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wonder-womans-ex · 8 hours ago

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Soulsmake Schedule

Soulsmake is an event centered on working with someone new and enjoying the process of creation!

Sign up as a writer, an artist, or either, and be assigned a random soulmate, ideally in pairs or writer+artist. Once pairs are rolled, you’ll have about a month to talk to your soulmate, find some common ground, and make an AU!

What that creation process looks like is up to the two of you—you two can draw or write as much or as little as you’d like. You can make full color art or a simple sketch, and you can write a full fic or a simple outline. You don’t even have to make anything at all! All you have to do to “complete” this event is have a single conversation.

Soulsmake is about making a friend and making a story. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Simply have fun with this low stakes, low pressure creativity event!

Below is the planned schedule, and a small explanation as to how each phase will work.

Monday, July 7 - Signups open

Saturday, July 19 - Signups close

Sunday, July 20 - Pool limiting review opens

Wednesday, July 23 - Pool limiting deadline

Sunday, July 27 - Soulmates assigned

Friday, August 1 - Soulmate reroll request deadline

Sunday, August 3 - Rerolled soulmates assigned

Monday, Sept 1 - Official completion deadline

Below the cut will be more information on each step of the event process. If you have any questions not answered in this post, check the #soulsmake qna tag on this blog to see if your question has been answered already, and if it hasn’t, our ask box is open!

Sign ups:

There will be a little over two weeks to sign up for Soulsmake. We’ll be asking you for your name, your socials, and your discord—this is the information that will be available to the other participants of the event during the limiting process.

Next, we’ll ask if you’re signing up as an artist, a writer, or either. We’ll be trying to make pairs of artist+writer, though we don’t imagine an even amount of artists and writers will be signing up, so that isn’t guaranteed. Signing up as either will help with balancing these, so if you can do both, consider signing up as either!

After that, we’ll be asking you your age bracket, specifically whether you’re an adult or a minor, and then ask if you’re comfortable working with someone in the opposite age bracket. Your exact age is not necessary, and this information will not be public.

Finally, we’ll be asking whether you’re comfortable with working in a team of three instead of as a pair. This is in case of an odd number of sign ups. We may also consider using teams of three so all teams have at least one writer and one artist.

Once you hit submit on the sign up sheet, the confirmation page will have a link to the event’s discord server. Joining that is required, as we’ll be hosting much of the rest of the event through discord!

(If you forget to grab the link before closing the confirmation page, please send an ask off anon for the discord invite!)

Pool limiting:

The next phase of the event is pool limiting. Once sign ups are closed, participants will gain access to a spreadsheet of the names, socials, and discords of all the other participants. You will then be asked to fill out a second form with everyone you want removed from your roster of possible soulmates.

This serves two purposes. The first: if you have any usual creation partner(s) you tend to work with, we would like you to write them down. We want you to work with someone you’ve never worked with before, so note down your usual accomplices to ensure you don’t get them by chance!

Second, if you see someone on the list you don’t get along with, we’d also like you to note down their names and remove them from your pool. We don’t want anyone to be randomly paired with someone they already know they won’t work well with, so this step should help minimize those conflicts by preventing them from happening.

Who you put on your limits list will be completely private, and once the event has ended, the list will be deleted.

If you do not submit a limit form, we will assume you are open to anyone who fits within the criteria from the original signup form.

Soulmate Assignment and rerolls:

[Note: Rolling soulmates may end up taking an extra day or two depending on how many sign ups we receive! If this happens, the other dates will also be pushed back accordingly.]

Finally, the soulmates will be rolled! When pairs are finalized, we’ll announce them in the discord server by pinging users. The creation period can start here for most pairs as they DM their partners, as the creation period will be done one-on-one in private DMs between soulmates rather than in the server itself.

In the first week after soulmates are rolled, participants will be asked to chat with their soulmates and get to know each other. Find out what your soulmate is interested in and find common ground!

In this stage, we’ll ask you all to be flexible and respectful. It’s possible your soulmate doesn’t watch your favorite CC, or that you aren’t super interested in your soulmate’s top favorite type of AU. That’s okay! Try to be open-minded about what your soulmate is interested in, and be flexible with what you yourself are willing to create—you’ll likely have something to bond over!

Open, kind communication will be key, as will a willingness to branch out and explore new things! If you aren’t able to be respectful and flexible, this event may not be for you.

That said, if you find that you and your soulmate aren’t compatible for any reason (ie you can find no common ground, or you’re on opposite timezones, or you just don’t really click or get along), you can come to an amicable split. If you and your soulmate decide to split, one member should head to the discord and make a ticket with the mods and ask to reroll.

Fair warning: If you and your partner cannot be respectful of each other in your decision to split, one or both of you might be asked to bow out of the event.

How rerolls will be handled will depend on how many people need rerolls and how they want their rerolls handled. Options will include rerolling new random pairs, individuals joining existing pairs, or participants picking their own new soulmate.

