#why did they even want energy

[whatyoutaughtwasfear]

did we know that the qsmp eggs were failed bird hybrid experiments? bc that feels huge and i havent seen anybody talking about it

[radiance1]

So, Danny was effectively homeless.

His parents are dead, his sister is dead, his friends are dead. Hell, even Vlad, Vlad kicked the fucking bucket which, Danny genuinely never expected.

Vlad was supposed to be his nemesis, his main bad guy, the guy Danny's supposed to constantly pull everything out against just to win. Not to mention how significant his presence was.

A part of him assumed that Vlad would always be there and him not being there and knowing he won't be there ever again is... weird.

So you're probably asking, how exactly did this happen?

Well you see, the nasty burger exploded, for one thing. Then when he was under Vlad's care both of them got outed for being ghosts to the GIW, which was technically Danny's fault, since he did something extremely stupid.

Somehow they got caught, and life under the GIW was not great in the slightest. The constant experiments, the dehumanization (Sometimes Danny doesn't even register himself as human), the amount of times their feelings were utterly disregarded, and so, so much more.

The GIW found Vlad to be more dangerous than Danny, even if he lacked the raw power Danny had his intellect made him dangerous and for good reason. For it was because of said intellect that Danny managed to escape.

Vlad didn't manage to do the same.

Danny hated reliving that memory. Because Vlad was a villain, evil and self-serving, he shouldn't be sacrificing himself for his literal greatest enemy to escape in his stead (Not that Vlad would say Danny was his greatest, he would probably say it was the person who refused him to buy the packers). It was just, so utterly stupid and out of character for him.

So, Danny managed to escape, Vlad died. He couldn't even say anything about Dani because she got destabilized in front of him, in front of both of them actually. It hurt to watch and, he didn't quite know the specifics between Dani and Vlad anymore, but he thinks they were getting... better.

Not how it was when Dani was first created, but Vlad was working on mending it. Which, honestly, just makes everything worse.

Danny isn't powerless but it's a damn close thing. He's far weaker than he normally would be, and he's injured on top of that too boot, his powers can barely work and it's just so stupid.

So here he was, hiding out in some random sewer because he didn't want to take the risk of being on the surface and he hates the smell, but he'll take that over being experimented on again. So, Danny spends most of his time in the sewers of this place called Gotham, he even managed to make his own little area with a couch he stole and a few other appliances that were thrown out.

He lacked a Tv or laptop, but he found a yo-yo! Most of his time was spent practicing various tricks with his yo-yo.

It got boring fast. But it was really the only safe thing he could do when waiting for his powers to come back. At least he's a god at yo-yoing now.

It was while doing various tricks with it in some random sewer path, that a literal, goddamn crocodile-man just splashed up from sewer water and half-laid on the edge, since his lower body was still in the water.

Danny looked at his yo-yo, the crocodile, and then slowly stepped on over and gently poked the crocodile dude.

He made a sound, so he was alive!

Finally! Someone to appreciate his godly yo-yoing skills!

[gayemeralds]

every day fighting for my life because i absolutely hate any concept of shadow training sonic and helping him with his chaos abilities. sonic chaos controlled with a fake emerald after watching him once or twice while hurtling through space at terminal velocity right before the capsule would explode. he was able to establish a super form in sonic two and has been collecting these emeralds in special zones since sonic one. he’s not the guy who fell from space after using his super form in sa2. sa1 when the emeralds and master emerald were acting strange knuckles wanted to ask for sonic’s advice over the matter. i simply do not think sonic needs shadow’s help.

[puppyeared]

ive made myself more wet and pathetic

[guesst]

sometimes i think about sullivan and how his n iruma’s relationship progresses and what made him choose iruma. i mean it was probably something to do with delkira that made him pick iruma up but i also think about that comment he makes early on in the series, that the others in the 3 greats have grandkids and he doesnt and how hed love to have a grandkid. and how he sends iruma to babyls partly because thats what a proper caretaker is meant to do. and how at the beginning maybe hes playacting and thinking yes this is the boy i have brought over for unspecified reasons, My Grandson, and i am the Grandfather (yay!) but its only later on that The Grandson becomes Iruma Suzuki first and then Sullivan’s Grandson second. and then i get happy about it

[snixx]

life went forward and the world moved on but I never got over among us (2018)

[moodyseal]

There's no eloquent enough way to describe the emotion one feels when finding out they got a question wrong on a test because they doubted themselves and changed the answer at the very last moment

[corvidcall]

i very rarely get a sense of satisfaction from completing tasks. ive heard people say this is an ADHD thing, but idk. personally i think i might just be bad at being alive

