ao3 authors who have no social media are are so mystical. they really be writing and posting some of the most perfectly crafted pieces of media and then disappearing without a trace

just remembered a convo I had with a couple friends some weeks back so, for my FFXIV folks:

💜onlyfans.com/ariluna91 💜fansly.com/ariluna91💜 if your not interested in those ask me for my discord or my snap 😘

I walked into Goodwill.

walked out with a pair of genuine Sai

When I say The Amazing Devil is my favorite band I don't mean it's my top band among many I mean it's the only band I listen to at all. They ruined me for other music. I want everything I listen to to be just as dramatic and vocally emotive and narratively focused and lyrically intricate, but I can't find anything else that scratches the itch and believe me I've tried. 😩Want to know what comes the closest for me, weirdly enough? Tenacious D.

Me spending hours drawing this: Man sure would suck if some eldritch god of madness showed up and idk became a voice in my head or sumthing and I helped them learn about being human,,,

Worldbuilding and Writing Fiction are two separate skills.

Someone reblogged one of my shitposts yesterday (the one about intimidating myself out of worldbuilding) expressing confusion in the tags about how anyone could be intimidated out of writing through worldbuilding too much.

This was kind of baffling to me, because I think I've seen it 50-60 times now, especially with new, ambitious writers who are starting off with deep fantasy or science fiction projects. When you talk to them, they've often sunk months or even years of worldbuilding into the project, but when you ask how far they've come on the fiction side of things, they usually have writer's block, haven't started writing the story, or say they're not ready yet. 'I'm starting soon' is a common refrain. 'I just have a little bit more left to do.'

The main reason for this - I feel - is that worldbuilding and writing are two different skills. Someone who spends 5 years worldbuilding has learned how to get really good at worldbuilding, but that doesn't mean anything about how good their writing will be. Many folks think worldbuilding will automatically make a story better, but sometimes worldbuilding can become unwieldy and stressful, especially in the case of a) entirely new worlds / secondary world fantasy, or b) complex worldbuilding. Definitely not talking about contemporary romance here, lol. (Though no shade to that, I've had a lot of fun worldbuilding for those stories too).

Going from worldbuilding to writing is launching into an entirely new space. If you find writing new stories easy, that won't be a problem for you, in fact you may not even have realised they're too different skills before now.

If you find writing new stories intimidating, sometimes having hundreds or thousands of things about your world to try and constantly remember can feel overwhelming and mess with the executive function needed to start a chapter.

In some cases, worldbuilding can make it much easier to start a story. But it really depends on what you're needing to do. If you're just writing a contemporary story where you need to research two characters and two jobs, you're generally going to be just fine.

If on the other hand, you have the equivalent of a 500 page Wiki behind-the-scenes, it can feel overwhelming very quickly.

New writers fall into this trap the most, I feel. They become accustomed to what worldbuilding feels like, and they hedge on writing the actual fiction, because they just have more experience worldbuilding and keep waiting for their confidence in worldbuilding to become 'confidence in starting the story.' It doesn't work that way. They're different skills.

They might even be better at worldbuilding than writing! But that just means - if they really want to be a writer - that writing is the skill they really need to work on the most. That can be a comfort zone issue too. It can also be a 'only about 5-10% of all this work will ever appear in the story' issue, where folks want to share the worldbuilding more than the characters or plot, and therefore are just not inspired to work on their story. It can be a 'I want this story to be as good as my worldbuilding' issue. It can be a 'I find the worldbuilding part easy' issue. There are lots of reasons people stall out in worldbuilding and then feel intimidated to write the actual story.

This can also happen with established writers who become aware that the more they know about their world, the more they don't know about their world. It can start to feel like - if you write 10 articles for yourself, you end up with 100 more to write. If you write those 100 articles, you have another 300 to write. Worldbuilding never ends. Worldbuilding can be endless, and if you're an immersive writer, you can get lost very easily in the details, or in not knowing what details are critical and what details aren't. (A hint here is that you'll figure that out really fast when you start writing).

Stalling in worldbuilding can be a lot of things, it can tell you that there's something broken in the world, something broken in the story, it can tell you more about your insecurities, it can tell you how good you are at one skill and where you might need practice in another. It's super informative!

But, generally speaking, the advice I tend to give to many new writers is to try not to let your worldbuilding period last too long. Ideally, put a timer on it and see how it feels to start writing your story once the timer has gone off (3 months, 6 months, 3 weeks, put it in your phone or in your calendar, and start the first chapter, or some random scene, once that time is up).

If, after that period of time lapses, you still aren't ready to start your story, something bigger might be going on. It's an opportunity to dig deeper into the situation. And sometimes just ask yourself if you're using the idea of a novel as an excuse to do what you love most: Worldbuilding. If that's the case, there are other jobs you can parlay a solid worldbuilding ability into. It doesn't have to lead to novels. :)

But yeah it's super super common for many writers to stall out between worldbuilding and writing, and to feel overwhelmed by their own worldbuilding.

New writers get affected by it the most based on observation and hanging around writing forums, and the advice that gets asked quite often specifically on 'when do I go from worldbuilding to writing the story,' but established writers experience it too, because as Gene Wolfe once said to Neil Gaiman: "You never learn how to write a novel, Neil. You just learn how to write the novel you are on."

On this day, 19 years ago, God of War (2005) was released on the PS2!

At the start of the year I started to use StoryGraph to track my reading and, to my unexpected delight, its recommendation algorithm has proven to be not-terrible. A big win today when it thought I might enjoy the queer, poly, fantasy book Hunger Pangs by @thebibliosphere. I didn't realize it recced indie books in there, and it was a delight to see Joy's book in the wild! I think it *is* time for a re-read, thank you StoryGraph.

(also, if you like my original stuff/fic and haven't given Hunger Pangs a shot, you probably should. Joyfully bisexual, engaging world building, gentle-dom moments, all with a flair that mixes Austen and Pratchett. This book doesn't fully develop the poly relationship, but the start of the negotiations are there, and y'all know how much I love a good poly negotiation)

what some artists i enjoys art tastes like:

@unknownarmageddon - strawberry ice cream

@meimeikyu - brownies and cookies

@thatidiotutartist - chocolate milkshake

@liliallowed - cake and custard

@psycho-chair - mixed berries - vimto flavour

@justanidiotartist - jelly, specifically cherry

@swiftmitsu - lemon drops/ sherbet lemons

@elizakai - powdered sugar and gum drops

@absurdumsid - marshmallows

@milkamel - also milkshakes, but strawberry this time, as well as strawberry shortcake

@wr-n - black liquorice

@largefound - wafer bars, like, pink panthers

(i feel like some of these flavour are like, really British and so some people might not know the taste im talking about, and for that, i am so sorry.)

(really hope you guys dont mind the notifs <3)

after reading yasmin benoit's insta posts about O's character, I was all excited for some ace rep, and then, of course, comes the inevitable letdown.

O's (sarah owen's) asexuality was only discussed in the sense of, "it made me do this horrible thing because I felt so alone," and that was literally it.

like why did the villain have to be ace? it could have been anyone else. why is todd from bojack horseman still my favorite ace rep?

whys your banner furret. its super cute and i love it but if every time i open your blog and see, say, that stretched beeheeyem i would cry laugh every time. i dont mean this in a change your banner 😡😡 typa way im just curious

let's answer a ton of asks at once in this one post! how about that?

first: this one. the banner is furret because the banner used to be an image that drew up just with a bunch of pretty colors and particle effects to look pretty, but furret was the one post that really made this blog popular. furret was the one post that enough folks on here reblogged to get the blog to where it is today, so i put it in my banner as a memento for the pokémon that kickstarted you even being here to send this ask. the regulars of this blog have changed a few times, and folks that were here before furret don't really come around much anymore, but furret represents the beginning of that new era of the blog, to me. the era where folks are actually seeing these pokémon, and can find what they like here. and maybe even some new possible paths for me going forward, if i can use this following to springboard things for myself if enough of you like listening to me talk :) hehe :) i need a job :) i am a good voice actress and i'm funny and i can make music an

↑ i don't know what this means. like the png? make the entire png super transparent? or the background? what. i would prefer something other than sand though, actually

fight! fight! fight! don't fight actually please don't do that

A Gothic Tale of Two Weird Old Men: Dracula, Van Helsing, Ignorance and Obedience

So, we’ve gotten to the garlic flowers. And the first point in the novel where, on my first read, I felt a tiny prickle of recognition and unease. This section in particular made a little exclamation point pop up over my head:

"Oh, Professor, I believe you are only putting up a joke on me. Why, these flowers are only common garlic."

To my surprise, Van Helsing rose up and said with all his sternness, his iron jaw set and his bushy eyebrows meeting:—

"No trifling with me! I never jest! There is grim purpose in all I do; and I warn you that you do not thwart me. Take care, for the sake of others if not for your own." Then seeing poor Lucy scared, as she might well be, he went on more gently: "Oh, little miss, my dear, do not fear me. I only do for your good; but there is much virtue to you in those so common flowers. See, I place them myself in your room. I make myself the wreath that you are to wear. But hush! no telling to others that make so inquisitive questions. We must obey, and silence is a part of obedience; and obedience is to bring you strong and well into loving arms that wait for you.”

Now, full stop, Abraham Van Helsing means well. He’s a heroic old dude driven by goodwill—and, we can assume later, perhaps a bit of personal history with this particular malady. We’re going to see in later chapters that he is absolutely down to fight for far more than just Lucy and his protégé’s sake. Better still, he provides a great foil against the common themes that so far endanger characters who get in Dracula’s path. Skeptics are endangered because they only acknowledge the truth of the bogeyman in their midst when it’s too late while the frightened believers are too paralyzed by the threat to make a move. Van Helsing combines the Scientific with the Mystic, acknowledges both as equally important, and uses them to his advantage.

Knowledge is power and all that. Dracula really does get away with most of the shit he does half the time because his victims don’t know what they’re dealing with. (The other half of the time, it’s because he’s just bulldozing through victims on a spree, RIP Demeter crew.)

The Count is usually the one holding all the cards and using his advantages to cause harm. Van Helsing brings his own intel and uses it to help to the best of his ability.

That being said?

(Mild spoilers below)

The first time I read through Dracula—and, honestly, every time since—I can’t help picking up on how precariously close Van Helsing treads to the Count’s M.O. of manipulation and Dramatic Withholding of Information with his young charges. Granted, I can let some of it slide via the, ‘But no one would believe me if I said it was a vampire! I had to keep quiet about my reasons!’ excuse.*

*(But, sir, could you not conjure up some convincing medical-sounding bullshit?? It’s the 1890s, they would have bought anything. In fact, why was it only down to you and Jack keeping watch, Dr. Drama? There’s a whole house staff here. Yes, fine, there’s Mom with her weakheartitis, but as long as you spin it as some minor irritation that needs checking in on for updates, it should be fine. And why does Lucy have to keep quiet about the flowers? Why can’t she say it’s for her sleep? Or her health? Or a good luck charm from the doctor, it would be Terribly Rude to Be Rid of Them (read: Against every Victorian bone in hers and Mama Westenra’s body to chuck them). Anyway.)

Without giving too much away, I feel Stoker kind of tips Van Helsing’s charisma points a little too far over the edge in future scenes. Mixed up in a shitton of future The Power of Christ Compels You! overtones, there is a lot of frankly bonkers acting from the rest of the cast when it comes to interactions with/gratitude to Van Helsing for [REDACTED] reasons.

As in, characters are going to start kissing the ground this old man walks on. (metaphoric)

And kissing his hands. (Literal. Yes, Godfather style.)

Dracula was lucky to get flipped off by his Brides. Van Helsing will have these youths rally around him and Every Syllable He Breathes as if it were actual factual gospel (which some is, naturally). With a notable exception in a very livid Jonathan Harker when we get to [REDACTED]. Shout out once more to Bram Flakes for accidentally making this solicitor man Spicy+ after certain events.

Most of me wants to believe Van Helsing’s effect on the others is just Bramarama Stoker pouring all his personal fantasies of being the Lauded and Heroic Professor Doctorman (who happens to share his name, no big deal, ha ha) into this character while the others sing his praises.

But the lit critic in me sees an uncomfortable amount of parallels between Dracula’s casual arcane actions, gaslighting and coercing with Jonathan and Van Helsing’s likewise casual mysterious measures, corralling, directing, and borderline mesmerizing the rest of the cast to follow his lead exclusively, with or without offering the full details of the situation, as we see with Lucy. He’s a good man and an interesting character, but there are Some Scenes that make me wonder if he isn’t using some kind of lowkey hypnotism to make things run a little smoother in the vampire hunter brigade.

An aspen grove telling the story of at least three different species of animals.

out of curiosity!