toomanyassassins

[toomanyassassins]

well-earned nap

[ID: Digital art of Gordon Porlock and Warren Godby from Red Valley sharing a hospital bed in a dark room. They both sleep peacefully under an orange and black quilt. Gordon is hooked up to a variety of medical equipment, while they both have bandages around their forearms. Gordon's glasses sit beside them on the bed, with their lenses cracked. End ID]

[toomanyassassins]

[toomanyassassins]

it is honestly amazing how much of writing and editing is just. logistics. like... do i use a name here or a pronoun? if i move this dialogue tag to the middle of this line and break it in half, does the end of the line hit harder that way? what if i move the tag to the front? what if i remove it entirely? ...wait, whose point of view am i in; can i reasonably say this character is appalled, or must i say they look or seem or sound appalled? is this a deliberate action or a step-removed one; is her hand closing on his shoulder, or is she closing her hand on his shoulder? environment environment environment, we need to break all this dialogue up with some narration, the scene is coming untethered. what! are! they doing! with! the rest of their bodies that are not hands! fuck fuck fuck FUCK i forgot we covered this two chapters ago and now i either need to cut this whole chunk or find a reason to reprise the conversation from earlier. name or pronoun? name or pronoun? name or pronoun? move this clause around in this sentence? oh i'll add this phrase-- nope, never mind, past!me added the same phrase two lines down. okay, if i add too much environmental narration it's going to take away from this bit, but not enough and it won't feel grounded. what if i move this to its own line? where the FUCK are their hands?

[toomanyassassins]

biggest L i've had to take from morning people is that the hours between 5 - 9 am really do have 7x as much time in them than the ones between 9 pm - 1 am and you can get your whole day's worth of shit done by noon

[toomanyassassins]

lieutenant jopson if they gave him a chance to serve cunt one last time

[toomanyassassins]

I think the single most fantastical and unrealistic thing that happens in The Terror is John Ross and James Clark Ross sitting next to each other in the scene where Sophia and Lady Jane address the admiralty/Arctic Council. No way. I don’t think you could have put JCR, John Ross, and John Barrow in the same room without an incident let alone have them sit next to each other good lord

[toomanyassassins]

[toomanyassassins]

Proposal for new fandom etiquette:

If you read a fic because it was linked/recced somewhere, you leave a comment saying "came from XXX" and that comment doesn't need to include anything else.

Because when all of a sudden there's a lot of activity on one particular fic I WANNA KNOW WHY!!!!!

[toomanyassassins]

[toomanyassassins]

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[toomanyassassins]

I wish they could invent a medical device that temporarily transfers your symptoms and pain to the doctor treating you and it worked like a shock collar. “I think light exercise would-.” and then bam they’re rolling around the floor clutching their stomach in agony and dry heaving.

[toomanyassassins]

very much a fan of this post so i felt compelled to make my own. print it out and give it to your coworkers or hang it in your cubicle and go "don't make me tap the sign"

[toomanyassassins]

[toomanyassassins]

there should be a special place in hell for those who renovate victorian houses to have modern interior like what the hell is wrong with you. i hope the ghosts kill you fr.

[toomanyassassins]

"depiction is not automatically glorification" can and should coexist with "some depiction is glorification and you need to be able to tell the difference"

[toomanyassassins]

Alexis Mata — Daydream in the Cactus Desert (oil on canvas, 2024)

[toomanyassassins]

"Sorry I can't, I'm busy"

Me being busy: