The prompt started it

I am pro-Frogs, all Frogs~Denois on AO3~they/them~icon and header altered picrews by tangotangredi.

[sexydexynurse]

Where To Find Me and My Stuff

So, you’ve seen me on the tumbls but you want a more reliable place to see stuff I’ve made.

Denois on AO3 - Currently 351 fics, 320 in OMGCP, 333 of which are NurseyDex. (Note: My fics are currently archive locked. I’m very sorry to my guest readers but it feels right at the moment with the ai scrapers. Highly recommend signing up for a free account. you can even get a free proton email account just for ao3 if you want then it’s not linked to anything else you do.)

Denois on SqWA - Crossposting fics from AO3 to the SquidgeWorld Archive because I see no reason not to. (Note: My fics will be archive locked here as well.)

ArtbyDenois on AO3 - Yep, a second AO3 just for posting fanart to AO3. It does not have all my art, but I’ve tried to post all the art I’ve made that goes with Fics and also my Dice Punks art.

The Denois Archive - This is still technically on tumblr, but it’s a tumblr just for posting links to my fics and I have pages with a searchable list of all my fics, and all my art that I’ve shared (other than nsfw). (Note: “all” as of the last time I updated the pages which has been awhile because I can’t get javascript to work anymore, but I share all links to my fics there first)

[glumshoe]

We played the fanfiction trope version of “fuck marry kill” in which the options are “slow burn/fake date/enemies to lovers” and it’s been like 30 hours and I’m STILL losing it over the concept of fake-dating Saruman the White.

[lilbittydragon-deactivated20241]

put 3 characters in my inbox and I’ll tell you who I’d slow burn/fake date/enemies to lovers with XD

[sexydexynurse]

put 6 character in my inbox and I'll tell you which combo I'd use for slow burn/fake date/enemies to lovers.

[elumish]

If anyone else proudly talks about how you have fed something I wrote into genAI, I will block you too 👍 Anyway you will be better off in the long run if you simply do not use genAI.

[elumish]

If you ever think "I don't have enough time to write this so I must use AI" I would like you to know that I just wrote about 4,500 words of my dissertation in two days fueled almost entirely by panic. Learn to be scared of deadlines. You will manage to write without AI. I promise.

[elumish]

Slightly more usefully, now that I've slept a bit, here are some tips for writing academic work on an extremely short deadline:

Know what you are going to write before you start writing it. I don't mean the literal words in each sentence before you start typing anything, but spending 10-30 minutes to get a handle around your argument and supporting points before you start writing will save you hours of frustration trying to string ideas together while writing.

Rely on structure. I was writing a dissertation chapter so I had full multi-page sections, but even if you're writing a paper that's 1500 words long, you should establish a clear structure for your paper ahead of time as part of planning your argument. That way, you can go down and fill in each section as you go or even work out of order and know that your argument will still track logically.

Use two screens if you can. Have your word document open on one screen and your sources, research, etc. open on the other screen so you can look at them both at the same time.

Cite as you go. Even if you don't do the full citation, document enough that you can easily produce the citation when you're done (e.g., page number).

Take breaks. As counterintuitive as it sounds, pausing to give your brain a break will let you get through more faster.

[doctorvtumbls]

The rough template for essays that got me through college is:

Paragraph 1: I'm going to prove X in this essay by examining A, B, and C. [Optional: quote from reliable source for ~flavor~.]

Paragraph 2: A agrees with me about X. Quote from reliable source.

Paragraph 3: B agrees with me about X. Quote from reliable source.

Paragraph 4: C agrees with me about X. Quote from reliable source.

Paragraph 5: I proved X by [brief summary of paragraphs 2-4]. [Optional: quote from reliable source for ~flavor~.]

Number of paragraphs in between opener and closer are variable. Three is usually enough to get you through most undergrad essays, depending on how much info you need to provide. Opener and closer are a must though. Opener so they know what to expect (thesis statement), closer to remind them what they just read and how that ties in to the opener (thesis statement was proven).

[elumish]

I would shift the internal paragraphs from "here is how this person/argument agrees with me on X" to "here is the piece of the argument I am making and how I am defending it, including by citing this person/argument."

It doesn't really matter that Bob agrees with you on X--you need to be able to present a convincing argument, and you can cite Bob's existing research to back you up.

I would broadly approach essays like this:

Paragraph 1: Here is my argument. Here are the core components or supporting arguments for my argument--essentially, here is what I am about to explain to you to get you to agree with my argument.

Paragraph 2a: Here is the introduction to the first component or supporting argument.

Paragraph 2b: Here is some proof (primary source data, other authors who have already argued this, etc.). This is where you cite Bob.

Paragraph 2c: Now that I have convinced you of this component or supporting argument, here is how this component or supporting argument supports/validates/explains my core argument. Now you understand my core argument a little better and agree with it a little more.

(Paragraph 2 can be as many paragraphs as needed.)

Paragraph 3: See paragraph 2

Paragraph 4: See paragraph 2

Paragraph 5: Now that you have read about all of my components or supporting arguments, which also explained how each one supported/validated/explain my core argument, I am going to explain how they cumulatively support/validate/explain my core argument, so you understand why I took you through that journey. (Optional addition: this is the core message you should take away from what you just read)

As an example, in the section I was just working on, one of the arguments I was making was that, for TV shows (within my dataset) that aired both before and after 9/11 and were set in locations/had protagonists that would have been directly impacted by the attacks, in its immediate aftermath shows set in NYC had a greater focus on the human impact of the attacks and the personal/citywide devastation while those shows set in the DC area had a more distant, political focus.

So the structure is (broadly):

Explain argument (I don't actually start with this, but that's because it's currently structured badly)

Walk through and analyze what each show did in the aftermath of the attacks

Conclusion after first set of shows (NYC shows), conclusion after second set of shows (DC shows)

[ecrivainsolitaire]

If only there was some sort of technology that facilitated structuring documents, creating and customising templates, finding and formatting citations, serving as a soundboard to challenge your hypotheses and identify biases, reformulate clunky arguments or run-off sentences… perhaps in such a world your two days could have been compressed to six hours of intensive focus on the research matter and less on making the PDF look pretty. Too bad no such thing has existed for the entirety of your university career.

The first thing you're going to learn in the workplace is that nobody will reward you for your effort. They will reward the quality of your output. It's up to you to decide whether and how your time and energy is worth saving, and how you get to that output.

You'd think someone so dedicated to research would understand that there's such a thing as nuance.

[elumish]

I'm sorry, do you think I spent most of those two days formatting a document?

I spent roughly 7 minutes at 1am making everything the right font/format and setting the header structure properly in Word. I spent another probably 25 minutes doing all of my citations, and I did use OWL Purdue's citation generator for a few of my citations because it is good and also I had no idea how to cite photos properly.

I think you're implying that I should be using generative AI to do my doctoral dissertation, which 1) lol, and 2) is a deeply stupid suggestion, but here we are, so now I'm going to talk about it.

To be clear, first, I finished my master's degree in 2018, so no, generative AI in the form you seem to be suggesting I use has not existed for "the entirety of my university career." ChatGPT was released to the public in November 2022.

If you are curious what I spent a lot of those 2 days doing, I spent Monday mostly in the office at my job, where I work full time, given that I have had a full-time job at this company since 2019, because again, I have been an adult for quite a while.

At that job, I have had to do extensive research, information gathering, analysis, and synthesis, which has often involved not just reading documentation but also holding real conversations with real human beings where I have to have a solid enough understanding of the material that I am asking/talking about that I can ask intelligent questions, explain my point of view, and respond in real time. Sometimes, I have had to do that without any access to a computer/phone--just myself, whatever materials I prepared beforehand, and my own understanding of what I am talking about.

I then need to be able to produce or update documents, decks, briefing materials, or whatever else is required, and then often I need to be able to present that information and correctly answer questions on the fly, which again means that I need to have a solid understanding of what I am talking about.

To build this understanding, I need to engage firsthand with the entire scope of information. I can't rely solely on summaries or other people's work, even coming from other people who know the material. Those of us who are working on something need to engage with the material together, bring our own subject matter expertise and point of view, and build a shared understanding together, not based on whatever garbage a glorified autofill plagiarism machine can manage to spit out.

