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iheart2manyfandoms · 1 year

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AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

So I was a part of the Linked Universe Discord server’s 4th birthday gift exchange and my giftee is @marenwithanm ! And girl might I say, you have incredible taste. The prompt I went with was language of flowers and you said you liked Four and Wild’s friendship.

Without further ado ✨

Tada!

The words around the edges are the flower names and meanings🌼🌸💐

Dandelions for freedom and survival

Cosmos for order, harmony, and balance

Forget-Me-Nots for memories

This is actually my first finished digital art piece. There was lots of experimenting involved lol. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and I hope you like it ❤️💚💙💜

#loz #lu #linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu four #lu wild #i feel like this is very important #post #my post #art #my art #i need an art tag #Lu gift exchange #lu4thgiftx #my boy #I might post the time lapse later #would you want to see that?#dandelions forget-me-nots and cosmos

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soltosia · 2 years

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Drawing of a bush and a time lapse with a song from a movie I've been "watching" while drawing. Yes I've been THAT restless during the movie. I swear it's social media's fault...

#time lapse #speedpaint #digital art #still life #???#does it count #my art #not fanart for once #I'm also surprised with that #bush #flowers #i might repost it later since I've posted it at a shitty hour and only now noticed heh

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bairdthereader · 14 days

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Time to pay homage to the Spring Queen, Tori.

[This is a long one, folks. I have lots of feelings. Sorry, not sorry! TLDR can just look at the gifs for the gist of the story.]

Having read Solitaire, This Winter, and Nick and Charlie in addition to Heartstopper, my thoughts on Tori and how she's portrayed in the show are a bit difficult to organize and express. Since we don't get her backstory in the show (yet), we see her exclusively engaging with Charlie's story; this leaves out a lot of her depth and complexity, or at least leaves it to the viewer to piece together. BUT . . .

The specific ways she goes about protecting Charlie say so much about her.

It's established from their first on-screen interaction that Charlie feels safe with Tori, both to be himself and to confide in her that he's ended his pseudo relationship with Ben, a relationship no one else knows about at this point. Tori automatically assumes the fault was with Ben, which is not only peak awesome older sister behavior, but a cue to Charlie that she knows him well enough to trust that he was not only not the offending party, but that the breakup was a very positive move for him. She's affirming and bolstering Charlie without any platitudes or unsolicited advice, a sign of her care and respect for him, as well as her understanding of him and his needs.

In Solitaire, Tori explains that she rides the bus with Charlie when he's dealing with particularly bad mental health struggles, which puts the scene toward the end of S1E7 in a slightly different perspective. She knows that something is deeply wrong, but also that Charlie isn't ready to talk about it. She keeps an earbud out just in case, but doesn't pressure him in any way, another sign of respect and silent support.

And of course the moment when Charlie is desperately vulnerable, scared, admitting his darkest thoughts to her, when she realizes for the first time (in the show timeline) just how deep the pain goes, she takes it seriously. She knows what it could mean. Though we as viewers haven't seen it yet, Tori knows her own version of this particular darkness and recognizes it in Charlie. She grounds him with firm, safe, physical touch and a truth that only she can give--which makes it the truest kind of truth, a bedrock truth for Charlie to stand on--that he is valuable to her and vital to her life.

After Charlie tells his parents about his relationship with Nick (with fairly negative results, but that's a whole other post), Tori's concern for Charlie is immediate. Not only does she remember how terrible the bullying Charlie experienced was, but she also knows how fragile his newfound happiness really is. Charlie misinterprets her question--whether intentionally or not I think might be up for debate--and assumes that her concern is mainly for Nick, asserting that he can protect Nick. Tori knows that Charlie will need that protection as well, maybe more, but also respects his choice to view the situation in this way. [Side note: respect is like Tori's secret love language; she doesn't give it very willingly.]

"Look after him or you die" seems funny, but Tori is dead serious. Her later accusation that Nick doesn't keep his promises feels harsh at first, and he doesn't really deserve it, but we have to see it for what it is. Tori is trusting Nick with a responsibility that she usually puts on herself, and she doesn't take it lightly; very few people can care for Charlie the way Tori does, and to her, failure to do so is indefensible. Nick's failing her test in this moment, though she's a complete enough person to recognize that it's a momentary lapse and trusts Nick with Charlie later in the story.

And of course there's the infamous Nelson dinner party, where Tori does in reality what we ALL want to do in spirit and knocks David down several pegs. She sees in him exactly the kind of person who bullied Charlie and made his life miserable, and she's not about to let it happen right in front of her. No real commentary here, just a deep appreciation for Tori's sisterly rage and complete disgust with David.

And then there's this:

Oh, season 3 Tori is going to be something to behold. I absolutely cannot wait. All hail the queen.

#victoria spring is a whole universe #objective: defend charlie #method: scorched earth take no prisoners #heartstopper #heartstopper netflix #heartstopper series #tori spring #victoria spring #jenny walser #alice oseman #osemanverse #charlie spring #nick nelson #narlie #nick x charlie #nick and charlie #joe locke #kit connor #solitaire alice oseman

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nexility-sims · 4 months

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𝐍𝐎. 𝟖 ❛ 𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 ❜ | THE DEN, MID MARCH 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

❛ Leonor had attended a recital just the day before, but this performance was an entirely different experience. She was unprepared for how arresting it would be. Without knowing, she had noticed the lead singer earlier that night, ostensibly holding court by the far edge of the bar, distracting the bartender with animated conversation. Leonor hadn’t heard anything she said, but her movements were full of energy, almost frenetic. Now, she held still. The bassist swayed from hip to hip. Behind them, the drummer stared out at the audience with a face full of shadows. Leonor thought the frontwoman resembled a pious statue as she stood there, chin tilted upward and eyes closed. The crowd hummed with impatient anticipation, but what she reflected back to them was unfazed tranquility. 𝐮𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧

❧ (the song here, as you perhaps could have guessed from the episode title, is meant to be "doll parts" by hole.) lightly phoned this one in BUT i'd rather keep moving than skip a week bc i was sick, so :^) this is an abridged version, and i'll post an unabridged version later today w/ a label for good measure !!! additionally, we are now done with the entirely self-indulgent red light filter, i promise sdfsdf

𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞𝐝 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

The very first chord sent a chill up Leonor’s spine. She watched, rapt, as the statue came to life in a fluid series of motions. Her voice was low and rough, not ethereal by any means but still somehow, to Leonor’s ears, exquisite. The lyrics washed over her unheard. She fixated wholly on the singing itself—on the emotion of it, how the crooning turned to a harsh quaver, within it a lament that felt more defiant than mournful. It was raw. The song’s inspiration, why this woman performed it as she did, was a mystery. It was the vulnerability of it that resonated. Leonor felt the emotion in her bones as she listened. Music was never her preferred outlet but, as she experienced the song, she wished it had been.

