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three-seperate-johns · 1 year

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Eight shows to get to know you :) I was tagged by @thetideseternaltune

I’ve taken the ‘getting to know me’ part to heart - I don’t even follow tags for all these shows on tumblr. They are not necessarily my favourite right now, nor are they the shows I write/read fanfic for.

In no particular order:

Numb3rs - I grew up without a tv, so numb3rs was the first show I really picked out for myself, and I started watching it when I was ~15. It’s the only show I’ve ever gone out and bought every season of for myself. It’s just a really solid monster of the week detective show, with subtle and charming characters who are not too closely involved in the plots they investigate. Which is exactly my jam. One of my friends watched Numb3rs and chatted with me briefly about it, but I’ve otherwise never fangirled over it with anyone. Even though I still count it as one of my favourite shows of all time 15 years down the track. I’ve actually never read fanfic for Numb3rs, and I know next to nothing about the making of. I wouldn’t recognise the names of the actors or any of the showrunners, which is actually my ideal media consumption experience xD

Buffy - First show I ever watched while surrounded by people who are obsessed with the show, and I had an excellent time with it. It was interesting because all my friends were teenagers when they watched it for the first time, but I was in my early twenties, and it was really interesting to see where my experiences of the show diverged from theirs. I don’t usually read Buffy fanfic, and some of my Buffy opinions are pretty controversial :P I think seasons 4-6 are the best, and I love Riley which seems to really bother some of my friends xD

Fallet - This show is a fucking fever dream. It took me a whole episode to work out that it was a comedy, it had some real ‘Douglas Adams’ vibes at the end, which was fun. It’s a murder mystery set in sweden that uses a mix of swedish and english, and it is best described as ‘kooky.’ My only IRL friend who watched it (after much nagging) did so while slightly feverish with covid. They seemed to have a good time, but I would not recommend doing this xD It’s wild enough without the delirium.

Vera - the quintessential ‘slow moving, episodic, british murder mystery.’ Vera is awesome (especially in the early seasons) for just being really fucking good. My favourite thing about this show is the leading lady - Vera is a grumpy, frumpy, middle aged woman without a maternal bone in her body. I am so sick of women needing to be kind and selfless to be a protagonist.

VGHS - now for something completely different! It’s a show made by a youtube special effects guy about a high school where you learn to play videogames. And it made me cry. A death notification set to an in-universe laugh track? Sign me up! It’s mostly super goofy, and the main character is way less interesting than all his friends, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Probably the closest thing to a pure comedy I will watch, but it makes it oddly poignant moments all the sweeter. Also, 10/10 ending. I don’t read fanfic of it either, and these days I’m waaay too old for the characters personally. I definitely had a bit of a thing for the main character’s gf tho. Ngl.

Shetland - I do this thing where I avoid looking at fan content for a show if I’m enjoying it on its own merits, because I want to experience it without the brain rot. Kinda weird, but it works for me. Shetland is funny because I could immediately see a pairing I wanted to explore, but I waited years for the show to go downhill before I let myself open ao3. Luckily, I think they caught up with the books, and changed hands around season 4ish, because the quality nosedived and I have read and written so many things for Jimmy/Duncan, and do not intend to stop xD I actually haven’t had the heart to watch the latest season, because I don’t think I’ll enjoy it all that much. Cool theme song though! And everyone should watch the early short seasons.

Capitani - I hate the hays code. And not just because of the moralising and the homophobia - it makes storytelling predictable. The impact it continues to have on all english speaking media is never more obvious than when you watch something from another part of the world and are completely blindsided by the emotional arc. Capitani fucking killed me. I’ve read that Capitani is Luxembourg’s only globally successful media product. I don’t know if that’s true, but I wasn’t sure if Luxembourg was a country or a city before I watched it, so it’s probably not far from the truth. I now have a fun little rap song in Luxembourgish on my spotify playlist! It won my heart forever when they set up a joke and completed it four episodes later without any call backs. Imagine having that much faith in your audience! I would read the shit out of fanfiction of the fucked up love story between Capitani and Karla, but unfortunately, there is none :(

MASH - My ex step father owned every season of MASH on DVD, and when I was 14 my friend and I would rush to my house to watch them while having sit-up competitions. I don’t know why this was a fun activity for two 14 year old girls, but I have so many fond memories of this time. It was the first tv show I ever watched sequentially, and the first show I ever watched start to finish. It was also the reason I beat all the boys in my class when we had to do those fitness tests in PE! xD I’m personally a bigger fan of the show post-season 3 when they had the big tone shift. While there are definitely funny scenes, the image in my head when someone mentions MASH is always Charles smashing up his record player. So while it’s famous as a comedy, that’s not really how I remember it. I keep meaning to go look up the show on ao3, because I am sooo curious about what the common pairings are, and what kind of tone the fics take.

I had a lot of fun with this :) Thanks for tagging me! I’m way too shy to tag eight people, but would love to hear about the viewing past of: @republicofgaypirates @galadriel1010 @leliesblou @scullyverse @justplainsalty

#tag games?#im going to be honest i have no idea what this is called #numb3rs #buffy #fallet #vera #vghs #shetland tv #capitani #mash

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gae-bolg-alternative-dot-exe · 1 year

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I'm putting together a "Which super popular anime/manga nosedived in quality/plot/writing/other the hardest?" poll and I was originally going to list 9 and have the 10th be other (in tags) option but now I'm thinking if I should make a tournament out of this instead?

As of now the 9 are: Attack on Titan, Naruto Shippuden, My Hero Academia, Bleach, Food Wars, Sword Art Online, Fairy Tail, Promised Never Land, and Prison School

Those nine I know are popularly seen as being good then having declines but there's also stuff that I've heard about or personally watched like: Demon Slayer, Chaika the Coffin Princess, Tokyo Ghoul, Aldnoah.Zero, Psycho-Pass, Wonder Egg Priority, One Punch Man (Murata run), Kiznaiver, Death Note, Darker than Black, Overlord, Kabaneri, Darling in the Franxx, Dr. Stone, Yu-gi-oh, Shingeki no Bahamut, Kado: The Right Answer, etc.

