Kara Dennison, The Last Teabender

News and features for Crunchyroll/Otaku USA. 50% of TopShelf2 and Altrix Books. Writer for Forgotten Lives, City of the Saved; editor/writer for the Black Archive. Asks are open against my better judgment. (Icon by Nashira, header by @randomthunk .)

[nikuttek]

Uh oh, I've got bad news for you, Grace

instagram | tiktok

[whatthefoucault]

This game is perfect

[the-last-teabender]

My housemate gave me my own profile on his Switch so I can have a Tomodachi Life island.

Naturally I am making good choices.

[alphacrone]

writers and artists everywhere all the time

[boopsloop141]

30 and still on tumblr? Embarrassing.

[the-last-teabender]

Getting hacked kind of feels unpleasant.

The blog of author and journalist Kara Dennison. Books, critical essays, observations, and more.

I mostly post reviews on my blog now, in between news on my own writing projects, but I want to get back to more personal musings and things to break that up.

So today let's talk about how I got hacked, and our view on internet safety and whose "fault" it is. Because I think we have a habit of turning "Please be cautious online" into "If someone hacks or scams you, it's because you're dumb and didn't protect yourself hard enough."

[kuragin]

this is the most underrated part of rockin’ and rollin’ yoda

[bunjywunjy]

Luke’s face is what makes this.

[bannertanks]

[twofingerswhiskey]

reblog if you hate the current interior design trend of painting everything white with hints of grey or black. ignore if you have no taste

[aropride]

please god let chatgpt die out like nfts did. With a fast and graceless fall into irrelevancy

[bladespark]

Like to charge, reblog to cast.

[atwotonedbird]

This spell has a very low hit ratio, so we need a lot of us to do it.

[cipheramnesia]

I need a polite way to email multiple people in a business environment that says, "Are you having an AI chat write your email replies? Because these are incoherent sentences and if it's a chatbot, I need you to stop."

[cipheramnesia]

I'm not trying to accuse anyone of communicating like an angry toddler with zero sense of object permanence, but I have received an awful lot of communications which ask for help with "it" while not specifying what "it" is, or asking me to send something while telling me they have it in the same sentence.

[cipheramnesia]

some mixed signals

[theprofessional-amateur]

I have a growing desire to return emails like teacher feedback on an assignment

"Thesis unclear and supporting arguments contradict leaving reader confused."

and in one particularly memorable and annoying case "You email lacks even one complete sentence or verb. Your audience is forced to wildly speculate what you are asking or proposing."

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

"Please send me the prompt you put into ChatGPT to generate this email so I can work out what you're actually asking"

[sociallyunacceptableart4]

This was my art school’s water fountain. Drink from them wolf tiddies

[mando-lore]

Assignment misunderstood. I have now built a city.

[mando-lore]

[mando-lore]

Give it a day

[alexaloraetheris]

[devinellekurtz]

My very first tiger drawing and my latest

[formaldehydedoesstuff]

Your skill level is unquestionable but listen.

I love him.

[toasthaste-art]

me also. as well.

[devinellekurtz]

This is the COOLEST thing I’ve seen in AGES. You both completely made my entire week.

[striving-artist]

We need to fricking stop with this CinemaSins TVTropes style crap in fandom. Actually, we need to stop that attitude in all creative fields, but I'm talking about fic right now.

I have seen many posts ragging on over-used phrases in fanfic, and yes, I find 'cerulean orbs' deeply strange, but if I ever said anything hateful on the topic I wish I hadn't.

You know why we say 'smirk' a lot in fic? cause its faster than 'gave a tiny smile to one side with their lips closed, a little cocky and provocative' Smirk is an easy way of saying it. It's the correct word. We say it in fic a lot because people smirk a lot in real life. Go people watch, its all over. Also. Bring me a true synonym for smirk, and I'll use that instead, but these ain't it.

If you have a better way of saying 'took off his shoes without untying them, just levered the heel with the toe of the other' that isn't saying 'he toed off his shoes' I'd love to hear it. Cause that phrase is perfect for it.

'Huffed a laugh'? Yeah, they did. Cause I'm not going to spend extra words describing how they 'exhaled through their nose once, amused, but not enough to fully laugh aloud' Its a specific action. You think people don't do that all day? five bucks says its exactly what you do when you see a meme most of the time. You didn't lol. You huffed a laugh.

The idea that something that's been used before is inherently less valuable is ridiculous. Same with the inverse.

If the phrase you want to use is common or widely used, but is the best way to communicate it? Use it. Don't fall for this trap that is currently consuming hollywood. You don't have to have a clever twist just because 'they survived and were happy' is a trope. You don't have to use some insane alternate phrase just because someone thinks fandom uses 'smirk' too much.

And, as always, if someone gives you hell and you don't want to fight them? let me know, cause I volunteer.

[randomthunk]

Dobwen? In 2026?? It's more likely than you think (answer: I don't actually let anything go).

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

VINCENT PRICE AND BORIS KARLOFF -

THE RAVEN (1963) dir. Roger Corman

[luna-azzurra]

Something nobody prepares you for is that the better you get at writing the harder it becomes. beginners write freely because they don't know enough to know what's wrong. then you learn. and suddenly you can see every single flaw in real time as you're making it and you have to write anyway while your own brain is in the corner going "that's a weak verb. that transition is lazy. you've used that word three times." getting good at this is mostly just getting better at ignoring yourself.