Notalotofloveleft

she/her. mid twenties, Writer, procrastinator and all around can't help it compulsive worrier, welcome to my blog.

[thoughtkick]

“People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world.”

— Unknown

[thoughtkick]

“Please stop destroying what is left of your heart by constantly thinking about things that have broken you.”

— Unknown

[thoughtkick]

“Until you get comfortable with being alone, you’ll never know if you are choosing someone out of love or loneliness.”

— Mandy Hale

[thoughtkick]

“In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.”

— Henry David Thoreau

[thoughtkick]

“People who make you feel better about yourself when you’re sad are so important.”

— Unknown

[ellecdc]

Basgiath War College's newest carpenter

Ridoc Gamlyn x fem!reader who are now exclusive, apparently [1.1k words]

summary: Your year's resident comedian has taken a liking to you. Unfortunately for him, you're not so easily wooed. Fortunately for him, he doesn't give up easily. He wants to be able to call you his, even if he has to take up carpentry to do it.

CW: relentless flirting, they both operate under the knowledge that reader could fully hand Ridoc his ass if she wanted to, black cat/golden retriever maybe?, fluff

You seem to have gained a shadow at some point on your trek from the dining hall to Battle Brief.

Seeing as you’re not Basgiath’s resident shadow wielder, it means that someone is following you. 

“Gamlyn.”

“Oh my gods, she knows my name.” Ridoc murmurs reverently, mistaking—or choosing to interpret—your acknowledgement of him as an invitation to move to your side instead of trailing behind you like a creep. 

The acknowledgement was supposed to be a fuck off. 

“How’d you know it was me?” he continues, unperturbed by your silence and the way your pace increases in hopes of shaking him. 

You don’t. 

“It must be the undeniable chemistry between us.” You can picture the smile he’s wearing as he continues his soliloquies; warm and sticky, easy. The kind of smile one wears when they’re hot and they know it. “Can’t believe neither of us have done anything about that yet.”

“You’ve tried,” you deadpan, mentally cursing yourself for caving and responding; he’s like a fucking dog with a bone. 

“And yet,” he whispers, leaning in like he’s telling you a secret. “We’ve yet to do anything about it.”

“There won’t be anything done about it.”

“About what?” 

You pause to look at the idiot. He stops too, smiling at you unbothered by the bodies of other cadets who have to navigate around the two of you in the hallway. 

“About the undeniable chemistry,” you drawl. 

It was clearly a trap—the bastard's brows rising victoriously. “So, you feel it too, huh? I knew it. You like playing hard to get, gorgeous?” 

“For the love of Amari, you are unbelievable,” you groan, barely restraining yourself from stomping your foot petulantly as you pivot and continue towards the classroom. 

Ridoc seamlessly falls into step with you. “Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“It sure sounded like one.”

You shoulder your way through the door of the lecture hall and descend the stairs to find a seat. Your shadow is hot on your tail and ready to take the empty seat beside the one you stop at, only to come up short and frown down at your bag as you unceremoniously dump it there. 

“What do you want, Gamlyn?”

You hear the telltale huff of a thoroughly unimpressed dragon in the back of your mind—which you translate to something along the lines of don’t play dumb, Stubborn One—that you do your best to ignore.

“Uhm, to act on this thing going on between us, obviously.” A man truly has no right looking so good while being so obnoxious.

“There’s nothing going on between us.”

Ridoc’s dark eyes flash in excitement, a dimple appearing as he smirks at you. “Not yet, maybe.”

“Get over it,” you huff, slamming down into your chair and readying your notebook for class to start. “It’s not happening.” 

He heaves a sigh as he steps around you and takes the seat on your other side. 

“Fine, but can I at least ask why?” 

You look over at him, really look. 

There’s an unruly curl that insists on hanging over his forehead despite him constantly pushing it back, still a touch damp from whatever shower he took after sparring this morning. His tanned skin looks like it’d be warm to the touch, as though perpetually sun-kissed despite it being notoriously cloudy lately. His lashes are dark and long and, dammit, Ridoc is pretty. 

He’s pretty and distracting and insistent and strong and loyal and you have no doubt he’d be so much fun. 

But…

“You don’t get told no a lot, do you?” 

His eyes flash down to your shoulder for a moment before they return to your eyes. “No, not really.”

“Fine.” You turn your focus to the front of the room, watching as Professor Devera enters and sets up at the podium. “You want to know why it isn’t going to happen?”

“Please.”

Fuck, and now he’s begging. 

“Because I have no interest in being just another notch on your bedpost.” 

The silence that meets you leaves you thinking the conversation might finally—blissfully—be over. 

So why does that thought leave your stomach feeling hollow? 

“Oh,” Ridoc hums. “I see.” 

You let out a sigh, still not looking at him. “Yeah.” 

“So you want to be a notch, just not another.”

“I- what?”

“Hey, no judgement, I can work with that.” He’s smiling again; one dimple mocks you as he too moves his attention forward, watching Colonel Markham enter the room to join the professor at the front. “I have to admit, I’m not usually a relationship kind of guy. But for you? I can make an exception.”

Your mind has stuttered to a complete halt, only a faint sound of amusement coming from your dragon among the eerie ringing that has replaced the sound of the quickly filling classroom. 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Ridoc turns and grins—grins!—at you. “You don’t want to be just another notch on my bedpost? I’ll replace the whole frame. Brand new, just for you. I’ll take up fucking carpentry and build it myself if that’s what you’d like.” 

All you can bring yourself to do is shake your head, as if rattling around Ridoc’s words in your brain will make them settle into something that makes sense. “You’re crazy.”

His grin grows impossibly wider. “Crazy about you.”

“Ew.”

“What? Too cheesy? Okay, I’ll dial it back. Sorry, new to this whole exclusive thing.”

 “Who’s exclusive?” Rhiannon asks as she takes the seat on your other side.

“We are!” Ridoc answers for you, slapping a hand on your thigh.

You flick his hand away, turning towards your new seatmate to deny it all when Rhiannon sighs happily. “Thank gods! Fucking finally, he hasn’t shut the hell up about you in weeks, you know?”

What…the fuck? 

“Oh, Ridoc?” Violet chimes in from Rhiannon’s other side. “His dorm room’s been so disturbingly quiet lately, I thought we were going to have to do a wellness check.”

Rhiannon snorts. “For the love of Loial though, please learn how to sound proof your room.”

But your brain must have taken some serious damage during sparring that you can’t remember because not only have you still not figured out how the hell this conversation ended up here of all places, but the only thing you manage to focus on—and parrot weakly—is, “weeks?” 

Ridoc’s thigh presses into yours as Devera calls the class to attention, the rider’s grin downright wicked as he leans over and whispers loud enough so only you can hear.

“Oh, haven’t you heard? The roster’s been cleared for weeks, babe. I’ve been waiting for you.”

© ellecdc; do not copy, translate, or repost my work anywhere under any circumstances.

[thoughtkick]

“You cannot make someone understand a message they are not ready to receive.”

— Unknown

[johnny-depp-is-loved]

in the end we are all creatures in need of love and comfort

[afrotumble]

The symmetry of this turn in the air!

Yellow Warblers (Setophaga petechia) are small, agile birds known for their stunning ‘circle flight’ during nest-building.

These little guys perform a semi-circular flight to mark their territory.

[kingwildex-deactivated20190919]

I’m at 5 what about you?

[inkededucatednnerdy]

#28 ……

[middleearthpixie]

7 for me

[fxlthyangxl-deactivated20240122]

website

[hesbythecampfire]

StopNCII.org is operated by the Revenge Porn Helpline which is part of SWGfL, a charity that believes that everyone should benefit from technology, free from harm. Founded in 2000, SWGfL works with a number of partners and stakeholders around the world to protect everyone online

Sounds legit

[songue85]

StopNCII.org is operated by the Revenge Porn Helpline which is part of SWGfL, a charity that believes that all should benefit from technolog

[nosferatusnoopy]

everyone reblog this!!

[uncleasad]

[Image ID: screenshot from TikTok(?) containing the following text:

Cousins, if someone ever edits your photo with Al or Photoshop to create a nude photo, then you go to www.stopncii.org/and submit the original photo and the edited photo, then they will remove the edited photo from all the places on the Internet. You don't need to talk directly to anyone for this and your identity will remain confidential

/end ID]

Per StopNCII.org, only their partner sites will remove the images, not “all the places on the Internet”—but that’s better than nothing.

[deadwhisper]

everyone reblog and stay safe

[jennelikejennay]

A warning: AO3 scams.

I've been receiving an increasing number of scam comments on my fic lately. It used to be very rare, and now I've had two in just the past couple days. It may be because my work is still available when you're not logged-in (because I didn't want to put barriers between people and my work) or because they're easier to write now thanks to AI.

I can't always see the endgame of it—like, what are these people trying to gain? Or is it just bullying for kicks? But this is just a PSA so that when you see one of those, you don't freak out, delete your account, spiral, etc. They are not real people and they didn't read your fic. Don't think of it like hate mail, it's more like a nastygram blown by the wind that ended up plastering itself across your face. It's unpleasant, but it isn't a reflection on you.

The classic kind is where they praise your work and claim to want to make a comic or video of it. This is a perfectly normal thing to do in fan spaces, the only problem is they expect you to pay. Payment is not the norm with fan work, and you have no idea what the quality of the work would be or if they really intend to make it at all. So never agree to these out-of-the-blue requests.

