one flesh, one end, bitch

hi im eli! pronoun me any, 25+, clueless and crying. here's where i shout about books, writing, and sometimes other fandom content. you may have previously seen me around as keys-crows-dreamers-scones! i'm on ao3, and i follow from elia-nna. (icon by the wonderfully skilled @Duquesita_/@duquesita.bsky.social on twitter/bsky)

[decaflondonfog]

for old time's sake

[drabble, seth/allison, grief :(, second person pov, canon mcd, for @aftgtinyfic]

The pity in Renee’s eyes, the worry in Dan’s—all of it makes your stomach turn. “Are you sure?” Matt asks. Is it so hard to understand this trip was already planned? Never like this, with an urn on the passenger seat, the seatbelt around it a mockery. But it was going to happen. You wish you’d kept some of Seth’s hair, his teeth. Something appropriately morbid. Instead, the two of you drive off to see a lady on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, who makes jewellery out of ashes. For the ring you never got to have.

[oliviaflies06]

What’s in the bag: Ryland Grace style

(Getting dragged along to meetings means bag searches happen quite often. He is NEVER ready)

Credit for the list goes to @official-dr-ryland-grace

[fanfictionwriter101]

Opening up your WIP like

[i-cant-swim-actually]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[saszor]

[ID in alt text]

"Tutorial" on how to draw an OC with dwarfism (well, some of it).

Boring tired disclaimer: Keep in mind that this is an introductory "drawing" "tutorial" and has some generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. Which happens to be true for everything in general.

You are heavily encouraged to do your own research because this does not contain everything you should know before making a character with any type of dwarfism.

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

If (when) you repost this on pinterest at least put a link to the original post somewhere..

[synnyi]

cytherea and loveday (a greek tragedy)

[freak-motion]

i'm the newest member of the SecUnit Three fan club hello

[pcktknife]

creative droughts are so embarrassing yeah sorry man I forgot my shapes and colors

[melancholygirls]

I passed a flower shop next to a tattoo shop and at first I laughed because I thought it was ironic and then i freaked because IMAGINE YOUR OTP IN A FLORIST/TATTOO ARTIST AU

[stillalittlekid]

OMG I COULD TOTALLY IMAGINE THEM LIKE THAT IT WOULD BE SO PERFECT

[christ-with-a-why]

[melancholygirls]

I cannot BELIEVE a post I made when I was 13 is circulating! And also apparently started this trope? I thought somebody had the idea separately and it blew up that way😭

[duckydoesstuff]

@hellsite-hall-of-fame for your collection

[ivyandbranch]

Get a Library Card even if you never use it

[epicsause-official]

i recently found out what the * * * that sometimes separates parts of a text is called and youre never gonna fucking believe it

[whetstonefires]

the problem with knowing things about battle tactics is that an ever-increasing subset of popular media becomes impossible to enjoy properly because you have to sit there like 'wow Captain Protagonist good to know all those dead people on your own side are a direct result of your total lack of anything resembling brains'

[whetstonefires]

seriously i'm not talking about anything elaborate, just basic common sense, but common sense is so much harder to ignore once you've got systematized data to back it up, like

what do they even think a fortification is for???

what do you think a shield is for. what do you think ranged weapons are for????

make the other sonuvabitch have a hard time killing you without getting killed first! most basic goal of combat! why are movies so bad at writing characters who actually attempt this on even a very small 'army' scale?

[whetstonefires]

and like i said in the first post, it's not just that it's Dumb, the thing is that once you put the character in a command role, their ability to think their way through a combat situation with some degree of optimization becomes a reflection on their character on like. a moral level.

if your tactics are dumb and reckless but you usually win and it's just you punching people that's one thing. or even if it's you and five guys who've decided they like how you roll!

but if you are put in charge of soldiers. and you throw their lives away because you don't know what you're doing. that's not okay.

it's not always avoidable! one of the basic problems with armies! but when it happens in fiction it needs to be on purpose, to make sure the military elements of the narrative remain thematically congruent.

when you have a bit where Main Character is in command and then makes avoidable bad decisions and people die who didn't have to. either the protagonist has been put in a horrific position by whatever authority figure thrust them into a role they didn't want and weren't competent to handle, without support.

or the protagonist, voluntarily assuming a management job they suck at, has committed a grievous harm against others by not recognizing their own limitations.

even if they win! i don't want to be watching a movie where the main character squanders every tactical advantage and loses 40% of their forces totally unnecessarily for Narrative Tension, but the enemy retreats or gets eaten by a dragon or loses the MacGuffin or whatever, and then there's triumphant music and a party because They Won!!!

no! they fucked it up is what they did! this is some Light Brigade gaslighting shit! shut up. our boy just massacred people who trusted him.

[curlicuecal]

kind of a tangent but this is also how I feel when the good guys mow their way through dozens of faceless grunts and then suddenly the big bad in charge is the life they face a moral quandary over

the random foot soldiers and henchmen's lives matter too! tbh

[whetstonefires]

#tbh they should matter MORE #they are way less culpable than whoever's in charge #it's just plot convenient to dehumanize the work force

[contribute-a-verse]

I think it’s worth noting that history is littered with examples of wasteful tactics. A common element is that often times technology advances while tactics do not.

