printed over where his heart beat. “I proper love you, Y/N.” He smiled and cupped your chin in his fingers to bring your lips to him.

“No!” Lambert shouted, making you two pause. “You two’ll never stop if you start, so don’t start until after the bloody show.” He rolled his eyes and continued with his ironing, making you and Harry chuckle feeling like high-school kids.

“Okay, now stay still.” You spoke as you glued the first gem and held it steady against the corner of his eye. He wanted to keep his eyes open to keep looking at you, because that’s all he ever wanted to do, but you instructed him to close them just to be on the safer side. It went on easy, sticking to the outer corner of his eye, in a soft white colour that matched his trousers. Yours were the same creamy white colour to match the colour of your dress.

“Do I look pretty yet?” Harry asked rhetorically, but you replied anyways.

“Y’look pretty always.” You kissed the top of his nose whilst you glued the other gem. He closed his eyes as you told him to, but he still smiled at your words. You concentrated as you stuck the gem to the corner of the other eye and sat back to make sure they were even. Harry opened his eyes to see you making sure they looked good. “S’perfect.”

“Like you then.” He hummed in appreciation of you.

“Let’s see then.” Lambert asked, making you both turn in the chair to face him and you readjusting yourself so you were sat back against his chest. “Oh yes! Okay this is photo worthy.” Lambert took out his phone and held it up to face you both, making sure you could see the gems.

“I don’t even have a shirt on!” Harry exclaimed, but held you close anyways as you smiled for the photos and his words making you belly laugh. You posed more seriously for a few and then took a few silly ones to. Your favourite one, though, was one where you were laughing so happily and Harry was looking at you and smiling in awe over you.

He set it as his lock screen. You set it as yours. It would stay that way until your new favourite photos became your wedding day photos.

••••

Sign Of The Times

Tonight was the first Love on Tour show you were attending, only having missed opening night in Las Vegas.

Harry knew that you were coming, but you’d told him to source you out within the crowds because you wanted a full fan experience. You’d gotten the all-clear from Harry’s security, allowing your from backstage and straight through into the cherry pit. You had your lanyard and your sign ready, as fans started to pile in. You were originally going to go straight to the barricade, but you thought the fans deserved that more than you so you hung back and stayed the ends of the crowds.

A few fans spotted you and came up to asking for photos, so you did. Posing with your mask on was weird because you still smiled underneath the mask even though it wouldn’t be seen in the photo. Some fans asked whether they could stay and dance with you ask night to which you were so happy for, because dancing alone would’ve been embarrassing even for you.

The intro for golden started and the crowds were deafening, but all you could think about was your boyfriend and his challenge to spot you within the crowds. Golden and Carolina came and went, you dancing like a crazed fan along with all your new friends. Everyone was so happy and some were even crying tears of joy.

There was just love, love, love, everywhere.

Harry came to his first pause and took a quick drink since he was already quite hot and the altitude in Denver was crazy.

“Good evening Denver!” He shouted into the mic, waiting for the screams of his fans to uproar and then settle before speaking on, “The altitude is crazy here. I’ve barely done anything and I can’t breathe!” He spoke, making you slightly anxious for him but you knew he would be okay because he had an oxygen tank on stage. “Now, m’girlfriend is somewhere here tonight and i’ve gotta find Y/N before I lose the challenge.”

The fans around you started screaming that you were here and the message kept on getting passed down the crowds until they reached the front. Harry was walking around your side of the stage until he met the fans at the front saying that you were behind them. Harry held his hand over his eyes to help him find you better and you held up your sign to help him. Your sign had taken you all of 5 minutes to doodle, but the message was clear;

“I want a kiss from the one in suspenders.”

“There y’are.” He laughed when he saw your sign, dropping his mic and leaning over himself to catch his breathe from the belly laugh that he just let out. You smiled when you saw him laugh, the fans around you screaming and thanking you for making him be this way. Harry stood up and looked at you, messing with his earpiece so he could hear the arena better.

“Kiss me!” You shouted and the people around you were also shouting for him to kiss you. Even with masks on Harry could clearly understand the message.

“I wanna kiss you but I can’t!” He spoke through his mic and his voice echoed throughout the arena, making everyone scream and you simply blush. You knew he couldn’t come and just give you a kiss, it would be too dangerous, but he sent you loads of blown kisses instead and you kept them all. You sent your own back and he stuffed them all in his back pocket, before moving on to his next song before he got told off.

“Damn, he really loved you.” One of your new fans friends says next to you and all you could think was; yeah, yeah he does.

••••

My Only Angel*

For four hours he had been gone.

