More on the Maomao Lahan modern siblings AU. I know that Lahan's hair is probably closer to black/grey since Maomao got her greenish hair from her mother, but hey, they're siblings, so Lahan's hair can be greenish too.

idk how experimental you can say this really is for me but it's a new reshade and skin details so this counts <3 anyway yesterday i wrote down an idea for a short story and it's one bullet point and it says "a rockstar picks up a homeless hitchhiker in the 70s. something homosexual happens" and that's the whole thing. the rockstar 👨‍🎤

just finished Nimona… DAMN does it feel good to watch such an openly queer movie man

Kingdom Hearts II Official Strategy Guide (Source) Sora's Forms

inexplicably sad about the loathly lady. I just can't imagine being brave enough to ask anyone whether they would prefer you be attractive in the sight of their friends, or attractive when they fuck you. that those are the only two options. I can't stop thinking about how there are many other answers to that question, and almost all of them are wrong.

Did some sketches!

This novel tore my heart out

—I've dreamt of a man spending time with me. We seemed to be so intimate that I feel strange myself, as if we'd been intimate for so long.

Bright Rapheepong as YAI I FEEL YOU LINGER IN THE AIR 💮 Episode 2

Adding Vanity Fair to the list of classic literature that I have avoided for far too long, because everyone talked about the serious parts and neglected to mention that it was hilarious.

Why was everyone telling me about Becky Sharpe, the scandalous and shocking anti-heroine (yuck), and never once mentioning the narrator who goes off on wonderfully absurd meta-tangents about the novel's structure and characters? It would be like talking about Wodehouse as if it were all from the POV of one of the scheming antagonists and failing to mention the wide cast of absurd characters and the quirky narration. Why does this kind of thing always happen with British literature specifically? Please let me know when books are funny, I'm begging you.

Netflix: suggests Ronja the Robber's Daughter show based on the old Swedish Novel by Astrid Lindgren

Me: "Oh, my God! That is so cool that a little bit of Scandinavian literature has come to Netflix!"

Netflix show: one of the cast members is black

Me: "Okay, slightly unrealistic since this takes place in the early middle ages in Sweden, but it doesn't really affect the story so whatever*

Netflix show: Ronja has blonde hair

Me: "... ok, now you're just trying to make me mad."

i have an idea for a fic that i’m absolutely obsessed with, id love it if i were a reader, it’s the perfect plot to highlight parts of the characters that i don’t see emphasized very often but that make me go crazy. here’s the problem: i’ve written in the past, but never completed and posted anything, and it makes me sad to think that this idea being my first will mean that it’s not executed to the quality that it is in my brain’s fantasy. i know the words on the page never quite meet the pictures you paint in your head, and i’ll have other good ideas, but im, like, preemptively mourning how this fic won’t be as good as i want it to be because it’s also serving as a lesson in how to write. do you have any words of encouragement/condolences lol

Oh, I mean, I do have words of encouragement, but they're not necessarily the softest ones! First of all: you've come up with an idea you love. That's the best. That's awesome. My best piece of advice is to be stoked that you get to write this fic, because that's going to be a lot of fun. I have a lot of sympathy for your plight, because there's a particular period in any artist's journey where their taste outpaces their talent, and it sucks. I'm still there, personally. I know a lot of creatives who are. We may live here forever! But it's fine, because it's kind of got to be fine for any of us to keep creating.

My second piece of advice is to ask why you have such radically different levels of confidence in different parts of the writing process. Why are you equally convinced by the brilliance of the idea and the disappointment of your execution? Why separate those two things? It's just the one writer, and it's just the one project. If I have an idea for a story but the idea doesn't tell me how to get from Point A to Point B, that also seems like a problem with the idea. When you really get down to it, practically, we might describe ideas as "seeds" or "babies," but they're not, because they don't in and of themselves represent a predestined genetic blueprint; an idea is just as much or as little as you make of it, and it has no value outside of what you do with it. Saying "what if Draco was a Gryffindor?" without any sort of answer to back it up is just — I mean, I don't think it's "worthless," because it's fandom, and it's still fun to discuss things with your friends! but the more thought you put into your answer, the more worthwhile it is, even if it becomes more flawed as a result. Your thoughts are flawed because they're human thoughts, but they're still worth more than their absence.

I guess the main takeaway here is to not hold the idea as its own immaculate creation, and to instead treat it like what it is: a manifestation of the same writerly skill that will have to be employed to execute it. The idea, by itself, is not good. You can't mourn a fic that doesn't exist; that's like me being sad I didn't write the #1 bestselling sequel to War and Peace. What you'll have at the end of this process is an imperfect execution of an imperfect conceit, which is all that any author has ever been able to say about anything, ever.

Stargazing

2024 reads / storygraph

The Sword of Kaigen

standalone fantasy set in a rural mountain village at the edge of an empire that still holds traditional values, with families of powerful water/ice magic warriors

follows a powerful young heir who begins to question his beliefs about the empire when a new boy comes to his village from the city

and his mother, a housewife who has tried to forget her youth as a warrior and vigilante in the city since she moved back home to a loveless marriage

when there’s a violent attack on their village that they’re unprepared for, everything changes, and she has to embrace her old skills to protect her family and people

Asajj and Dooku in The Clone Wars (Novelization) by Karen Traviss

Ok, but what would The Creature have done if Victor made a woman like he demanded, but she didn't want to give him pussy?

"Wake The Fuck Up" — Easy there, little man Original title: "The New Baby" by Ruth and Harold Shane (1948) — Illustration by Eloise Wilkin