If I make a it into a tourney I'd essentially get rid of the Other option which I do think is fun and I'd feel it would come down to the popular shonens anyway so idk.

#and no I'm not including Fire Force because that wasn't even good from the start #but I could say the same for shit like sword art and I'm still including it b/c I know other people like it a lot at the beginning so idk #I think I'm putting too much thought into this

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deadendtracks · 1 year

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i think i'm landing on the opinion that the quality of this kind of interview has really nosedived in recent years, and am starting to be convinced it's because anyone with any writing talent can't afford to be a writer any more.

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apocalyptic-dancehall · 10 months

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For the violence game 1, 12, 15

1 - the character everyone gets wrong

i'm doing a twofer for this one fuck it

i will literally peel myself alive for every time people think claptrap is JUST annoying or JUST perverted or JUST bossy or JUST depressed and pity-fishing, like yeah those are some of his personality traits, but sometimes a lot of people write him off as JUST those things and it drives me mad! unless you've got good reasons and aren't just blindly hating on him, i don't wanna hear it

first impressions do make an impact however but i feel like too many people think bl3 clap is just claptrap in general and not a case where his writing quality nosedived

and numero dos.. jack

jack is highly entertaining and magnetic, yes, and yet, he is so so so fucking pathetic and somehow SOMEHOW people think he's done nothing wrong! it's all lilith and moxxi and felicity and claptrap and roland and athena's fault (/s) blah blah blah and I DON'T WANNA HEAR ANYMORE OF THAT BULLSHIT

jack is a manipulative, colonizing, misogynist dictator who skins and strangles kittens for fun, has canonically expressed how exhilarating killing people has been even before he became the hyperion ceo, shows little to NO remorse for his actions, has little care for other people's feelings/existence unless they interest him or provide a means to an end for him, burnt down his ex's arena just because they broke up, and despite what he claims, doesn't care much for his top henchmen (timothy's 20-year contract and the subsequent events, wilhelm getting poisoned before heading to the tundra express (without his knowledge), his complete underreaction to nisha (his GIRLFRIEND at the time) most likely dying, and murdering claptrap after taking the h-source from his system), and certainly doesn't give two flying fucks about his own daughter, as seen in this post where it's implied that he beats her (probably after overlook, since angel's only in-person appearance is after that)

12 - the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

CLAPTRAP MY BABY CLAPTRAP MY HONEY CLAPTRAP MY SWEET LITTLE RAGTIME GUYYYYYYY

i'll admit that yes he can be a bit much in bl1 but if you looked past that tiny speedbump he's pretty interesting, like among the biggest things he's done is stage a revolution! a goddamn planet-wide revolution! and why? it's because he saw his fellow claptrap units being mistreated and abused, and while the way he went about it was a bit much (cough cough claptrap did nothing wrong COUGH), he was still fighting for what he believed was right! also him shooting marcus in the back that was so satisfying actually even if it didn't actually happen

and then (chronologically) pre-sequel rolls around. he's paired up with five other people who, while varying in this aspect, hate his guts, and despite that, he still carries a positive attitude! even when he's been broken and traumatized by what he and the others have to do, he carries on. yes he's terrified, yes he wants nothing to do with this, but orders are orders.

cue claptastic voyage. somewhat innocuous enough, just a bit of mind-diving, dubstep-infested insanity, no? it kinda takes a turn when the gang meets shadowtrap, who is basically claptrap's antithesis, he's actually intelligent, calculating, and doesn't sound like bill cipher after having 15 cans of monster back-to-back. through him the vault hunters air out a lot of claptrap's dirty laundry, deal with his intensely repressed guilt in the most violent way possible, and increasingly grow exasperated with him.

right before they head into the cortex, claptrap (well, his personified consciousness) snaps right the fuck out, explicitly spelling it out to them that all he wanted to do was help, and if they didn't want to appreciate his attempts despite everything, they never deserved anything good to go for them in the first place. and still! right as he and shadowtrap meet face-to-face for the last time, after pulling away from the high-five to seal the deal, shadowtrap asks him why. claptrap's reasoning is that they're (the vault hunters) his friends, and despite all of the shit he's been dragged through thanks to them, he's still willing to forgive them for everything. such a thing may have (implicitly) influenced shadowtrap to revive claptrap after the dlc.

bl2 leans HARD into the comedic side of claptrap, for better or for worse, but he still manages to pull through and provide considerable assistance! without him, you would've still been on the southern shelf, without him, there was no way to breach the anti-competitor gate at thousand cuts, and without him, getting into hero's pass was nigh-impossible. the last one especially because claptrap expresses how he's actually done something right for once in a way reminiscent of what happened a couple of years prior and it's very heartwarming for me aaaaaa

i don't have much in the way of bl3 because i haven't played it yet by the time i'm answering this but from what i HAVE seen.. claptrap's definitely lost a lotta fucks and i'm like about fucking time! thing is that they're playing up the joke aspect and kiiinda took away a crucial part of him (his door opening prowess) but!! i think his friendship with ava and baby dancer redeemed him, the former being a nice change of pace post-tales and a good way to garner at least some likability (considering how unpopular ava otherwise is), and the latter having him (and the bl3 vault hunters) come to a girl's house, her revealing that she can't dance anymore because along the 7 or so years between 2 and 3, she lost the use of her legs, and claptrap still dances with her! because he manages to convince her that even though that may be the case, she could still dance with her wheels

oh and he doesn't charge her for any of this. at all. honest to fucking god this was a glimpse of claptrap at his best

tl;dr: claptrap may be totally pathetic and kind of annoying as hell but he'll still do what it takes to make people happy in any way he can, and while it's been used against him quite a bit, he still has a warm-enough heart to try again. thanks for coming to my ted talk

15 - that one thing you see in fanart all the time

maybe not all the time but it's quite often and not at all negative!

it's when people draw other characters sitting on him like a stool. i find it really funny because literally anyone could perch on top of him and he'd still be right-side up. bonus points if he reacts curiously

#responses!#releasing some bottled-up potential here THANK YOU #i er uh. went all out on the claptrap love opes lol #👁‍🗨#📺

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whymasi · 2 years

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To bloom a flower that resembles the pretty you (AO3, restricted)

Charles regularly goes to a garden blooming with a wide variety of flowers to pick them and sell on the market, in exchange for meagre amounts of money. There is a castle that looms over that garden, with stories passed around from mouth to mouth in the village claiming that there lives a boy named Max inside this castle, who was made extremely hideous by a moment of accidental rage from his father.

Uhh so I’ve finally got down to writing a fic and posted it on AO3??? arghhh I haven’t written in so long I feel my quality of writing has nosedived... still I’m quite excited to make this teeny contribution to the Lestappen community! <3

#lestappen #Charles Leclerc #Max Verstappen #AO3 fanfic

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captainmdhridoyhossain-blog · 10 months

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[ad_1] For years, the research picture on how social media affects teen mental health has been murky. That is changing as scientists find new tools to answer the question. Olivier Douliery /AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Olivier Douliery /AFP via Getty Images For years, the research picture on how social media affects teen mental health has been murky. That is changing as scientists find new tools to answer the question. Olivier Douliery /AFP via Getty Images Back in 2017, psychologist Jean Twenge set off a firestorm in the field of psychology. Twenge studies generational trends at San Diego State University. When she looked at mental health metrics for teenagers around 2012, what she saw shocked her. "In all my analyses of generational data — some reaching back to the 1930s — I had never seen anything like it," Twenge wrote in the Atlantic in 2017. Twenge warned of a mental health crisis on the horizon. Rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness were rising. And she had a hypothesis for the cause: smartphones and all the social media that comes along with them. "Smartphones were used by the majority of Americans around 2012, and that's the same time loneliness increases. That's very suspicious," Twenge told NPR in 2017. But many of her colleagues were skeptical. Some even accused her of inciting a panic with too little — and too weak — data to back her claims. Now, six years later, Twenge is back. She has a new book out this week, called Generations, with much more data backing her hypothesis. At the same time, several high-quality studies have begun to answer critical questions, such as does social media cause teens to become depressed and is it a key contributor to a rise in depression? In particular, studies from three different types of experiments, altogether, point in the same direction. "Indeed, I think the picture is getting more and more consistent," says economist Alexey Makarin, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A seismic change in how teens spend their time In Generations, Twenge analyzes mental health trends for five age groups, from the Silent Generation, who were born between 1925 and 1945, to Gen Z, who were born between 1995 and 2012. She shows definitively that "the way teens spend their time outside of school fundamentally changed in 2012," as Twenge writes in the book. Take for instance, hanging out with friends, in person. Since 1976, the number of times per week teens go out with friends — and without their parents — held basically steady for nearly 30 years. In 2004, it slid a bit. Then in 2010, it nosedived. "It was just like a Black Diamond ski slope straight down," Twenge tells NPR. "So these really big changes occur." At the same time, around 2012, time on social media began to soar. In 2009, only about half of teens used social media every day, Twenge reports. In 2017, 85% used it daily. By 2022, 95% of teens said they use some social media, and about a third say they use it constantly, a poll from Pew Research Center found. "Now, in the most recent data, 22% of 10th grade girls spend seven or more hours a day on social media," Twenge says, which means many teenage girls are doing little else than sleeping, going to school and engaging with social media. Not surprisingly, all this screen time has cut into many kids' sleep time. Between 2010 and 2021, the percentage of 10th and 12th graders who slept seven or fewer hours each night rose from a third to nearly one-half. "That's a big jump," Twenge says. "Kids in that age group are supposed to sleep nine hours a night. So less than seven hours is a really serious problem."

On its own, sleep deprivation can cause mental health issues. "Sleep is absolutely crucial for physical health and for mental health. Not getting enough sleep is a major risk factor for anxiety and depression and self-harm," she explains. Unfortunately, all of those mental health problems have continued to rise since Twenge first sounded the alarm six years ago. "Nuclear bomb" on teen social life "Every indicator of mental health and psychological well-being has become more negative among teens and young adults since 2012," Twenge writes in Generations. "The trends are stunning in their consistency, breadth and size." Across the board, since 2010, anxiety, depression and loneliness have all increased. "And it's not just symptoms that rose, but also behaviors," she says, "including emergency room visits for self-harm, for suicide attempts and completed suicides." The data goes up through 2019, so it doesn't include changes due to COVID-19. All these rapid changes coincide with what, Twenge says, may be the most rapid uptake in a new technology in human history: the incorporation of smartphones into our lives, which has allowed nearly nonstop engagement with social media apps. Apple introduced the first iPhones in 2007, and by 2012, about 50% of American adults owned a smartphone, the Pew Research Center found. The timing is hard to ignore, says data scientist Chris Said, who has a Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton University and has worked at Facebook and Twitter. "Social media was like a nuclear bomb on teen social life," he says. "I don't think there's anything in recent memory, or even distant history, that has changed the way teens socialize as much as social media." Murky picture becomes clearer on causes of teen depression But the timing doesn't tell you whether social media actually causes depression in teens. In the past decade, scientists have published a whole slew of studies trying to answer this question, and those studies sparked intense debate among scientists and in the media. But, Said says, what many people don't realize is scientists weren't using — or didn't even have — the proper tools to answer the question. "This is a very hard problem to study," he says. "The data they were analyzing couldn't really solve the problem." So the findings have been all over the place. They've been murky, noisy, inconclusive and confusing. "When you use tools that can't fully answer the question, you're going to get weak answers," he says. "So I think that's one reason why really strong evidence didn't show up in the data, at least early on." On top of it, psychology has a bad track record in this field, Said points out. For nearly a century, psychologists have repeatedly blamed new technologies for mental and physical health problems of children, even when they've had little — or shady — data to back up their claims. For example, in the 1940s, psychologists worried that children were becoming addicted to radio crime dramas, psychologist Amy Orben at the University of Cambridge explains in her doctoral thesis. After that, they raised concerns about comic books, television and — eventually — video games. Thus, many researchers worried that social media may simply be the newest scapegoat for children's mental health issues. A handful of scientists, including MIT's Alexey Makarin, noticed this problem with the data, the tools and the field's past failures, and so they took the matter into their own hands. They went out and found better tools. Hundreds of thousands of more college students depressed Over the past few years, several high-quality studies have come that can directly test whether social media causes depression. Instead of being murky and mixed, they support each other and show clear effects of social media. "The body of literature seems to suggest that indeed, social media has negative effects on mental health,

especially on young adults' mental health," says Makarin, who led what many scientists say is the best study on the topic to date. In that study, Makarin and his team took advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the staggered introduction of Facebook across U.S. colleges from 2004 to 2006. Facebook rolled out into society first on college campuses, but not all campuses introduced Facebook at the same time. For Makarin and his colleagues, this staggered rollout is experimental gold. "It allowed us to compare students' mental health between colleges where Facebook just arrived to colleges where Facebook had not yet arrived," he says. They could also measure how students' mental health shifted on a particular campus when people started to spend a bunch of their time on social media. Luckily, his team could track mental health at the time because college administrators were also conducting a national survey that asked students an array of questions about their mental health, including diagnoses, therapies and medications for depression, anxiety and eating disorders. "These are not just people's feelings," Makarin says. "These are actual conditions that people have to report." They had data on a large number of students. "The data comes from more than 350,000 student responses across more than 300 colleges," Makarin says. This type of study is called a quasi-experiment, and it allows scientists to estimate how much social media actually changes teens' mental health, or as Makarin says, "We can get causal estimates of the impact of Facebook on mental health." So what happened? "Almost immediately after Facebook arrives on campus, we see an uptick in mental health issues that students report," Makarin says. "We especially find an impact on depression rates, anxiety disorders and other questions associated with depression in general." And the effect isn't small, he says. Across the population, the rollout of Facebook caused about 2% of college students to become clinically depressed. That may sound modest, but with more than 17 million college students in the U.S. at the time, that means Facebook caused more than 300,000 young adults to suffer from depression. For an individual, on average, engaging with Facebook decreases their mental health by roughly 22% of the effect of losing one's job, as reported by a previous meta-analysis, Makarin and his team found. Facebook's rollout had a larger effect on women's mental health than on men's mental health, the study showed. But the difference was small, Makarin says. He and his colleagues published their findings last November in the American Economic Review. "I love that paper," says economist Matthew Gentzkow at Stanford University, who was not involved in the research. "It's probably the most convincing study I've seen. I think it shows a clear effect, and it's really credible. They did a good job of isolating the effect of Facebook, which isn't easy." Of course, the study has limitations, Gentzkow says. First off, it's Facebook, which teens are using less and less. And the version of Facebook is barebones. In 2006, the platform didn't have a "like" button" or a "newsfeed." This older version probably wasn't as "potent" as social media now, says data scientist Chris Said. Furthermore, students used the platform only on a computer because smartphones weren't available yet. And the study only examined mental health impacts over a six-month period. Nevertheless, the findings in this study bolster other recent studies, including one that Gentzkow led. Social media is "like the ocean" for kids Back in 2018, Gentzkow and his team recruited about 2,700 Facebook users ages 18 or over. They paid about half of them to deactivate their Facebook accounts for four weeks. Then Gentzkow and his team looked to see how a Facebook break shifted their mental health. They reported their findings in March 2020 in the American Economic Review. This type

of study is called a randomized experiment, and it's thought of as the best way to estimate whether a variable in life causes a particular problem. But with social media, these randomized experiments have big limitations. For one, the experiments are short-term — here only four weeks. Also, people use social media in clusters, not as individuals. So having individuals quit Facebook won't capture the effect of having an entire social group quit together. Both of these limitations could underestimate the impact of social media on an individual and community. Nevertheless, Gentzkow could see how deactivating Facebook made people, on average, feel better. "Being off Facebook was positive across well-being outcomes," he says. "You see higher happiness, life satisfaction, and also lower depression, lower anxiety, and maybe a little bit lower loneliness." Gentzkow and his team measured participants' well-being by giving them a survey at the end of the experiment but also asking questions, via text message, through the experiment. "For example, we sent people text messages that say, 'Right now, would you say you're feeling happy or not happy,'" he explains. Again, as with Makarin's experiment, the effect was moderate. Gentzkow and his colleagues estimate that temporarily quitting Facebook improves a person's mental health by about 30% of the positive effect seen by going to therapy. "You could view that meaning these effects are pretty big," he explains, "or you could also see that as meaning that the effects of therapy are somewhat small. And I think both of those things are true to an extent." Scientists still don't know to what extent social media is behind the rising mental health issues among teenagers and whether it is the primary cause. "It seems to be the case — like it's a big factor," says MIT's Alexey Makarin, "but that's still up for debate." Still, though, other specifics are beginning to crystallize. Scientists are narrowing in on what aspects of social media are most problematic. And they can see that social media won't hurt every teen — or hurt them by the same amount. The data suggests that the more hours a child devotes to social media, the higher their risk for mental health problems. Finally, some adolescents are likely more vulnerable to social media, and children may be more vulnerable at particular ages. A study published in February 2022 looked to see how time spent on social media varies with life satisfaction during different times in a child's life (see the graphic). The researchers also looked to see if a child's present use of social media predicted a decrease of life satisfaction one year later. That data suggests two windows of time when children are most sensitive to detrimental effects of social media, especially heavy use of it. For girls, one window occurs at ages 11 through 13. And for boys, one window occurs at ages 14 and 15. For both genders, there's a window of sensitivity around age 19 — or near the time teenagers enter college. Amy Orben and her team at the University of Cambridge reported the findings in Nature Communications. This type of evidence is known as a correlative. "It's hard to draw conclusions from these studies," Gentzkow says, because many factors contribute to life satisfaction, such as environmental factors and family backgrounds. Plus, people may use social media because they're depressed (and so depression could be the cause, not the outcome of social media use). "Nevertheless, these correlative studies, together with the evidence from the causal experiments, paint a picture that suggests we should take social media seriously and be concerned," Gentzkow adds. Psychologist Orben once heard a metaphor that may help parents understand how to approach this new technology. Social media for children is a bit like the ocean, she says, noting that it can be an extremely dangerous place for children. Before parents let children swim in any open

water, they make sure the child is well-prepared and equipped to handle problems that arise. They provide safety vests, swimming lessons, often in less dangerous waters, and even then parents provide a huge amount of supervision. Alyson Hurt created the graphic. Jane Greenhalgh and Diane Webber edited the story. [ad_2] #screens #causing #teen #depression #Jean #Twenges #book #shows #link #Shots