Four hours since he was in this hotel room with you. Four hours since you had first started acting like a brat. Four hours since he’d gotten fed up of our attitude and tied you up and left a vibrator pulsing against your clit. Four hours since your first orgasm, four minutes since your last.

The whole time Harry had been on stage, all he could think about was you being bound tight in his hotel room and dripping wet from the number of orgasms you would’ve had. He knew you’d never be able to hold yourself for four hours, so he didn’t say you couldn’t cum only he forgot to mention that the number of times that you did cum would be the number of times he denied you later on in the evening. Harry had gotten especially hard performing Only Angel, because that was your song that he’d written for you and then fucked you countless times to. Fans noticed, but put it down to the adrenaline of being onstage rather than the thought of his girlfriend being tied up and overstimulated back in his hotel room.

You just came down from the high of another orgasm when Harry walked through the door. You sighed when you saw him, thinking this would finally be it and he’d let you go free now you’ve suffered your punishment. That was wishful thinking, however.

“Oh, I didn’t see you there.” Harry pretended, wanting to tease you as much as possible, as he walked past you and hung his jacket on the back of a chair.

“H-harry.” You sighed, squeezing your eyes when you moved and felt the vibrator hit and new and exciting angle. You moaned quietly and had to suppress the embarrassing cries you wanted to let out.

“Yes?” Harry moved so he was standing at the edge of the bed, undoing the buttons on his shirt one-by-one. He looked so hot with his sleeves rolled and the suspenders already dropped down to his sides.

“I-I please s-st- enough.” You whimpered, pulling on the restraints to try and stop it yourself but you’d already tried that one too many times and nothing has come of it.

Your wrists were slightly red and bruised from all the tugging you’d been doing and Harry noticed that as he peeled away his shirt from his body. He threw the silk shirt somewhere else in the room and walked over to the right side of the bed, sitting down to get a closer look at your wrists. He leant down to give it a gentle rub and a kiss. You sighed in delight at the feeling of his cool lips burn against your flaming skin. Harry sat up and tilted your face to the side so you could face him, slight tears in your eyes. He looked at you for a few moments, taking in the shear beauty of you and your glorious body, before making sure you were alright.

“What’s your colour, baby?” He asked you gently, stroking your cheek and then running his thumb along your bottom lip with a soft pull.

“G-green.” You nodded and he smiled, leaning in to kiss you on your desperate lips. You basked in the taste of him, closing your eyes like you needed to save this moment to memory forever. You loved him like this, when he was dominant with you. He let you be submissive like you wanted to be.

“That’s my good girl.” He leaned back from you and moved onto the bed more, straddling your bare body. The silk of his pants felt erotic against your hot skin and you moaned at the dreamy sensation. He ran his large, ringed, hands up and down your body, feeling every curve and crevice. He massaged your boobs lightly in his hands, up and down your stomach and to your inner thighs behind him. You hummed at the feeling, gasping when Harry finally turned off the vibrator and moved it away from you. You felt lighter from freedom all of a sudden.

“T-hank you.” You breathed out, opening your eyes to meet his electric green ones. Wow, he looked beautiful - still slightly sweaty and hot from his concert.

“Don’t thank me yet, angel.” He grinned as he took down his trousers and pants, pushing them to the floor with his foot.

He didn’t even wait for you to register what was going on before he slipped himself inside of you. You loved the feeling so greatly, but your clit was still so sensitive. You shuddered as he picked up his pace and thrusted into you harder and harder, faster and faster. The sound of his skin slapping against yours, made you arch your back and your toes curl and then feeling if him so deep inside of you was enough to make you cum already, again.

“Feel s-so good.” You looked at him and saw the desire within his eyes. He was so full of lust right now, because the sight of you tied up with him pounding into you is better than simply imagining it. Nothing could feel more euphoric than this, both of you were sure of that.

“Yeah? Feel me all around you? So perfect f’me. M’beautiful angel.” Harry moaned out, cupping one of his hands around your throat and pushing you deeper into the mattress, whilst his other hand went to cup your breasts and give them the devotion they deserved.

Everything felt everywhere.

His rocks became sloppier as he reached his high, yours approaching much sooner than you thought it would. You were surprised you actually had anything left in you. His cock hit a spot inside of you that made you scream out and he felt you collapse around him all at once, causing his own release to quickly follow. He continued to fuck you through your release and bent himself over to press his lips to yours. He felt and tasted amazing, you couldn’t get enough. It would never be enough.

“Love you so much.” You spoke the best you could and Harry released his hand from your throat, leaning down to kiss it softly. He reached over to your hands to untie them afterwards, giving them both a few kisses over your wrists when he saw the harsh marks. Your arms were so tired that they just fell to your sides, but Harry kept on touching you softly; stroking your messy hair away from your face and caressing your cheek softly as if he hadn’t just fucked you raw. He kept his face close to you as he whispered the words that would stay imprinted on your heart forever.

“I love you, Y/N.”

[antimonarchy]

How to Create Image Descriptions

So I’ve been creating image descriptions on tumblr for about a month, and I wanted to share some helpful guides I’ve found on how to create them as well as my own tips that I’ve picked up. Video descriptions and transcripts are also necessary, but since I mostly focus on image descriptions that’s what this guide is about. This might get a bit long, so fair warning. 

What are image descriptions?

Image descriptions are a textual depiction of what is going on in an image, as shown with the image below. 

[Image ID: A picture of a person with short black hair working on a computer. They are sitting at a wooden table with a large blue pot of pink flowers in front of a grey brick wall. A guitar is propped up against the wall in the background, and there is a string of lights near the ceiling. /.End ID]

Why create image descriptions?

The primary reason for creating image descriptions is to allow people who are blind/have limited vision to experience visual content. Many people who are blind/have low vision use screenreaders, which read text out loud when it is clicked or hovered over with a mouse. A large amount of online content, such as pictures, graphics, or drawings, is visual and so possibly cannot be experienced by someone with vision problems. As a general rule of thumb, anything that can be dragged or dropped most probably requires a description. In addition, if someone has partial vision and attempts to zoom in on an image, sometimes it can become pixelated and impossible to understand. 

Some neurodivergent people might need a description to understand the tone of an image, such as the meaning of facial expressions of a person to understand what emotion the artist is trying to depict

Some people might not have high speed internet or have low computer memory, meaning that they turn off images in order to save space. This means that they as well might require descriptions of visual content

Are image descriptions the same as alt text?

no, alt text and image descriptions serve the same purpose, but they are different in how they are presented. Alt text, short for alternative text, is included in the html of an image and can be read by a screen reader. However, there are many reasons why many prefer image descriptions over alt text. 

There is a limit of 200 words in alt text on tumblr specifically (and not in other contexts, which makes this information only applicable here), which means that detailed images or graphics are unable to be described fully without possibly cutting out important information. 

People who require descriptions, but who do not use a screenreader, must right-click and search through the html of an image in order to find alt text, but with an image description they are saved that work. 

Who should create image descriptions?

Everyone who is able to should create image descriptions. A content creator is best able to communicate the message of their work through text, as they are the one who created it and thus understand its message the best. While of course it takes practice when starting out, over time image descriptions become second nature when posting visual content. Always check the notes of a tumblr post for an ID rather than reblogging without one. 

What should be included in image descriptions?

There is no simple answer to this question, there are a variety of resources and guides on how to create one, and you should not accept my advice as the ultimate authority, as I am by no means a professional, and only create descriptions in my spare time as part of the effort to make Tumblr more accessible. However, here is my information for those starting out. 

First, consider what type of visual content it is. Is it fanart of a tv show, a screenshot of a tweet, or an informational graphic meant to educate people on a particular issue? 

Then, consider what information is most important in the image. If the visual content is an image of a famous building, then in writing the description the focus should be on the building, rather than describing for instance the color of the sky, surrounding buildings, or the clothing of the people walking by, as they are not the information that is being presented. 

Perkins ELearning has an excellent list of things that should generally be included, which I will include here. In my experience, these are the most important elements to describe

The people and animals in an image

The background or setting of an image

Elements that relate to the context specifically, so if it was an image of a congested highway on a news website, the description would mention the packed cars

The colors of an image (don’t overdo it however, a simple ‘light blue’ will suffice, no need to say something like ‘a color blue that is similar to the color of a robin’s egg’ unless it is crucial to the viewer’s comprehension of an image)

Context for an image. For instance, imagine if someone had drawn a version of the Bernie Sanders ‘I am once again asking’ meme, with Eleanor Shellstrop from the Good Place saying “I am once again asking for there to be a Medium Place.” Rather than provide a description to the example such as:                                          [Image ID: A drawing of Eleanor Shellstrop saying “I am once again asking for there to be a Medium Place.” /.End ID] you would instead say                                                                                                [Image ID: A redraw of the Bernie Sanders ‘I am once again asking’ meme with Eleanor Shellstrop from The Good Place saying “I am once again asking for there to be a Medium Place. /.End ID]

If the image is of a social media post, include the username/handle of the creator as well as the reactions (likes/reblogs) if they are visible in the image, as they may be cut off by the original screenshotter. 

If it is a drawing or piece of art, always look for the artist’s signature when writing a description

How do I write an image description?

To start off, here is an example description written for a piece of art I made myself. 

