The Mad, Mad Hatter

Gia, she/her. | AO3: Gia279 & SpicySpite Pillowfort: ReaperGia. Probably contains zombies. current project:

[outtoshatter]

For the Fandom Revival 2026 event, I've chosen to revamp the summary for the first story in my apocalypse series and clean up the tags a little bit! 

Title: The New Real | Originally posted: April 2020 | Rating: T | Fandom: Teen Wolf | Relationship: Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale | Relevant tags: Witch!Stiles, magical nuclear apocalypse, creature horror, mutants, original characters, survival, slow build relationship | Series: Strange Young World

Summary, newly written for this event:

Ten years after the magi-nuclear apocalypse that remade the world, Stiles and John are awoken from the tomb Stiles created to shield them from the bombs. Now they've been thrust into an entirely new and strange world populated with deadly mutated flora and fauna and people desperate for garden witches—the only beings who can still grow crops in spite of the harsh, unpredictable weather. Stiles specializes in battle and protective magic; he's never grown so much as a carrot. But he must convince the werewolves who woke him and John from their magical slumber that he's capable of garden magic, if they are to survive.

Fun fact: I didn't really understand the rating system on AO3 when I posted this so for any fic that I didn't think was G rated, I just put not rated to be safe. lol.

[olderthannetfic]

I think a lot of people who are upset that their trans headcanon that changes the character's canon gender isn't received well would feel better if they realized that it's less about the "trans" part and more about the "genderbend" part. People largely don't like "character is all the same but is now a cis girl instead of a cis boy" fics either and tend to pass on them. Genderbends are wildly popular in some spaces, but niche in many others, and adding a trans element to them won't make them less niche. It's okay to like a niche without trying to investigate why it's a niche and how bigoted it is that it's a niche.

--

If you say a headcanon isn't received well, I'm going to assume an active negative reaction.

If you're talking about people going "No one clicked on my fic and that's injustice!", those people are universally godawful morons who should be blocked.

A person doesn't need to dislike a headcanon or even disagree that it's highly plausible to not click on fic. They might be like "As a trans woman, she is absolutely a trans woman... but also, I only want to read it if I write it."

Personally, I don't think people's feelings about cisswap fic and their feelings about trans fic are necessarily linked. The common reasons people say they don't like trans fic are 1. they don't like preachy issuefic and it's a not uncommon problem, 2. they're trans and sensitive about portrayals, and 3. they want to read about the probable canon set of junk and all the trans fic is the kind that gives the character different junk. And the overwhelming reason is people just being indifferent and not thinking to click on it.

[ao3commentoftheday]

Something that I haven't seen emphasized yet in the beta discussion is that at least in my experience, betas are generally giving suggestions rather than saying that something must be changed. If I'm saying "I don't think this line makes sense" I'm not saying it has to be changed, just that it's confusing to me, and maybe to others, but that you are in no way required to change it if it's a stylistic choice, or you just like it like that. If I suggest a different word choice, you're always free to ignore me. There's also a chance that I'm wrong! I'm human, you're human, we can make mistakes. Some of my suggestions are also personal opinion on how to say something, but in english there's usually no singular way to represent something!

I spent some time as copy editor for a newspaper before I moved up to senior board, but I still do a lot of copy work for it as we don't have a copy editor currently (copy is what we call the editing process of our articles, so similar to proofreading as a beta). We work in google docs and as we edit articles, we always use the suggestion mode to make sure we aren't making changes unilaterally that wouldn't be noticed, and that could be wrong. After two rounds of editing (one for grammar and one for fact-checking, although the latter is probably more relevant to newspaper than fic), the author of the article could go through the comments and decide if they agreed that they used one word too much or a paragraph should be moved to make a line flow better or to add a sentence, etc. or just ignore the comment. Their name would be on the article, so authors always have the final say.

There's obviously some differences in these two types of writing (especially as for newspaper work I have to follow a style guide and make comments about capitalization or how we write people's titles that had to be changed), and I can only talk more about shorter pieces as articles are only so long, but the "Suggestion Mode" method of thinking about betaing is something that I retain in fandom and I think is a good way to think about it. 

If you want to soften the blow as a beta, try phrasing your comment as a suggestion rather than a fact to avoid coming across as negative or accusatory. If you are the author and you're scared of rejection or harsh words, try to think of your beta's comments as light suggestions from a friend on improvements rather than them criticizing you, harsh, etc. They don't think you're a bad writer just because they said you used the word "glowing" too many times in one paragraph, and their opinion of you does not depend on your skill or your work, but who you are. It may not work for every case as everyone's preferences are different, but this "Suggestion Mode" method of working/thinking can help ease friction between betas and authors and I hope it helps!

Thanks for giving your perspective on things!

[moveslikekeithrichards]

the role of the person in the passenger seat is not only navigator but secretary as well. you have to type up the drivers messages to random ladies on facebook about cbd cream & google whether that billy joel song was the theme song for that show or not

[moveslikekeithrichards]

you also have to provide a henchmans disdainful scowl at whoever the driver is flipping off in the target parking lot

[the-apocrypha]

other assorted roles may include

retrieval team for objects in the backseat

custodian of the parking garage tickets

"All clear my way"

en-route dining concierge

announcing "Horses!" when there are horses

[lynx-girl]

Don't forget the Tommy Gun

[help-my-ocs-breached-containmen]

You should never forget the Tommy Gun

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[angel-fruitcake]

i can handle one (1) Event™ per day. whether it be a phone call, an appointment, trip to the grocery store, play date with a friend, etc. only one, that's it. any more than that and i am Stressed

[daughter-of-sapph0]

happy pride

[lindleland]

[learningtogirl]

I've seen this clip many times, but never really appreciated the power of "what was her problem?" Just casually assuming that lesbians come in a wide variety of shapes and being inclusive. As a transbian who is probably still closer to Homer shaped than to my ideal, that's huge!