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lavender-lores · 2 years

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june reading wrap-up

finally back from my trip so now i can make this post! i've also updated my read list accordingly :)

the love interest (cale dietrich) - 6/13, 4 stars

it was entertaining for sure! but some parts of the book were either badly written or with weird plot pacing 😭😭 and even though its supposed to be stereotypical, what can i say? it was stereotypical.. and then the late half of the book just comes at you out of nowhere it was weird... but i really liked it what can i say??

my mechanical romance (alexene farol follmuth) - 6/14, 5 stars

this book knocks it OUT OF THE PARK! its realistic and its witty, and i guess a large part of the reason i liked it so much was because i related so much. its ironic but i finished this book about being a girl in robotics while literally sitting in my robotics class where i'm the only girl 😭😭 i loved this book. i want to frame it. its lighthearted in the parts it needs to be and the pacing + writing is superb. you gotta read it!

these violent delights (chloe gong) - 6/21, 4 stars

this book has been in my possession since literally winter and i have been trying SO HARD to read it until now and it was just SO HARD to get into. but by chance when i picked up at the beginning of my vacation i found myself well into the book. i dont think i'll check out the sequel, though. it was good, but it just didn't hit all the way for me.

cafe con lychee (emery lee) - 6/21, 2.5 stars

idk why but emery lee's writing just doesnt stick well with me. the book had me feeling empty and it seemed like there was just no real reason behind the book, yknow? it was fine at best. but i didn't enjoy it

a crown of wishes (roshani chokshi) - 6/22, 4.5 stars

this book!!! was so fun!!! i am not an enemies to lovers type of person (i am an extinct species) but this was literally so fun. the RELATIONSHIP between the mcs, the ACTION, the FANTASY, and the ROMANCE!!!! i loved it so much! this book was just so me in a way i cant explain. this one is one thats going on the darlings shelf

the kite runner (khaled hosseini) - 6/23, 5 stars

not much i can say on it that nobody else has, but let's just say that i'm using this for my ap lit summer reading as a "book that demonstrates literary merit."

skyhunter (marie lu) - 6/24, 4 stars

another that took too much time to get into 😅 my friend recommended this to me in like november and kept asking me about it because they loved this one so much but i had to kept telling them i hadnt finished it yet and i felt really bad.. but once i read it it wasn't all that bad! but it wasn't a fave that's for sure.

the tiger at midnight (swati teerdhala) - 6/28, 5 stars

I. LOVED. THIS. BOOK. the dialogues were fun and the pacing was good, plus it had the long-lost-royal trope that i absolutely love! sometimes though the writing would be weird about the whole viper stuff cuz it would keep saying she was super scary and then most of the book is her acting very.. lackluster? as opposed to this in-universe reputation. either way, i simply had to get the next book asap. and...

the archer at dawn (swati teerdhala) - 6/29, 2 stars

....... what happened 😭 idk the story quality literally nosedived after the first one i was so shocked and i didnt even feel like getting the next book i have no idea what happened in this book..

solitaire (alice oseman) - 6/30, 1 star

there are some people that are going to be very mad at me for this. but unfortunately, i feel that there is something all those people share that allows them to like this book: relatability. and i do not have that. the mc is unlikable, and she is unlikable on purpose. the point of the book is to help you to understand life from the perspective of someone like tori. but all i can say is that i absolutely hated reading it. this book did nothing but.. annoy me. i hated how she acted to other characters. i hated how she complained all the time. i wish michael holden never came back. this whole book just made me mad. i'm really sorry but i just hated this book.

here's to reading more in july!

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scienter · 2 years

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Hey, I'm new on this platform & still not sure how tumblr actually works.So I've been lurking around reading & reblogging all your old TVD metas and others' as well.They are amazing by the way.I wish I knew about you all during TVD days! I withdrew myself from the show completely since that garbage of a finale and didn't rewatch until recently only to realise I never really moved on from Steroline.It's weird how a fictional couple could have so much impact over me and that impact is there till date.It's still unbelievable what Julie did,first in s7 and then in the end.And then she moved Caroline to TO for Klaro****!!!Do you think she scammed/baited us for years just to keep her show running?Dries and Williamson were definitely responsible for s7 and series finale respectively but Plecc was there all along and she kept blaming everyone else for all of her stupid decisions.

Thanks! I actually don’t think that JP was deliberately scamming the audience or stringing us along. I think TVD turned into a shit show for a couple reasons – some of the JP’s fault, some of them not.

First, JP was stretched thin when TO premiered. Running one show is a huge task that requires a lot of attention. Adding a second show often results in distracted showrunners / overworked writers. This inevitably results in lower quality work on BOTH shows (e.g., TVD & TO; The X Files & The Lone Gunman / Millennium; Once Upon a Time & Once Upon a Time in Wonderland). It’s not a coincidence that TVD writing quality nosedived when TO premiered. There was too much work for JP to juggle.

Second, while Caroline Dries was a good screenwriter, she was terrible showrunner. When TO premiered JP left TVD in Caroline Dries hands because (1) she was one of the most experienced TVD writers (2) she was arguably the best writer in that room when JP left. Unfortunately, TVD suffered. Being a greater writer doesn’t not automatically make one a great showrunner. A lot of the nonsense in the later years is Dries’ fault, not JP’s. And JP couldn’t override the creative decisions of the showrunner because the showrunner has the ultimate creative control.