For these three minutes, Leonor was alone again. The stage’s pit had been packed with an eager, noisy audience that responded enthusiastically to every line of the song. As it became a concert for one, they faded. Leonor’s eyes followed the movement of the singer, how her lips parted and her fingers strummed the guitar she played. They existed together in a suspended moment outside of time. It might have occurred to her later that extending, even possessing, such a moment was well within her power. For enough money, she could have anyone’s private time—especially artists, people who needed and understood patronage. It wasn't it in the spirit of the venue, but neither was her very presence, arguably. However, she was entirely in the moment as it unfolded. Feelings welled up inside of her. Her skin prickled. Her eyes, too, felt the familiar sensation attendant to being overwhelmed.

Still, even euphoria had a blush of grief these days.

The song ended, and the bar's spirited ambience rushed back in like a sun-blocking wave. As she began speaking casually to the audience, the singer’s captivating voice changed. Whatever spell she had cast broke. Her friends remained enlivened, but Leonor felt only the desperate need to reclaim the quietude again. The minute of transition between unfamiliar songs felt like too long—too risky—of a wait. Perhaps the night had caught up with her. Or, perhaps, if she ducked into a quiet corner and collected herself, she could resume the admirable attempt at normalcy that had characterized the evening so far. That was her preferred outcome. She knew, on one level, that she was having fun. This momentary lapse wasn’t really an aberration, she feared, but she was determined to treat it as such.

Leonor turned to Kore instinctively, leaning close to exclaim the most convenient and innocuous escape valve within reach, “Where’s the restroom?”

TRANSCRIPT:

RENZO | Okay, settle down. Next up is a treat. The Fluke girls have a new song for us. This is a songwriter’s song, alright? Conceived in this building. Show some respect.

LEONOR | Where’s the restroom? KORE | Stairs, near the bar!

[Leonor sighs, door opening]

LEONOR | What are you doing here?

LEONOR | Oh—[Laughs]—sorry. RENZO | It’s a bathroom. Maybe I gotta piss.

RENZO | Hey, don’t leave. I’m kidding. Wanted to check on you. LEONOR | Really?

RENZO | Sort of. I also had an ulterior motive. LEONOR | Did you?

RENZO | I wanted to be alone with you again, too. LEONOR | You’re in luck.

RENZO | You know, you do look different in person. More real. LEONOR | I get that a lot. RENZO | Do you? Huh— LEONOR | [Snickers] No, of course not!

RENZO | So, what do you think— LEONOR | No more talking now, okay?

RENZO | I’ll show you the dressing rooms next time. LEONOR | Next time? [Chuckles]

#;long post #ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e03

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exhuastedpigeon · 2 months

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hiii, i just saw your tags on a post about catholicism and I know you watch 911, so i was wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts on how you'd like to see 911 handle the whole Eddie is a lapsed catholic and has catholic guilt and is now dating a former almost-nun. do you think eddie's going to have a moment of "oh, actually i want to do mass and confessions again because thanks to my lovely girlfriend marisol, ive found my faith again"?

ANON I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED! I'm going to put some of my own experiences under the cut at the end of this ask because I think the context is at least a little important.

I think someone like @monsterrae1 will also have a ton of insight into this as another recovering Catholic and as someone from a Latin Catholic background that's probably similar to Eddie's.

Now to my take:

When they brought in Marisol's backstory of being a novice nun I laughed so hard I fell out of my chair and then I got really excited because bringing religion into Eddie's story is, in my opinion, the most obvious path for Eddie's queer awakening and an arc where Eddie unpacks a lot of his catholic guilt and repression.

If Eddie goes back to Church, which I think he might based on Bobby's advice not because of Marisol, I don't think it's going to be a 'oh wow I missed this!' moment, I think it would be the start of a journey where Eddie realizes how impacted he is by Catholic guilt and how even if he hasn't gone to church in years, it's impacted so many aspects of his life.

Eddie saying he's a manchurian catholic and has a reservoir of catholic guilt he didn't realize was there was so funny to me because that man doesn't even realize how his catholic guilt has impacted his life. Every time he ignores his own feelings for other people. every time he tries to do what he thinks people want of him instead of what he wants. every time he shoved down his feelings to 'do what's right' that's catholic guilt, baby.

My personal feelings on it are that Eddie is going to realize that he's been repressing a lot about himself... like maybe his sexuality. He's been comphet coded for years. From the panic attack of Ana being called his wife to saying dating feels like a performance to what he said last episode about the church being a big reason he and Shannon got married. (This isn't to say he didn't love Shannon because he did, we know how much he did even after their relationship was dead in the water).

I think we'll probably get an Eddie/Marisol breakup in the next few episodes - likely triggered by Eddie realizing he's maybe not straight and maybe he needs to figure himself out. Or maybe because he still can't get it up around her because of the nun reveal. Or maybe for some other reason - like maybe Marisol is a little homophobic.

They're setting up a perfect 'queer repressed Eddie' arc. They've set it up since before the move to ABC, even if they didn't do it on purpose.

I don't think it's going to be an easy journey for Eddie though. He's probably go so much internalized homophobia inside of him. He's got so much to unlearn and so much he needs to learn to love about himself. That's one of the reasons I hope Tommy sticks around - he's someone Eddie could lean on and learn from because he came out later in like - he came from a similar background with the military - he's someone Eddie could trust with that.

Now, a little backstory on my own relationship with Catholicism before I dive in - I was raised very Catholic, church every Sunday, Catholic school (uniform and all) from kindergarten all the way to high school, I was confirmed, I was my sister's confirmation sponsor, I was an alter server, I was a lead in my high school's church choir.

But my Catholic background is also not the exact same as Eddie's. He specified he comes from Latin Catholics and that's an important distinction because different cultures have a different approach to Catholicism. I'm originally from the states and while I'm not Irish-American or Italian-American but, I was raised in a very Irish and Italian neighbourhood (lots of first and second gen immigrant folks) and have probably a more 'Irish-American/Italian-American Catholic' perspective.

I am not practicing anymore and have gone to so much therapy for what my therapist calls 'religious trauma' because Catholicism, my teachers, and some of my priests, made me hate myself for existing even before I knew why I hated myself. Catholicism and the way they speak about queer people and the way they speak about sex is extremely regressive and when you learn about it from a very young age, you internalize that.

I also experience guilt when I do basically anything for myself that isn't beneficial to other people. You're made to feel selfish for having needs. I just... don't like organized religion because of my experience with the church.

I spent like 21 years hating myself and feeling tremendous guilt about my feelings towards women and every time I would kiss a girl I would play if off as 'oh haha it's just for laughs' because Catholic. One of my best friends in university once said to me, "I'm gay, but I'm catholic so I'm straight". He's now married to a woman and has a kid and every time I see him he looks worse and sadder. He struggles with addiction, likely because he's trying to numb himself. I think any religion that makes someone feel that way is toxic.

#asked and answered #eddie diaz #catholic guilt

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bonefall · 9 months

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can clerics be lawyers? if so, maybe cinderpelt being the lawyer for squirrel & leaf? who are the options that you are thinking of?

I've got a rough outline of the Trial of Squirrelflight's Horror in mind with some neat new deets, let me toss them together so you can see what I'm trying to do here. I'll also post a "Wanted Ad" of traits the cat needs to display

But to quickly answer directly; Yes, Clerics can be lawyers. However, Cinderpelt might not fit specifically, because this lawyer needs to be equally antagonistic as well as protagonistic. This won't be a Lizardstripe situation.

