[grantsables]

🎮 Games I've made:

- Life Is Better in the Biodome (7-minute playtime, visual novel): A cyborg who's had the man he loved programmed out of his memories finds a letter. Playable in browser here. A revised version of the script was also published online free in The Solitude Diaries.

- The Witch's Berceuse (25-minute playtime, visual novel): A girl feigns blindness to hide her eyes from a wicked countess who doesn't allow anyone to possess things more beautiful than her own. A sapphic story inspired by classic fables. Playable in browser here. My short story I adapted this from was also published online free in Marrow Magazine.

📇 My published short fiction:

- There Are No Roses in the Forest (400 words): A man follows a suspicious recipe from the ghost of his husband. Online free in The Pink Hydra.

- Paradise for the Pawned (1,300 words): An entity working at a carnival built with human remains checks in a guest. Also online free in The Pink Hydra.

- The Exile of Iohannes (500 words): A worshipper of a minor deity visits a candlelit shrine to paint him. Online free in Miracle Monocle.

- Death March in Andante (6,000 words): While learning to navigate life in a strange island town after the murder of her twin sister, a girl finds a door to the afterlife. Available in The Arcanist’s Winter 2025 issue, but I recommend reading the original version online free here.

🎨 Art tag is #myart

Other than short stories and visual novels, I have novel WIP's that will see the light of day Sometime in the Future Maybe™, and poems that will be posted Once I Edit Them®, so stay tuned©.

[nessieartss]

maybe the real dessert was the friends we made along the way

[052-jy]

We found each other here, too

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[mentally-unstable-bagel]

another???

[fat-fuck-hairy-belly]

I told you people we have to start killing chocolatiers when there were two of them. Now there's three and it's already too late. By this time next year the world will be overrun.

[grantsables]

Wait wait wait. Three ?

[yuutaguro]

judge jury executioner

[morganaspendragonss]

will you guys cancel me if i say that queer tragedy has a place in the creative arts and shouldn’t immediately be dismissed as bury your gays

[rubynye]

adding @glorious-spoon 's astute tags:

#bury your gays and women in refrigerators and the black guy dies first are all about treating marginalized people like props#to further the story of the (white straight male) protagonist#that's not the same thing as a tragedy! some stories are tragedies! whose story has weight and meaning - that's the question

[cuppydogshane]

me and the mutuals are giving some minor characters rich inner worlds later if you wanna pull up. yeah its gonna be all day.

[skelotan]

fellas is it just me or has job hunting gotten worse

[grantsables]

You answer spork because it shows that you're a versatile worker and an outside-the-box thinker. Or you say "Cake server," turn around, and show off your dumper.

[ao3commentoftheday]

I'm struggling writing a fanfic, I'm not sure if this has been asked before but, do you think it's better to write in past tense or present tense?

I personally think it comes down to the author's choice. As long as you're consistent with it and not hopping from present to past and back again, you'll be fine ❤️

(if you're worried about doing that, find someone who can beta read for you to check and make sure)

[kiragecko]

The one that’s most comfortable to you is definitely the best option, but if you really can’t choose, here are some strengths they have:

Present tense CAN feel a bit more intimate. The action is happening around us! First person and 3rd person limited present tenses generally let me get furthest into character’s heads.

Present tense can make action scenes more intense, but also seems to make them harder for people to write. You have more control of the speed and timing, but that makes things weird and clunky if you don’t fully understand how to control flow and pacing yet. I’d suggest past tense if you’re writing a lot of action and aren’t confident in that skill

Present tense often works better for viewpoint characters with limited knowledge, mistaken beliefs, or extreme emotional growth, I find. The change in the character’s voice over the length of the story feels more organic. But past tense works better if you want to hint at future changes to mindset - maybe a character who no longer connects with their past decisions, or is distressed they missed certain clues.

Present tense makes it a lot easier to write ADHD characters, or anyone else with memory issues. Viewpoint characters who struggle to remember stuff don’t feel very natural in the past tense!

I also find it works better for certain types of intellectual characters. If characters spend too much time in their heads, analyzing possibilities, then switching to present tense for ‘reality’ can keep things clearer. On the other hand, characters really detached from their emotions can sound more natural in past tense.

Past tense is really good for ongoing stuff, or stuff that doesn’t have clearly defined starts/stops. Summaries, montages, the narrator saying things like “at some point”, “over time”, “eventually” - all of these flow a bit smoother in past tense, I feel.

Stories with time skips tend to feel less jarring in past tense. Or with a lot of variability over how long specific scenes take. I find it a lot easier to read scenes that take course over a whole day in the past tense. In present tense, I sometimes get confused about how three lines could possibly last 2 hours. (Probably because I’m further in the character’s head, and assume I should be seeing all their thoughts.)

Past tense can feel like someone telling us a story, which can be really effective for certain plots! It matches how a lot of people talk to each other, and so can be easier to write for some people, as well.

-

I tend to find that past tense is less noticeable, but I don’t think there’s a consensus with that. Present tense works best for me if it’s there for a purpose, while I prefer past as the default. But I’ve heard lots of people with different perspectives!

I hope you can figure out what feels best for you and for your story!

[grantsables]

Here's also a very good and thorough video that talks about the intersection of point of view and tense:

I do have a few caveats to the video though:

- Past and present tense are only grammatical tenses, not necessarily markers of where the narrator is at in time, meaning you can have things like retrospective present tense where someone is telling a story that happened in the past (with all the knowledge that entails) using present tense. We do this a lot in real life actually, often with a framing device. How many times have you told/heard someone tell a story like this: "So last week I took my dog to the park, right? We walk up and there's another puppy right around his age, so I crouch down and let it sniff my hand, but then ..." <- Retrospective present tense with a framing device!

- Future tense can be intermingled with present tense if you want to play with structure, reveal information out of order, frame the story, etc.

[grantsables]

Funniest possible thing she could have done for Pride

[grantsables]

Wait I need this one

[grantsables]

Funniest possible thing she could have done for Pride

[lemonsweet]

[violentoffender]

[grantsables]

[aretarers]

whatever else you have to say about katy perry i do have to say "do you ever feel like a plastic bag" is maybe one of the all time funniest ways to start a song

[grantsables]

I downloaded this song over a decade ago and have been torturing friends and family with it ever since

[tinsnip]

[cherrylimemaid]

i found the fire emblem 3ds font you know what that means

[grantsables]

This reminds me of two very cool tools made by the community!

FEFTS (Fire Emblem Fates Text Simulator; formerly known as FEITS/Fire Emblem If Text Simulator) by SciresM, which lets you create custom Fates conversations and portraits

And Fire Emblem Conversation Editor by SecretiveCactus, which lets you do that and more (I think its main purpose is creating/editing script files to mod the game, but I've never used it unlike FEITS)

And while we're at it, it doesn't do Fates like the above two, but there's also FE15-Text-Simulator by Fudgenuggets/ngarces, which was used to make this beautiful work of art:

[squagswag]

brain: remember kyle xy

me: i didn't even watch that show, but yeah

brain: yeah

me: why'd you remind me of it

brain: yeah

[grantsables]

🦋