Third, television shows often decline in quality when the writers run out of steam in the later seasons. In fact, MOST tv shows decline in quality. The few tv shows that remain in high quality towards the end have the BEST screenwriters running their shows (E.g., The Mary Tyler Moore Show was run by James L. Brooks & Breaking Bad was run by Vince Gilligan). JP and the rest the TVD writing staff were nowhere near as talented. As a result, TVD writers were thrown for a loop with the cast changes in the later seasons (E.g., Nina leaving & Candice’s pregnancy). Also, the writers seemed to run out of ideas so they just put the plot on a wash, rinse, repeat cycle. In short, the TVD writing staff weren’t skilled enough to write better material. (This is probably the biggest factor for the shows decline in quality tbh.) Why couldn’t JP & company come out and just admit this fact? Ego. Or they may not have even realized that this was a problem.

Fourth, Kevin Williamson rejoined the writing staff in the the final season & hadn’t realized that the show had moved on without him. Killing Stefan in the end? That was Kevin Williamson. However, the question remains: why did JP allow KW to get his way? She fought for the Dawson’s Creek ending when KW rejoined for that finale, so why she was willing to let KW petulantly screw up the TVD ending? Did KW bully them into it? Did KW's contract stipulate that he got veto power over the other writers? Was the writing staff exhausted fighting KW so they just gave in? Did JP feel guilty for taking the Dawson’s Creek ending away from KW & compromised on the TVD ending to make up for it? We will never know.

In short, I think that TVD became a shit show due to writing staff’s incompetence and burn out. While JP is responsible for a lot of the hairbrained plot ideas in season 7, I don’t think that all the blame can be laid on JP’s feet. The show started to run off the rails in season 5 (arguably season 4), and the problems just snowballed from there.

#asks #ask for ts #tvd writing problems #julie plec for ts #tvd for ts #just to be safe #tvd asks

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girldraki · 3 years

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Okay so on the one hand we have this fic which we Are Writing and we historically dont have good turnaround on stuff we havent churned out in one sitting only. on the other hand we are getting so fucking tired the quality of our work is most likely nosediving. on a third mostly unrelated hand if we sleep now our schedule is toast

#txt

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dancefloors · 3 years

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Is that meant to say Kanye??? Because I hate him but I’m low key very obsessed with the way their reputations and careers are going to be forever intertwined (I also think it’s so interesting how in 2018 when Kanye’s rep started nosediving, Taylor’s started drastically improving, and vice versa)

unfortunately. as much as I dislike him as an individual, being raised on his and taylor's music in a similar way makes it impossible for me not to see them as like foils to each other. beyond the direct entanglements, and reputations and trajectories like you mentioned, I feel like their music also has that quality. both of them having their first few albums being a coming of age trilogy... the VMAs event being reason why speak now and MBDTF were made as sort of both of them proving themselves.. the way their entanglements sort of lead to them making music that shifted the pop/hiphop scene unbelievably due both of their influences... both of them having image obsessed writing but in opposite ways.. the whole old Kanye and old Taylor thing (happening almost at the same time!!!)... MBDTF being Kanye's rep and vice versa. the 'my reputations never been worse you must like me for me'/'you love me for me, could you be more phony?' parallel on both their "rep" albums alone drives me crazy every time I hear either of them. anyway. I know they're separate artists and it's painful to go over their "feud" and what not but I think retrospectively they will be two of the most interesting artist foils / relationships in the 2000s+ pop scene

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 4 years

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Hi Rachel, do you think that it is liberating to write novels that you keep for yourself.

I ABSOLUTELY do. I think this is a very underrated topic in the writing community which may be because the community itself is so publishing focused, but this is a topic I’ve been passionate about from a very young age. I’ve been trying to make a video on this for months, but haven’t found the right words, so I hope this describes it coherently!

Let’s start with a story!

The beginning (2014)

A few days after I turned 13, I started a little ol’ book called Fostered. I wasn’t feeling the opening, but with some encouragement from my lovely sister @sarahkelsiwrites, continued the story and eventually finished the first book. After the first book was written, I decided I wanted more from the series and embarked on a book two. Writing this book was blissful, entertaining, and very quickly turned into writing a book three as the plot grew and I grew fonder of the characters. All three of these novels began at age 13.

Crossing the threshold

By this time, however, I was itching to publish book one. After all, I’d spent so much time in 2--and now was in the middle of 3--books and wanted to share this story with the world. I envisioned films, a franchise, the whole Dystopian-in-2014-shebang. And so began:

Operation: Publish Fostered

I did research. I was disheartened to find out that writing a series first and THEN querying was not optimal (I had already written two books and was in the middle of the third), but felt confident in my ability to sell my series (you go girl). I asked literary agents whether or not this was destined to fail, I wrote a lot, googled a lot, etc. Publishing was exciting, and then I realized

No one wanted to publish this book

It’s not that I ever got rejected. I had never gotten close to the publication stage with these books. But at around the 2015 mark, YA Dystopian nosedived into Very Dead territory and it was pretty industry standard at the time that it was a very difficult sell due to the oversaturation in the market (The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc). I was crushed and in denial! I asked agents again, hey so does my book sound like a dystopian KNOWING deep down, it was. I brainstormed ways I could change up the idea to strip away the dystopian and get my “day in court”, but nothing could strip the typical 2014 YA dystopian from these books. This leads us to:

Approach the inmost cave (2015)

I was so sad. At 13, I’d destined myself for blockbuster, yet humble success. At this point, I had just started grade nine and had slowly begun a descent into never finishing book 3. It’s not that I didn’t want to finish the book--I truly did, but my dilemma with publishing or not publishing was something I didn’t know how to navigate around. At this point, I’d developed extensively as a writer despite writing for less than a year and knew the first book didn’t hold up to the quality of the second and third. But I’d lost my Fostered spark at a point of the book where I thought everything was going wonderfully. I hit an unforeseen roadblock, didn’t know what caused it, didn’t know how to move around it, and had actually given up on this series (to my dismay). I tried everything to fix this problem, like re-reading the book which was about 150k words at that point, switching POV characters, etc, but nothing worked! With this in mind, and also understanding the industry truly wouldn’t be interested, I was led to:

2016′s “REWRITING THE FOSTERED TRILOGY LIKE A FUCKING BOSS”

This was a letter I’d written to myself (age 14) outlining why I wanted to rewrite these books and the steps I’d go about doing that. I wrote: “these characters were your life, and you legitimately loved them (and still do) with all your heart. You want to give them a second chance.” At this point, I was at a bit of a crossroads. I wanted to rewrite the trilogy, but my main motivator was that I desperately missed this story that had brought me so much joy the year previous. I hardly thought about publishing, or the research I’d done--that started mattering less when I realized I was at risk of never being able to write the story I absolutely loved again. Though I still had ideas to publish (like consolidating all three books into one), my main motivator in this plan of action was to spark joy with this project again.

The “switch”

I never did rewrite the Fostered trilogy according to plan. I didn’t follow the steps or write the franken-Fostered novel (all three books in one). In fact, all the Fostered books are the exact same as they were years ago, except now book three is finished after I introduced a new character who reinvigorated the dynamic. So what happened? I actually can’t give you an exact timestamp for when my mindset shifted from “I really want to publish this” to “so I want this story for myself”. From all the “heartache” I’d experienced as a very young writer learning things about the industry, to hitting what was to date, the lowest point of writing this series, I began prioritizing story over publication. Maybe it was that scare I’d had when I realized I may never write with these characters (who felt like lifelong partners) again that highlighted my priorities for me. But that same year, I broke past the trilogy Fostered once was, and made it four books, then five, then six. From books 4-6, my choice not to publish these books deepened because I realized it isn’t the enjoyment of other people that make these books worth writing for me, it is my own enjoyment that makes it worth it.

When I had given up on book three, I was still stressed about publishing, and future audiences, future, future, future! I lost my enjoyment somewhere along the way, and simultaneously lost my love for something I didn’t think was possible for me to stop loving. At 14, I’d already shelved many novels, but never, ever thought I’d be in the same position with Fostered because it was so special to me, in a very different way than my other work. The taste of losing that relationship with the series changed my view on publication.

Where I am now

I’ve now completed seven books in the series, am working on the eighth, and have plans for the ninth. I love devoting my time to these books. Nothing is more gratifying!

It’s not that I am an advocate against publication. People ask me so often “why don’t you publish Fostered, please publish it, you could make money, isn’t it a waste of time to write something you won’t publish?” and it’s so difficult to relay the complex answer outlined above in one or two sentences. It took me almost losing what meant the most to me for me to understand that THAT’s what makes Fostered valuable, how I feel about it, not how others do, even if an audience would be cool. My own enjoyment of the work is an unbeatable thing.

So yes, I ABSOLUTELY believe writing novels only for yourself is liberating, and in fact, I encourage it. Some people still won’t understand this ideology, and I truly think until you go through something similar, you might not, and not everyone goes through such a shift in their career anyhow. But going through all I did with Fostered taught me how much self-love of my own work is VITAL. Fostered is my heart, and has changed my life in profound, unpublic ways, and I find that privacy with this project a very intimate experience that almost feels akin to friendship.

TL;DR

Writing for yourself gives you the space needed to be a writer undercover. It does not mean you may not be meticulous with your plot or prose, or get stuck, or frustrated, or get upset that you only seem to be producing “garbage”. I still experience all these things! But what writing for myself does is give myself the responsibility to do the best for myself because I know I deserve that. I’m struggling with Feeding Habits right now, and I could sloppily write something to feel better as it’s all personal work (which sometimes, you need), but I know I can do better, and I know I deserve better, and I put lots of effort into my work unpublished or not for this exact reason.

I believe writing for yourself is something writers should practice at least once in their lifetime! It’s truly changed my outlook on craft, and publishing.

#asks #writing #amwriting #writerblr #writeblr

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milky-mochi · 4 years

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late night texts | csb

genre: fluff, crush! soobin, close friend! soobin, friends to lovers, soobin is a fluffy baby okay he’s a cute blundering mess

pairing: choi soobin x reader

word count: 1.7k

summary: soobin is helplessly head over heels for the girl he cares so much for, but he keeps his feelings to himself, until things suddenly change for the better, over late night texts and blooming roses.

song: 🎶 blueming by iu 🎶

soobin's fingers hung over his messenger app in anticipation.

It was half past ten, and yet his phone delivered him no message from you. you had promised him that you would text him at quarter past, after your shift at your internship had ended, but fifteen minutes had passed and there was still no green dot beside your icon.

soobin just assumed you had fallen asleep after a tiring day, which he totally understood. he didn't blame you one bit, knowing how tired you must have been after non-stop activities for twenty hours. sighing in defeat, he placed his phone face down and cracked his knuckles.

he missed you so much his heart ached, but he could never text you first. he didn't know if he meant enough to you for it to not be annoying, and soobin was a big coward.

just as he got up to get a drink as a distraction, his phone chimed. soobin nosedived into his table so hard to grab his phone that he probably could've broken it.

at the top of his notifications, a light blue notification from you awaited him, labelled clearly with your contact name. soobin had been too afraid to put a heart beside your name (for fear of the boys finding out, or even worse, you). but you were too special to him for it to just be your name. so he copied a cute little flower emoticon from this layout site and placed it lovingly beside your first name, even though he knew that his contact in your phone was probably saved as every one else was.

clicking on the notification, soobin's furrowed eyebrows smoothened and his bunny smile revealed itself. the thought of you never failed to make his day a whole lot better.

y/n ❁: hey soobin! :D

y/n ❁: sorry im so late :(( i missed the bus and didn't get home until like 2 minutes ago

soobin sighed as he let out a knowing smile. you had busted your data watching videos of your favourite drama a week ago, so you couldn't text him on the bus.

binbread: omg it's okay y/n

binbread: don't you wanna take a shower first? i can wait!

y/n ❁: i'm alright, soobin. thank you tho 🥺

y/n ❁: and besides,

y/n ❁ is typing…

y/n ❁: i'd much rather talk to you

soobin felt his heart pounding in his chest, felt the blood circulating through his fingertips, his face, his entire body. he was flushed red and felt warmth consume him, leaving him with the jittery, skittery feeling that your sweet words always bestow him with.

binbread: y/n omg aaaaaaaa

binbread: 🥺🥺🥺

binbread: i love talking to you too

binbread: how was your day?

whenever soobin asked you this at the end of every day, it was never just a conversation starter, let alone a formality. he genuinely always wanted to know how your day went, worried at how much you exerted yourself to serve others. soobin knew how reckless you were when it came to your own needs, and he sealed a secret promise to always look after you, especially when you didn’t look after yourself.

y/n ❁: omg it was amazing

y/n ❁: there’s this guy named hangyul who just started interning with me

y/n ❁: he’s so funny omg i actually had to tell him to shut up so i could get work done

guiltily, soobin felt his heart drop. of course there was another guy, someone much better, someone of the quality you deserved-

y/n ❁: ok lowkey

y/n ❁: think im gonna set him up with seungyoun

binbread: seungyoun? the guy from your dance studio?

y/n ❁: yeah!!! they’d go so well together

y/n ❁: oh yeah

y/n ❁: hangyul is gay

y/n ❁: lmao

soobin felt embarrassed at how relieved he was. soobin was definitely the jealous type, and he hated it. he hated the way his mind would jump to conclusions, hated the way he always felt on the verge of being replaced, and he really hated the way his jealousy was always amplified when it came to you.

you didn’t have any mutual friends, so he’d rarely ever have to see you interact with any other guy. he was so grateful for that. who knows what his jealous heart would do if he saw you with someone else. at least, with this, he had that false sense of security that maybe, maybe, your feelings echoed his own.

binbread: omg do it y/n

binbread: don’t you need to sleep though

binbread: as much as i love talking to you

binbread: you literally pulled like 8 all nighters in a row

y/n ❁: it was only 3 :(

y/n ❁: and i missed you :(

y/n ❁: stay soobin :(

y/n ❁: soobinnie :(

you frowned at soobin’s inactivity. little did you know, soobin’s neighbour had knocked on his door, asking if he could borrow scissors because his kid needed it for a project and he couldn’t find a pair in his home. you could have waited, but you had missed him the entire day. and you were feeling really, really, annoying.

y/n ❁: soobiiiiiiiiiiin :(

y/n ❁: soobin come back :(

y/n ❁: i miss u :(

y/n ❁: love :(

y/n ❁: baby :(

y/n ❁: you’re my

y/n ❁: honey bunch

y/n ❁: sugar plum

y/n ❁: pumpy-umpy-umpkin

y/n ❁: you’re my sweetie pie

after soobin had kindly handed his neighbour his scissors with the baby blue handles, he immediately picked up his phone and read your messages. instantly, his face burned up and he dramatically put his hand to his heart (because he was alone, and you made him do things like that just by calling him two pet names and quoting a children’s song). but as the ‘seen’ appeared at the bottom of your messages, panic began to jolt your bones.

y/n ❁: soobiiiiiiiiiiin :(

y/n ❁: the user has deleted this message

binbread: y/n

binbread: i saw everything you sent lmao

binbread: dont do this to me :(

y/n ❁ is typing…

y/n ❁: do what binnie? :)

binbread: that

binbread: [insert crying cat meme]

binbread: [which i don't have on me now because i cleared my storage]

y/n ❁: ok i literally cant take this

your thumbs twiddled around your screen as you inhaled sharply.

y/n ❁ is typing…

oh no, thought soobin. this is the end. this is where she gets irritated with me because i can’t take a joke. she blocks me and we never talk or hang out again. she find another guy and she’s happy without me and i’m sad and lonely and miserable, shovelling bread into my mouth as a replacement for my soul-

ding!

y/n ❁: you’re too cute for this world soobin

y/n ❁: and u make it so much better for everyone

y/n ❁: especially for me

y/n ❁: and i know this seems weird, and may very well ruin our friendship

y/n ❁: but i really really like you

y/n ❁: and im tired of hiding it

damn, soobin thought. damn i was not expecting that.

soobin’s heart was beating wildly out of his chest for the third time that day, only because of you. his fingers were shaking as he typed his reply as fast as he could. the moment he had dreamed of for months had finally come tapping on his screen.

binbread: oh my god

binbread: i like you too

binbread: i’ve liked you for like

binbread: so long

binbread: is this real

y/n ❁: or is this the fantasy

binbread: those aren’t the lyrics y/n

y/n ❁: i tried okay

binbread: and im so proud of you for doing so

binbread: truly a pop culture queen

y/n ❁: :(

binbread: okay okay

binbread: jokes aside

binbread: i've liked you for like,, 10 months now

binbread: this is a dream come true

binbread: you're a dream come true

binbread: so y/n

binbread: will you go out with me?

y/n ❁: i literally just confessed to you like 3 minutes ago

y/n ❁: like yea of course choi soobin

binbread: you could’ve just said yes :(

binbread: but okay meet me at the 5th station tmr?

binbread: i wanna take you to my favourite bakery! :D

y/n ❁: totally :D

and so here, at fifth station, act ii of your relationship with soobin had revealed itself. soobin looked like a prince, stepping out of the subway in a creme button up and black jeans, approaching you with a red rose in one hand and his phone dialling your number in the other. he smiled brightly as he approached you, seeing your face and your screen, popping up with his contact name.

incoming call…

soobin ❁

and so to his favourite bakery he brought you. it was rose themed, from rose gold metal vases to wooden countertops, and rose infused drinks and pastries, you felt like a princess. his princess. especially when he brought you for a walk in the cafe’s rose garden and you ran your hands gingerly over their velvet petals, thinking about the rose in your hand, how lucky you were to have it, and how many more of them you would get to enjoy. soobin gazed at you with soft eyes and gently took your hand in his.

“we’ll be as beautiful as this, together. a hundred roses,” soobin said, as if he were reading your mind, “wanna make them bloom with me?”

---

a/n: ayo! hoped u liked my first soobin fic 🥺 i love choi soobin and he’s very cute,, anyway if u have any requests feel free to send em in!! i’d love to write em <3

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