And to your point about the workplace, people do reward effort. Not everyone, obviously, and quality does matter, but showing up and actually putting in work is genuinely important in the workplace.

I have also been in the workforce long enough that I can tell the people who outsource their efforts, including to AI. It may seem great to have AI fix your clunky or run-on sentences--but the act of doing fixing them, of forcing yourself to more clearly articulate an idea, makes you understand that idea better or reveals the places where you don't understand that idea. The people I've worked with who can't fix their own clunky writing have historically also been those who had the least understanding of the ideas articulated in that writing, and that is not a coincidence.

Now back to my PhD.

I probably didn't actually spend that much more than six hours of intense focus on the work I did over those two days. That time was broken up, of course, by things like breaks and sleep and my gainful employment, but of the time I spent actually heads down working, it was probably somewhere between 6 and 10 hours, which is an extremely reasonable amount of time to write 4,500 words of a doctoral dissertation.

And I could do that at least in part because I am familiar enough with this topic that I am not learning it from scratch when I sit down to write about it. I have sat with it and discussed it with real humans and interrogated my thoughts on it and built my point of view.

If I weren't interested in doing that, if I weren't interested in becoming a genuine expert in my topic, I wouldn't be doing this work in the first place.

Anyway, learn how to format your own documents. Learn how to challenge your own biases. Learn how to fix your own run-on sentences. Learn how to put the work in. You will be better for it.

[kuttithevangu]

Imagine a stage production where at the start of Act 1 there’s a whole rack of guns in the corner and then as the play goes on the actors keeping taking a gun down and holding it for awhile and then just tossing it offstage. At final curtain no guns have been fired

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

"only a poor artisan blames his tools" is such bullshit, in almost every imaginable line of work the quality of the tools you have access to plays a massive role in the quality of the end product, sometimes in excess of the role played by individual skill! For example, some people have to code in javascript

[probablybadrpgideas]

You ever notice that no one in tabletop games gets random stomach bugs?

Every in game day, the players all have to roll a die (which die is up to the group). If they roll a 1, then that day they have a cold, stomach issues, mild diarrhea, a migraine or some other technically mild issue that nonetheless impacts every single aspect of their day and abilities. Roll another die to see what the problem is and work with DM to decide what the gameplay effects of it are (i.e. movement is halved if you’re feeling a bit diarrhea-y because you feel like you’ll shit yourself if you move too fast).

­

as a migraine sufferer they aren't mild, did you perhaps mean headache? - paper

[dubiousculturalartifact]

The new Odyssey adaptation has inevitably gotten people talking about a Muppet version of it, and they’re frequently suggesting Kermit as Odysseus, Miss Piggy as Penelope.

I’m sorry but that’s thinking way too small, hear me out:

We need to have Miss Piggy as Odysseus, and Kermit as Penelope.

Think about it… who’s the more fickle, prideful, warlike one in that relationship? Who is absolutely ready to go ham, at a moment’s notice?

It ain’t Kermit

[anyroads]

Miss Piggy tied to the mast while Statler and Waldorf heckle her from the sea

[homeofthebasin]

I normally dislike these kinds of takes but this one works absurdly well. Who'd be the kind to brag with their full name to the cyclops? Who'd be immune to turning into a pig because they are already a pig? Who'd want to hear the sirens so badly that they'd tie themsleves to a mast just to ensure the sirens aren't as good singers as them? Who would get brutalized by hubris but still come home ready to kill a bunch of people for trying to get with their partner?

[kuttithevangu]

One of the reasons you might find yourself reading a book and feeling like stuff Just Happens is if the obstacles and conflicts the characters encounter do not result from the choices the character has made. In character-focused stories it’s satisfying to see characters run into obstacles THEY HAVE CREATED, specifically obstacles they have created by MAKING WHAT THEY THINK ARE THE RIGHT CHOICES.

Sometimes a contributing factor for this problem is that the characters know themselves too well. People rarely act out of fully conscious awareness of their own thoughts and feelings, so it’s weird when characters in a story do this. You can get a ton of conflict out of characters thinking they want Thing X, getting Thing X, and realizing it was actually Thing Y they wanted all along and now they have to deal with making the wrong choice.

