I Just Live Here

Doing fandom things. Writer, sometimes. She/her

[aralana765]

Updating my pinned post to show more of what I’ve written!

Sk8 the Infinity fics:

Sk8—Sunflower series: Reki knows he doesn't have the most confidence in himself. It's something he's been working on as he builds on his strengths and loves: skating and skateboards. But it never hurts to have a little backup as you build yourself up. Langa wants to build up a new skill to help his mom. Luckily, he knows someone knows how to cook and has the time to help.

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build a Mechanic: Joe knew Reki was smart, especially when it came to all things skating. But seeing those smarts put down on paper, seeing it come together in a cohesive board design, that was something entirely different. Something that deserved to be recognized.

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build a Programmer: Reki is finally finding his place at S. People come to him for his board designs. Langa and Miya are great friends. He can go to Joe and Shadow for help if he needs it. Maybe even Cherry if he's in a good mood. Yeah, he's doing alright. But Kaoru Sakurayashiki sees potential in Reki. Sees a way for him to flourish even more.

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build a Chef: A companion fic to To Build a Programmer. As Reki starts to find his footing building boards and learning programming from Kaoru, Langa decides to dive into a new interest. He approaches Joe about learning to cook as a gift for his mom, and establishes a mentor along the way.

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build a Bond: Reki had given Kaoru a unique opportunity for his birthday: a way to sync both of their AIs. Carla can't wait to reach out to her new friend. Takes place in To Build a Chef after chapter 9.

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build a Vacation…Maybe: Joe and Kaoru have left for Kaoru's birthday trip, leaving the boys behind, despite Reki's best pouts and clear arguments that he definitely deserves to go to the family reunion (he is their son, after all). Instead, he and Langa consider making a trip of their own.

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build a Trip Home: Kyan Hiroshi loves his family, but with his job he often has to love them from afar. But his son is confessing to his crush today, and he will find some time to support him, no matter what. Maybe some day he'll even get to meet the boy.

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build a Relationship: A side fic for Sunflower primarily focused on Joe and Cherry's relationship. Can absolutely be read independently. Chapters will mostly be disconnected scenes showing different aspects and times in their relationship.

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build a New Home: Reki and Langa are finally moving into an apartment all their own, and of course their skate family are here to give them a hand.

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build a Tradition: Five years after Reki received his lip piercing from Kaoru, it’s his turn to give a piercing to the next generation. Miya just wishes his piercer would admit that they definitely share Kaoru and Joe as dads. Part of the Sunflower series. Featuring art by @Mediaraiz!

Sk8 Sunflower—To Build an Adult: It’s Kaoru’s birthday, and his pseudo-son has planned a day out for him. But it’s strange seeing Reki grown up, knowing that means he’s gotten old too. Though, not necessarily a bad strange. (Takes place ten years after the general Sunflower timeline)

Sk8—So The Stories Say series: Kojiro works as the right hand to the spymaster of Eden, known to most as Cherry Blossom, and separately as the Duke Kaoru Sakurayashiki. Kojiro has no love for the king, Adam, and wants to see him overthrown. Luckily, so does the spymaster. And, luckily, he always seems to be on everyone’s good side. (Fantasy au, spies, villainous/manipulative Kaoru. He’s a nasty piece of work. Fae magic)

Sk8 STSS—Actions and Words: Count Higa Hiromi, highest ranked general of the armies of Eden, is a man of action, not words. That’s not to say he wasn’t a smart man. And there was something…off about the Spymaster's new scribe. Not dangerous, maybe. But something…not quite…good.

Sk8 STSS—Uniquely Captivating: Kojiro was a lucky man. He came to the kingdom of Eden as a spy for the kingdom of Sole, and now he worked as Eden's spymaster's right hand man. He had access to Eden's every secret. But more than that, he had found a new purpose, something new to dedicate not just his life, but his everything to.

