#ravencromwell

[featherxquill]

ravencromwell replied to your post “How many of you are using tumblr on a dekstop rather than on mobile?...”

So A. yesssssss!!!!! for finally being able to see Tumblr again. B. God support is an endless nightmare and am sending you all the sympathies. Have been nagging them for weeks! because the code used to tag folks when using the HTML editor--only option for assistive tech--is A. not giving functional username links and B. not notifying folks they're tagged and yeah, utter crickets. So glad you found a solution!

Hey there,

Generic enthusiastic greeting thanking you for your request! We’ve received it, and now someone will review it and presumably decide that they can’t be arsed to reply. We’ll probably never respond :^) 

Please only reply to the email chain we started, rather than creating new emails or new requests for the same issue.That would clog up our system and make it harder for us to ignore you easily, which we will, because even if you do what we ask we’ll just send you this automated message again, lol go fuck yourself.

[/salt]

Seriously though, I have so much sympathy for you having to use tumblr’s html editor at all - it always seems like absolute garbage, at least from the perspective of someone who learned very basic blog coding back in the LJ days, but can never, ever get tumblr to do any of the things I want. Godspeed on that <3

[notbecauseofvictories]

So looking at your tags as someone who hasn't seen the BBC Little Women adaptation, what'd you think? Good, bad, somewhere in between?

Overall, I loved it—they really spent time establishing the March sisters and their family, which brought out a lot of the tenderness of the story. Marmee was an actual character, and there’s one particular scene where I genuinely cried for her. Amy of all characters got some great scenes, not just the whole pickled limes debacle, but with Jo and Laurie and Aunt March, and you can see how she’s silly and vain and also well-mannered and charming. Meg actually has a personality, and she’s played by a genuinely young actress who sells her sweetness. Jo looks like Jo, it’s just such a pleasure to see an actress who was age-appropriate and wears her hair wild and is a force of nature.

(The male cast also showed up, though they had much less to do. Laurie in particular was louche and Romantic and well-cast—though he and John Brooke’s actor were vying for least-reliable American accent.)

(………also, as someone who at the tender age of 12 fell in love with Professor Bhaer, when he invited Jo to a debate on German philosophy I damn near swooned.)

I have some quibbles about the way they handled some of the plotlines—in particular, I wasn’t sold on a single one of the romances, but since Alcott wasn’t terribly invested in them either I don’t think much was lost. The family is there, and explored more broadly and with more genuine sweetness than other adaptations, and that’s what matters.

It’s also an incredibly beautiful adaptation, and they took pains with light and shadow, interiors and scenery and music in a way that’s very lovely to watch.

[femmequixotic]

So I'm sure I'm by far not the only one to tell you this, but honey, if you need to push the SB update back even further--either because's writing's tricky or cause you wanna have it on Sunday for scheduling reasons--I don't think there's a one of us who wouldn't understand. (and if there is, they've got problems and aren't worth troubling over) Having a Mom who struggles with health stuff regularly, I know that anxiety band all too well. <3333333333 so much.

Thank you my dear. *so many hugs* It really is lovely to read this--you’ve put my mind at ease about my decision. (I also hope things are going okay with your mom right now--it really is such a hard thing to have to deal with, I know. <3)

I actually am going to push the update back a couple of more days and aim for Saturday for the chapter. This week has been harder than I expected, and I need the extra time to finish writing. I feel terrible about it, to be honest, but I also know that I need to practice some self-care, which is part of my goal for 2018, so I am going to take your advice (and that of @noeeon and @sassy-cissa). Many, many thanks for reminding me to put self-care first in the new year.

So yes, expect SB on the weekend, my dears. As always, I’ll put up a notification here when it goes up! <3 <3 <3

[featherxquill]

Any of 4, 6, 16, and 23 you feel inclined towards for the fandom meme?

4. Favorite books read this year

I really enjoyed my reread of Tad Williams’s Otherland series, but I also discovered several other awesome books in 2018. We Were Witches by Ariel Gore is a queer feminist semi-autobiographical novel about a young mum. I also really enjoyed listening to Carrie Fisher’s Shockaholic  and Wishful Drinking in audiobook form - Carrie reads them herself, and she’s great. I used the library of the school I was working at quite freely, too, so did read some pretty awesome YA - Will Hill’s After the Fire is about a girl surviving a cult, loosely-based, if I remember right, on the Waco seige, and Teri Terry’s Contagion is a brilliant medical apocalypse sci fi. I was a little less impressed by the second in the series, tbh, but the first one is tense and tight and wonderfully imagined.