Creation period:

Once the pairs are solidified, the creation period officially begins! Soulmates will have one month to make up an AU together, and once the month is up, you’ll be asked to share what you have.

Again, this is a low stakes, low pressure event. You can go all out and create full art or a completed fic, or you can do some simple sketches or a simple outline. The only thing you need to do to “complete” this event is have a conversation with your soulmate!

While this is a Life Series fandom event, if you and your soulmate feel inspired to make an AU for another fandom you both share, you can do so. You can also make an original story or work with your sonas/OCs. Shipping is allowed if both parties are comfortable with it, and while we do not care if adult pairs create NSFW, we will not be reblogging it to this blog. Absolutely no GenAI or C.AI will be allowed.

You can share your work by pinging this blog and using the #soulsmake tag! If you and your partner are inspired, you are more than welcome to continue creating for your AU after the event is over.

If you still have questions after this, please feel free to check the #soulsmake qna tag or send us an ask! Additionally, any other informational posts will go in the #soulsmake info tag.

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wonder-womans-ex · 12 hours ago

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bad dating stories time: the shoe incident

so in highschool, my best friend wasnt allowed to go on dates unless there was another couple there to keep an eye on him. part of this was his parents being insane, but also, part of it was him being insane. in a problem with no reasonable parties, there are no reasonable solutions.

at some point in my junior year, my sorta-gf broke up with me, and i just wasnt feeling dating, which was bad for my friend, because he had a good thing going with a girl he met in court.

he kind of hounded me about it. kept pushing me to just put me feet back in the dating pool and i wasnt real thrilled about it, because i knew he was pushing me for his own benefit, not mine, so i kept telling him to fuck off, and after a few weeks of being told that i would date when i was damn well ready, he eventually said: okay. what if i paid for the date AND found you a blind date AND all you had to do was show up?

and i shouldve said no, i know, but i let him wear me down, and i will own my fault in that. a date starting on such a stupid premise could never have gone well.

but he still managed to find a way to make it worse.

i dont know how long he tried to set a blind date up. it couldve been multiple attempts. he couldve stooped to this immediately. but what happened in the end was that he called a girl from the ward he attended - a girl that he knew had a giant, mushy crush on him - and he said: hey! how would you feel about going on a date this weekend?

(you know, implying it was with him, but never actually saying it.)

and she said YES WOW I WOULD LOVE TO and he said great! and then he called me up and said he found me a date.

i did not learn about his crimes until several weeks later. i will die swearing before god almighty that i would never have allowed this travesty to happen if i had known.

that was on a monday. the date of the date rolled around that friday evening, and im sorry to confess, i really phoned the whole thing in. i showed up in my favorite comfy outfit, which was also a fashion crime: basketball shorts and flipflops and a baja hoodie. it was super comfy but it made me look kind of crazy. i picked him up first, and then i picked up his date next, and then we went to pick up my date, and thats where you're gonna get the play by play.

i arrived, walked across the yard, and knocked on the front door. she opened it almost immediately, like shed been waiting right by it, and i could see her expression go from OMG IM SO EXCITED to super disappointed, then disgusted and finally pissed. and because i didn't know about my friends sins, i thought it was from my outfit. which seemed... harsh. like, hey, im allowed to be quirky, fuck you. also its a blind date, i thought the deal was that we were both going to be sad broken sacks of mortality.

anyway, we looked at each other for several seconds before she slammed the door in my face.

i looked back at my friend. he was sweating bullets. i dont know what he expected from this, but there was this big long pause where we both tried to figure out what to do, and then the door opened up, and her dad invited me in, and he said she was gonna need a few minutes to finish getting ready, and that in the meantime we could sit and talk.

we did not talk. we did sit. i sat down on the couch, and he sat down in a chair across the couch, and then instead of talking he cleaned his pistol on the coffee table. i wasnt actually sure if it was a threat, or if it was just a fidget thing for 40+ year old republican men, but when i tried to help he got snappy so i just watched him put a pistol back together.

he was okay at it.

eventually my date came downstairs, still mad as hell for reasons beyond my ken, and i felt pretty guilty for being such a mess because i thought that was why she was so angry. i tried to make up for by walking her to the car and getting the door for her, just generally trying to be extra polite, but before i could make it back to the drivers side, her dad called me back to the door. so i flipped around, went to the door, and immediately regreted my decision.

soon as i was within range, her dad got waaaay too close to me, leaned in, and said "whatever you do to her, i will do to you," and my brain went into overdrive making three consecutive realizations.

realization one was, damn, the pistol thing was a threat. that sucks. what an asshole. realization two was, wait, im autistic and even i know theres a 0% chance me and my date even hold hands, least of all boink. does this guy actually think there's even a 1% chance of anyone in that car getting laid tonight? is he an idiot? and then realization three went through, which was wait, is this guy threatening to fuck me? and unfortunately, with my brain doing so much processing, my mouth was left to run amok, so somewhere between realization 2 and 3, i said:

"i can't get pregnant"

which, i swear, wasn't actually me trying to be a smartass, it was just me pointing out that he couldn't actually follow up on that threat. it just wasn't possible. we do not live in the omegaverse and im not scared of you.

still, it was an insanely catastrophic thing to say, and the moment we both heard it, we bluescreened. that single sentence obliterated both of our momentary streams of consciousness like a saltine in front of a sand blaster. problem was, he'd probably gone his whole life not even realizing someone could say something that stupid, and making that realization was going to cost him a lot of thinking time. me though? i had been saying shit like that for 17 years, i didnt have to rewrite my expectations of human nature, i just had to plan an exit and start striding. so i was already halfway back to the car before i heard "hey. hey come back. Hey. Hey. HEY. HEY WAIT. HEY GET BACK HERE. HEY-"

and then i was in my car, and i drove away.

if this happened today, he'd have called her, and the whole thing wouldve imploded then and there, but back then, there were still a decent number of teenagers without cell phones. especially the teenagers of insane, gun toting parents. so she just said: whoa what was that all about? and i said: dont worry about it, he'll tell you about it when you get home.

and she said: ok and went back to staring daggers at me and my friend.

WHICH SURPRISINGLY isnt even how the story ends.

we went to an improv comedy show, and it was a disaster. it shouldve been like, 7/10 tops, but between my date being mad, and my friend having a good time, and me having the existential terror of knowing that a guy with a pistol was probably waiting outside his house for me to come back, it was easily 11/10. i laughed way too hard at everything. especially the jokes that flopped. id sit there in this mostly silent room and laugh until i dry heaved a little, and my date was absolutely disgusted, and even my friend was a little embarrassed, which would just make me laugh harder. i laughed so hard that night i could barely talk the next day. and then the show ended, and my friend said, you know, that was a good time, but i think we should maybe do something a little chiller? who wants to walk around the park? and his date said yeah, and my date said no, and i finally had mercy on the poor woman so i said, look, im gonna drop you off. and i am so, so sorry about this, but im dropping you off like a block away. super duper sorry.

do talk to your dad about the pistols thing if you dont want this happening more in the future tho.

and she said: okay. so i dropped her off, and she walked a block down, and that was that.

then i drove my friend and his date to a park that was good for wandering. i figured they wanted something more private, so instead of following them around point blank, i chose a park with this 30 foot rope tower, and i climbed to the top and i said: hey i can see you anywhere from up here, you are officially chaperoned from a distance. get panopticoned idiot. except my friend really is an idiot, and he didnt really get the whole 'now i dont have to third wheel so insanely hard with you guys' thing so he climbed up the tower too, and then his date followed behind him, so there are three people basically sitting together on top of a telephone pole.

and then they started making out.

i was close enough to hear it.

i didnt really know what to do so i was just kind of sitting there, dissociating, when some college kids came around and started shaking the tower. my friend's date went aaaaaaaaaa im afraid of heights :( and my friend went oh, dont worry, ill hold you tight ;) and i went hey, im gonna climb down and ask them to stop.

so i did climb down, and i did ask them to stop, and they flipped me off, which i wasnt even mad about. at that point i was i was like yeah, it would be weirder if this wasnt a mess. gods plan has been to fly this day like a 747 into my metaphorical twin towers and brother he is close enough for me to see him grinning through the cockpit window. still, eventually the college students got bored, so they climbed up the tower, which gave my friend and his date a window to climb down, and together we walked back to my car.

now, i cant explain why this is, but sitting back in the drivers seat was my carriage-back-into-a-pumpkin moment. i'd been chill about all the chaos, just rolling with the punches, but sitting down made me realize how much of a shitshow the day had been, and while i couldnt go back and fix all of it, i could go back and fix one thing.

so i told my friend and his date, hey, you two, stay here and don't do anything weird. don't. then i walked back to the rope tower, and i started picking up the shoes the college students had left at the base in order to climb.

about halfway through this, i realized that if i took all their shoes, they might think i was in it for the money, and i actually wanted them to know i was in it specifically to spite them. fuck those guys. so i put all the right shoes back, gave myself a 100 foot headstart, yelled "nice shoes, assholes", did a little jig, and started running.

my advice to everyone is that college students are faster than you think. even with the headstart, and the whole climb down the tower thing, i was still only fivish seconds ahead of them by the time i got to my car. i flung the door open, looked in the backseat, didnt see anyone, flung the stolen shoes in the backseat, heard two "ow"s, took that as proof of presence, jumped in and pealed out of the lot.

my friend and his date popped up a few seconds later. they were, uh, doing something weird in the back seat. my one request - obliterated.

they climbed up to ask where the hell all the shoes had come from, and i was like yeah i stole them from the college students, and they were like oh. cool. hope you had fun. and i was like, i did. i did. but speaking of fun, what were you doing back there?

and for the first time in my buddies life, i think he was actually embarassed.

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