[Image ID: A digital drawing of Suki from Avatar: The Last Airbender over a gold background.  She is shown from the shoulders up facing the viewer, and has a neutral expression. She is wearing metal armor over a light green tunic, and is wearing her Kyoshi Warriors facepaint and headdress. The artist’s signature ‘Astra’ is written in the lower right of the image. /.End ID]

In this description:

I made clear where the description begins and ends, so that someone with a screenreader is not confused. I usually use brackets ([ ]), write the words ‘Image ID’ (or video/gif/other) and finish with a slash, period, and the words End ID. (/.End ID)

I emphasized the type of image, in this case a digital drawing

I said the character’s name (obviously this may not be known if describing a photo or something you are not familiar with)

I described the background and the character’s clothing

I described her expression

I included the description of my signature.

This is my basic process for writing a description

I first say what the content is, such as a drawing, photo, or screenshot of a tweet.

I then use what is called Object-Action-Context for the most part, which UXDesign has a long article on https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-write-an-image-description-2f30d3bf5546. For example, [Image ID: A photo of a person standing in a crowd waving to someone out of view in front of a river. /.End ID] While obviously I would usually provide more information than that, Person = object, standing + waving to someone out of view = action, and ‘in a crowd’ = context. 

I describe the clothing that might be worn

I talk about the position that people in an image might be in, such as leaning against one another on a couch, or standing with their fingers intertwined

I talk about the expressions on their faces, if shown

I talk about their general appearance (if important to the description) such as hair color/length

As said before, I talk about the context of an image if necessary

If the background is a simple color, I usually include it in the first sentence of the description. However if it is more complicated, such as a river winding through a dense forest, I include that at the end of the description after describing the important elements. 

Typically if I am reblogging an image, I do not add on any commentary after creating an image description, as this allows others to reblog my description without my personal reaction. If I want to add on to an image, I usually reblog my description post. 

In general, it is best to remain objective when writing a description, meaning not including your opinion of the content. However especially in an informal setting, say for instance you were describing an adorable cow, I would see it as fine to say [Image ID: A small drawing of an adorable cow. /.End ID] because the emphasis is on the appearance. There isn’t a clearcut answer, and it really depends on the context. 

What are some tips for writing descriptions/common pitfalls?

If there is an element of an image like a line that represents an emotion, or a sound effect like ‘clang’ if something falls, include that in the description. For instance, [Image ID: ...beside the mug that has fallen on the floor, there are the words ‘sploosh’ indicating the sound of the water that has spilled out. /.End ID]

Put image descriptions first. Don’t hide them under readmores or any other text. If you have something with multiple images and you are the creator, place the description under each image in succession rather than all at the end. Readmores are ableist, as they require someone who has vision problems/one of the conditions described above to do more work to access the message of visual content. 

If you are mentioning the skin color and/or race of someone in an image, make sure you describe it for anyone else who might be in an image. Don’t just describe the race of someone who appears to not be white. This doesn’t mean that you have to describe race, such as if the character is one whose race is commonly known, just that if you do, make sure you do it for all characters/people in an image. 

In order to write IDs effectively, I’ve found it useful to download a screen reader. I use NVDA, which is entirely free and easy to use and can be downloaded here: https://www.nvaccess.org/download/. 

Insert + Q turns it off

While my guide has focused mostly on image descriptions, video descriptions are also necessary. However they are not my area of expertise, and differ slightly, so I would recommend anyone interested in them to check out this website https://www.washington.edu/accessibility/videos/

Transcripts, for those who are d/Deaf/Hard of Hearing, are also necessary for making content accessible, and might be required for content that also has a visual format, such as a Tiktok. I would recommend this website https://www.w3.org/WAI/media/av/transcripts/ for anyone interested in writing transcripts

What are some more resources I can check out?

Here are a series of websites that I have found while researching how to write descriptions

UX Design -  I mentioned UX Design earlier when talking about Object - Action - Context, this article is very useful and examines how to structure a description and provides very useful examples for beginners

Perkins E-Learning - This article is very useful in helping someone what to include in a description, such as clothing or background information, as well as providing some additional information on alt text if you are interested

Meloukhianet - This blog post by s. e. smith goes into detail on the elements of an image to emphasize depending on its context, using the example of a picture of their cat sunning himself. 

SOAP - This article by the Stanford Online Accessibility Program (SOAP) provides a large amount of information on the purpose of image descriptions and what content requires them

HubPages - This article by SOTD and Zera discusses the difference between sparse, lush, and overdone descriptions, which is the amount of information included, and if/when each should be used. 

I hope you found this information helpful, I encourage everyone to check out these websites, and my inbox is always open for questions!