[soyalexnajera]

[despazito]

[brawlite]

honestly sometimes there's no better feeling than rereading a fic you've written and coming out of it going, "yeah that actually this DOES slap. exactly what i wanted to read. fucking nailed it."

[ladytharen]

#I am my own target audience (via @sheshallfromtimetotime)

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen (2004)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Remaining time: 6 days 8 hours

[parakeet]

just saw a 'comments' tab on someones blog you know where the following and likes tabs would be if enabled and it was just showing all the replies theyve made on peoples posts. this is fascinating when did this feature come out

[parakeet]

EMERGENCY - ITS AUTO ENABLED!

if you've made replies on posts there is now a tab on your blog showing every post youve replied to and your reply.

if this is not what you want, either go to your blog and click comments and disable it from there or just go to your individual blogs setting pages. just change it from blue to grey if you dont want everyone to see your replies AND the post you're replying to

PLEASE BE ADVISED that it is set to disabled for blogs that have not made any replies but it will turn ON if you reply with that blog in the future.! i just tested it with my main, which was greyed out but it turned on the moment i left a test reply

figured i'd get the word out bc i have not seen a single mention of this and i'm sure there are plenty of people who maybe comment on things they don't want on display for everyone to see on their blog lol. you can still look at your replies with it toggled off just no one else can, like locking the following and likes list

[parakeet]

so for some reason this feature was actually announced on the tumblr engineering blog. interesting choice not to reblog it to the staff or tumblr blog, esp considering they asked for user input on how to implement it, but i suppose considering the response to the last update maybe the replies would be too overwhelming...

so couple of clarifications. comments are disabled as default for primary blogs that have their likes disabled. they are seemingly enabled for all other blogs that have replied to posts

posts you comment on may show on your followers 'for you' page if you leave your replies publically available. they may, in the future, show in on your followers dashboard if your follower goes to their dash settings and enables this. apparently, if your likes are enabled, your followers can already see those on the dash if they've gone into preferences and selected to do so, which I was unaware of, and that seems to be disabled at default, but it's possible i disabled it previously and forgot about it ig

[rainbowcrate]

🌈 Hey Reading Rainbows! It’s time for our first artist reveal for the July Roll for Romance crate! First up is Dani (@/Danisaur.Art) who illustrated the endpapers for The No-Girlfriend Rule by Christen Randall (@bycrandall)!

How excited are you to see the new endpapers?

From the artist:

Dani Figueroa is an American graphic designer based in the Netherlands, who specializes in stylized repeating patterns. She loves finding the small pieces of books or games that represent the whole and bringing them together with bright color palettes. When she's not doodling, she can usually be found with her nose in a book!

🌈 Subscription spots are currently open for 1, 3 and 6 month subscription spots! These will start with the June crate! Use RAINBOW10 to save on your first month! Subscribe on our website!

Subscribe to Rainbow Crate!

Our original monthly queer book box subscription. Each box comes with TWO hardcover, fully customized, special edition queer books. Subscrip

ID: An artist reveal for one of the July books. A quartet of illustrations arranged in quadrants of the graphic. Surrounding the graphic is a blue-green ombre striped border. In the center it reads “Artist Spotlight: @danisaur.art”. Artist Spotlight is in black font while the handle is in a magenta font. End ID.

[eosofspades]

i didn't have "i'm broken" teenage asexual angst i had "i'm literally being the only reasonable one about this concept and the rest of you are behaving like fucking freaks" perception issues

[catscatscatscatscatscatserybody]

This is so fucking funny

[icecolddoot]

The Royal Protector

Been replaying the dishonored series and i felt like drawing Corvo. Tried something different with the backgrounds and the colors for this one.

[nightmare-from-heaven]

Hey. Your brain needs to de-frag. Literally it needs you to sit there and space out.

If you want your memory or executive function to improve, stare out a window at the skyline or sidewalk or trees or birds on the electrical wires for like 20+ minutes per day. (With no other stimulation like a podcast or TV if you can manage but hey baby steps innit). If you're fortunate enough to have safe outside with any bits of nature, go stare closely at a 1 meter square of grass and trip out on the bugs and shapes of grasses and stuff.

Literally this will make you smarter. Our brains HAVE TO HAVE this zone out time to do important stuff behind the scenes. This does not happen during sleep, it's something else.

That weird pressurized feeling you get sometimes might be your brain on no defrag.

Give your brain a Daily Dose Of De-Frag.

[starsdreaming]

This explains so much.

Also, if you don't take the time regularly, your brain will do it for you. Usually when you're already stressed and it gets to be too much. You will zone out. And you can not control it. So regular maintenance will help

[nightmare-from-heaven]

Hey. Your brain needs to de-frag. Literally it needs you to sit there and space out.

If you want your memory or executive function to improve, stare out a window at the skyline or sidewalk or trees or birds on the electrical wires for like 20+ minutes per day. (With no other stimulation like a podcast or TV if you can manage but hey baby steps innit). If you're fortunate enough to have safe outside with any bits of nature, go stare closely at a 1 meter square of grass and trip out on the bugs and shapes of grasses and stuff.

Literally this will make you smarter. Our brains HAVE TO HAVE this zone out time to do important stuff behind the scenes. This does not happen during sleep, it's something else.

That weird pressurized feeling you get sometimes might be your brain on no defrag.

Give your brain a Daily Dose Of De-Frag.

[starsdreaming]

This explains so much.

Also, if you don't take the time regularly, your brain will do it for you. Usually when you're already stressed and it gets to be too much. You will zone out. And you can not control it. So regular maintenance will help

[dailycatsblog]

[only-cat-memes]