BEFORE THE TRIAL;

Squirrelflight's Horror is a book that is setting up the events of TBC.

First of all, it's setting up how no one immediately caught Bramblestar being replaced by an impostor. He is not a popular leader, with a long list of controversial choices.

(unfortunately, the fact he was suddenly good at making names stood out more than his cruelty.)

Second of all, we're going to set up some tumult in StarClan.

When Squirrelflight and Leafpool die this time, it's actually their uncle Iceheart who "fetches" them.

He died in the Battle of the True Eclipse, having a rematch with Tigerstar. So they haven't seen him in a while.

From him, they learn there's been delays in StarClan cats coming up and down. But he'll walk them up. (Iceheart replaces a cat named Blade completely.)

Squirrelflight really doesn't want to go, since her grandson Hollylark (from Fallenleaf x Cinderheart) just died, leaving her apprentice Sparkpelt (from Bramblestar x Jessy) alone with newborns.

There's also been a couple shuffles in the cats they meet up in StarClan, let me go over them;

Squirrelflight is barren and had a miscarriage, back in Po3. She was only a moon pregnant (equiv: 4-ish months in a human)

She never gets back with Bramblestar after his treatment in BB!OoTS, he has Spark and Alder with Jessie.

SOOO I don't actually have a place for Dandelionkit and Juniperkit because I really do not want BB to have Angel Fetus Children like canon lmaooo

Flickerkit and Larksong are here though! Their new names are Flickerflame (starclan-given) and Hollylark (to show that Larksong and Hollytuft have been combined).

Shrewpaw, now Shrewface, has been Squirrelflight's guardian angel for her whole life. She learns this here.

When apprentices and kits die, they get full names and the ability to choose the age they appear as, barring certain circumstances.

Hollyleaf, now Fallenleaf, is not dead so she is not here.

Squirrelflight's mentor was Goldenflower, not Dustpelt. They are BOTH here though.

When Squilf and Leafpool get to StarClan, they learn that they've lived VERY controversial lives, and now need to be judged. That brings us to...

LEAFPOOL'S TRIAL

Actually does not go over as harshly as it did in canon. Squilf is going to be the one getting interrogated, sorry girlie

The main purpose of this one is to show how the trials work for Squilf later. I'm also planning for the same Lawyer who handles Leaf to handle Squilf too.

However, Leafpool is still grilled. The line, "Why do you think you're worthy of StarClan?" is used.

Breaking the code to be with Crowfeather is brought up, countered with "she came back and stayed, because the Clan did not have a Cleric."

When the Three are brought up, it's addressed with the Queen's Rights. She "did what she was supposed to," giving her children to Squirrelflight to raise.

She spent her whole life obeying, even at personal pain to herself, and served her Clan loyally despite momentary lapses in judgement.

It was a traumatic thing to go through, but still results in an easy ruling; Worthy of StarClan.

Leafpool chooses to stay in StarClan, and they watch her body die down on Earth, plus the following vigil

Squilf's Trial is a lot more complicated.

SQUIRRELFLIGHT'S TRIAL

Fire Alone, as an ideology, involves a TON of codebreaking... which she has done, often. Especially during the events of Squirrelflight's Horror where she has been forced to defy Bramblestar's direct orders several times

She's lived her whole life with the knowledge that unjust laws MUST be defied.

I think she should also kill someone in defense of the Sisters tbh. Like let's really make this worse than canon and give them something worth interrogating her about. WAS it okay to kill that person in defense of someone outside the Code?

It's not just Squirrelflight that's in question here; it's Fire Alone itself. WILL StarClan accept the idea that the Code applies to outsiders as well?

VERY IMPORTANT: This is why I do not want the Lawyer to be someone who is a Fire Alone supporter. Squirrelflight is defending it, AND herself

Iceheart, Firestar, Sandstorm, Bluestar, and all of her allies grow more and more agitated as the Trial goes on. Her enemies do as well.

Before the ruling, the entire jury is in a FEVER PITCH. Thunderstar, the Judge, cannot roar loud enough to get them all to quiet down. In fact, he makes it worse

Ashfur is one of the named "enemies" of Squirrelflight, and one of the loudest for her damnation.

The court cannot calm down enough to cast a ruling. It's starting to break out in actual fighting, Squirrelflight casts a glance at Leafpool

She's trying to yell that she needs to go home, people need her, she doesn't have time for this

And then she feels a squeeze on her ankle

Yowling with alarm, Squirrelflight feels herself sliding down into the clouds, away from the furious chaos that is engulfing StarClan. It becomes a shining speck on the horizon as if she's falling out of a dream

She's screaming for Leafpool, reaching out her claws for StarClan, convinced that she's just been damned and is being dragged down to the Dark Forest

BACK ON EARTH

She awakens in her nest, back in her body

With her son Jayfeather next to her.

As she stirs and begins to raise her head, she hears Lionblaze bellow, "YOU GLORIOUS BASTARD YOU REALLY DID IT!!" before dogpiling her

Jayfeather looks surprised that it worked at all at first, before huffing proudly

Jayfeather: "never ask me for anything ever again"

The last of a golden glow fades from his eyes; he has used the last drop of power he had left. He later shares that he doesn't think it would have worked if Squilf hadn't still been hanging on.

Fallenleaf rushes in next, followed by grandchild Ivypool, her first apprentice Rosepetal, her best friend Daisy, and by that point the Cleric's den is bursting.

Bramblestar is poking his head in, but realizes pretty quickly that he is Not Welcome, and stares longingly.

After her cuddles and hugs, Squirrelflight brings up Sparkpelt. She NEEDS to see Sparkpelt. Sparkpelt needs to know she's okay, and that her mate and poisoned child reached StarClan.

SO... LAWYER WANTED AD:

The lawyer can't be someone who's entirely on Squirrelflight's side. It's someone who is challenging her, but not entirely unsympathetic.

It needs to be someone she knew in life. Lawyers are never people who are strangers, which rules out Yellowfang who I had been heavily considering.

Ideally it's the same lawyer between Squilf and Leafp, just so we can spend plenty of time with the character and use Leaf's trial to show their personality.

Hmm.... you know, now that I'm thinking about it... what if it was ASHFUR?

Maybe even have him blackmailing Squilf... "I'll be fair, for you, of course... just promise to do whatever I say, and I'll save your sister. This is your chance to make up for everything you did to me..."

That could be pretty fun. AND be good setup for BB!TBC.

