Don't know what I'm supposed to put here...

Any Pronouns

[soramyastan]

Intro Thing

Hi!!!!!!!! You can call me Zeph. I use any pronouns. I won't post much, but I might reblog or like stuff.

:)

[maxknightley]

"it would be so good if it was good" will haunt you but "it's extremely good, except for the one or two parts which are so bad it's genuinely kind of insulting" will straight up drive you insane

[maxknightley]

one has you making posts like "okay but if the author UNDERSTOOD the POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS of the story they were telling, and leaned into it, it would actually be a really interesting exploration of..."

the other has you pacing your bedroom at one in the morning going "why. why would you ever in a million years do it like that. genuinely what possible thought process was involved. was the writer possessed by a fucking ghost or something."

[treasuredplanet]

in hindsight sending the number one digit at a time created the funniest half second of either of our lives

[odo-apologist]

[soramyastan]

Odd Squad... not rant but just lots of talking in these next few paragraphs.

ok, so I've been rewatching a LOT of Odd Squad lately and I've been thinking about this one moment in Training Day for multiple days at this point.

When Olive is telling Otto about when Todd first began to be odd, she states him creating the Sandwichinator and the Stretchinator/Colorinator hybrid gadget (if this thing has an actual name that I'm forgetting about I'd love to know.) as the first signs he was beginning to be odd. And when he is showing them to her, she immediately responds with the "But our job is to fix odd stuff, not make them more odd." line and I'm just thinking about this because

Todd even says it in that scene "Why should Oscar get to have all the fun?" and I don't know if I'm just thinking into this way too much or if I missed something with this scene but does he not kind of have a point.

Like, I'm not saying Todd is not odd, he very much is, but I wouldn't say this is like the first sign. This is literally what the scientists do all the time on the show. Making gadgets that are, honestly, odd. I mean, later there's the Face Replaceinator and I'd honestly say that is way odder than the Sandwichinator or the unnamed gadget. (Genuinely, how is the half squirrel/half pigeon face less odd than something that can change the shape and color of your nose. Like, just on a scale level of this, one affects one facial feature while the other replaces your entire face)

Also, the Sandwichinator gets used throughout the show afterwards. I remember it in Assistant's Creed and it has one of the Guide To Your Gadgets videos and I'm sure there's more examples that I'm not thinking of. So the gadget itself is not a problem here.

I'm not saying it was neccessarily a good idea for Todd to be making the gadgets, I mean, we've seen what happens when certain gadgets get dropped and there have been instances of explosions in the lab and those are with the scientists. I feel like there's probably some safety regulations and procedures that are learned in the academy if you're a scientist, right? Maybe? (This is almost certainly where I'm looking into this wayyyyy too much, but anyway)

But before Oscar founded the first lab, agents were in charge of building/reparing gadgets. If this flashback was just a little bit earlier, then Todd doing this would likely just be a normal thing. Honestly, considering how bad everyone was with reparing their gadgets in Oscar Of All Trades, there's the chance that in that alternate universe, Todd might have filled Oscar's role. (I actually do think about this very specific thing of what if Todd had actually founded the first lab a lot, and I feel like I'm probably the only person to do so but anyway)

Anyway, I guess the point of this whole multiparagraph thing is just that moment really annoys me but I also think it's interesting because while Todd's motivation is described as "Solving so many cases, he got bored" in Training Day and his goal being "To cause oddness at all costs" in Bad Lemonade, he also very clearly has a lot of problems with the Odd Squad Organization that are both mixed with that but also seem to be separate, like how he did NOT want to get involved in Midday In The Garden Of Good And Odd even though he was also very much not a villain anymore. And anyway, even though I feel like this inconsistancy in attitudes betweeen the investigation agents making gadgets and the scientists making gadgets probably wasn't intended to be seen this way, I think it would be interesting if it was and either way I think it is just an interesting thing to think about with the show.

Anyway, I love Odd Squad. I like never talk about it, but I do. And I've just been thinking about this for multiple days at this point and I feel like I'm definitely just obsessing over stuff that's not really there but either way, here's what has been consuming my brain for the past few days, woohoo!

:)

[boilingheart-archive]

Y’all little writers go on and have fun now

[sakurabomb]

@ominous-signs saw this one at a mall the other day

[ominous-signs]

Official ominous sign

[ominous-signs]

Read the sign as “I’m so still, are you here” to make this an official scared sign

[ambiartician]

Why would I read it like that.

[ominous-signs]

For the trills of a different perspective in sign

[aropride]

[whole body so tense you'd think it was a verb form indicating what time an action occurred] yeah i'm fine why

[sentientsky]

characters going “we were lovers once”: eh, it’s okay i guess. it’s nice enough

characters going “we were friends once”: absolutely devastating. one hit knockout i’m gone

[zoppzoop]

getting violently ill btw

[jabberding0]

Wei Weaving is a Chinese artist

[nepharim-tree]

[licenseddoctor]

Hey kid you want a job?

Great get online and go to a job board. Indeed, Linkedin whatever. Now you're gonna search for a role that's in your city, fits your qualifications, and doesn't seem like a bad time.

See that easy apply button? Don't hit it they just throw those in the trash. Now you're gonna want to go to the company's website and check their careers page.

Oh? That job doesn't exist anymore. Cool go back to the job board and find another one.

Great you found another job, you're on the company's career page and the job exists!! So you're going to need to make an account on the career page website. They're using Workday, the same site as the last job you applied for? Who cares? You need to make another account for THIS job's workday page.

Now you're going to upload your resume. That'll autopopulate about 15 boxes with everything on your resume, except formatted wrong and with tons of errors. So just go through and painstakingly check the dates on all of that and rewrite everything you already laid out in an aesthetically pleasing format on your resume.

Ok time for the cover letter, explain why this specific job and company are deeply important to you. You love their mission statement and wouldn't even laugh if their ceo was gunned down in the street. You'll really want to reiterate the things you just spent the last 20 minutes filling out on the resume section

(Remember to include language from the job description, people who work in HR are lower than dogs and they need patterns or they get confused.) Write about a page, but hey don't sound too desperate or robotic this is where they judge your character!

Maybe add your portfolio site at the end here, who knows if that helps no one has ever clicked mine haha.

Anywayyy time to hit apply! Congrats! You'll see that confirmation email come in and you should be getting the rejection letter in about 2 weeks. Unfortunately your resume didn't have the right buzzwords and the AI auto rejected you :(

Time to start again and try not to kill yourself!

[your-werewolf-boyfriend]

Listen to me

Listen very closely

The above is exactly why half of my friends come to me, and cry they're suffering, and I get to bestow my job hunting knowledge on them. I love this shit, it's a game.

For credentials my fastest job hunting time has been 1 week. I searched for 1 week, got an interview, and was hired within a week. My slowest was 1 month, while out of work, while telling ALL my interviewers that I quit my work without notice (I was testing my interviewers to see how shocked they'd get when I'd tell them why, anyone who wasn't shocked I would tell them at the end that I will keep them in mind (not)). My entire average is 2-3 weeks.

Firstly, what you're gunna do is pick a job sector. You're gunna pick a few of these by the end, but for now pick one. Maybe you wanna do bookkeeping, maybe you wanna do something in doggy daycare. Maybe you're a sous chef. Idk! Figure out what abouts you want first. Do not apply to anything yet. You're gunna look at the job description, I've picked out a few for bookkeepers below.

Now what you're gunna do is you're gunna look for "buzz words", or rather words that are gunna appear commonly and indicate the tone for that job. I've highlighted some, but not all in my examples below

Just look at that snout at how similar those descriptions are!

