I put random tags for this but I need advice about my friends

I asked my friend to go to a concert with me and she said we’ll go while waiting on her to message and say she’s ready to book the tickets I find out she has gotten tickets for another friend and is going with her instead I later find out my other friend also got a ticket with her. Then I was told that they had no way uo and where selling the tickets and now I’m seeing photos of them on the bus and going to the concert hall.

And no it’s not just any concert

ITS FUCKING HOZIER

The LOML

the person I find a way to bring into any convo of music, I’m in tears wished them a good time I just hope they know how much they have hurt me because I was told that they didn’t mean to leave me out when things like this happened before as I am always the one left out.

I’m at a loss at what to do, they have wrecked my mental health and I’m dealing with so much families issues and my parents split up and now my friends are treating me like shite on there shoe

Since my first TMNT meme post in forever did really well, here's a lil' something for the Aprils!

I think it's only natural to feel anger when somebody isn't "taking your advice" or listening to you about their mental health or what will help them. People want to help people, and the anger comes when you are perceiving somebody as not being receptive but...

It can be a selfish impulse to say that your opinion about their illness is the only thing they need. It isn't about you, even though the advice you give is given by you.

Nobody deserves to suffer, this is true. But, also, nobody deserves to be forced to do things that either won't help or won't be genuine. If somebody isn't taking your advice, there's a reason for it (maybe it's not a good enough reason for you, but this isn't the point). It's okay to be disappointed or angry, but it's not going to help to lash out at them. That is only pouring water onto a grease fire.

✨preferences should not be standards for writing advice✨

I dont think Mob is naive as much as he's socially unaware, like the reason why he trusts Reigen so blindly is a bit more complex than just him being naive

Cause Mob reached out to Reigen because he was desperate to find someone like him, someone who understood his psychic specific issues, someone that could truly know what he's feeling and going through and give him guidance and support

Post incident Mob's thinking process was something along the lines of my powers hurt people -> my powers are bad -> my powers (my emotions, my instincts, myself) cannot be trusted

So he lost all confidence and trust in his own actions, resigning to being as passive as possible to avoid any further damage to anyone else, thus he started doubting his own perception of reality too

He's a kid already struggling with being ostracised for being socially inept, who just got traumatised and all of his insecurity increased by the tenfold, he doesn't know how to process what he's going through. He needs help.

And here comes Reigen, seemingly reliable, a responsible adult in a child's eyes, someone who claims he can understand him

Even tho Reigen doesnt. But it doesn't matter, because Mob finds comfort in his words and takes them to heart

Even if Reigen doesn't fully get it, even if he doesn't see the bigger picture, even if his advice isn't always the best

Eventually, Mob grows up, realises Reigen isn't as honest as he seemed through his 11 year old perspective, but like most things, he refuses to acknowledge it on a deeper level

Mob knows, but never tells Reigen, never thinks about what all those lies mean to him (ofc until he forces himself to face those doubts regarding Reigen, to properly acknowledge both of their flaws and accept them as they are, I should scream into the void about Confession Arc more God)

Due to his lack of trust in himself, Mob has relied on Reigen for years now to shape his moral compass, his thoughts, his decisions

Because well, Reigen lies, sure, but he isnt a bad person. When he hurts Mob, it isn't intentional or with ill intent, he still wants the best for him, what's the issue?

Except that it stunts Mob's growth. He doesn't develop as a person, doesn't have goals or wishes or ambitions, can't make choices on his own, he doesn't even let himself acknowledge his own emotions, he refuses to let himself exist

But Mob realises in time that he wants more than that, he wants to become better and be independent and feel again

Still, he puts the acknowledgement of the lies on hold for as long as he can, unwilling to question the way things are

This can make him feel a little naive, he constantly relies on Reigen and trusts his decisions and raises questions rarely until separation arc when he finally puts his foot down

And I do think that moment is the most resounding proof we have that Mob knows and allows himself to be used by Reigen, not wanting to shake the status quo, until he gets fed up

I mentioned the social ineptitude at the beggining but idk if I should even elaborate on that, you've watched the show, you know what I mean

He's blunt and can't read social cues or tonality that well and can't speak in front of crowds and is overall pretty awkward and I do think some people conflate that with naivety

Mob is still a child, he doesnt fully understand how the world works at the ripe age of 14 years old, but some folks take that as him being inherently naive/innocent/whatever which I don't find true

TW vent abt some ableist shit i got hit with today (maybe?) i need advice

This is a genuine question to every disabled person on this app cause idk if i'm the one going insane, but basically i was sitting at lunch with some friends today, and this other girl i didn't know (jessica for the sake of online privacy) started talking to me.