I haven't gotten many of these; most people asking to transform your work are legit. So (if you want the thing) just say "yes, I would love to see it! Please share it with me if you do, I'll link it!" and leave it at that. Decent artists will be happy with this, and people who are trying to separate you from your money can't work with that.

They're getting a little sneaky now though. They know they're not supposed to advertise anything for profit on AO3. So they try this approach:

I was riding high on the praise till the last line. Then I realized this person is essentially no different from somebody offering candy from a van. They tempt you with flattery, everybody likes that. Then they try to get you to a second location. To which I say,

Don't get in the van!

A normal person could have gone to my tumblr, which is linked in one of the notes, and DM'd me. They would have started out in a normal way, meaning along with praise for the fic they would probably have something they actually wanted to talk about, like "hey I liked your worldbuilding ideas, do you think that the Gorn might also do XYZ?" Or "I wrote my own fic on the same topic, would you like to look at it?" Everybody wants something and I am way more comfortable once I know it's a normal thing that normal people want: a conversation, attention, craft advice, a discord invite, whatever.

It's not weird for someone to say "hey my tumblr is XYZ if you want to connect there." It IS weird to ask to move to an undisclosed "other app" when we weren't even really having a conversation that was going anywhere. That's how I almost got scammed for a huge amount of money by a job that didn't exist earlier this year. Scammers want to go to another app because a) the app they are on has robust anti-scam rules, and/or b) they do not have an established identity on this app, so they want you to join them on an app where they've stolen someone else's identity to look more legit than they are.

Remember that a stranger is a stranger even if they are very nice about your fic!

The last one, I don't understand the endgame of at all. The call-to-action varies and sometimes there isn't one. But the root of it is that they accuse you of being AI.

Now, I hate AI. I also can detect it pretty easily. I suspect this comment is AI. I'm not sure, but the weird over-the-top word choices and the clunky phrase "bordering on an AI's calculated formality" definitely give me that vibe.

That said, I don't believe in AI witch hunts. The best proof of AI isn't generally the text, it's that it's shared by someone without a real personality or history, or someone who posts more rapidly and at more length than a human could. (Like facebook pages that post thousand-word essays every hour around the 24. That's not a person.) In this case, I can't check that. They're not logged in, and the name they're using is almost certainly stolen from someone else. (It's a real person who hasn't been active in a long time and isn't in this fandom.)

But, AI or not, they came here to bully. This comment is calculated to make me question whether I'm robotic in my writing or should be using more colloquialisms. (Failed at that, because I'm literally writing from an alien POV; the nonhuman vibe was by design.) Once they've triggered my insecurity, they want ....an audio clip? Unclear what they could do with that, but since I am uncomfortable sharing my voice anywhere—most of my closest internet friends have never heard it, because I'm insecure about it—I didn't even consider complying. Never let insecurity or the desire to prove you're a real person make you jump through whatever hoops they think would prove something. (It wouldn't even prove anything! AI prompters are people and can easily do real-person things to support their AI creation.)

I think we should make two norms in this community:

We don't use AI, ever. There's nothing to gain. We're here for the joy of creation.

We don't accuse other people of using it, ever. It's such a crushing criticism to receive for your genuine work. Even one false positive would be unacceptable. The only surefire proof a fic is made by AI is that they said it was.

If someone accuses you of being AI, don't panic. It's almost certainly a drive-by attack that has nothing to do with you or your work. Either ignore it, or briefly state that it isn't AI and your genuine readers know that. This isn't for the commenter, but for other people in the comments who might see it. Save your effort and attention for any real comments you get. If you were a robot, you wouldn't be pleasantly engaging with your friends in the comments, now would you?

I hope this is some comfort if you've received any weird or upsetting comments. Unfortunately making your work available to readers means it is also visible to bad actors. Don't let them steal your joy in creation and participation in fan community. If you get a comment that strikes you as odd, reach out to your fandom friends or here on tumblr and ask. Very often it's part of a new scam that others have seen as well.

[dhazefawn]

Sharing to raise awareness. This has happened to me already, and it's so annoying. I was lucky enough to know it was a scam, but I hope this helps whoever sees it. Thanks to OP.

[thoughtkick]

“One day someone is going to hug you so tight, that all of your broken pieces will stick back together.”

— Unknown

[thoughtkick]

“There isn’t one person in this world that I want more than I want you.”

— Unknown

[thoughtkick]

“I was willing to fight for you, for us, but you gave me every reason not to.”

— Unknown

[thoughtkick]

“The keys to happiness are in your hands.”

— Unknown

[thoughtkick]

“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”

— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart