JVL
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
todays bird
trying on a metaphor
Discoholic šŖ©
styofa doing anything
Not today Justin
#extradirty
Show & Tell
Peter Solarz
Sweet Seals For You, Always
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
d e v o n
One Nice Bug Per Day
taylor price
JBB: An Artblog!
RMH
almost home
oozey mess
ā
seen from United States
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@sleepdeprivedreadingao3
So... Joel kept calling Jimmy Captain America during the first episode of Past Life eh?
:)
Time to revive Captain Solidaripecs.
Credit to @sleepdeprivedreadingao3 and our little book club server. We were there when the context was written.
"oh you're bi too? haha attracted to every woman and five men amiright" don't put words in my mouth. don't put your baggage on me. if you saw the men i wanted to fuck you'd hurl.
āI like women because theyāre amazing and I like men because I canāt stop making bad decisions haha.ā
Well when I like women itās because Iām fucking awesome, and when I like men itās because Iām fucking awesome. Your take on your own sexuality fucking sucks, Iām better than you.
It's got the same energy as "I hate my wife" boomers, and it sucks too because even if YOU never say it, it gets said often enough people internalize it. Do you know how long my spouse would say stuff like "Yeah, idk why she's with me, a man, when women are so much prettier" like shut UP, if I did not actually find multiple genders attractive I would not call myself bi! If I did not find you attractive I would not be with you! You deserve love!
Must admit that one thing that changed the way I see fandom discourse is realizing that a lot of fandom is justā¦ playing with dolls. We're playing with dolls. Shipping? Playing with dolls. AUs? Dolls. Darkfic? Dolls.
Lotta people very agitated about the other kids playing with dolls wrong.
really good analogy because yknow what sometimes it CAN feel bad to see other kids playing dolls "wrong!" maybe you see them damaging or "hurting" their dolls and you hyper empathize, or you see them making modifications and you don't like them! and it makes you feel bad to see it!
fortunately, though, you don't have to watch! nobody is making you watch! and nobody's gonna take YOUR dolls from you. nobody can hurt your dolls, either! these dolls are an infinitely renewable resource. you can have your own iterations, that stay happy and healthy, forever! (and moreover, the dolls don't have real feelings, and cannot suffer!)
some types of stories about my favorite characters make me feel bad. so i don't read them! just like i don't watch youtube videos of people smashing toys
good post op
Does your ass really crave a d!ck so badly you need to ride oh so freedom of condom opinions and clogging the tags, ik damn well your only source of jerking off is hate
Omg do you mean itš„ŗš„ŗš„ŗš„ŗ
Hey!! get off of anon and say that shit to my face
WAIT U DIDNT NEED TO DO THAT WGAT IT WAS FINEšššš
TS IS NORMAL PPL R ALWAYS MEAN OR WEIRD ITS FINE I SWEARššš
Jamie, I love you and that you're standing in support for Percy, HOWEVER that blog was made specifically to take the heat from anons like that so others can express annoyance with some behaviors arounds ships in peace. Also Percy's answer was a group effort and we picked the anon's ask apart just to figure out what that nutcase was trying to say
This is money cat. He only appears every 1,383,986,917,198,001 posts. If you repost this in 30 seconds he will bring u good wealth and fortune.
how are we falling for this anyway reblog
I mean itās a cat
Wors case scenario: cat
happy belated pride month to my favorite flower gays ft my silly pirate au that i've not posted any art of yet :D
i wanted to get this done before july but i was too late ;v;
I see it a lot in my students that the ONLY mode they can engage with literature on is one in which they either say it's good because it's "relatable" or it's bad because they "can't relate to it" as well, and I feel like this is a symptom of the same problem. An unwillingness to engage with fiction outside of its ability to be a mirror to your specific worldview and set of morals. But art doesn't exist to give you moral purity badges--it's a mode of expression that produces conversations between artists and readers. And to engage in those converesations on an adult level you need to learn to process the discomfort of flawed human realities productively.
this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about
I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.
I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.
I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.
Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.
Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:
The place has a style sheet. Use it. They say they want your MS in 16.5 point Papyrus italic with 0.8 inch margins all around, guess what you're doing before you send it off? Save As, reformat, send it. In the absence of a specific guide: Courier 12 pt (Times New Roman if you must), double spaced, align left, tab 0.5 at each new paragraph.
Check the word count. Don't submit novellas to 2500 word short story venues. BTW, you format the MS in that old style above because the question isn't literal words. Courier 12pt double spaced gives you 250 words per page for typesetting purposes. 2500 words is 10 ms pages, 5000 is 20 pages, etc.
Don't send your romance to Analog or your war story to Harlequin. If it's a cross-genre story, be sure there's enough of what the publication is focused on to interest them, but breaking through is hard if that's not something they usually do.
That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.
Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.