#Better Bones AU #Squirrelflight's Horror

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skz-sage · 4 months

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skz + sage 5star moments (maknae line)

a/n: my apolo cheese for being absent. i do really want to continue writing for sage! i have so many ideas. as always, any requests are welcome! please leave them in my ask box :) if i get enough love i MIGHT do lalalala era version

jisung

jisung and sage do a vlog together so sages little series where she posts vlogs every few weeks. this days guest was jisung. every time you put these two together it’s absolute mayhem. literally in every video with jisung and sage they’re giggling, screaming laughing, it’s always happy-going with them. in this vlog it shows them going to practice, the convenience store and to the park. one of the highlights in this vlog is sage and jisung walking into the store and sage says “it’s on me, get whatever.” you can immediately see the sparkle in jisung’s eyes eyes. in subtitles she put “princess peter han~”. you can tell sage was getting worried the more and more jisung added things to the basket. she waited a little more to say “hey! i’m not made of money!” she scolded him. which made him laugh. you could tell he was doing it to mess with her. it didn’t matter because at the end they had a romantic picnic at the park with their snacks.

felix

this moment consist of felix and sage getting their makeup done next to each other. they were the last two to have their makeup done. because sage is a girl, her makeup takes a little longer than the rest of the boys. felix has this cute thing where when they’re getting their makeup done next to each other, felix will stay behind and talk sages ear off. sage took a time-lapse type of video, recording felix just talking, doing nothing just annoying miju. all she really did was nod and make small replies. it’s not that she didn’t like felix doing this, it just who sage is. she could be so interested in what you’re saying but she’ll give half-assed replies. minho gets on her ass a lot for it. she later posted onto her personal instagram the video and pictures she took of him next to her. she captioned it “yongbok? more like yongboring 😒”

seungmin

for this specific part of the mv, sage had to act surprised. for an odd reason it took sage a while to get it right. of course, seungmin found it soooo amusing. just from him staring at him with a grin, she could tell exactly what was going on in his head. this would go in a compilation of “seungmin staring at sage for 30 minutes”. oh he was evil, but she loved him. the camera man will go over to seungmin and he’s laugh to the camera, mocking sage’s attempts to act shocked. “she’s endearing.. but a little stupid.” this made stays be like “HUH?? JESUS HES SO MEAN TO HER”, but no this is just how sage and seungmin joke around. they’re brutal towards each other. later on when it was seungmin on camera and sage watching, she shook her head and sighed. “he’s really pretty, stay. but he’s horrible towards me. you should always love me more.” she joked with a straight face towards the camera.

jeongin

in the 5star concept pics, jeongin and sage were paired together. the visuals they gave were astronauts, intergalactic, out of the world. it had the members talking out it for weeks. went from “she’s so gorgeous!” to “miju where did the years go? you’re all grown up!” which she hears often… it drives her crazy. in the dressing room, jeongin left behind an expensive silver necklace. with a note from jeongin saying “for miju~ ♡”. of course jeongin checked with staff to make sure she can wear it during the photoshoot. of course she gave her best visuals in the photoshoot, as she always does. after the shoot her and jeongin went out to restaurant and sage still had the necklace on. later jeongin would post on his instagram a picture of his kiss-stained cheek and the culprit? son miju.

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sunsafewriting · 1 year

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favourable conditions - chapter 4 (3.9k)

chapter excerpt:

Beatrice doesn’t sleep that night, but still, there are routines that can’t be broken.

She slips out of bed, dresses, and runs.

She runs too far and too fast to pretend it’s only exercise for the sake of conditioning. She runs until she can’t breathe, until the muscles in her left side cinch tight and burn, and still, she runs.

This time, she changes her route and heads for the beach, keeping the Governor’s manor safely out of view.

It doesn’t matter if Ava is awake. It doesn’t matter if there’s a light on. A candle isn’t a signal, only a flicker in the dark.

Beatrice knows that; she knows better .

And yet.

There is still the impulse to find Ava and demand something of her, to tug her close by both her hands, to hold her the way she has always held Beatrice, even without touching.

But there would be no use in any of it.

This was always going to happen.

(Beatrice remembers the first parade of suitors, when they were eighteen — remembers hearing about it second-hand from one of the other officers, and then sparring with Lilith until even Lilith’s usually inexhaustible fury was wrung out, and only Beatrice stood to go again.

“What has got into you?” Lilith demanded, with something almost like approval. Lilith, the only person to ever like Beatrice more after Beatrice split her lip.

And later, at the manor — Ava carrying on as she always had, barely waiting for Beatrice to take up her post in the foyer before abandoning her latest art project in favour of other pursuits. “I was informed by one of the guards that you speak Dahulean fluently.”

“Yes, Miss Silva.”

“I have been teaching myself. Perhaps you might permit me to practise with you?”

And then, in a lapse of restraint, unexpected and unstoppable, perhaps among the first things she ever said to Ava that she desperately desired to take back: “Wasn’t one of the young men here today from the Dahulea Isles? Surely he would’ve been the better candidate for this revision.”

Ava fixed Beatrice with a delighted smile. “Are you keeping track of my suitors, Officer?” she asked, twirling her paintbrush to tap Beatrice’s chest with the wooden end, and smearing a streak of blue over her own wrist.

“No, Miss Silva. One merely hears things.”

Untrue, and Ava might’ve known it, as she seemed to easily know all of Beatrice's secrets.

“Regrettably, as I had to inform my uncle, they were each exceedingly ill-fitting as matches, although many of them were quite lovely.”

“Your uncle heeds you on this matter?”

Something passed across Ava’s face, then — not anger, exactly, but not unlike it. “For now,” she said. And then the unease was gone, replaced by the kind of amusement that Beatrice feared and longed for in equal measure, that was invariably the prelude to head-swimming dizziness. “Have you forgotten my request?”

“No, Miss Silva. I will practise with you.”

It had not taken especially long for Beatrice to realise that the verbs Ava kept mixing up were very particular verbs with very particular meanings that did not, in fact, sound alike at all. Beatrice gently corrected her as often as she could, flushed and stammering herself, but Ava proved to have an inexhaustible number of mistakes ready to be made.)

#posting this early when no one is awake but me but w/e lmao #sorry for the insanely long wait but we are BACk in BUSINESS babey #sunsafewriting #ava x beatrice #avatrice #avatrice fic #avatrice fanfic

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murmurlilies · 3 months

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Less about OCs, but I'm interested to know what your process is like when creating a piece as detailed as that one you posted for Valentine's Day. How do you go about it? And do you happen to do time-lapse videos?

hmm can't say I can give an explanation that's terribly interesting or satisfying lol... I'm almost entirely self-taught, so "process" is a very loose and nebulous concept for me, and it changes from piece to piece. the one common thread among my works is that they all involve obscene amounts of trial and error. I don't have any recent time-lapses because I never think to record them, but if I did you would definitely see how often I feel the need to adjust and redo every little thing.

for the Valentine's Day piece, because it was a "remake" I had the benefit of a much more solid foundation than usual to start out with. however you can still see where I ended up deviating from the sketch phase - most obvious being her pose, the design of her hair, and the details of her sandals. (there were also meant to be candles on the dresser, but I forgot and didn't feel like adding them back in later and so I decided a vague suggestion of candlelight was enough lmao)

anyways, compared to everything else, sketching and linework are fairly straightforward and come most easily to me. there really isn't much to say, just scribble some messy lines and then whittle away at and draw over them till they magically become less messy!

when it comes to coloring and shading, things get a lot weirder and more complicated. this is where my process tends to vary the most, because it really depends on the mood of the piece. for this one I wanted something dark and seductive, so I covered the whole image in a layer of burgundy red, then painted the "lighting" on top across several Overlay layers. additional shadow details were brushed in on Multiply layers using deep purple instead of straight black, but ultimately I didn't want them to be too dark, as that initial layer of red was meant to serve as the primary "shadow" of the piece.

this is also usually where I decide which lines I want to "color" with clipping masks, which can either make certain elements pop or feel softer. it sorta brings the whole image together, giving it a much more painterly look overall. from there all that's left is to keep making adjustments and adding little details - the glittery effect on her dress was one of the last things I added, I thought it looked really nice!