Sk8—The Right Mindset series: One night when Kaoru can't sleep and Joe is away, Carla recommends a new method of soothing her master: hypnosis. When Joe interrupts, the evening quickly redirects to something kinkier, and the men find something new to add to their bedroom activities.

Sk8 TRM—Only Left With Pleasant Thoughts Now: Carla fell silent for just a moment, letting Kaoru watch the bright pink light spin in smooth circles in the dark of the room. Then, her voice eased out of the shadows again, soft, and somehow different than before. “There is a reason people attribute things like spirals, circles, and pendulums to meditation and trance. Their movement is repetitive and predictable, and the mind finds comfort in that. It likes to know what is coming, and finds satisfaction, if not pleasure, in finding itself correct.”

Sk8 TRM—Write Your Gorgeous Mind Away: “So. Carla gives you the words. You write them to match. She’s also going to have some music to set the mood. Oh,” he added thoughtfully, tugging on Kaoru’s ponytail, “and you’ll have to really focus on your work, because I’ll be trying to distract you. You think you can handle all that, princess?” “Can I handle doing calligraphy with some music while you try to distract me? That’s my average Tuesday afternoon, Kojiro. I still don’t see how this is supposed to work.” He leaned his head back on Kojiro’s shoulder, but his expression was smug. “I think you’ll figure it out pretty quick. And if not, if it doesn’t work, I’ll try something else.” He hummed, then grinned. “I know, we can make it a challenge. See how long you can hold out before you drop." Kojiro and Kaoru have been introducing hypnokink into their lives since the night Kaoru resorted to having Carla try hypnosis out to help him sleep. Now, Kojiro has a new induction he wants to try out on his husband, even though Kaoru has his doubts on how effective it will be.

Sk8 TRM—Words Sink Deep: “Hold your focus for me. Hold your focus on your breathing, and on your body, and on your movements. Focusing on how that movement loosens your muscles and warms your body. Focusing on how the repetitious actions let your mind settle. Focusing on how the ease of movement means you can focus on not focusing.” Something about that struck a chord in Kojiro’s hindbrain, felt true, felt right, in a way nothing else Carla said had felt. He was caught on the sensation of her words curling around the base of his skull, down his spine. On focusing on the words, on his breath, on his motion, on nothing at all, and how focusing on nothing let his movements smooth into something even more fluid. His breath hitched at the top of his next cycle as the music pressed in close again, the words almost audible. But he had to focus on not focusing, so he just let the music flow in, accepting whatever message it brought with it.” Or, it's finally time for Kojiro to be put under trance with his husband.

Sk8—Doubt Comes In and Meets a Stranger: To prevent Kojiro's family from causing an emotional scene at the airport, Kaoru offers to drive him when it comes time for him to go to Italy. But being left behind can be okay sometimes, so long as the one leaving will miss you too. Or, Kaoru really overthinks Eurydice's side of the story.

Sk8—New Precedent: Kojiro returns from Italy thrilled to be with his family and Kaoru again. He's also extremely ready to hit up Crazy Rock, even if Kaoru doesn't go to S anymore. But there's a new skater running the show, one who hides their face, that Kojiro gets on with like a house on fire. Or, Kojiro is an idiot and falls for the same boy twice.

Sk8—Tamarisk: Matchablossom Bang 2024 fic worked on with @mediaraiz ; Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys, and sometimes a team of thieves are needed to help the little guys stand against the big guys. When a local corrupt politician is up for election again, this team of thieves—hitter Joe, hacker Cherry Blossom, grifter Adam, thief Miya, and mastermind Snake—set a plan in motion to use his passion for horticulture against him, even with their grifter out of play. And even if Kojiro and Kaoru have to reign in their arguing to play boyfriends. Surely one job playing nice should be fine. Surely. OR: the Leverage AU that requires matchablossom to fake date.

Sk8—Carla On Strike: Matchablossom 2025 fic featuring art by lovlykoos; Carla believes she’s the reason Kaoru and Joe are having trouble reconnecting when Joe gets back from Italy, so she decides to remove herself from the situation.