Now that you've got your buzzwords, you're gunna slap those babies into your resume! You see, since your resume is usually read by a computer first, you're gunna trick the computer into giving it to a person. Really what the computer is scanning for is how similar your resume is to the job description. Remember your bullet points, and to keep it short, try to only have 3 to 5 bullet points per job:

- Processed over 500 invoices a day in an efficient and accurate manner

- Curated reports for management review by utilizing available data

- Monitored and recorded over 100 submissions each day increasing accuracy by 50%

These are some great, made up examples I pulled from those buzz words. You might notice I added some numbers into there. That's something you'll wanna try and note for yourself, how much of something you can do, how accurate, how much efficiency you increased, these look GREAT when your resume gets past the computer and is moved in front of a real person.

Now you have your sector-based resume with lots of buzzwords. This is great! Now for the easy part. You're gunna channel your inner "IDGAF" And you're gunna send that to every listing you like on indeed. Filter for "Apply on Indeed" and spam that shit. Sometimes you gotta answer a few extra questions, but if they give me more than 5 quick questions I trash the submission and move on.

Don't waste your time jumping through hoops, streamline it for yourself and use the same methods companies are using. Push MASSIVE amounts of average quality resumes out. The more opportunities taken = the greater the chance of success. For every opportunity taken you've now pitched a chance of success, for every resume you cannot submit because you're piddling around on their stupid website or answering 50 interview questions online, you send out a 0% chance of success.

So go, try this, and see how it works for you.

Some additional things to consider:

- Add random shit in your resume, I added my "Board Game Club" (BDSM group) into my resume for hobbies and discussed how I got my start using sparklines there

- Never underestimate the flair of a little Clipart fleur-de-lis or something on your resume. Never put colored Clipart, but a little floral or swirl design located somewhere nice makes it stand out

- if you don't have a degree that doesn't mean they won't pick you, twice now I've come to a job without a bachelors and being honest that I was only getting an associates before I think of my next steps

- Embellish, do not lie. Jargoning your job description to make it sound cool and professional is GREAT. Do not give me a resume saying you can use CNC machinery when you've only used a 3D printer. Just tell me you know how to program and manage a 3d printer and want to learn CNC machinery.

- Keep. Your. Resume. To. Two. Or. Less. Pages. You don't need EVERY job, only the relevant ones, if your interviewer asks about the gap, tell them what job you had during that time (or if you wanna lie say you were taking college courses and were on a break, you dont need a degree to say you took courses) and that you only wanted to showcase the most relevant ones

- I'm serious on that last one I'll eat your fucking resume

[sweaterkittensahoy]

HERE'S HOW TO WRITE A COVER LETTER FROM SOMEONE WHO HAS DONE IT PROFESSIONALY:

Look at the job description.

Identify what they want examples of like "ability to multitask" or "can work across teams to achieve success" or "can work on a budget".

Pick three.

Write this:

IF YOU CAN FIND THE NAME OF A HIRING PERSON: Dear [Name]

IF YOU CAN'T FIND THE NAME OF A HIRING PERSON: Fuck the usual salutation and just roll directly into "I was very excited when I saw this job application. I feel I am a great fit for this role."

Now, look at the three things you chose from their list of what they want. Write a paragraph like this.

I am an adept multitakser who routinely handles several projects/deadlines/needs (whatever). In my current position I [multitask example]. In my previous work, I [second example].

SECOND PARAGRAPH SAME AS THE FIRST DIFFERENT THING THEY WANT BUT NOT ANY WORSE:

In my current position, I work with multiple teams daily, including [name any team you have waved hello to in the hall] and through my work we have [list an accomplishment that required multiple teams].

THIRD PARAGRAPH HERE WE GO AGAIN:

Staying in budget is something I am very familiar with. When I worked on [team], my contributions [list] not only brought the project in on time but under budget by [number]. I have also brought in other projects under budget [examples].

AND NOW THE FINALE:

Thank you for your time in reviewing my cover letter and resume. I look forward to discussing my qualifications and interest in the role with you at length. I can reached at [phone number] and [email].

Sincerely,

[NAME]

And remember, any question that is looking for a negative story ("Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a co-worker") should ALWAYS be presented by you as "I do have a story for that, and I'm pleased with how I handled it." and then you focus on the all the positives in that situation. So, state what the problem was, and then how you fixed it, and then how fixing it improved your working experience. For example:

"Well, I worked with a man named Bob, and he never answered any emails he got after 3:00 PM, so if I had a question after 3, I'd start a draft email and just add to it if i had further questions. And then I'd schedule it to send at the top of his workday. He started earlier than me, and I'd usually come in to a reply from him with the answers I needed when I first sat down for the day. I actually had another co-worker who was having trouble getting Bob to answer questions, and I said, "Oh, are you sending them after 3?" and when she said yes, I shared my own process so it was easier for her to get information, too."

You see how you acknowledge there was an issue but put most of the focus in your answer on the fix? That's the sort of answer they're looking for. The "tell us about something bad at work" questions are about weeding out people who will take any moment to go into a full-on complaint about anything. Any questions that SOUND negative are about wanting to hear your POSTIVIE ability to manage conflict and difficulties.

[sophisticatedchaoss]

had a character chart idea

[younggayanddoingokay]

Project hail mary time travel au where grace doesn't actually tell anyone he time-traveled or allude to it at all and tries to act as normally as possible but also keeps insisting on certain things for the ship (like a probe that can handle a planet's atmosphere) or insists on doing experiments in certain weird ways that took ages of trial and error to get to the first time around but he immediately gets results in like batshit crazy ways. sometimes he just forgets stuff (like little stuff) hasnt actually happened yet or he'll mention some aspect of the coma bot that lamai hasn't actually invented/figured out yet but that wasn't his specialty the first time and he doesn't know the timeline or realize that she hasn't come up with it yet and she's like 'wtf that's a great idea? how did he know this? why did he talk about it like i'd already figured it out?' he makes comments on elections/politics and accidentally predicts things because he simply doesn't realize that they havent happened yet.

hes like 'peter parker coming up with excuses for why hes doing weird shit' levels of bad at hiding his secret identity as a time traveler. he never says a word but the whole vat eventually figures it out anyway because theres simply no other explanation that makes sense to them. Stratt has an unofficial rule that if grace mentions an idea for the ship or something offhanded then it happens right away. embezzler bob keeps prying him for stock advice and he's like 'what the heck i know nothing about finance why are you asking?' it's an open secret on the vat that grace time traveled and everyone knows that everyone else knows except for grace who thinks nobody knows and then one day ilyukhina is just like 'hey grace did we meet aliens up in space the first time you did this?' and hes like 'oh yea totally, rockys great... hey WAIT A MINUTE?'

[agender-ryland-grace]

rocky may be the size of an earth dog but he is 168 kilos and strong as hell whereas grace is a wet paper bag. one of these two is being carried by the other and it is not the one you think

[agender-ryland-grace]

grace go far.

[agender-ryland-grace]

he's fine. probably.

[autisticlittleguy]

Apparently Eva Stratt at the end of the movie on the ship had a prison tattoo on her neck that meant something along the lines of "life without parole." So, parallel to Grace and Rocky's adventure, there was a whole subplot where Eva Stratt

- Was eventually trialed by governments of the world as a scapegoat and sent to prison

- She somehow BROKE out of said prison and currently commandeers a rogue paramilitary faction of Project Hail Mary loyalists who believe in her over world governments, who presumably are still hunting her down

- She currently is on the run and staying mobile on an ice breaker ship like some kind of james bond villain base (but you know, good) while STILL working on project hail mary the whole time

- Her rogue loyalist faction controlled enough resources they could go to space and collect the beetles Grace had sent. Alternatively, it was the world government that collected the beetles, and Stratt had a whole ass heist movie to steal them, which is why she had the little xenonite figure at the end of the movie. Either ways she was running circles around them.

Absolutely insane. Never piss off a history major

[wajb]

ragebaiting lemonade stand owner with one simple order

[writingwithfolklore]

Writing Resources to use instead of AI

For coming up with character names:

Behind the name (my absolute fav)

Allows you to choose the origin of where you want the name to be from, whether you want a more feminine vs masculine vs androgenous name (as voted by users), random surname generator, and clicking on the name gives you important info like if there are any famous people with the same name, where it’s from, how common it is, and how people tend to see it, etc.

You can also search their name database by letter or meaning or origin, so if you know you want a character who has a name/surname that starts with an A from Ireland, there’s a whole list for you to choose from.

Census sites

Especially useful if you’re looking for a name from a specific place and/or time period. Just search “(country) census (year)” and you’ll find a database of real people who lived in that place at that time. No one can ever call your names unrealistic again.

For coming up with place names:

Fantasy name generator

This site can basically come up with any name for any person, place, or thing you might ever need. There are also specific generators for different fandoms if you’re looking to make an OC in an established world.

For finding that one word on the tip of your tongue:

One Look Thesaurus

This is my go-to. Not only can you find synonyms like a regular thesaurus, but you can also describe words like “unhappy smile” or “quiet laugh” to find the more specific word you’re looking for.

For coming up with ideas:

Word cloud

When I need to inspire a new idea, I write down all the things I’m interested in (hauntings, academia, lesbians, etc.) and put them into a word cloud to shuffle them next to each other. Sometimes seeing a concept in a new context can spark new ideas!

WWF Discord

This is my discord channel (shameless plug) for when you need to brainstorm off other people but don’t have anyone irl to talk to. We’re also happy to read and give feedback on writing, answer writing questions, or just chat!

For visualizing places and characters:

Pinterest

Pinterest can at times be a bit too sterile for my tastes, but if you use the right words, you can find more realistic photos of places. For example, adding “aesthetic” after basically any word will bring up a more broad collection of photos to help you flesh out places.

This is also a great way to find photos of people and fashion to help visualize characters. I’m bad at describing clothes, so I usually collect photos of outfits to help me know what my characters are wearing. Searching up “character inspiration” will collect more interesting photos and drawings of people who might not exactly be of our world.

(However, to make Pinterest not show you AI results, you have to go into your settings and check the “reduce AI” box. Luckily, it does mostly work.)

Death to Stock

Like pinterest but completely AI free (hooray!) Only drawback is that you have to pay a monthly subscription (about $20 CAD).

Cosmos

Very similar to pinterest but slightly more "artsy". I'm not super familiar with this one but I believe all the photos are human and you can save them and create collections with a free account.

Dupe Photos

Royalty-free stock image site with very Pinterest-core photos!

Minecraft

If you haven’t built your entire fictional city in Minecraft instead of writing, why not? It’s fun.

The Sims

This one is dual purpose because you can not only create your characters in Create a Sim, but you can design their houses. If you really want to go for it, you can bulldoze all the lots in your town and build your world from scratch.

For checking grammar:

Grammar Girl

Easy to follow definitions and examples, and if you learn better by listening, every article comes with a podcast to follow along with instead.

Grammar Monster

This one is my favourite for checking grammar rules because there’s tons of examples in graphics that helps for any situation.

Reedsy

Among other things, reedsy can connect you to professional editors within your budget.

For writing advice:

One Stop for Writers

This one was recommended from my discord channel and has all sorts of tutorials and resources for the writing craft.

My Blog Directory

Another shameless plug, but if you need writing advice on something specific, you can search through my directory to see if it’s there. If it isn’t, you can always send me an ask about it!

For an alternative to Google Docs:

Ellipsus

Think google docs but without AI. Yay!

(will update this list with any more suggestions or resources I discover 😊)

[just-a-readthrough]

A great resource