...ok now take everything I just said and throw it all in a blender. because even though it might sound fairly orderly, the truth is I'm constantly making changes to all stages of my works, even the earliest ones, all the way to the end. I'll still be making adjustments to the linework and such after I've already put so much effort into the lights and shading! it's not the most efficient way of doing things... but again, trial and error. my perfectionism gets the better of me...

anyways I apologize if NONE of this made any sense, like I said I never had any formal training in art, so I'm not very good at teaching or explaining it!! at the end of the day my process is less about what makes logical sense and more about finding what feels right in a given moment. at the very least I hope it was a fun read lmao 🥳

#evayo asks #evayo art #glassborn #ocs #fun fact: i had no idea what to put in those dialogue bubbles till like an hour before upload LMAO... she could've been saying anything 🙊#art

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pippytmi · 3 months

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Kacy exes era was definitely something and so was your fic

All of those angsty prompts are sooooo good. The first one where it's late but you can't sleep so you show up at their door in pajamas 😭😭

Fully imagining Kate turning into peak Season 1 mean girl cause she isn't getting enough sleep and is making it everyone else's problem too and then Lucy also can't sleep and it's effecting her performance out in the field so Jane tells her to take a long weekend and catch up on sleep but she can't cause she can't sleep without snuggling right up into Kate

thank you omg i hope I lived up to the the angsty kacy post-exes era 🫡🫡🫡

and holy shit wait i can 100% see the vision for the sleep one? like. jane notices that lucy isnt doing her best and tells her point blank “whatever you need to get well-rested” so when kate opens her front door at midnight she is understandably very, very confused. totally imagine the scene going like this:

////

Kate answers the door with an (appropriate) amount of apprehension due to the time of night, but it melts away into soft, plain confusion when she sees Lucy standing there. “Lucy,” she says, quietly, sounding vaguely hopeful and relieved and—Lucy absolutely cannot allow that.

(The hope, anyway).

“Hi,” Lucy says firmly, “I need to sleep here. Tonight.” She reconsiders her words a little and amends, “Please.”

“Is there something wrong with your apartment?” Now Kate looks concerned. “Are you okay?”

“Everything's fine. Can I—can we take this inside? Your neighbors will really hate me otherwise.”

“Yeah, of course.” Kate steps back to let Lucy in, watching her with that patient, perplexed furrow of her brow, and Lucy is extremely mad that she still finds it cute.

“Jane told me to come here,” Lucy says, once they're standing together in the living room and Lucy is pointedly avoiding eye contact. “Well not here specifically, she just made me take time off to get some rest and…well, she might have mentioned that you're a little off yourself. In her usual cryptic way.”

“Off?” Kate echoes, frowning. “Off how?”

“Well you've been a little—prickly. More than usual. At least, that's what my team has been saying, I haven't noticed anything.” That's a lie, but Lucy is trying very hard to show she doesn't care what Kate Whistler is up to nowadays.

(Showing up today is just. A brief lapse in judgment).

Kate crosses her arms. “I've been nothing but professional. If they sent you to complain—”

“That's not why I'm here, okay?” Lucy pauses to exhale deeply. “I can't sleep. I'm driving my team crazy and Jane finally told me to take some time off and…I think I just can't sleep without you.”

“Oh.” Kate blinks, outwardly stunned, and her frown falls entirely. “Does this mean—”

Lucy doesn't let her finish. “I don't want to talk about us,” she says. “I don't want to listen to you explain, or…or anything. I just want to sleep, and obviously, it needs to happen in your bed or it won’t happen at all.” She pauses. “If you’re fine with it, anyway.”

Kate just stares, for a moment. “Is this…wise?” she finally asks. “The ramifications of getting used to being around each other could be…”

“Don’t analyze it,” Lucy protests. “And don’t look at me like I’m crazy. I just need one night of sleep or I’ll actually kill someone. Can we just, take it one day at a time here?”

“Okay.” Kate bites her lip, looks down and doesn’t look back up. “Sure. We can just stay together tonight and figure the rest out later.”

The act of giving in is very uncharacteristic for Kate Whistler, and deep down, Lucy knows why Kate is agreeing. She knows why Kate is so willing to let Lucy back into her bed despite their issues. And she knows why Kate is currently gently clearing off Lucy’s side of the bed that is so obviously slept-on instead of Kate’s usual side.

But Lucy pushes those thoughts deep, deep down, and instead buries her face into a pillow and listens to Kate’s uneven breathing. “I can hear you thinking,” she says, feels Kate shift behind her. “Relax, okay? We’re just two people…sleeping next to each other…to get one night of rest. It doesn’t have to be weird.”

Kate gives a huff of a disbelieving laugh. “Right,” she mumbles. “Not weird at all.”

Already, Lucy feels like this is working, all exhaustion melting out of her body as she sighs. “You can touch me, you know.”

Kate coughs. “What?!”

“It it helps you sleep,” Lucy yawns, eyes already closed as she pulls the blanket a little tighter. She has an explanation on the tip of her tongue about how she knows Kate likes the grounding ability to touch, but it fades when sleep comes.

(She swears, though, that she feels the faintest brush of Kate’s fingertips at her waist right before it does).

#also can we talk about that latest ep bc im DEAD god i <3 them #kacy is truly. enveloping my brain i might cave and start a whole proper fic for them...im envisioning a celebrity au lets see how it goes #anonymous #preguntas #i need a fic tag #(sort of. i just need to look back at this lol)

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baileys-3 · 8 months

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I write and write and write ... a new fanfiction story

About Lucy and Tim's secret dating time.

And it's probably going to be huge… I'm not even on the first date yet and it's almost 14,000 words.

But I want to pack everything in. Above all, of course, the scenes that we didn't see, but of course also the scenes that we did see. It should be a continuous story and not a patchwork quilt. The evolution of feelings from that nervous question about a first date to the mutual trust that we see just a few episodes later. Form nobody knows anything until suddenly everyone knows Chenford is a thing. How did they figure it out? There will be other POV's (Grey "I asumed as much", Angela, Genny ...) in the story. So I'm pretty demanding on myself right now. But writing is fun. The bad news, of course, is that it will take time. But I thought I could post a few little insights every now and then.

And that's why today there's the first little sneak peak, namely the beginning, the first words of my new story:

"Unless it is?"

She must have some kind of short circuit in her brain. Because she hears his words. They reach her ear. And are sent on from there to her brain. In a fraction of a hundredth. But something must be going wrong with the processing. "Unless it is?" That would mean ... no he couldn't have said that. " Unless it is?" That look. Those steel blue eyes. The question she sees in them. Has he blinked at all in the last few seconds? Lucy say something. And she tries to think. But she can't think. Because her brain has a lapse. Not one of those blackouts you might have in an exam. "Unless it is?" No, it's not a blackout. Say something, Lucy. But she can't say anything. Because her brain has obviously switched to stand-by mode. Because it would mean ... no it can't be. " Unless it is?"