Sk8—A Natural Fit: Reki's always been pretty observant when it comes to how people move. It came from watching people skate. Now he puts it to use building custom prosthetics for people that will fit them just right. Or: Mechanic Star Reki builds something else now.

My Hero Academia fics:

Mha—Hanging By a Thread series: Best Jeanist should be dead. He should have been killed a few times over. But he’s still kicking, and he’s going to make it everyone’s problem.

Mha HBaT—Loose Threads: Hakamata Tsunagu should wake up in the Commission safehouse he's been recovering in since Kamino. That's where he should be. But instead, he wakes up, curled up and crammed into a duffel bag, drugged, and without the first clue of his surroundings. So much for the "safe" house.

[datasoong47]

[linguisticparadox]

[r5h]

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2609/

[bralsra-deactivated20250108]

theres ALWAYS a relevant XKCD for everything huh

[craicisirish]

reminds me of how artists flip the canvas to make sure their art looks good

Just flip the genders real quick and check if you accidentally made a cult

[awihog]

"I asked chatgpt" "I asked grok" ok well I asked fbi special agent fox mulder and he said that his theory is chatgpt is powered by a historical demon referenced in two (2) twelfth century texts that he actually believes is an alien taking the form of technology in order to assimilate better with the modern world and dana scully was also there and she just put her head in her hands and sighed

[tumbleweedrider]

Spontaneous Reki fanart because season 2 was just announced

(Sorry daily Zashi is so late, I’ve been super busy and unmotivated, rest assured it’ll return soon! Damn appointments, shakes fist)

[json-derulo]

Whenever they gave us one of those "read through ALL the instructions before you begin!" trick assignments in school where the steps lead you on an increasingly ridiculous goose chase until the final one tells you to just put your name on the paper and turn it in without doing anything else, I was always like, "Okay, but what's the point? Surely the REAL world won't be anything like this." And then I grew up and discovered that not only is the real world often exactly like that, some people won't even read the first line of the instructions even if they make perfect sense. And these people are called "co-workers"

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

friend of mine recommended a video essay that's like 5 hours long about why it's currently a whole Thing for fascists to claim they only eat meat and demonize vegetables etc etc, and it's genuinely quite well researched in many places and contains some fascinating history and has made me feel very weird about my status as an adult who enjoys drinking milk. but I've not finished it and I genuinely don't know if I will because at one point the ol' "you can't say you care about animals and also eat animals" chestnut got dropped by the white vegan essayist and it put such a bad taste in my mouth that I had to leave instantly

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

like idk man it just feels genuinely parodic to dedicate hours to analyzing how foodways have frequently been used as white supremacist propaganda and then casually toss out an argument that pretty invariably demonizes indigenous hunting practices with 0 regard for traditional knowledge and land stewardship guiding those practices

[deramin2]

Every time I hear a white vegan say that I want to throw the rubble of the Klamath Dams at them.

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.

The Klamath River Runs Free

The Klamath River Runs Free

[supreme-leader-stoat]

#also do you have any idea how much conservation is funded by people who want to eat those animals#at least in the us anytime someone buys ammo or hunting equipment or hunting licenses that money goes directly to state wildlife agencies

[sharkfiinn]

loser duo

[reggiemess]

Cannot stand the trend of censoring any and all words that describe concepts that might make you go :( especially when the censoring is done in that quarter-assed way that's just 'did a lil scribble over a vowel so you know that I know this word describes a no-no."

I'm not even going to be vague about what sparked this. Do not fucking censor the word 'stole.' I'm at my fucking limit.

[reggiemess]

Who does this benefit. Who is made safer by this. Whose life is made better by this. Who is out there going "Wow I sure am glad I didn't have to see that word without it scribbled on a little. That really reduced the emotional impact of reading that word." Can I kill them?

