Widdershins

Just a lurker, collecting stuff I want to be able to see again.

[thestuffedalligator]

I drew this in a fugue state last night

[roach-works]

joseph trimmer paperdolls

1) electrician’s work uniform

2) cold weather wrap and sweater

3) warm weather wrap and tanktop

4) casual jeans and t-shirt

[splickedylit]

In case any of our readers were wondering how Fourhands mods wear shoes

[rollerskatinglizard]

Run Aground Update!

Today, May 31st, we start our third and final Act with Chapter 49! Read it on Royal Road, Wattpad, or our website. (And if you feel like reblogging this post, we'd be grateful!)

The early access ebook of Run Aground is available on Smashwords. The final, polished version of the ebook with illustrations and bonus extras will come out November 2026.

If you're reading on Royal Road, please consider giving us reviews and ratings as well as comments and favs: the former are what help the story's ranking the most and thus potentially get us more readers! Note: on Royal Road, a review is on the story as a whole, while a comment is on one particular chapter. You don't have to wait til the story's done to leave a review, just say what you like about it so far!

The seventh book (and second full-length novel) in the Michigan Fleet series, Run Aground, is now posting one chapter every Sunday on Royal Road, Wattpad, and our new Michigan Fleet website! You can read it wherever you like, and can leave us comments so we know who’s reading where! (Please give us feedback, we’ve been writing this book for so long...) Every other chapter is illustrated by the talented cowriter-artists Ray and Splickedy. The book should stand alone fine if you haven't read the series, although it will be a richer experience if you've read After the Storm and Taste of New York (and maybe Cross My Heart).

After years trapped in a wealthy monster’s harem, actor Rafael Caro is a ghost of his former self. When he meets Rich Merrill, the newest captive, unexpected kindness brings him back to life and headlong into love. Rich, Rafael and their friends in the harem try to keep each other sane and safe in this cruel place—but no one escapes without help from outside...

Note: The series so far has been reasonably delicate with the subject of sexual coercion, but this story has a lot to do with captivity, exploitation, and depersonalization. We take those subjects seriously, and though we try to keep the hurt balanced with comfort, the dark topics are still prominent parts of the narrative. If you have triggers around sexual coercion and abuse, be cautious about this story. If you're into this shit: hell yeah welcome aboard!!!

Content warnings: dubcon, noncon, sexual slavery, violence, alcohol use, noncon drug and alcohol use, murder, attempted suicide.

Now go, read and enjoy on whichever site you prefer!

[something-sings]

Guys guys guys you have no idea how excited I am.

There's a new Michigan Fleet novel!

I have very specific taste in fiction. Two of my favorite things are (1) intricate hopepunk world building and (2) emotional vulnerability and mutual caregiving between survivors of violence and privation. And this series has both in spades. There are also a lot of explicit sex scenes, which I usually skip over to get to what to me is the good stuff, because I'm demisexual like that, but if mlm sex scenes are one of your favorite things, lucky you, there's another good reason to read these stories.

If all that, plus a maritime setting, sounds appealing to you, I highly encourage you to go devour the first novel, After the Storm.

And if you've already read that one, let me just "squee" a little. From the cover blurb, I am excited to read this new novel, wherever the story goes. But if Trimmer shows up at some point to wreck the shit of anyone messing with Rich, I would be extra double delighted. Just putting that out there.

[prinnay]

The Botanists

Had a lot of fun making this one :)

[prinnay]

[Nightshade Ceramics]

Illo no.3 in a courier fox adventure series I seem to be making

[shiverandqueeef]

how measurements work in canada (ie/ badly)

[meneatyoghurt]

We have similar problems.

Here's a UK version:

(it gets more complicated than this but this is the basics that most people need...also there's an age disparity in that some older people will only use imperial and some younger people have never used things like stones and pounds)

[anasabdin]

Abandurance

[nattousan]

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

[aventuras-de-andre]

if one of the knights (other than lancelot) had to find out about merlin’s magic I’d obviously pick gwaine HOWEVER a hilarious choice would be percival or elyan. because, and i say this with love, they’re not usually involved in any drama or Situation(tm) so you would just see them Stressed the Fuck Out in the background

like elyan sees merlin use magic in a bandit attack and the rest of the episode keeps cutting to him fighting back a panic attack, breathing into the medieval equivalent of a paper bag

[something-sings]

I don't know if he shows up in the later seasons of the Merlin TV show, but I would also like to nominate Sir Dinadin. In Mallory's version of King Arthur, all the knights are completly oblivious doofuses (with Arthur the biggest of them all), except for Sir Dinadin, who goes around being like "Guys, bros, pals, why are you two fighting. You are literally besties. Do you not recognize each other? Oh you actually did not recognize each other. Take your helmets off. Yes, look, that is your buddy you just stabbed. Stop it." He would absolutely be the only one to notice Merlin doing magic in a stage whisper all the time.

[stivaktis]

An oldie, but a favourite.

Happy Glorious 25th of May.

[cruzfucker]

[1canadanus1]

Omg this is just like one of Pliny's letters.

When I am in the courts I frequently find myself regretting Marcus Regulus, though I hardly mean to say that I want him back again. Why then, you may ask, do I regret him? For these reasons. He used to hold the profession in great respect; he used to be nervous and anxious to succeed and write out his speeches beforehand, though he could never thoroughly commit them to memory. Even his practice of smearing ointment over either his right or left eye - the former if he were appearing for the plaintiff, and the latter when he was pleading for a defendant - and his habit of changing the white patch from one eyebrow to the other, and consulting the soothsayers as to how his cases would go, though due to gross superstition on his part, were also to be partly explained by the great regard in which he held our profession. Again, his other practice of always demanding that we should be allowed to speak as long as we desired, and the way in which he succeeded in getting an audience together, were very gratifying to those who were engaged in the same cases as he was.

Pliny the Younger Letters 6.2

[1canadanus1]

Everyone's reblogging my addition and I didn't even put in the best part of the letter!

However, be that as it may, Regulus did well to die, and he would have done better still if he had died earlier.

[something-sings]

I feel this one in my soul. A few months ago my work nemesis died. He was unfailingly polite to me because he saw me as a peer, but for a decade he bullied the admin staff and his female boss. When we got a male boss, he immediately became better behaved to the boss, but continued bullying the admins. He was our representative to the inclusivity committee despite regularly making very weird jokes about inclusivity at every monthly staff meeting. Finally, on a Friday, we caught him denying someone's accommodation request, for discriminatory reasons, IN WRITING and we were about to GET HIM. And then he died over the weekend. The emotional whiplash was so intense. Like, I did not want him to die. I wanted him to finally get yelled at by our terrifying civil rights compliance officer.

[trippiest]

what a beautiful day to not be in high school

[gayofthefae]

This is the like those “remember to be grateful you don’t have a sore throat right now” posts. It IS a beautiful day to not be in high school! Thank you!

[cat-skull]

imo the term "walkable" in "walkable cities" should be understood to mean "wheelchair accessible" as well, not just literally "possible to walk in". the act of walking in a city doesn't automatically make it walkable

[thegaymertrainer]

Ribbon dancing I was not aware of your evolution 🤯

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I’m blindsided by authors using ai in their works. how can readers and writers tell if the writing is ai generated?

I’m gonna assume writers know whether or not their own works are ai because they either write them themselves or have ai write for them.

but as for readers (or writers who read other writers’ works), no, you can’t tell unless the writer themself says their works are ai generated. anything else is witch hunt, speculations and possibly wrongful accusations — all of which harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.

so if at any point you think an untagged work is ai and if that bothers you, quietly click away. but you can never know for sure based on vibes. because everything ai writes, a human writer does. that’s what ai was trained on and what it was trained to mimic.

I’ve already talked more about this here, here, here. and more on my other blog @writingdose here and here.

[littlepagodatree]

You can notice certain telltale signs in some of the writing, such as short sentence stacking and usage of "not x not y but z" structures. But you have to be familiar with AI writing styles to be able to notice that.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I’ve been writing “not x, not y, but z” way before gen ai became a thing. I’ve read works that have “not x, not y, but z” in them, and I’ve read those works way before gen ai became a thing. I’ve also been using em dash way before gen ai became a thing, and I’ve seen em dash used in so many written works way before gen ai became a thing. I know for a fact some human writers actually prefer short sentence stacking too.

every “ai telltale” is something humans write before, otherwise ai wouldn’t have been able to mimic it in the first place. because it needs human-made works to mimic on.

when I say ai witch hunt, speculations and accusations harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more, “not x, not y, but z” and em dash are one of the main things I’m talking about.

[seananmcguire]

As I saw someone say recently, when you start declaring "obvious tells," from punctuation to sentence styles, to be proof of AI, what you're actually spotting is trace amounts of the original source material.

[something-sings]

I would be very surprised if AI will ever be able to write an entire fiction book that is fun to read, makes sense, and has consistent characterization the whole way through. I guess someone could use it for brainstorming initial writing prompts and still end up with a tolerable book at the end of it. But I think the kind of book that I enjoy reading requires a human brain to hold it in its entirety at some point in the process.

[something-sings]

With the possible exception of a Keith Laumer novel. That delightful weirdo wrote like he was actively trying to avoid a coherent plot, and I still enjoyed his books.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I’m blindsided by authors using ai in their works. how can readers and writers tell if the writing is ai generated?

I’m gonna assume writers know whether or not their own works are ai because they either write them themselves or have ai write for them.

but as for readers (or writers who read other writers’ works), no, you can’t tell unless the writer themself says their works are ai generated. anything else is witch hunt, speculations and possibly wrongful accusations — all of which harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.

so if at any point you think an untagged work is ai and if that bothers you, quietly click away. but you can never know for sure based on vibes. because everything ai writes, a human writer does. that’s what ai was trained on and what it was trained to mimic.

I’ve already talked more about this here, here, here. and more on my other blog @writingdose here and here.

[littlepagodatree]

You can notice certain telltale signs in some of the writing, such as short sentence stacking and usage of "not x not y but z" structures. But you have to be familiar with AI writing styles to be able to notice that.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I’ve been writing “not x, not y, but z” way before gen ai became a thing. I’ve read works that have “not x, not y, but z” in them, and I’ve read those works way before gen ai became a thing. I’ve also been using em dash way before gen ai became a thing, and I’ve seen em dash used in so many written works way before gen ai became a thing. I know for a fact some human writers actually prefer short sentence stacking too.

every “ai telltale” is something humans write before, otherwise ai wouldn’t have been able to mimic it in the first place. because it needs human-made works to mimic on.

when I say ai witch hunt, speculations and accusations harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more, “not x, not y, but z” and em dash are one of the main things I’m talking about.

[seananmcguire]

As I saw someone say recently, when you start declaring "obvious tells," from punctuation to sentence styles, to be proof of AI, what you're actually spotting is trace amounts of the original source material.

[something-sings]

I would be very surprised if AI will ever be able to write an entire fiction book that is fun to read, makes sense, and has consistent characterization the whole way through. I guess someone could use it for brainstorming initial writing prompts and still end up with a tolerable book at the end of it. But I think the kind of book that I enjoy reading requires a human brain to hold it in its entirety at some point in the process.

[rylandsgrace]

I feel seen