#archive of our own #chenford #chenford fanfic #lucy chen #the rookie #tim bradford #tim bradford x lucy chen #chenford fic #tim x lucy #chenfordsource #fanfiction working process

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battleslippers · 26 days

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do u know how to render...

lol i mean ik u do but can u teach me?????? (only if u want :3)

HERE WE GO. I am by NO means an expert/professional, so my process isn’t perfect nor is it the most efficient (😭), but here’s my process + some time lapses.

added a border because this post is so damn long

1. sketch — I try to make sure it’s accurate if there is a ref, and the proportions are right in this because the sketch determines how good the rest of the piece is and how much tweaking you’ll have to do in the future. Think of it like the foundation: if it’s wonky, everything else will be wonky and it’ll be a HUGE pain to fix later (speaking from experience). The purly painting is probably a great example of what NOT to do in this case! That thing took so much time because I didn’t have a good enough sketch and I didn’t really have my colors down, so I did a bunch of tweaking, which you’ll probably see in the time lapse.

2. Base colors/undertones/blocking in: this 100% differs depending on ur style, preference, and goal of the painting. If I’m doing a photo study for value or color, I’ll simplify it down as much as possible (basic colors or 3 values). Undertones are there if you’re REALLY working a traditional method I think.

I think this is one of my best examples of this type of painting. This is purely copying a photo to the most accurate, and if I had to do anything differently, I’d block in the shapes and shadows THEN go into all those details (I feel this would be more efficient but, again, preference lol).

3. Shadows — this really goes hand in hand with the previous step, but I like to establish these with usually a cooler tone depending on the environment and lighting. If your piece is outside on a clear day, the shadows on a lot of things will be blue due to the light from the sky. If you look at enough pictures and pretty much anywhere around you, you’ll see how light and shadow interacts with colors of the environment, which is really cool!!!

4. Messing with it — with those undertones and shadows, I might add in extra colors like redness or blue for things like skin to get that layered feel (especially considering how skin isn’t totally uniform due to its mild transparency). Then I’ll color pick those in between tones and block in stuff and do it until it feels right. The Angela painting is probably my best example of this, which I’ll reblog with (plus two other ones) For Curly’s jacket, I used a few different brushes to get that texture and the whole process was basically scribbling until it looked right. Hatching is one of my favorite methods to get a little texture in, so I do that a lot too.

5. Finally touches/technical settings — once everything is totally done, I’ll usually mess around with the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness along with Color Balance and Curves on the overall painting until I’m happy with it. Then I’ll probably turn up the Sharpness a little and maybe add some chromatic aberration.

Overall, I usually do these steps going from background (if there is one) -> skin -> clothing -> hair, but I hop around a lot. I usually establish the flats overall then render each individual one.

Also, lighting does NOT have to be warm and shadows do NOT have to be cool; it all depends on the context. As long as your values are right, your colors will probably look good. Of course, it’s still worth knowing how to make them harmonious or contrast and allat, but values are the main foundation. Online resources are also awesome (my favorites being Proko, Marco Bucci, and Sinix among many others) and just observing things around you and others’ art is an incredibly powerful tool. I usually like to check my values by making my painting black and white by coloring in a luminosity layer with white. This method isn’t universal due to different programs, but if there’s a setting to turn ur drawing black and white, I def recommend it.

youtube

A side note: my rendering style is basically just painting 😭 At most I have like 5 layers max (sketch, flats, background, subject, hair or anything else I’m afraid to fuck up) but I end up combining flats and sketch most of the time and just paint over it. Most of the time, I have 2-3 layers and combine them all by the end. For the (currently) black and white Johnny one I’ll reblog with is just one layer, but I’ll probably make layers to overlay color and another to add variation/detail. My process isn’t very uniform or clean 💀

I am SO sorry this turned out to be such a long post good god

EDIT: I realized the paragraph I thought was deleted actually just moved so I erased it lmao

#asks #slipperlations #advice #???#pleaee please please push your colors too unless youre going for realism its actual hell trying to learn how to do it after condemning #yourself to photostudy hell (me)

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wild-at-mind · 1 month

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I don't want to be shitty to younger people on tumblr and in social justice spaces (teens and early 20s) and their absolutism and black and white thinking because I totally was like that too. I absolutely loved that thing where someone said something bad about a tumblr user and then you could act like everything they said was suspect forever. It was so convenient, to put things neatly into boxes. Social justice on here was very different back then, this would have been the early 2010s and a lot of it was about cultural appropriation vs appreciation. I think that is a very important conversation but this too was very black and white. I noticed that the only person injecting any nuance was an activist in her 40s I used to follow. Through her I learned also that some topics are really loaded for certain people but others might not feel the same because of different life experiences, even if they were the same ethnic group encountering the same type of potential appropriation. She got me primed for nuance I would later need, when my brain flat out stopped letting me deal with black and white thinking after my breakdown in 2015 and the fallout going up till 2017 and beyond. It's only now that I am really getting better. With occassional lapses. (Like when people on here were lauding protest suicide, that messed with my brain so much. Activists like the one I used to follow who don't like that kind of thinking, or the bloodthirstiness of a lot of the 'activism' shit on here, leave tumblr. They do, because it is shit here. You can get attacked for opposing the violence and self flaggelation in the rhetoric on here. By people you broadly agree with!!)

I think the reason youth tends to come with this kind of thinking is because they haven't seen it happen many times before and not lead to revolution. I can only assume that there really are people using social media to make young people interested in activism think that accelerationism is the only pure policy- by not doing things that might make things slightly better, society will be forced to fall and revolutionise into something much better. That means you don't become impure in the eyes of some internet strangers who don't give a fuck about you as a person, which is important to most people especially younger ones who haven't found their 'people' yet- everyone wants to be accepted. So you wait, years and years, the revolution doesn't happen. Things get worse in many ways, but it's never worse enough for society to fall. Because it won't. Or I guess probability means statistically, it could. But the older you get, the less likely it seems. What will you do?

I think the only thing that helped me out of this headspace was meeting people in real life who believed the same things as me, but who I disagreed with slightly. I found out oh wait, I do not have to do as the internet says and cast these people out. I can slightly disagree on how ideally an issue should be handled and that is ok. Now, many years later, I'm reclaiming my right to think the way I do, and to not trick myself into thinking I am a way I am not. The way my brain works may not be how my friend's brain works, but I can trust she won't reject me because I find JK Rowling's opinions offensive but don't find content dunking on her interesting in any way. Because she's my friend, and at the end of the day we share the same values.

To someone not online I don't think this stuff would make sense at all. Sadly I'm too weak to not be online, and I have this long background of being in that space which influences all the pushback with myself I've had to do. Its hard to get rid of that history, and hard to ignore the posting on here that seems to validate things that people living with OCD cannot put stock in (e.g. your feelings and thoughts are objectively real and also show what kind of person you really are- absolutely not something we can accept and still live with ourselves.) But I have to do it. I have to keep living. I have to believe that would be a net good. If I can't stay offline, maybe by writing this stuff it will help me and others who think like me.