If most of the protagonist’s problems are ultimately caused by their own reaction to situations, not by the occurrence of situations per se, it keeps the momentum going and it gives the audience something to sympathize with. I LOVE when someone tries their best and just makes things worse.

It is fairly baffling to see coming-of-age stories that have this central problem. How can you have a coming-of-age story in which the character’s choices and mistakes do not contribute to either the plot or the growth of that character. Psyduck perplexity dot jpeg

Not calling anyone out though. Not about anyone specific 🦄

[zoctopode]

8 page comic about a mech and a mechanic and grief

hello precious followers. i made a comic about grief, or how i feel when i process grief at least. i put a robot in it. please read it.

if you wanna catch future comic pages i make as soon as i make em, heres a link to mmmmmy patreon! huge giant massive thank you to my patreon supporters you guys rule

[scorpiaok]

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AND DON´T USE AI.

Edit: if you do use ai... tag it

[msilverstar]

This! And AO3 allows original works as well as fanfiction, meta, essays, fanart, podfic and other fanworks, but not recommendation lists. It's an archive not a social network.

[brainstreams]

Don't use AI to write. Use cocaine like a real author.

[wonderstruck]

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[avengerphobic]

honestly im very tired of peoples inability to recognize stereotypes that stem from sax rohmer novels i think white people especially owe it to asian people to do a cursory reading of the premise of fu manchu novels and read the characters are associated with them just so they can get their heads out of their asses and stop blindly reading fu manchu and fah lo suee reskins without any critical thought

[avengerphobic]

like an asian daughter trying to get away from her evil dad or trying to usurp her father with the help of white men is a anti asian stereotype i need yall to know that. the daughter who is actually good and is just a helpless victim of her father and she needs help from a white man to either get away or kill her father is a racist stereotype. Id take it a step further and say that even if its not a white man getting help from any outside force to usurp or run from her father is in fact racist. An asian woman falling in love with a white man and that white man basically making her realize that she shouldn't be following her father is racist it comes from Daughter of the Dragon. It comes from Sax Rohmer. We need to recognize that its a thing. We need to be critical of how we talk about characters that fall into that trope

[avengerphobic]

if you reblog anything from me I wish it were this. the anti asian stereotypes from sax rohmer novels are so prevalent in literally everything its difficult to find anything with Asian people that doesnt have at least a few. especially comics

[swarmofbees13]

Different fiber arts when you make a mistake

Sewing: It’s ok, the pattern is only suggestion! Ply around with if, make it your own.

Quilting: All good, you’re just gonna need to spend half an hour on the calculator and make another trip to the fabric store.

Knitting: Time to sob while you frog two hours of work.

Bobbin Lace: No one will notice that not, it’s only a glaring problem in the most delicate piece of work.

Tatting: So you choose death?

[ultharkitty]

Nalbinding: OH this is going to take five times longer to take apart than it did to make

Early-C17th style blackwork embroidery on natural linen: First, we get out the magnifying visor, then we get out the lamp with the daylight bulb, and then we choose our blade very fucking carefully...

Crochet: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

[the---hermit]

"is it better to read non fiction or novels?" No. It is better to read than not to read full stop. That is the only argument. Let's not create yet another fake scale of who is a better reader. I am so fucking tired of this kind of discourse. If you only read graphic novels you are still reading and that is better than not reading. If you only read middle grade books despite being in your 30s you are still reading and that is better than no reading. If you read one single book a year it is still good because you are reading. And that makes you a reader.

[smubbles-etc]

Celestial Bodies Smubbles

Apologies for the delay on posting to tumblr, RL ate the mods whole, but!

The Celestial Bodies Smubbles are on anon for another two days (until Aug 15th) and the collection will remain open indefinitely thereafter, so go forth and create!

This blog will reblog fills we are tagged in.

For always up-to-date info about when the next round goes live, either stalk the AO3 subcollections page, or come join us on Discord! We always attempt to cross-post to tumblr, but life may get in the way.

You can check out the FAQs or this Tumblr for more information.

[smubbles-etc]

Brief heads up -- author reveals will be delayed by a couple of hours due to IRL obligations, but they will happen within the next 6h!