Enclosed/attached is my story <Title> for your publication <Magazine>. It is x (rounded to the nearest 500) words. I can be reached at <email> (that you check regularly and isn't likely to dump things into spam) and <phone>.
(If submitting a hard copy: The manuscript is disposable. A SASE is enclosed for your response./A SASE is included for return of the manuscript and your response.)
Thank you for your consideration.
If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.
In the midst of an interstellar revolt against an evil galactic Empire, vital weapon plans fall into the hands of a farm boy on the edges of the galaxy. With the help of an aging warrior from the Old Republic, and a smuggler with a dark past and his imposing alien copilot, the four set out to deliver them to the rebel forces but are instead flung into a rescue mission to save the beautiful princess who stole the plans as worlds are destroyed by the might of the Empire's weapon, the Death Star.
Captured by the Death Star on route to deliver the plans, they manage to escape the base with the princess, the old warrior sacrificing himself to make this possible. As the Death Star approaches the rebel base, they use the captured plans to stage a desperate final stand. In a fierce space battle of single-pilot ships over the surface of the moon-sized weapon, the farm boy manages to make the critical shot with an unexpected assist from the smuggler, destroying it.
Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.
Happy writing.
PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.
Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.
PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.
@silverhand's reply is right on.
Seconding that: if an agency / publisher has a style sheet or submission format then they're rules, not suggestions, with sound reasons for all of them.
Courier 12-point font, for instance.
Besides @silverhand's example of how, with correct margins and line-spacing, it enables word count and page length, it's also very plain so an editor's or reader's attention will be on how the story is told rather than on how it looks.
Here's a 2007 article in which writers talk about the fonts they use; though the reasons why differ, Courier is a clear favourite.
An in TTSBC universe hot take, if you will (imagine this as a tweet) "HotGuy should not be allowed at pride hes a government worker and so it A Cop #NoCopsAtPride"
*cue Scar crying in the corner wrapped in a pride flag*
"BUT I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!?!?!?!?"
Okay but... That's Scar, you know, the college professor. But HotGuy? He's a law enforcer for the city and so could be called a cop. Now Scar just needs to figure out that he can go to pride, just as a civilian
when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each otherā¦ like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?š³
THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DONāT KNOW WHO THIS āHARRYā PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW
op is the only valid person iāve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light
Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:
Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didnāt *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.
Politicians used his music to promote their āMurica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. Heās over here asking when weāre going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who werenāt helping the people.
It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jacksonās record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.
Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.
So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.
Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman
I used to think that Bruce and Clarence kissing onstage was exuberance, showmanship, and telling racist homophobes to fuck off. Like, they picked up a certain kind of audience and went āRacist homophobes? Not in our house!ā And started the kissing then but then I actually looked it up and
https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons
It was a story whereā¦ we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldnāt have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen
It wasnāt about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage
It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that heās been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarenceās life and will presumably love him the rest of his own
Clemons said in one interview. āBruce and I looked at each other and didnāt say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each otherās lives. He was what Iād been searching for.ā In another version of the story, Clemons says āHe looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.ā
Iām having some emotions about it!
āHe was elemental in my life,ā Springsteen adds, āand losing him was like losing the rain.ā
Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!
We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!
God Iām not okay about it
This is how the golden age of piracy ended.
The first mermaid to get tattoos :)
āwe didnāt know any better,ā the crewman says, and swallows, presenting the chest to the captain. āwhat do we do now?ā
ākill it,ā the captain says, but the ice is melting in his eyes.
āwe canāt,ā the first mate says desperately, praying she wonāt have to fight her captain on this. āwe canāt. we - i wonāt. we wonāt.ā
āi know.ā
x
ādaddy,ā she says, floating in a tub of seawater in the hold, ādaddy, la-la, la-la-la.ā
her voice rings like bells. her accent is strange; her mouth isnāt made for human words. it mesmerises even the hardiest amongst them and she wasnāt even trying. the crew has taken to diving for shellfish near the shorelines for her; she loves them, splitting the shells apart with strength seen in no human toddler, slurping down the slimy molluscs inside and laughing, all plump brown cheeks and needle-sharp teeth. she sometimes splashes them for fun with her smooth, rubbery brown tail. even when they get soaked they laugh. they love her.
ādaddy,ā she calls again, and he can hear the worry in her voice. the storm rocking the ship is harsh and uncaring, and if they go down, she would be the only survivor.