My top tips for when you realise society isn't falling and won't just reset and come back better:

Join IRL activists, support their actions, plan actions with them. Get used to the variety of shapes activism takes. Talk with them about the things you disagree with. Your ability to ally with people you slightly disagree with but agree on most issues is the number 1 way you become set apart from internet-based activism.

Be suspicious of anyone promoting inaction as activism. (Yes that's about the not voting people.) You don't become impure if you vote for the candidate who is the least shit, or has the most chance of getting in and making things less shit. That's OCD thinking that for some reason has become mainstream on tumblr among non-sufferers and sufferers alike.

Posting on tumblr doesn't matter. I have seen people who convinced themselves it did go down conspiracy rabbit holes very easily. (You know- 'they are trying to silence us because of the importance of our posting!' and then it spirals from there)

People trying to guilt and shame you into doing certain things, such as rejecting your long-term mental health, or tell you that if you feel like shit all the time it's a good thing somehow- stay away from that thinking like its infectious. The most effective activism comes from people who are in an ok place mentally so they can plan and work together, not people who feel like them feeling ok is bad or offensive somehow and are making snap decisions based on this. You feeling bad doesn't help anyone.

#morality based ocd #ocd and activism #ocd and politics #leftism and ocd #existing with ocd on the left #unproofread sorry

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tawus · 4 months

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what is your advice on writing smut? i rlly struggle with creating the chemistry and the tingly feeling in the pits of my stomach it ends up coming out too formulated

Sorry about the delay in answering this. I’ll give my personal pointers and also a more well-rounded resource at the end for the deeper dive

1. Good smut is driven by dialogue, with stakes

Usually for the purpose of turning us on, you gotta have dialogue. Endless descriptions of sexual acts on their own end up becoming dull and nowadays there is SO much smut content out there that if you get bored with one, you can instantly click on a different fic.

Sexual acts come secondary and they’re tied to the primary thread of the tension-filled dialogue between the characters. All the way to the end there’s gotta be dialogue, and the sexual acts are performed almost in the background.

Plus, this is fanfiction, right? We turn to fics to be able to indulge in the attention of our 2D faves. So any dialogue line you write - we will read in the voice of our favourite character and that is what breathes life into that scene.

One of my best smut works is in chapter 6 of Sophisticated (warning: very filthy), but god knows I spent so much time building up the tension between the characters that some readers actually began complaining under the previous chapters, going "When are they gonna fuck already??". When they finally did fuck, 10 out of 10 readers admitted it was worth the wait. Doesn’t mean you gotta write a slowburn longfic to deliver a great smut, but you gotta establish the stakes for either character: what do they have to lose as a result of this lapse of judgement? What does it mean for each of them to let the other fuck them? Don’t be afraid to give your Reader character a personality and preferences - I know a lot of ‘x reader’ authors are afraid to do this, but I do nothing but this.

2. Good smut has to turn me on as I write it

This is lowkey TMI but it is what it is. I tend to write my smut scenes in one sitting, or two if it’s a really long one. I make sure to sit down to write it at a time I know I won’t be interrupted, so that I can catch the horny flow and ride it to the very end. I don’t think about how my sentences turn out, I just keep writing and writing it as filthy as it gets. Editing the text on a later day will fix it all up.

Onanism beforehand is forbidden btw. If you do, post-nut clarity will set in and you won’t be in the right mind for writing smut.

3. Good smut is built around MY kinks

Say, if you chose to take on a commission or a request, in that case you might be forced to write someone else’s kink – and even in that case, it won’t come out quite as genuine if you don’t at least try to embody their kink. But in general when you’re writing fics, centre your smut scenarios around your OWN kinks. That way they will come out most authentic. Don’t try to cater to everyone; you’ll never be able to. Whatever your favourite way of doing the nasty is, write it that way and I guarantee you there will be readers out there who share your preferences and those will be the ones who appreciate your work.

4. You can be inspired by well written smut, but please, for the love of enjoyment and author integrity, don’t copy – it shows.

Sorry, this isn’t directed towards you, but I’ve had experience related to this where someone copied my smut scene almost word for word and I was just like…bruh. In any case, because there is already so much smut content both here and AO3, people are just looking for something new, something unorthodox, something that doesn’t use the same cookie-cutter smut sentences, scenarios, and terms. So the more original your scene is, the better! Don't be afraid to get extra filthy with your descriptions or dialogue lines, venture out of those bounds you read in other smut fics.

And here is the external all-rounded source for writing steamy stuff: ‘I Give You My Body’ by Diana Gabaldon. Dm me if you can’t get it anywhere

#ask tawus #writing advice #writing #creative writing #writing techniques #writer tips #writers #writers on tumblr #ao3 writer #fanfiction #tawus

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wee-snek · 10 months

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Magic Trick a la @ariaste

Since OP is overwhelmed with feedback and asks about the theory, I'm going to just continue theorising about it right here:

"Continuity Errors" that stink of....Meddling:

1: When Aziraphale returns from Edinburgh, they put the plants in the car...then next scene Crowley is driving back from somewhere, but we know it's the same day. Where did he go? Was it important? Was it deleted?

2: Equally where/what the f was Crowley after the battle? Post-battle in E6, when Michael is threatening Aziraphale with erasure, Crowley is just lounging in the background looking calm as anything. Excuse me? Dearest Angel is being threatened and Crowley just...does not care? Nonsense. I expect he was either not really there, or was doing something else, and this cardboard cutout version of him was placed back in the scene by Meddling.

3: Changes to the car. This might be more "the car has accepted them both as owners" or it could just be bad attention to detail by someone Meddling. The leather seats changed to black when the car turned yellow, and then the seat colour remained black for the rest of the season. But Aziraphale did NOT remove the bullet decals from the window when he was using the car. BUT they're gone in the credit scene. Like, conspicuously gone. For why?????

4: OP touched on the demon attack being Edited, so I'll just add to this that these are supposed to be 'bottom of the barrel' demons...and yet two of the three members of the Dark Council that FurFur went to in E4 are there (not Dagon, obv, but the other two apparently high-ranking demons are now also part of this attack?). THATS ODD?!?

5: 1650. We all spotted it. BUT in light of some Meddling, I would have to ask, is 1650 a Pledge? or a Clue? Is it just Neil being silly and just going to bring up 1650 later, or were we, the audience, 'shown' the 1650 scene, but then it was deleted from our memories? I DO NOT KNOW.

6: Lots of time lapses. It's been pointed out that the time of the bookshop battle could NOT have taken all night, and that the 1941 flashback SHOULD HAVE taken all night. But also: after Crowley (iconically) orders 6-shots-of-espresso, Maggie immediately walks in and Nina is already late for closing the cafe. Hmmmm. Also, Mr Brown carries the same newspaper all week. Again, very conspicuously. Is he real? Does time not pass for him? What's going on with the prop department here?