6. Favorite movies of the year

I didn’t go to the cinema much in 2018, despite ringing in my new year watching The Last Jedi, but I have been a bit recently, and I loved The Children’s Act - all hail Emma Thompson - and Bohemian Rhapsody was great. I also really loved Grandma - it’s not new, but it only appeared on Netflix last year, and I watched it two weekends in a row because it was really great. I mean, it’s a road movie about a lesbian grandma helping her granddaughter raise funds for an abortion. Sounds wild, but it’s full of heart and Lily Tomlin.

16. Favorite m/m ship of the year

Honestly, I don’t follow m/m ships much at all. My fandom experience is all about the ladies.

23. The most missed of your old fandoms

Once I’ve moved on from a fandom, I don’t tend to miss it too much - I will write and make things in tiny, dead or non-existent fandoms for the two people who care, as long as I have the inspiration to do so. Once that’s gone it’s usually because I’m ready to say goodbye, so I don’t tend to miss the fandoms themselves too much. That said, I absolutely miss being part of a large active fandom, even if I’ve always been part of a smaller niche within one. I particularly miss the camaraderie and quality of the HP Old Lady Smut Brigade, and it makes me sad that once I’m done with something I find it very hard to muster the enthusiasm to participate any more.

[femmequixotic]

Oh Femme, I saw your clever updating of the chapter count--so it's to be sixteen now, is it? :d (Also: that was one of the most beautiful tributes to a beloved ever. May Noe have the happiest of b-days & you have a brilliant one making hers a joy. Watching you two, getting to see your adoration for one another, is such a damn gift--such a glimpse at the sort of relationship I want & such an outpouring of light and joy in such dark times the rest of us bask in second-hand. <33333)

You are sharp, my dear! Yes, I’ve added 2 more chapters to the DTT total because of plot needs--it’s starting to be time to tie some threads together! *looks shifty* *kicks Eddie Durant into the shadows for a bit longer, lol*

And thank you so much--you’re incredibly sweet. I have been so incredibly lucky to find the love of my life through fandom; it’s something I would wish for everyone!

[femmequixotic]

One SB element I'm fascinated by and haven't heard much chatter on's Gawain's affair, and how it'll mirror/diverge from H/D in 3 & 4. We keep getting backstory & now a namedrop. It's too close to Harry's situation 4 him 2 avoid reckoning with its lessons--Gawain's 2 complex 4 him 2 be wrong re all consequences. How much will having an example help them diverge from mistakes, & be4 that, will it feel like the roadsign that didn't avert the crash? It's the gun on the mantle I'm watching hawkishly.

This is a good question! I think you’ll get some answers in this next book about that. :) I can say that Gawain doesn’t want Harry to make the same mistakes he’s made in his career, and there also might be a bit of jealousy on Gawain’s end too about how Harry seems to be allowed more leeway than Gawain might have been allowed back in his early days in the Auror force. But I can say that there are consequences that Harry might have to face, although they might not be the ones Gawain’s worried about. 

And that was probably a hugely roundabout way of answering your ask, but I don’t want to spoil things too terribly much! :D

[anghraine]

Happy belated birthday! I love when sales of things I love coincide with my birthday--like the universe tapping me on the shoulder and promising a good year ahead, so I'm so glad one hit for you :)

Thanks! I was surprised but delighted, so I'm happy to take 9$ Mass Effect as a good omen!

Unrelatedly, I've been trying to scale down my Tumblr posting, so I didn't respond at the time, but I think you're the person who left that really nice reply on my Faramir post? The week leading up to my birthday was not great and that definitely brightened my day :D

[pinkcupboardwitch]

Character asks: 12 for Vortalis and/or Talya, whatever strikes your fancy?

:3 yay, time for some innocent fun!

Vortalis: when he talks about only sending enemies after Holland, he includes Talya in that list.

Talya: she knew the twins distantly when they first came to London. They were very young then, about eight or nine, and she used to toss them some spare coins or scraps when walking home after work like they were kittens.

They mourned as much as they knew how to when she stopped showing up.