Aelora's Fandom Lair

Multi-fandom blog, including my first love horses... Seblaine, Travis Kelce/The KC Chiefs, Yellowstone, Interview with the Vampire, Stranger Things, The Last of Us, OFMD, Black Sails, The Witcher, GoT/HOTD, Band of Brothers, Babylon 5, Star Wars, WoW, Star Trek, LOTR... and so many more. Occasionally, I write fanfic. Katherine Hepburn is queen!!

[thedankmemes]

[doseofwords]

[roseworth]

ok now im kinda curious

what social media did you use before you joined tumblr

tumblr is the first social media i have regularly used

twitter

instagram

reddit

tiktok

pinterest

ummm you forgot *insert social media here*

Voting ended onJun 21, 2023

[angiefsutton]

MySpace baby

[mycptsdstory]

SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE BACK

[orlissa]

Hi,

It’s you friendly neighbor fanfic author here. In the light of this apparent new trend of people feeding unfinished fics to AI to get an “ending,” and some people even talking about “blanket permissions,” let me just say this:

I EXPLICITLY FORBID ANYONE TO FEED MY FICS TO AI. DUDE, THAT IS ABOUT THE LEAST RESPECTFUL THING YOU CAN DO. IF YOU DO IT, SHALL YOU BE EXCOMMUNICATED FROM YOUR FANDOM AND WALK ON LEGOS BAREFOOT TILL THE END OF DAYS.

That is my anti-permission.

Thank you for your attention.

[theintrovertnation]

[puraiuddo]

FanFiction.net is not gone.

Right now it's a victim of DNS (Domain Name Service) spoofing. This means that a malicious party is trying to steal traffic from FFn by purchasing a very similar domain.

So if you want to read fanfiction and not see leaves, you have have to type out "www.fanfiction.net".

Please share so people stop panicking.

[creativepromptsforwriting]

Reblog to give the person you reblogged this from motivation to work on their WIPs

[aelora]

One year ago today I was introduced to Eddie Munson, and I haven’t been the same since.  😭 😭 😭

[aelora]

327 days later and I’m still enraged over Eddie’s pointless death.

Also, the Steddie bug has bitten me, again. So maybe I can get Chpt 10 of that fic finished and posted before I move back onto Seblaine...

Why are all of my boys bothering me during my busiest time of the year?!?

[aelora]

Drove out to the barn of one of my clients this morning to work on a couple of her horses, only to find one of them colicking. Needless to say, I didn’t get to work on the horses because I was walking that one for hours because it took forever for both the client and the vet to arrive due to traffic. So yeah, my day was shot. But, the horse is okay, finally started having a few guts sounds and seemed far brighter and perkier by the time I left. The client was grateful I randomly decided to come out. I am, too. He’s one of my favorite horses. 

But yeah, honestly got nothing done today. Oh well.

[secretink]

Writing fanfic as a non-US citizen like

[intrinsicklutz]

In case anyone actually wants to know the answer: it’s the plot of Cars. The difference is literally the plot of Cars.

Highways are usually two-to-four (at the widest) lane roads that meander the US landscape. Think Route 66, dinosaur statues, mom-and-pop diners, southern gothic. There are state-level and national-level highways. Some run for a 100 miles, some, like US HWY-17, run most of the East Coast:

That red line is US HWY 17. If you follow it, you will go through tiny towns. You may hit stoplights. I kid you not, you will see spinning cows on poles. Businesses exist along highways that you are encouraged to pull over and visit. They were designed to let you see America.

Yeah.

Now, interstates were made in the 50s and were made to get people from Point A to Point B. These suckers range from four lanes to eight lanes around big cities. They cut through everything. If you want to get to a business, you have to take an exit ramp and detour. They are great for getting places fast. You can still have weird experiences on them, but usually at night, when your eyes start playing tricks on you. Or there are deer.

I-95 is a massive corridor that runs from the Florida Keys to the Canadian Border. You can see the difference just looking at the maps.

As far as writing goes:

If you want quirky character development inside the car, you’re looking for an interstate. The majority of Americans take interstates to go on road trips.

If you want mysterious and/or supernatural hijinks, you’re looking for a highway. They are weird, weird places, and they’re surprisingly easy to wind up on if you leave the interstate.

(Even in America, no one’s really sure what a freeway is. Just ignore it.)

[thecheshirecass-deactivated2018]

Freeways exist in big cities where cars are more prominent than public transport, such as LA or Atlanta. You’ve year of liminal spaces? Freeways during rush hour are a physical manifestation of hell.

[aqunathlok-ataashi]

Awesome! Now what the hell is a turnpike?

[thecheshirecass-deactivated2018]

If you find out, let me know. Maybe ask someone from New Jersey.

[spanishskulduggery]

A turnpike is a highway with a toll. Turnpikes are special highways where you drive really fast and it’s usually linking big cities with each other and you keep going until you hit a toll booth.

They’re called “turnpikes” because in the olden days, there were pikes or barriers up and you had to pay the toll for them to be raised or turned to let you in.

[merindab]

Also, just for the record, Hawaii does have interstates.

[marisatomay]

For everyone who didn’t want to know, expressways are a form of highway that connect both suburban areas and major interstates to a city They often have both an alphanumerical name and a colloquial name In Philly we have the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76)

[heywriters]

Would like to add that highways and mainly interstates were made specifically so THE MILITARY could get from Point A to Point B. This combined with a post-WWII boost in the economy and car industry gave Americans the ability to tour the country on their own for the first time ever. A whole chunk of American culture was created by just expanding the road system.

Think about road systems and other systems of travel when worldbuilding!

[literaryreference]

All this being said, most East Coast US people will refer to all of these things interchangeably as “highways”/”the highway.”

[naomitess]

Another note for non-USians trying to write a road trip story – if your characters would definitely be taking the interstate, but you want them on a highway in order for the supernatural shenanigans to start (or whatever), the solution is very simple: they hit a traffic jam. Could be due to construction, could be due to an accident, but traffic slows to a crawl and they say “there’s gotta be a way around this” and take the next exit. Then it turns out their cell phone has no coverage in that spot so they can’t just pull up a map, and VOILA. Into the Twilight Zone! One of the things about an interstate is that USUALLY, there’s an exit and an entrance right by each other, so you can exit, find a gas station or a place to grab lunch near the exit, then get right back on, but this is not always the case. Sometimes there’s an exit, but nowhere nearby to get back on.

[leebrontide]

I just want to add that there’s a slightly different vibe if you’re in the midwest. Because cities on the coasts are closer together, the interstate is just a super efficient point A to point B, city to city, no interruptions.

In the midwest, and I expect the southwest, to the interstate can get some real wonky vibes because YOU ARE ALONE. You are on one black strip of neverending road across hours and hours and hours of alone. You can drive very fast for a very long time and not see signs of another human being. Sometimes the alone-ness is added to by the sheer flatness of the land around you. You can see for forever and there’s nobody here. You sometimes see dead gas stations or billboards with only scraps of paper left on them.

You are in tornado ally and there is NOWHERE to hide if a blizzard or thunderstorm or twister comes for you. If it’s winter the snow is BLINDING.

It’s beautiful. But it’s horror is less small-town-gothic and more existential threat.

[beautifulterriblequeen]

For clarity: the term freeway literally means it’s an interstate with no tolls. It’s free for every driver to use.

The West Coast of the US doesn’t have tolls on our interstates, but some of our big important bridges have tolls.

[ruffboi-mags]

Seconding @leebrontide’s bit about interstates in the mid and southwest. I have Seen Things doing cross-country moves through the southwest and midwest. One experience that we refer to as “Silent Kansas” we literally went across the entire width of Kansas without seeing a single other vehicle, open gas station, or sign of life, while shrouded in a blanket-thick fog that dissipated essentially immediately upon crossing the border into Colorado. Or the time we were driving south on the I-17 in Arizona after midnight, and there was something following us for a full hour that was a pair of glowing lights that looked like headlights but, I swear it’s fucking true, was not another car. they disappeared in my rearview on a stretch with no exits just outside the Phoenix city limits, and to this day I have no idea wtf it was.

weird shit happens on interstates away from the coasts.

[eilooxara]

Highway: a high-speed and long-distance road, but without limited access. You will have occasional stop lights or stop signs, and you’ll go through small towns. Most likely place to see a cryptid. (also a generic term for all of these roads)

Expressway: a high speed road with limited access. There are no stop signs or lights. There are entrance and exit ramps. These usually cut through the landscape to a greater degree than highways.