Exhibit B: (slightly different but in the realm of 'i see what you're doing)....overarching theme of resurrection. All three flashbacks heavily involve that idea. Job's children are "brought back" from the dead, Mr Dalrymple is literally a Resurrectionist and we try to bring Morag back, then literal zombies? And Mr Brown clearly dies, and Crowley brings him back almost as a second thought.

#the magic trick you didn't see #the pledge and the turn #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens theories #ineffible husbands #metatron #fuck the metatron #ineffible #crowley

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ivan-fyodorovich-k · 6 months

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Maresuke Nogi was always his own toughest critic. Emperor Meiji trusted him and appointed him to high military posts in Japan: general in the imperial army, governor-general of Taiwan. But we all make mistakes, and Nogi’s lapses gnawed at him. Twice he requested the emperor’s leave to commit ritual suicide. Each time, the emperor refused. In Nogi’s home, now a quiet shrine in a Tokyo meadow, you can see pictures of Nogi reading the newspaper on September 13, 1912, the morning of his boss’s funeral. No one was left to stop him. Near the photo you can see the sword he used later that day to disembowel himself.

I raise the example of General Nogi to encourage present-day leaders (military, political, educational) to take a much more modest step. They should offer to resign—often, and both in times of trouble and in times of calm. This weekend, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill, did the honorable thing, and the chair of Penn’s board, Scott Bok, followed his kōhai’s example shortly after. Magill resigned because she, along with Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth, performed abysmally under questioning in Congress. Their inquisitor, upstate New York’s Elise Stefanik, a Republican, asked them whether chanting genocidal slogans violated their universities’ policies. It depends on the context, they all said, on the advice of counsel and the worst PR teams money can buy. Within days, Magill and Gay conceded that their answers had not been ideal. Gay is facing calls for her resignation, too.

Resign. Resign. Everyone: resign. Resignation has come to mean failure, something one does when cornered, caught dead to rights, incapable of continuing for even another day. It should be an act of honor—a high point in a career of service. It isn’t shameful. It is noble. It is the first and sometimes only step in the expiation of shame, and (ironically) the ultimate sign of one’s fitness for office.

No one demonstrates the value of these traits better than those who lack them entirely. I thought of Nogi’s katana, flashing from its scabbard, last week when the House voted to expel George Santos, Stefanik’s colleague in New York’s Republican delegation. The House almost never kicks anyone out, mainly because those facing expulsion have in the past tended to resign rather than weather the indignity of an expulsion vote. Santos is taking his ouster well and posting prolifically on TikTok. A psychologically normal person would have resigned the instant his tower of lies showed signs of wobbling. To let it crash down, then dance around the rubble of that tower until the orderlies arrive and pull you away, is truly mad behavior, and a demonstration of unfitness for the job, or indeed any job other than TikTok star.

I cannot prove this, but I believe the tendency to stick it out rather than resign started roughly when Representative Anthony Weiner (New York again, this time a Democrat) called a press conference to discuss whether he had, in fact, tweeted a picture of his penis, tumescent in his underwear. He could have just quit, and eventually he did (but lived to humiliate himself another day). But that pause to hold a press conference broke the seal on something dangerous, the idea that one can talk one’s way through a mortification. To take the podium and subject oneself to hostile questioning under those circumstances bespoke a delusionary chutzpah.

It soon became clear that anyone socially defective enough to persist through a scandal has a good chance of surviving it. By the time then-candidate Donald Trump (Republican, guess where) appeared on the Access Hollywood tape, describing his hobby of sexually assaulting women, it ceased to be obvious that at some point one should tap out and go home. If you have no shame, and you refuse to go, there might not be anyone out there who can make you. Mechanisms exist, as the Santos case shows. But the mechanisms were devised to govern people from another time, sensitive to ridicule and guffaws.

One should be ready for criticism, both earned and unearned. But resignation—more precisely, the offer of resignation—is an expression of confidence, both in oneself and in one’s employers or constituents. A board can reject a resignation. Voters can turn out in the streets to beg you to reconsider, or can turn out at the ballot to vote you back in. In fact, the more defensible one’s position, the greater esteem we should show for the one who offers to leave it. Call this the Nogi rule.

Harvard’s Claudine Gay evidently believed that she’d erred, because she reverted immediately to damage-control mode after leaving Washington. The next day, she told the Crimson that her testimony did not represent “my truth”—that is, that she disapproves of genocidal anti-Semitism. (This is an extreme example of the political axiom “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”) Her original answer before Congress lacked any visceral disapproval of anti-Semitism, certainly none to match Harvard’s recent record of condemning speech deemed offensive to historically disadvantaged groups. Her affect was robotic, neutral. She showed no signs of concern at all.

But her neutrality was born of an honorable principle, well worth defending. It reflected the values of free expression in a modern interpretation of the First Amendment, under which anyone can say just about any foolish thing, as long as saying it isn’t about to cause someone else to break the law. If the “context” of a genocidal chant is a nonviolent rally, the university shouldn’t stop anyone from chanting. (It should examine its soul. But that is another matter.) If the context is a crowd of protesters with bricks in hand, running at a group of Jews, the university should expel or fire every demonstrator there, whether armed with a brick or a bullhorn. All three presidents should have said this, then added a note of contrition over their universities’ failure to uphold these principles of free expression in the past.

But I’ll say it again: Gay should resign. To offer her neck to Harvard’s Board of Overseers would show her confidence that its members, like Emperor Meiji, would see past her error and ask her to endure in her position. It would also demonstrate her willingness to own that error, to acknowledge it publicly and unselfishly. Maybe the board would accept her resignation, and maybe it would not. Either of these fates is better than the one she is courting. At the moment she is trying to wriggle out of her error, and clinging to her job as if her dignity depended on keeping it. Better to teach by example that the reverse is often true, that dignity depends on leaving a job—and that staying suggests that one has nothing else, once it is gone.

The greatest legacy a resignation leaves is the creation of a culture of resignation. One institution that, up until now, has had such a culture is the Israeli defense establishment. A few weeks ago, I spoke with a former Mossad official who assured me that the entire leadership of the Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces would, as soon as the Gaza war reached a satisfactory pause, resign from their positions. They would do so, he said, because resignation was the only honorable response to their failure to foresee and prevent Hamas’s attack on October 7. Their predecessors did so in 2006, after the very messy war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and after several other episodes of modest failure in Israeli history. That they might stick around, slinking back to their offices as if hoping everyone forgot about their mistakes, would be inconceivable. In this context, one understands better the popular rage against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in whom the spirit of General Nogi is extinct: To this day, he is making the case to the Israeli right for his remaining their leader indefinitely.

One can’t get far in politics without a dogged willingness to destroy one’s critics and step on their corpses to reach the next height. But this is a minimal qualification for success, and everyone who attains high office, having climbed up from decades in the Senate or in departmental meetings, has it to an unusual degree. To persist is just to do what comes naturally for these people. To give up at the right moment—that is a quality against type, and a virtue possessed by the greatest of leaders. It is nevertheless available even to those who have hitherto shown no signs of greatness at all. Let it be said of them what is said in Macbeth of the Thane of Cawdor: that nothing became them in public service like the leaving it.

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