putting my prediction on record now that the coming decade is going to see the rise of viral-marketed fancy at-home water filtration systems, driving and driven by a drastic reduction in the quality of U.S. tap water (given that we are in a 'replacement era' where our current infrastructure is reaching the end of its lifespan--but isn't being replaced). also guessing that by the 2030s access to drinkable tap water will be a mainstream class issue, with low-income & unstably housed people increasingly forced to rely on expensive bottled water when they can't afford the up-front cost of at-home filtration--and with this being portrayed in media as a "moral failing" and short-sighted "choice," rather than a basic failure of our political & economic systems. really hope i'm just being alarmist, but plenty of this already happens in other countries, and the U.S. is in a state of decline, so. here's praying this post ages into irrelevance. timestamped April 2023

Yeah I think this would be the best crossover ever.

happy zukki week everybody

feel free to not answer this if it is too personal but emmy i’m wondering how you met your boy and started dating? sincerely, someone who has no experience and is feeling kind of hopeless

unsure if i’ve told this story before, but!

we actually got set up on a blind date by friends. he was nineteen and I was seventeen, we went to the cinema and barely spoke haha. then we were dating for a month or so before he generously (🙄) asked me on my eighteenth if I would like a boyfriend for my birthday haha.

I think we were about seven months(?) into our relationship before we realised we’d actually met each other before. to give him his due, during our first date, he did say he recognised me but I brushed it off 🫣 we were looking through my high school year book one night when he pointed to a girl and told me he crashed her party, which I was very much at.

I then remembered that whilst I was very drunk and very angry at my then current boyfriend (a complete asshole), two guys dressed in weird hawaiian shirts crashed the place and the very pretty one spent the night flirting with me even though I was too raging to realise 🥹

seeing american (very probably racist) politicians talking about europe like there are only blonde and blue eyed people here and imply that that is somehow a sign of people being "better" and more deserving of life than those in any other part of the world that isnt america or europe makes me so unbelievable angry, not just bc its obviously racist but also bc its just not fucking true, there are all kinds of people here in all kinds of color and shape from all kinds of backgrounds, its not a fascists wet dream like they seem to pretend and them using this shit ass fantasy to justify condemming russia but not israel just makes my head want to explode twice as much

as a native, brown haired, brown eyed german with the biggest and bumpiest nose you only see in the before photo of before-and-after-surgery photos, fuck that, free palestine, genocide is wrong not matter what the people being killed look like, all of them deserve to live a long and good life in their homeland

(fyi; i am not saying we dont have a fascism problem here, oh boi, we definitely have, doesnt invalidate my point however.)

(fyi fyi; i am not fishing for sympathy, just needed to vent this bc i read about american politicians doing exactly that and it made me see red)

and to add something more useful to this post, remember your daily click https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.

My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?

Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.

I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!

I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.

I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.

So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.

Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.

I love that after over a decade on the internet my current experience boils down to waiting 3 hours to see if a holographic puppet murders a ghost hunter

steve and eddie bonding over shared trauma is old news let them bond over being petty over the same harmless annoyances like the gossipy old ladies they were born to be

trigun college!au where knives doesn't think you're good enough for vash, and hates how close the two of you seem to be getting as your friendship develops. so of course the obvious solution is to fuck you within an inch of your life on a semi-regular basis so that you don't get any ridiculous ideas about trying to date his little brother.

*I literally cannot get to sleep unless I write this*

What was the queer scene like in Arcadia?!

Seriously, what was it?! What did the subculture develop into? How were queer meet-ups done? Not only was it stuck in time, but also on TV since the seventies?! Did viewers push for more rep while those wanting Arcadia-born citizens to be free were like 'Priorities! Maybe we should push for them to be let out rather than being out in a human zoo to an audience they don't even know'. And then discourse because of course.

I mean, I kinda think that while aesthetics remained '70s, women's rights and civil rights would've progressed in Arcadia just for the sake of keeping up with the audience's standards. To be a safe version of the '70s and not one that would piss viewers off. But queer rep is still having trouble being seen as 'appropriate' today, and so would queer rights have progressed in Arcadia?

These are the questions, people!

beside a very standoffish bucky is a very determined sam who’s mission is to convince everyone they meet that he’s a sweetheart

fumi i hope you know that in an extra of how laios' party is formed he is explicitly banned from getting a crush on marcille.

like i know you went in depth on the trauma he has because of humans on your laimar post about the succubus but please know that he was explicitly banned its so goddamn funny.

im crying laughing while typing this out happy laimar love loses 🥂

Lmao yeah 🥂

It’s a very fun comic! The marriage seeker mystery can finally be put to rest 😌 I don’t really think it changes much, that it overrides anything we knew or that I theorized, esp since we already knew about the party-wide romance ban, but the meme potential (and fic potential) IS so strong now that we know Laios was the one most targeted and distrusted of all… And trust was the biggest issue, romance brings nothing but trouble in their minds but the trouble they experienced with the marriage seeker was because she was disingenuous and manipulative and Laios was oblivious, and as time went on the party realized that Marcille was trustworthy and they stopped worrying about that particular scenario happening. It can def bring a new meaning to the "This is my succubus?!! No one can see it no one can know AAAAA" line though lmfaoo. It’s so funny and honestly such a win for aroace Laios

I sort of like the thought that Zuko and Aang take the Sun Warriors' warning not to tell anyone about the dragons a little more seriously… and they keep it between them. Of course, they trust Sokka, Toph and Katara. Of course they know they wouldn’t tell anyone, but now three people (including Iroh) know the truth about Ran and Shaw. And that’s three too many when you’re trying to keep a secret.

(and there are other people at the temple as well - like Haru, Teo and The Duke - who, while trustworthy, aren’t as close to them as the others, and when it comes to secrets with as much consequence as this one, you can’t afford to take any chances.)

Furthermore, the culture within the Fire Nation since Sozin’s rein has been warped. The culture is not to respect the dragons as the original firebenders, it’s to conquer and kill them. It’s the ultimate proof of your strength as a firebender. All it takes is one mistake before rumour spreads, and people go looking for the ultimate hunt. It’s not something Zuko or Aang can risk.

Whether Katara, Toph and Sokka (and Suki) ever find out the truth is up to you. But post-war, after Zuko returns from a strange, poorly explained trip with a dragon, and eventually develops the ability to use rainbow fire, either the others have some questions about Aang’s knowing look, or they are finally let in on a monumental secret.

Doug and Elaine Thomas met in a coffee shop at Gotham U, they struck up a conversation in line talking about everything from the weather to certain wildly unpopular school policy changes, they end up talking even after they get their orders (peppermint tea and a chocolate croissant for Elaine, cinnamon latte for Doug)

Doug secures his second date when he finds out Elaine has seen approximately Zero (0) movies and takes it up on himself to show her the world

Zeb Wells I'm in your walls because what the actual fuck is this shit???

Because it definitely isn't something Spiderman whose gone out of his way to visit fans dying of cancer or other medical conditions or tried to save a homeless girl who was a fan of him only to be too late, would say.