Then she pointed out my hearing aids (signa, they're pretty discrete but are visible) and asked about them.

So i explained my disease and my nervous damage and whatnot... (i'm hard of hearing, as in 80% loss in my left ear, 70% in the other)

She then told me she related to me, and for a second i genuinely thought she was either deaf or hoh... BITCH I WAS SO WRONG

She told me that during this summer she went scuba diving and water got stuck behind her eardrum. (she has no issues now, she recovered 100%)

So she knew how i felt, she then went on a tangent about how hard it is to lose your hearing.

???

Is it wrong that this pisses me off??? Like you can't relate to me?? You barely understand what it's like to lose you hearing.

So uh yeah, this feels so weird to say to someone who's disabled, like idk, to me it feels like telling someone who's lost a leg that you relate to them bc you broke your leg.

Yeah anyways, am i being dramatic? Cause i feel like i'm justified but it could be coming from a nice place?

"timothy. do you have feelings for lucy?" ➞ "timothy. are you proposing to lucy?"

Hey all. As someone who has been recently come across a tricky issue.

Plagiarism is not okay. Even if it's inspiration.

First. If you are inspired by a fic and plan on your own take on the story, be sure to reach out to the author first. And im not talking about, say a movie re-imagining, au premise, or any other common template. I'm talking about the exact story an author wrote.

Even if it is hiatus, make sure its okay for you to take a stab at the story if the author isn't orphaned on ao3. Reach out. Talk to them. Discuss your inspiration and find a way to write it in your own words. Don't steal sentences from the fic you are inspired from and do not just change words around in a sentence.

That's plagiarism.

What's the difference, pain wise, of being grazed by a bullet and actually being shot? I'm a writer I swear.

i need people to start paying me for every time they tell me "oh but ur arts so good ur wasting ur talent u need to do it professionally" wrong i need to do art to draw beautiful characters that not a single other person cares about while feeding every ounce of love i have into my work or to convey thoughts & feelings beyond words and to even think of doing otherwise is to deny my own nature "oh but u can do what u want and then sell it" why is everything about money to you why cant u just enjoy things at what point in ur life did u forget how to have fun

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

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

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

LONG POST INCOMING.

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

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

You. Are. Allowed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dennis is asshole. Why Charlie hate?”  “Because Dennis is a bastard-man!”

SOME THINGS I LOVE: [4/10] Friendships  Charlie Kelly and Dennis Reynolds, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (2005-)

Y'all remember when we were discussing the differences between our hyper-planning and how people with issues with time / planning for the future experience and navigate things?

I'm really fucking feeling the dysfunction of one of the largest driving features of that which is honestly - in my words - the lack of ability to really get much dopamine at all from things in the present. I don't know of neurochemically that is at all whats going on here, but its just what it feels like.

I have a lot of things going on, I have a lot of things I am doing, and a lot of those things I do think are really nice and all, but most of the time I'm doing them, its hard for me to really place a carrot on a stick because SO much of my long term plans are in a state of determinism (ie waiting for outside factors to close certain doors and open new ones to decide the more specific nuances of my next few years) and so there really isn't any concrete "this is part of the plan for this and will play into it this way and yada yada"

And like, I can play Bladurs Gate, I can work on the DnD stuff, I can write, I can play video games, I can do things that are "enriching" but since none of them really genuinely play a role in any of my plans, I really, for a lack of better words, care. It's not that they don't make me happy or I don't enjoy themdo - I do, it's just such a dull and empty joy that it almost feels worse.

Now that I'm thinking about it and the way my own mind internally verbalizes it "its just a waste of time and a distraction from the actual goal which won't come any faster" and I think thats just a different way of saying "its just a filler between now and the second shoe dropping."

I dunno man, I have a lot of time and ability to do a lot of the hobbies and projects I was wanting to do, but its just so... boring and empty and I honestly kinda hate it.

🌋

I'm bringing all of you to the capoeira practice

i dusted today.

the alarm to clean went off, and i got up and dusted until the 20 minute timer went off. turns out in that time, if i'm focused, i can do nearly the whole upstairs.

it's such a little thing, but we have to be kind to ourselves, you know? even if you little thing today is just getting out of bed, or brushing your teeth, or breathing for another day, we should be proud of ourselves.

maybe it really does get better