[manasurge]

Valentines doodles <3 I didn't get done as much as I would've liked, but I ran out of steam :( Qirri with her gf's (Taimi's) bow for @ratasum <3 Vlast beanie baby gift for Thalys for @commanderthalys <3 Vinetooth Joel with a bouquet for @mystery-salad <3

[pastafossa]

how long did it take for your fanfiction to start getting some recognition? did you "advertise" it or "promote" it in any way?

i know that people say this doesn't matter, but i feel like even if you love writing the feeling that you're just talking to yourself gets pretty exhausting at some point. so i'm not talking about having thousands of readers but rather like. what's your advice to have readers at least?

- someone who hasn't even started writing their ideas yet...

LONG POST INCOMING.

First I want you (and everyone else reading who may be struggling with this) to know I'm absolutely with you and generally think 'it doesn't matter' is a horseshit answer. It's this weird thing we do in fanfic that we generally don't apply to other artforms that I've seen. If you're a painter, a playwriter, a novel writer, and you say, 'I want at least a few people to love my paintings, I want some people to come see my play, I want my novel to be published and do at least ok' we all support them, we nod, we agree, we talk about how they can do that successfully. It's considered normal to want some amount of success. But hold up fanfic instead and it becomes, 'how dare you want that praise, you're being egotistical, you should be writing only for yourself'. I'm not saying you can't do that - there are some who do - but it's definitely this bizarre switchup to say there's this single artform in which we can't want attention on our work and that there's something wrong with us if we do. That can be an absolute creativity killer depending on what kind of writer you are (hi, extrovert writer here who only gets writy writy juice from social interaction - aka comments and discussion. So I totally get it being exhausting just doing this on your own).

So let me say this categorically: you're allowed to want things. You're allowed to want kudos, comments, and hits. You're allowed to want messages and asks. You're allowed to want some readers you can talk with about your story.

You. Are. Allowed.

Ok, now that that's out of the way.

Edit: more below the cut cause I didn't realize the length of this on mobile

TRT definitely didn't get popular overnight. The first four chapters were sporadic, and then I took a hiatus due to life things for a couple years. During that time, it kept slowly ticking up bit by bit on AO3, with occasional comments. Iirc it was hovering somewhere around 700 kudos by the time I came back in Jan 2021 - and that's a awesome! It's big! But it's also a number that was gained over a few years, to put it in perspective. It absolutely took off after I came back though, and over the past 2 years both TRT's popularity and the stats of my one-shots in the fandom have grown. Part of that's just the time frame (TRT's been up about 6 years), but it's also due to a couple things that I think built up TRT's popularity.

Building a tumblr presence was huge. Ironically I didn't really intend to do it for advertising; I just wanted a place readers could ask questions or we could all freak out about Matt or I could post some drabbles or updates on the fic. But considering the fact that AO3 and tumblr are the top fic sites online, I wound up promoting my fics unintentionally just by being a friendly, happy tumblr user and fandom goer. All I did was follow the courtesy rules I knew - post stuff regularly, reblog, comment, make friends with other writers, just be friendly in your neighborhood because you love the lady with the gif flower shop on the corner or the wise old pizza maker who serves hot fandom takes all day long. I built familiarity with my writing and name by posting short fics, and by taking part in challenges and prompt lists and short requests for drabbles if I saw them, though that's something that's hard to do if you don't have time (I've got less time now, but I started this blog in the early pandemic so I had aaaaall the time in the world to write and was using it to stay sane). I tagged religiously because I LOVE tags, but that helped, too. Tumblr's search system is half broken but the half that works means people CAN find your writing even if they aren't following. Doing all this over here got me a huge boost over on AO3.

I will say that if you can have a fandom tiktok presence, there's a lot of fic reviewers, edits, and good stuff that can get your fic some readers (I've had some people do this on tiktok for TRT and it sent a surge over). I personally haven't done anything there yet, in part because while I'm on tiktok I try to keep my actual, real person accounts separate from my fic/fandom accounts and i haven't bothered to make a second account solely dedicated to the Pasta name yet.

Longfics on AO3 have the advantage in fic stats in the sense that every time you add a chapter, it gets bumped to the top of the front page and you get seen again. Eventually a lot of people will click out of curiosity. They may not, however, give you a lot of user subs or add to your other fic stats at first, whereas if you do a bunch of oneshots you're more likely to get user subs but less hits on each fic. This is a decision you'll have to make, and I know folks in both camps who built their followings using different methods on each. Either way, it helps if you're posting regularly, either in a long fic or one-shots. I call this the Stephen King method, who said he just writes a ton and throws it all at the wall, and eventually you get enough good despite the bad that you start building a following.