For example, in the American Civil War, the tactics used of soldiers, marching into open fueled, and exchanging musket fire was not all that different than the tactics of the American revolution a little under 100 years prior. However, the rifles that infantry men were armed with were significantly more accurate. As a result, casualties, both in terms of lives lost, and soldiers, injured were horrific.

The concept of trench warfare in World War I was not all that different from wars, fought all over the continent in the century prior, and were designed to try and curb advantages of cavalry. But again, of mortars, more accurate, rifles, and chemical warfare meant that charging trenches resulted in truly grotesque numbers of casualties.

There is certainly evidence that World War I era generals were fairly callous when it came to casualty figures. They were more interested in territory gained. And it mattered very little how many lives that cost since soldiers were replaceable.

I agree that there should be some narrative coherence when protagonist squander advantages due to bad tactics, but when you look at actual history, it’s very clear that even if there are “good guys“ and “bad guys“ in war, there’s also just a lot of waste. That doesn’t make for a very sexy narrative, but it’s the nature of the beast. Militaries in particular are conservative institutions slow to change. you do things a certain way because that is the way they are done. That will always get people killed. But that’s also excepted as the way things are done.

At the end of the day, I’m just not sure there is a good way to organize two groups of people trying to kill each other.

I think the more interesting question is, should there be?

[whetstonefires]

i mean maybe, but that's not what the post is about, it's about fiction that places warfare centrally, but then engages with it only on an aesthetic level.

thereby creating major ruptures in the narrative logic and characterization for anyone who knows (for example) what the point of a wall is.

this is a writing complaint, about failure to adequately situate motive within character and maintain internal consistency.

i'm not going to ask every piece of fiction that wants to have swords in it to engage in a meditation on the nature of conflict. that sounds boring, and also like it's asking too much of people. i'm aiming way lower here.

the problem is a general failure to care enough about the battle as an event within a narrative to make the pieces go together according to an internal logic. people being dumb is fine as long as they're dumb on purpose. people not doing The Most Winning Thing is fine as long as the priorities they're supposed to have are the priorities they're actually displaying.

[mysteryteacup]

There's nothing more frustrating as an audience than being told "this person is a Good Person who Cares about their men and is also a Genius Tactician" and being shown a clown that never thinks before getting most of their people needlessly killed.

[beatrice-otter]

Also, regarding WWI specifically, their tactics were a hell of a lot better and more effective than pop culture gives them credit for. They were actually very sophisticated and doing the best they could with what technology they had. The problem is that once you have machine guns, there are only really two ways to break through that rate of fire:

Artillery barrage beforehand to try and kill as many people/machine gun nests as possible on the enemy side, followed by an infantry push that you know is going to take ruinous casualties if it works at all.

Tanks. Armored vehicles capable of driving over a battlefield with thick enough armor that the machine gun isn't a problem.

And they didn't have tanks! They were trying to develop them, but the technology level wasn't there yet. They couldn't move over broken terrain, and they kept breaking down even on smooth terrain. If you're going to have a war at that technology level where you have lots of machine guns but no tanks yet ... then WWI is about the best you're going to do.

Now, obviously, the solution to this is "but why have a war when the technology is at this stupid stalemate level?" but the people fighting the war (even the generals) rarely have control over that.

[susandsnell]

feminist killjoy hours again, what the actual fuck is “weird girl literature” and how often do we acquiesce to the latest degrading gendered advertising campaigns

[susandsnell]

Women did not fucking pioneer horror, thriller, and science fiction as we know it for publishing to infantilize it into a high school phase

[susandsnell]

is Stephen king “weird boy literature”? Or does he get to be an adult horror novelist?

[solmarillion]

i hate how much people care about their ships being "canon" now. spirk fans didn't publish zines full of fanfics in the 70s only for modern fandom to grovel at the knees of corporations and beg for things to be canon. use your imaginations, don't allow billionaires to think for you.

[mormtastic]

rocky support

[yaraaflor]

imagine you work at a luxury car dealership. two college kids show up in a shitty rental car one day. one is has facial tattoos and the haughty attitude of a famous person. the other is a dead-faced goth the size of an elf. tattoo boy says they’re here to buy so you humor them and show some cars. elf man doesn’t say a word the whole time but clearly is calling the shots. he points at a Maserati and says he’ll be paying for the whole thing, no financing necessary. then he goes back over to the rental car, where evidently there has been a whole person asleep in the backseat the entire time. this man is about the same height as the goth pixie and dressed like a homeless person. he listens to the goth say something, pulls out several wads of cash, hands them over and goes back to sleep. your boss spends the next hour walking these freaks through the paperwork while you count through what turns out to be nearly 100k in cold hard cash. no one explains a goddamn thing and they leave with the nicest car on the lot

[mopeyopie]

jean <3