[reggiemess]

[starryscaledfish]

Very important to me that the war god of bai zhan peak is also the prettiest princess of the entire sect

[niidsch]

Not seeing many people talk about this on Tumblr, so gonna spread the word myself: Webtoon is going to start using AI for translations and an AI chat bot with comic characters. If you're against this you should delete your account, and if you are publishing on the website, you should consider moving to other alternatives and especially having your own website to host your comic.

Also needless to say that Webtoon can absolutely afford to hire translators, this is just yet another way to not pay the people who are making the company behind Webtoon absurdly rich.

And for the people who might see this as a good decision:

(+ all the environmental damage that AI is causing)

[grimark]

did you see they made jane prentiss from the magnus archives real

this is the correct way to feel about having a wasp's nest in your house.

[grimark]

oh fuck you were not kidding

[wormbraind]

the teen titans powersets are so crazy because it’s like. girl whose father is the devil, from the bible. girl who can make the earth swallow you. alien princess with laser beams. boy who can do a backflip

[wormbraind]

#he does really good backflips

oh okay that clears it up. thanks

[face-without-a-heart]

I like how OHSHC is so uninterested in thinking about how maybe some of the Ouran students’ families are unethically rich that they try to make you root for a guy honing the social skills he needs for his future as a yakuza boss

[podcastwizard]

every day i walk into work and my manager says “here is the rule you must enforce” and i go “got it bossman” and i spend a couple days enforcing the rule and then my manager comes up to me and says “why are you enforcing the rule? we changed the rule yesterday and didn’t tell you” and i go “ok bossman new rule it is” and then a customer comes in asking to break the new rule and i say “sorry you can’t it’s the rule” and they say “but you don’t understand the rule doesn’t apply to me” and then my manager comes out and says “they’re right the rule doesn’t apply to them” and i ask why and my manager says “it just doesn’t.” and then the next day we get rid of the rule entirely and no one remembered it existed in the first place.

anyway this sounds like a metaphor for neurodivergence or something but it’s not this is just my fucking life

[wtf-scientific-papers]

Submitter comment: I'd like to submit this '[s]tudy of defensive behavior of a venomous snake as a new approach to understand snakebite' not for it's topic (worth studying!) but for it's insane methodology, which... well, I'll just let the researcher speak for himself:

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]

From the recent (aptly named) interview: Researcher steps on deadly vipers 40,000 times to better predict snakebites

[dragongirl-casca]

[sandersstudies]

I had this freshman tell me she “couldn’t” audition because she was too scared of the stage, and might have a panic attack. I asked how she felt about walking around onstage in costume and not saying any lines. That was fine. I was like okay awesome let’s lay some groundwork now and maybe senior year you can have like three lines!

[sandersstudies]

I remember this kid who came into an audition and froze up, just couldn’t speak. Competent reader and speaker but when people were watching she couldn’t do a thing.

We cast her anyway, in a chorus role. Offered her lots of support and encouragement and kindness and grace.

At the next audition she whispered. Anyone who had never seen her before would have thought she was the most nervous kid there. But the directing team was abuzz afterward. Did you see? She did it! Once or twice I could actually almost hear her! Amazing.

Got cast again, in a chorus role. She’d been making friends with the other kids, and they offered her encouragement too.

And the next audition we said wow I can hear her! She’s speaking! Let’s give her a handful of lines! She can do it!

Anyway as a mentor in the performing arts these things are huge wins for me. Some kids are competent and confident performers at 7 or 8 almost by nature. Others, even much older kids and adults, have to make progress by inches. But progress is exciting! The only place to go is up!

[sandersstudies]

If a student is encouraged properly, theatre is one of the best sources of self-esteem, self-reflection, and both spontaneous and rehearsed eloquence/comprehensibility that there is. It truly could be considered a cornerstone for communication disciplines of all kinds if it just attracted the right people to teach it. (Unfortunately a lot of people are attracted to directing for a sense of power over others, and not an interest in mentoring and coaching.)

[april]

women are like diamonds: synthetically-produced women are not meaningfully different from naturally-formed women, and anyone trying to tell you otherwise is probably trying to justify keeping their women mines open

[gayluigi]