Learn learn learn. This is standard fic advice I always give, but it's still relevant. I think one of the reasons imo TRT has done so well is that I've spent a lot of time over the years learning how to write and edit - I read a ton of books (sometimes just to figure out HOW good authors structure their stories), I took a lot of English classes, I've taken some creative writing courses in my spare time. That two year hiatus was heavily spent doing a lot of research and practice around an original novel I want published one day. And I used ALL of that in TRT, just to see what it was like to put it all together. Be hungry for knowledge, be hungry to learn. The more you learn, the better your fic will be, and the more people that will click.

That learning also includes a looooong string of fanfics that started at a very novice level (hello 12 year old me), to fics that were ok and did moderately well but weren't anything huge. Hell, I had a tumblr account for my previous fandoms before I wandered over to Pastafossa, and while those fics did decently, I never had the huge reaction I've gotten here. But I used each and every one of those fics to learn and grow and adapt. Treat your own fics the same way. If it doesn't get hits, try to learn from it before moving on to the next idea a little wiser and a slightly better writer than before. There will always be people who start to follow you along the way.

A small one, but important: I swear to god, do not shit-talk yourself. Not in the summary, not in the tags, not in the A/Ns. I'm not talking, 'this is my first fic!' That's fine. I mean trashing your own work. Shit like, 'ha ha this sucks, it's terrible but oh well' will absolutely lower your stats, because people will believe you and will ditch your fic. On top of that, it's just mean to yourself, and as I said above, you want to be a good person in the fandom neighborhood. That means not breaking the windows of your own house.

People generally think of summaries as a side note, but a shitty summary can absolutely tank your stats. Treat it like the rest of your fic - this is the trailer before the movie, and it's a huge element of what gets people interested in the first place.

Lastly, like I said at the top, the biggest factor is time. There are people who post one fic and explode in popularity, absolutely. But far, far more little followings are built on the bones of time, of abandoned fics, of muttering and highlighting phrases in books in the middle of the night, of trying and trying and trying until we have at last have a breakthrough and then drag that breakthrough forward with us to the next fic. TRT is absolutely one part lightning in a bottle - the biggest success I've ever had anywhere with my writing, a confluence of fandom factors and world events that gave people (and me!) time to write and read. But it's also standing on the back of whole lot of fics I wrote that look like everyone else's: ones with no comments, low interaction, insults; ones where I had precisely zero idea of what I was doing, but wanted to try anyway. And the way I got through that, as a writer who needs interaction in order to create, was by building friendships in fandom so that even when a fic didn't do all that well, I still had friends I could talk to about the characters, the world, the fandom itself. I asked friends to look them over and give advice. I had friends being my cheerleaders. And if you're an extrovert like me, or just a writer who needs that to create, then those connections are vital as you build up a following.

That's a lot of what I've done. I know there are other ways to build a following, but this is generally what I've done, what I've learned to do, and it seems to have worked. Just remember that there are no bad fics - just learning opportunities. Learn something, and that fic's a success, and work as hard as you can to make those fandom connections to carry you through the process.

I absolutely hope to see your work around one day, so that I can be on of those followers!

[vv-ispy]

If decarabian was a gamer he would have the most decked out setup imaginable. 2000+ dollar custom keyboard where nearly everything but the internal components are made of solid gold. Top-of-the-line pc entirely encased in various ornately decorated gemstones. He would have at least five monitors (bonus points if they also double as surveillance monitors.) His gaming chair would in fact be a literal throne. At times he thinks that video game logic must surely apply to real life mortal human logic as well and vastly overestimates how durable most humans are.

Someone save her

[wesavegotham]

The different parts of Gotham War not lining up at all in terms of plot, character motivation and characterization is bad enough, but now that DC is suddenly trying to explain when other titles like Detective Comics and Batman and Robin are taking place in relation to Gotham War it gets even worse because now all of these storylines make so much less sense too.

[pinkyjulien]

━ The RVC00N Dumpster 🦝

🟨 Silky Lace Bodysuit

for Fem comes in 10 style/colors

🍈 Refits for EBB, EBBPush and Vanilla Big 🎒 Compatible with Equipment EX

▶ On Nexus

[liquidstar]

WOW I FINALLY FINISHED THIS SET. There were a lot of things I wanted to get right for them so I took some extra time but hopefully it was worth it! The guild for this set is Cobalt Heart- a guild with focus on maritime missions, lead by (of course) guildmaster Neptune. There was no other planet I could've picked for his namesake lol. They're the guild I jokingly call the most jockish, but some moreso than others. I really do hope I did all the characters justice, but if you wanna know more about the individual members, it's under the cut as usual!

Name: Neptune

Name Origin: The planet named for the god of the ocean

Pronouns: He/him

Age: 52

Guild rank: Guildmaster

Weapon: Trident

Ethos (Power): Ocean wave (Control over water- stronger with sea water)

Flaw power is based on: Originally based on his overly relaxed go-with-the-flow nature, but since becoming a father and guildmaster he's matured, and his power grew from simple wave control to more powerful control over the ocean's water. Waves aren't always peaceful, but he's become someone who understands their power and the responsibility needed for it.

Notes: If it's unclear, the marks on his chest are meant to be top surgery tattoos, but in cool wave shapes!

Name: Triton

Name Origin: Neptune's moon, aptly named for his son

Pronouns: He/they

Age: 24

Guild rank: 4 star

Weapon: Twin sai

Ethos (Power): Ocean breath (Underwater breathing as well as other aquatic adaptions)

Flaw power is based on: His ardent wanderlust, especially in regards to the ocean. They literally cannot leave it alone despite any possible better reasoning, which is when it becomes a problem.

Notes: Was his other parent a mermaid or did they just do the fish thing on their own? The world may never know.

Name: Otrera

Name Origin: A trojan asteroid named after the queen of the Amazons

Pronouns: She/her

Age: 32

Guild rank: 5 star

Weapon: Brass knickles

Ethos (Power): Preflexes (Hightened reflexes)

Flaw power is based on: Her overly-guarded and cagey nature.

Notes: But her brass knuckles are pink so its quirky when she knocks your teeth out.

Name: Naos

Name Origin: A star whose name means "ship"

Pronouns: He/him

Age: 21

Guild rank: 3 star

Weapon: Modified crutches

Ethos (Power): Helm (He can change the direction of inanimate objects. It's not limited to projectiles, he can change the direction of objects while they're in someone's hand too.)

Flaw power is based on: His avoidant tenancies, especially where more serious responsibility is concerned.

Notes: Honestly? Joined the guild to boost his playboy status.

Name: Aitne

Name Origin: One of Jupiter's moons, named after the personification of Mount Etna, a stratovolcano

Pronouns: They/them

Age: 27

Guild rank: 4 star

Weapon: Spiked gauntlets and armor

Ethos (Power): Molten Core (Lava manipulation)

Flaw power is based on: Their brash and destructive nature.

Notes: Likes all their food to be charred.

Name: Ariel

Name Origin: A moon or Uranus, named after an air spirit!

Pronouns: She/her

Age: 16

Guild rank: 2 star

Weapon: Baton

Ethos (Power): Harmony (Perfect balance on anything)

Flaw power is based on: Her own difficulty maintaining emotional balance under stress

Notes: She's a gymnast! And even though I didn't make the character named "Ariel" a mermaid, you can still see a scale pattern in her leotard!

Name: Maru

Name Origin: A white dwarf whose name means "Sky." It's orbited by the planet Ahra.

Pronouns: She/her

Age: 18

Guild rank: 3 star

Weapon: Claymore sword

Ethos (Power): Sky walking (She is capable of interacting with air as if it were a tangible object, creating leverage for herself to walk and balance on as if it were solid)

Flaw power is based on: Her somewhat vain tendency to place herself above others

Notes: Complete and utterly confident she's the cooler twin

Name: Ahra

Name Origin: A exoplanet whose name means "Ocean." It orbits the star Maru.

Pronouns: She/her

Age: 18

Guild rank: 3 star

Weapon: Claymore sword

Ethos (Power): Wave riding (Creation and control of tidal waves to ride on, as if she was surfing them with no board. But she does have to be on them.)

Flaw power is based on: Her arrogance and recklessness

Notes: Completely and utterly convinced she's the cooler twin.

Name: Pipoltr/Pip

Name Origin: A star named for "a bright and beautiful butterfly."

Pronouns: Whatever really?

Age: 8

Guild rank: 1 star

Weapon: Giant lollipop

Ethos (Power): None yet!

Flaw power is based on: N/A. This doesn't mean they're flawless, but until their power develops they're really just here to go on fun little adventures.

Notes: This child hangs around with sailors all day long. The words they know....

[neverendingford]

skyglow:

(alternative title: photo dump of a midnight desert run)

[front-facing-pokemon]