ādonāt worry,ā he says, and goes over, sitting next to the tub. the first mate, leaning against the wall, pretends not to notice as he quietly begins to sing.
x
āfather,ā she says, one day, as she leans on the edge of the dock and the captain sits next to her, āwhy am I here?ā
āyour mother abandoned you,ā he says, as he always has. āwe found you adrift, and couldnāt bear to leave you there.ā
she picks at the salt-soaked boards, uncertain. her hair is pulled back in a fluffy black puff, the white linen holding it slipping almost over one of her dark eyes. one of her first tattoos, a many-limbed kraken, curls over her right shoulder and down her arm, delicate tendrils wrapped around her calloused fingertips. āalright,ā she says.
x
āwhy am I really here?ā she asks the first mate, watching the sun set over the water in streaks of liquid metal that pooled in the troughs of the waves and glittered on the seafoam.
āwe didnāt know any better,ā the first mate says, staring into the water. āwe didnāt know- we didnāt know anything. we didnāt understand why she fought so viciously to guard her treasure. we could not know she protected something a thousand times more precious than the purest gold.ā
she wants to be furious, but she canāt. she already knew the answer, from reading the guilt in her fatherās eyes and the empty space in her own history. and she canāt hate her family.
āitās alright,ā she says. āi do have a family, anyways. i donāt think i would have liked my other life near as much.ā
x
her kraken grows, spreading its tendrils over her torso and arms. she grows too, too large to come on board the ship without being hauled up in a boat from the water. she sings when the storms come and swims before the ship to guide it to safety. she fights off more than one beast of the seas, and gathers a set of scars across her back that she bears with pride. āi donāt mind,ā she says, when the captain fusses over her, ānow i match all of you.ā
the first time their ship is threatened, really threatened, is by another fleet. a friend turned enemy of the first mate. āwe shouldnāt fight him,ā she says, peering through the spyglass.
āwhy not?ā the mermaid asks.
āheāll win,ā the first mate says.
the mermaid tips her head sideways. Her eyes, dark as the deep waters, gleam in the noon light. āare you sure?ā she asks.
x
the enemy fleet surrenders after the flagship is sunk in the night, the anchor ripped off the ship and the planks torn off the hull. the surviving crew, wild-eyed and delirious, whimper and say a sea serpent came from the water and attacked them, say it was longer than the boat and crushed it in its coils. the first mate hears this and has to hide her laughter. the captain apologizes to his daughter for doubting her.
ādonāt worry,ā she says, with a bright laugh, āit was fun.ā
x
the second time, they are pushed by a storm into a royal fleet. they canāt possibly fight them, and they donāt have the time to escape.
ālet me up,ā the mermaid urges, surfacing starboard and shouting to the crew. ābring me up, quickly, quickly.ā
they lower the boat and she piles her sinous form into it, and uses her claws to help the crew pull her up. once on the deck she flops out of the boat and makes her way over to the bow. the crew tries to help but sheās so heavy they can barely lift parts of her.
she crawls up out in front of the rail and wraps her long webbed tail around the prow. the figurehead has served them well so far but they need more right now. she wraps herself around the figurehead and raises her body up into the wind takes a breath of the stinging salt air and sings.
the storm carries her voice on its front to the royal navy. they are enchanted, so stunned by her song that they drop the rigging ropes and let the tillers drift. the pirates sail through the center of the fleet, trailing the storm behind them, and by the time the fleet has managed to regain its senses they are buried in wind and rain and the pirates are gone.
x
she declines guns. instead she carries a harpoon and its launcher, and uses them to board enemy ships, hauling her massive form out of the water to coil on the deck and dispatch enemies with ruthless efficiency. her family is feared across all the sea.
x
āyou know we are dying,ā the captain says, looking down at her.
she floats next to the ship, so massive she could hold it in her arms. her eyes are wise.
āi know,ā she says, āi can feel it coming.ā
the first mate stands next to the captain. she never had a lover or a child, and neither did he, but to the mermaid they are her parents. she will always love her daughter. the tattoos are graven in dark swirls across the mermaidās deep brown skin and the flesh of her tail, even spiraling onto the spiked webbing on her spine and face. her hair is still tied back, this time with a sail that could not be patched one last time.
āwe love you,ā the first mate says simply, looking down. her own tightly coiled black hair falls in to her face; she shakes the locs out of the way and smiles through her tears. the captain pretends he isnt crying either.
āi love you too,ā the mermaid says, and reached up to pull the ship down just a bit, just to hold them one last time.
āguard the ship,ā the captain says. āyou always have but you know theyāre lost without you.ā
āwithout you,ā the mermaid corrects, with a shrug that makes waves. āwhat will we do?ā
āi donāt know,ā the captain says. ābut youāll help them, wonāt you?ā
āof course i will,ā she scoffs, rolling her eyes. āi will always protect my family.ā
x
the captain and the first mate are gone. the ship has a new captain, young and fearless - of the things she can afford to disregard. she fears and loves the ocean, as all captains do. she does not fear the royal fleet. and she does not fear the mermaid.
āyou know, i heard stories about you when i was a little girl,ā she says, trailing her fingers in the water next to the dock.
the mermaid stares at her with one eye the size of a dinner table. āis that so?ā she hums, smirking with teeth sharper than the swords of the entire navy.
āthey said you could sink an entire fleet and that you had skin tougher than dragon scales,ā the new captain says, grinning right back at the monster who could eat her without a momentās hesitation. āi always thought they were telling tall tales.ā
āand now?ā
āthey were right,ā the new captain says. āhow did they ever befriend you?ā
the mermaid smiles, fully this time, her dark eyes gleaming under the white linen sail. āthey didnāt know any better.ā
She protects her family.
I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD BOB ROSS IS A GIFTED GOD I DREW ALONG TO HIS VIDEO IN MS PAINT AND
HOW
THE
FUCK
THIS MADE ME SO HAPPY I DONT EVEN KNOW HOW PLEASE I ADVISE YOU GUYS TO DRAW ALONG WITH BOB ROSS IN MS PAINT IT IS AN EXPERIENCE I AM SO CONFUSED BUT PLEASED FUCKING DO IT
Bob Ross teaches you using layering and color theory, which are principles which work no matter what you paint with. Some materials wonāt blend the same as oils obviously, but as Ross himself said, āyou can paint with almost anything.ā
Paint along with whatever you have, itās great practice.
āIĀ lovedĀ you, always.ā
going to comment a little on this game: the overseeing voice talks as if it owns you, and defies your free will. if you follow its orders, you are praised, and the worldview becomes sharper and more detailed. if you donāt, you are chastised, and the world becomes more vague and difficult to navigate, but also more colourful and loud. itās odd, and sort of eerie, but definitely interesting. take it as you will.
This game really unsettles me. It unsttles me that my first choice to obey, and when I played again and disobeyed, I got really emotional really fast. Failure hurt me more the more I disobeyed. It wasā¦ interesting to experience.
iāve always said we are trained to obey more than to think.
holy shit. i reblogged this the first time without playing. then i played in and it is terrifying.Ā i very much like this, but it will give you intense feelings.Ā
Whatās the game??
you obey everything the game tells you too, even jumping into barbs and basically killing yourself. if you dont youre chastised and even the scolding is terrifying
So, essentially, itās a game that illustrates what itās like to be in an abusive parents or an abusive relationship - and how it affects you emotionally. That is horrific and ingenious - the next time someone negates the affects of emotional abuse, Iāll take them to this game and let them come to their own conclusions.
This game absolutely gets it. The most solid and reliable degradation is a gendered insult. The more you obey and co-operate, the better understanding you seem to have of your word, and things seem easier. But what really gets me is the contradiction. You are not allowed to have the correct answer. Are you a boy or a girl? The answer is no, I will give you the answer. even towards the end, your āpraiseā is āno, I will give you the answer. You earned this answer, but it is given to you by me.ā Disobeying makes the world frightening and confusing and difficult, but beautiful in a world devoid of flavour.
great that itās made by a fellow australian too
Reblogging this for later.
If anyone was looking for the name itās called Loved
Holy jesus this sounds horrifying and interesting all at onceā¦
Where can I find this
Itās a Flash game from 2010.
https://ocias.com/works/loved/
Play the confrontational short story by Alexander Ocias.
Was playing Stardew Valley last night, extremely high, and realized I wanted to install some mods. I'm not new to modding games but I'd never gotten into modding SV so I went to install SMAPI, and holy shit y'all.
The love and care that was put into designing this piece of sortware. You run it and it pops up a command prompt and *it has instructions for how to use a command prompt built in.*
This is the single friendliest piece of software I've ever encountered. There's a meticulous wiki page with screenshots of exactly what everything looks like, where to click, what to type, everything.
It's designed so literally anybody can do it.
And it's designed to not be scary to somebody who doesn't understand computers very well but wants to download mods for this cute little farming game. Deadass had me crying of the amount of compassion and *care* that a whole community put in to make it so accessible, for free.
Humans are good, actually, and you can't change my mind
guys, i think the hermits are going to accidentally start a prank war again. because just like last time, a game of telephone has begun. first, false made iskall's build into ''false beans,'' her shop from the previous season. however, to give herself plausible deniability, she signs it with "love, Joel. x" due to his username, smallishbeans.
next, iskall sees this, and completely believes it. he thinks it was joel who pranked him, and as he says to pearl while showing off the sign, which he kept even after tearing the prank down, "joel gave me a kiss." in his most recent video, he pranks joel by sending him loads of anonymous messages in order to completely spam and fill his inbox, preventing him from getting any more mail, with notes such as "thinking about you. x"
of course, joel is going to have absolutely no context for this, because he didn't make the initial prank. so who is joel going to assume sent him all those messages while he was away on holiday? well, i have a guess.
etho.
skizz is NOT beating the angel allegations
Reblog if you didnāt write My Immortal
Weāre going to find the author by process of elimination.