Freeway: an expressway without tolls

Turnpike: an expressway with tolls. So called because they had a long stick (a pike) on a pivot that blocks the road until it is turned to let you through after paying the toll.

Interstate: a (usually particularly long) expressway built as part of the interstate system. Has a designation I-## (eg, I-95). There are also local expressways that are part of the interstate system that get a third digit (I-495). These generally connect Something™ to the larger two-digit interstate (so I-495 connects to I-95). 3-digit interstates are most often freeways. A two-digit interstate may be a freeway or a turnpike and will probably switch back and forth over its length.

Also, everyone will use most of these terms wrong most of the time! You can call any of them a highway and no one will bat an eye. You could call a turnpike a freeway and people will literally not notice. If you call anything an expressway you’ll sound like a nerd or a politician. We usually only say interstate to differentiate it from some other similar road. But if you call something a turnpike that doesn’t have turnpike in its name, even if it is a toll road, people will look at you funny.

[traegorn]

Additionally, sometimes “turnpikes” are called “tollways.” Like the Tristate around Chicago.

[lymmea]

Really love that these explanations, while they technically explain everything, have even left me, a born American, more lost than before. Rip in pieces, non-American writers, we did our best.

[aelora]

Just to make things a little crazier, Interstate routes with odd numbers run north and south, and Interstate routes with even numbers run east and west. The lower numbers for north/south are in the west, and the lowest numbers that run east/west, are in the south. 

[bundibird]

I dont really care if you use the term bisexual or pansexual, but what i DO care about is that you understand that bisexuality at NO stage in history was EVER trans-exclusionary. Bisexuality has always included trans folks, and non-binary folks, and the entire spectrum of gender between male and female, as well as Definitively Gender and agender. It has ALWAYS meant "attraction to more than one gender." It has NEVER meant "attraction to cis men and women only."

So, pan, bi, use whichever label you will. But do NOT buy into the recent-years innacurate concept that bisexuality is attraction to cis men and women only, because thats literally never been the case.

[bundibird]

@brassmama exactly.

^^ Like. Its literally right there in the middle of the flag.

And by contrast, this is what the pan flag colours mean:

So literally its just......

bi colours = "same gender, opposite gender, and other genders"

pan colours = "men, women, and nb people."

Those two things are...... not all that different to each other.

The purple has always, literally since the flag was created, meant "more genders."

And bisexuality included "more genders" in the definition before the bi flag was created, too. Thats why they included the purple bar in the first place, because it was reflective of bisexual people's attraction to and relationship with gender.

If you feel that pansexual suits you better, or you like the pan flag more, then thats fine -- but don't spread the misconception that bisexuality is remotely exclusionary. Because its literally never been.

[aelora]

It blows my mind how forgiving readers can be when it takes you years to post an update. I can’t get over how happy everyone seems that I haven’t abandoned “Good Enough”. I definitely have never meant to abandon it. I’m just slow, and have far too many hobbies (plus those pesky RL responsibilities), and sadly, I like sleep. But yeah, no fic is ever abandoned unless I specifically say I don’t plan on finishing it (like the sequel to my LOTR fic that I purposely dropped because I couldn’t handle the fanaticism over it! People were Facebook stalking me. It was awful!). 

Makes me feel better about trying to update my Stranger Things fic, though mostly because no one is reading that one anyway, and it’s really just for me!

[kitausuret]

Write fanfic for yourself.

Publish fanfic for the rotation of 3-6 people who are devoted readers and will either go feral or leave you very nice words and yell with you about it.

[redheadspark]

Thank you to those specific mutuals who do this with my work. you don't know how much it means to me :)

[afeelgoodblog]

Imagine being buried alive and then seeing this little guy with a backpack suddenly arrive

[pea-gravel]

It gets better. The little backpack has a two-way radio.

So you’re trapped under rubble, and then a rat shows up. Flicks a switch on its little tumtum. And starts talking to you.

[la-mancha-screwjob]

The Rescuers live action adaptation looks good as hell actually

[aelora]

Just got final confirmation for our special guests for our event in August, and guest speakers include Jon Batiste and Jason Sudeikis! And our concert performers are Katy Perry and Sting (such a weird combo!). Going to be a fun event!

Love my company!