Sandbox of thoughts

Random assortment of writing, all things FFXIV and more

[minecraft]

[canoncanidae]

[catchymemes]

[dawdreygore]

[mothermishy]

You guys just have to trust me on this one and click here okay?

[abracazabka]

[feralrookie]

OH MY GOD I NEEDED THIS

[prismatic-bell]

For the chronically anxious and/or otherwise mentally ill:

This is not a screamer, jumpscare, or any other kind of horror link I don’t know the name of. It will not cause you to question reality and as far as I’m aware, there is no reason it should cause any kind of hallucinations or psychosis. I don’t want to spoil the surprise because it’s DELIGHTFUL but I am happy to tell you it’s very sweet and gentle and also great lowkey stress relief. This is a cinnamon roll link appropriate for all ages (yes, all the way down to babies) and you will enjoy it if you click it. ❤️

[teaboot]

This makes me so happy

[desertarchaeo]

April 1: Pep talk

Jali shifted back and forth from foot to foot nervously, the rustle of her skirts and jewelry loud in the dusky twilight. Around her were several others in similar dress, either waiting calm and collected or moving themselves through small warming exercises as they waited for their cues. Drums rumbled and voices rose through the air, pressure building among those gathered.

Jali did a little hop in place unable to contain her nervous energy, then paced herself in a small circle, clenching and unclenching ring covered hands.

“Oi newbie! Settle. You’re rattling louder than a coin purse at market.” One of the other dancers called from where they had been sitting quietly.

“Oh shush Khulan, can’t you see the girl is nervous?” Another dancer came over and put their hands on Jali’s shoulders to stop her movement. “Nothing to be nervous about. It’s just clan afterall. They all know you.”

She looked up at the other dancer and opened her mouth to counter when they were shushed.

“You will be fine. We all saw you practice, you know the motions, follow the drums and voices. Let them carry you and don’t think. None of them out there will know if you mess up, only you will.” The older Au Ra gave them a wide grin. “Why do you think we make the part you're doing different every year, it’s always given to the youngest dancer on purpose.”

They stepped back, running their hands down Jali’s arms until they held her palms in theirs. 

“Now take a deep breath. In, count to three, out. Repeat.”

The drumbeat swelled and the air felt tense and thick around them. The chorus of voices faded to a single note and everyone around Jali was suddenly moving into position. She took one more in and out breath and moved to her position among the women as the men leapt out into the firelight.

[desertarchaeo]

New writing prompts to try and get me back into writing again. Picked up Au Ra April off twitter and am aiming for at least 300-500 words per day.

[thisismyideaofhumor]

I always wondered why the Western Zodiac and the Chinese Zodiac were both called zodiacs if one was associated w astronomy and the other w time in general. Like what defines a zodiac that the word is only used to describe these two things? Looking up the word “zodiac” in the dictionary didnt help bc it only talked about the western one.

Well, I decided to look up the etymology for zodiac and it turns out it comes from the Greek for “circle of little animals.” I love humans

[okayneat]

was unwilling to accept this outright so i checked etymonline and, truly:

(img described in alt text)

[hipstercanada]

Behold, a zodiac!

(Image description in alt text)

[thelonelywhale]

I know it’s post pride, but consider

[thelonelywhale]

Happy Pride! People still hot

[duckbunny]

"biblical angels" you do realise there are angels in the old testament that are literally just regular looking guys, right? you do know that the hallucinogenic incoherent descriptions are in like. two books. and the rest of the time angels are just guys. you know that, right?

and I'm not saying don't have fun with weird angels. I'm saying, either the eldritch forms are for special occasions, or the society of the angels is Many-Eyed-Many-Winged-Interlocking-Circles, Four-Faces-Six-Wings, and Mike.

[witches-ofcolor]

Literally Raphael is just a normal person!

[rubensmuse]

this is what the heavenly breakroom is like

[callmebliss]

Oh no now I love the water cooler angel

[cyber-corp]

Having your own personal blog is honestly quite a nice change of pace compared to Reddit. I could put a funny GIF of George Bush getting hit by a shoe on here and the worse case scenario is that no one even notices.

You put that on a big subreddit and you get your eyes gouged out and a heap of political discourse underneath your post.

[cyber-corp]

YOU HEAR THAT EVERYONE??? I’M A LIL GECKO BOY

[love-always-adelaide]

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Perfect use of this site op. 10000 out of 10. Welcome to Tumblr. I hope you enjoy it 💖

[adventures-in-poor-planning]

Everyone else talked about outdoor cats, it's time for me to talk about offleash dogs

[adventures-in-poor-planning]

Reasons not to have your dog offleash at a public park:

1) roads (this one is self-explanatory)

2) it makes the park inaccessible to like, entire swathes of the population. If you have experience with police dogs or guard dogs in your neighborhood, or you're a new immigrant from somewhere with a large population of feral dogs, it sucks ass going to the park and having someone's massive lab bound up to you!

3) If, for example, you are in a protected wetland area plastered with friendly signs asking you to please leash your dog to avoid causing an ecological impact, having your dog offleash might cause an ecological impact! "Oh no, my dog is well-behaved, they would never bother the wildlife" wrong! your dog is in the pond trying to eat the endangered Blandings' turtles!

4) Non-zero chance of a jokerified park guide (me) just clipping your dog to a leash and stealing them

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

5) “Oh but my dog is friendly!” If your unleashed “friendly” dog runs up to my leashed UNFRIENDLY dog, and my dog bites yours, guess who’s getting the blame despite doing everything right?

[greed-the-dorkalicious]

6) Allergies. “Oh but my dog is friendly!” oh well that’s great I guess I can just put the epipen away because, yknow, he didn’t mean to induce anaphylactic shock, it was all in good fun, nothing to worry about!

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

7) Small children, the elderly and disabled people. “Oh but my dog is so friendly!” When your friendly dog slams into me/jumps on me/knocks me over I am just as injured.

[seananmcguire]

8) Many of the places where it seems attractive to let a dog off the leash are home to wildlife! My local swamp park has a whole-ass coyote pack living in it. That is their house, and they will view your precious little sausage roll as a delivery dinner. I have legit seen a coyote come out of the bushes and take a small, off-leash dog. Leash your dogs.

[tiktoks-for-dead-pope]

[saeva-sava]

BABY

[unpretty]

i will never complain about a book seeming like a fanfic with the serial numbers filed off because that means the author had the invaluable ability to tell when their au had diverged enough that these were just straight-up different characters now

[unpretty]

even as we speak there is probably someone out there writing a delightful 100k+ word gay romance novel about a genderqueer bisexual single parent who lives in a beach town and fixes classic cars and falls in love with the sexy tentacle monster mermaid that saved their life, and that writer could probably make pretty good money self-publishing it, but they won't because that would mean admitting that they aren't really writing destiel anymore

[unpretty]

love that despite not being in the fandom i hit the middle of the venn diagram of 'characters that the average person would never in a million years recognize as dean winchester' and 'characters that a certain subset of fans would immediately think are dean winchester' so perfectly that i've since been told i described multiple popular fics

[coldopenadhddadjoke]

my only disagreement is that nothing over 100,000 words can be "delightful"

file the serial numbers off and get an editor

(or at the VERY least, have the self-respect to hack it into three books and call it a 'triology' if you /want/ to tap into the market of people who want doorstoppers.)

[unpretty]

just checking stats in calibre using its wordcounter, it tells me:

gideon the ninth is 141k

the welcome to night vale novel is 101k

the long way to a small angry planet is 132k

the duchess war is 100k

good omens is 113k

dread nation is 105k

network effect is 117k

one good earl deserves a lover is 108k

priory of the orange tree (which i do consider a doorstopper! you could murder mr boddy in the library with this hardcover!) is 266k

have you considered that if you think the average paperback romance novel is a doorstopper, you might prefer novellas

[thebibliosphere]

I was reading that comment and thinking to myself, three books out of 100k? Maybe three novellas, but not three novels.

Three YA novels, maybe.

For adult fiction, it's about 60-100k per average for a novel, depending on the genre. Anything under about 50k is a novella, iirc.

Which is fine if that's what you like reading. But 100k is not unwieldy. And many of us churning out those word counts do have very exacting editors :)

(Hunger Pangs was 120k-ish, and people still complain to me that it was too short.)

[unpretty]

oh good, i specifically didn't mention hunger pangs being 123k in calibre because i was like "if calibre is miscounting really badly i'm gonna look like a huge jackass when joy points that out" :V

[thebibliosphere]

Haha, tbh I wouldn't know. It varies between editions and I can never remember which is which.

I was going to say re: your tags, "I'm pretty sure Kindle lists the word count as mandatory," but no, it lists the file size and page print length which is not as helpful for the purpose of this post.

[fallenstarworkshop]

I think word count should be as ubiquitous and as mandatory as page count. It's far more helpful.

[thebibliosphere]

Agreed, actually. I think I'm going to start including it in my metadata.

[thoughtsofadame]

Just to hit back to the og post point 100k word fanfiction is perfectly good. You don't need to file off the numbers and publish it you can just have exceptionally long fanfiction. The market is there and not everyone wants to turn things into original fiction.

[unpretty]

it has nothing to do with length and everything to do with characters so divorced from the original canon that they are no longer in any meaningful way the same guy, aside from the fic author's insistence that this melodramatic victorian-era mormon woman with vampirism is actually spock

[spider-shoes-archive]

first aid certifications should be free btw

[spider-shoes-archive]

for fucking real though. why did they paywall being certified to like. literally resuscitate someone

[thebibliosphere]

"Why am I so tired," I mutter, knowing full well I've got at least four different comorbid conditions that cause sleepy bitch disorder.

[only-cat-memes]

Your daily dose of cat memes

[omnidens-deactivated20251215]

baby coelacanth

baby coelacanth.

[omnidens-deactivated20251215]

some choice tags

[lemonsharks]

Him FINS are too BIG! too BIG for him HIM!