a connoisseur of fine legerdemain

"Acey" or "Onna", either is fine. Tumblr Old™. Don't take it personally if I don't follow you back; I can only handle so much on my dash at a time. No fancops.

[prokopetz]

Look, I see what you're saying, but I swear I was irresponsibly handing out magical artifacts of world-shaking power entirely at random. The fact that they all ended up going to photogenic orphans between the ages of twelve and seventeen was just a weird coincidence.

[dukeofriven]

If you hadn't gone around killing all the adults with the first generation of world-shaking power artifacts, maybe the median age of the world population wouldn't now be 'orphan' and you wouldn't now be trying to make that my problem.

[pixiemage]

Hey there! Just a friendly reminder/PSA from your friendly neighborhood Pixiemage!

“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” is too often (incorrectly) used as a cover-all tag, on fics ranging from Vaguely Uncomfortable to Serious Shit, as a replacement for any intense tags relating to the story. People will use it to say “Holy shit guys some INTENSE SHIT happens in this story” without actually saying what that Intense Shit™ is.

In actuality, the “Dead Dove” tag is meant to be used in addition to other warning tags. Pulled from a scene from the show Arrested Development (look it up on YouTube!), it means “Hi! Hey! I labeled this fic to warn you of what’s in it, so you might REALLY want to read those labels! This fic is exactly what it says on the tin! The tags are accurate! Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because this is me warning you! Read the tags!”

So before you accidentally use the “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” tag without context, here’s your preemptive lesson for next time. Please tag your fics accordingly! Ta!

~ Pixie

[jabberwockypie]

Also content warnings in general. If you just say "Trigger Warning!" and nothing else with no context as to what it is you're warning for, that's not really helpful to anyone.

[starpains]

on “the blond,” “the older man,” and other crimes against third-person limited

You know that thing where a story is written in tight third person limited — we’re meant to be inside someone’s head, seeing the world through their thoughts — and then suddenly the narration says “the blond frowned” or “the shorter woman sighed” about a person the POV character knows really well?

That’s called antonomasia — using a descriptive label instead of a name. And it’s fine when we’re talking about strangers: “the cashier handed her the receipt,” “the tall guy blocked the door.” The POV character doesn’t know their names, and we just need a quick way to tell people apart.

But the moment it’s used for someone the POV character already knows, it breaks immersion. Because that’s not how our minds work. We don’t think “the older man smiled at me.” We think “Mark smiled.” Or maybe “my boss” if that relationship matters in the moment.

Third person limited means the narration sits inside someone’s perception. Their inner monologue is the story’s voice. So when you switch from “Mark smiled” to “the blond smiled,” you’ve pulled the camera away from their mind and turned it into an outside shot.

If you want to create distance or irritation, you can do it on purpose —

“The idiot from accounting emailed again.”

That’s character voice. That’s judgment. That works.

But otherwise?

As soon as your POV character knows someone’s name, use it. While we do tend to worry about repetitions, names rarely register as such to the readers.

If you need variety for rhythm, use relational or emotional identifiers that make sense in their head: her friend, his partner, their teacher, the person they loved.

Because inside someone’s thoughts, there are no “blonds” or “brunettes.”

There are only people they know.

[onnastik]

[beammeupplease]

Muratami Yutaka

[nonbinary-akutagawa]

He would do numbers on tumblr

[king-the-pathetic]

Not what I usually post but look at that wawa go!

[inber]

hate it when you see something in media that has great kink potential so you skedoodle post-haste to ao3 only to discover there's none fic left beef and then you have to sit there going oh I see I'M the pervert weirdo I'M the problem with society and everyone else in the world is going to heaven with a hundred innocence dollars preloaded onto their ole fashioned wholesome funtimes themepark fast pass card like fuckin oath man

[edwardashley]

#particularly when its something you're not even actually into but its just so Obvious how could it Not be on ao3#but then it isnt. do you have a duty to place the fic in its rightful ecological niche just because you have the vision?#do you have to track down a perv of the appropriate disposition and gift it to them?#do you leave well enough alone even though you can See the absence like a wound in the side of Truth?

[bethanydelleman]

I just learned yesterday that watermelons could explode when overripe and then today one exploded in my kitchen. So I guess I'll never learn anything new ever again just to be safe.

[yunnaan]

Pls let me share this beautiful tag with the masses milord

[exxos-von-steamboldt]

[delicatefury]

I just googled this and… yes, it’s absolutely real.

And there are so many articles and videos and discussions. Like, the scientific community is buzzing about this.

So much research will have to be redone because the data was absolutely compromised, off by orders of magnitude, by using standard lab gloves.

The world is probably not horrifically contaminated by microplastics. Sterile laboratories, however, are contaminated by latex and nitrile gloves.

Thank God someone bothered to check.

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics, U-M study reveals

Nitrile and latex gloves that scientists wear while they are measuring microplastics may lead to a potential overestimation of the tiny poll

[jantesika]

I mean. this is not surprising. but also what the fuck.

[screenshotsofdespair]

[triapus]

This is how the James Web telescope works

[macleod]

A million little eyes staring into the cosmos to help paint a picture of our place in the universe.

[hungry-skeleton]

That's an angel

[nineinchmales]

Did you know that um…. (remembers that words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm) …………

[crushedcoriander]

i feel so bad for Kunikida he’s constantly getting ragebaited

[homunculus-argument]

General rules to live by:

You gotta be tough if you're gonna be stupid. You can do stupid shit all you want but you're not going to avoid suffering consequences.

If you can't be tough, you gotta be nice. People can forgive a lot of stupidity if you're polite about it and pleasant to be around.

You can't tell whether you're stupid or not. There is literally no way to know in advance, for absolute certainty, whether the thing you're just about to do is genius or stupid before it either splendidly succeeds or blows up in your face.

[venomshole]

[pathologising]

the fresno nightcrawlers

[dateamonster]

popular high fantasy franchises looove having at least one visibly monstrous species that is like a vaguely racist caricature of a nondescript indigenous tribe with a mercenary culture of Honor and Battle and Only The Strong Survive etc etc

[dateamonster]

no adventurer ever comes across a village of big nonhuman creatures who live in the Untamed Wilds or belong to a nomadic civilization who are just like. chilling. they always have some kind of horrific stereotypical backwards culture thing going on like leaving their sick and elderly to die in the wilderness or doing supermisogyny on their women that the adventurer has to intervene on. and its like the mcu villain ass "they had good intentions but they went too far" narrative thing where you cant point this out without someone being like so you think its good that the orc society is doing supermisogyny 🤔and its like well no but you see a writer wrote the supermisogyny so the hero would have a good reason to invade the secluded tribe and teach them his value system and rescue the strangely sexy orc woman whose character design mysteriously conforms to human beauty standards when the guy orcs dont so he can free her from her life of savage orcish supermisogyny and give her a life of civilized regular misogyny.

[dateamonster]

actually dont know why i specified fantasy when scifi loves doing this too. perhaps all genre fiction is still struggling to get out from under the influence of the early 20th century pulp adventure novel.