¯\_(ツ)_/¯

just a 31 year old incredibly isolated trans artist with debilitating executive dysfunction - ANTI AI

[tryin-my-best]

ok so I've heard about Assistant to The Villain (mostly from youtube reviews talking about how shit it is) but how come I'd never heard anyone talk about Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots??? It's literally so good? It's like The Boys, if it also had supervillains and henchman temp agencies. The MC is one of said temp henchmen - a data analyst. Things go to hell for her and she winds up using her skills to completely fuck with the heroes from behind the scenes, very satisfying. The ML appeals to my Tumblr sensibilities, though I didn't really catch romantic vibe that much. (SPOILER -> -> -> -> ->) They're not yet an item at the end of the book, so that could change in the second novel, which I haven't read yet. She writes body horror really well, pretty fucking grotesque. And there always felt like there was a reason for it, not just shock value. I wouldn't recommend the audiobook though, the VA goes mad with vocal fry-itis with some of the male characters (unfortunately, mostly the more prominent ones)

[callizinc]

When the story has a sequence where the characters each get personally tortured with their exact personalized greatest fears and traumas

[dead-dyke]

You wrote about murder?? Murder is illegal?? You wrote about this dude killing someone and you didn't even say 'murder is bad' at the start of the book, wht wtf, wtf is wrong with you? I can't believe you condone murder, I can't believe you're pro murber, oh my fucking God don'ttalk to me when ou literally kill people, freak. I'm calling the cops, what the fuck, I'm shaking and crying.

[bookwyrminspiration]

i understand words and phrases. my dialogue is natural and in character. i know where the plot is going. my word count is reasonable. i am not scared of my document

[livelaughwriteit]

Writing Sexual Tension

Some tips and tricks I’ve seen on Tumblr, on Pinterest or have learned the hard way while writing. These are pretty basic but sometimes basic is good!

Realizing they can feel the person touching them. Maybe they’re not touching but they can feel the warmth.

Accidentally saying something flirty and both of you freeze. Or saying something flirty and the other person panicking and running away

Eyes dropping to lips. Eyes looking them up and down. Eyes unable to look away. Eyes unable to make contact without blushing. Eyes are you best friend.

Mirroring. When people have crushes or like someone (or want someone to like them) they do what is called mirroring. If character 1 crosses their arms and character 2 has a crush on them, have character 2 cross their arms too.

New Girl taught me about toes. If their feet are facing you, they want to stay. If their feet are pointed away, they want to leave. I’ve found its not always true but its something you can mention or use.

Unable to stop smiling. Unable to stop laughing.

Touching the other one when you laugh. Touching them to move them out of the way. Touching them and not moving your hand away

Hugging them when you see them. Sharing a bed. Trying to be near them at all moments.

Looking at their lips and fantasizing about kissing them.

Watching others interact in some way with them or how they act around them and being super jealous, wondering why they don’t act that way with you.

[and-fishing-equipment]

in 2026 DO NOT ask yourself whether your art is GOOD

instead ask:

is it SINCERE

was it CATHARTIC

was it FUN TO MAKE

is it MADE BY ME

and don't forget to stay silly

[cloudabserk]

WARNING do NOT start reading books and comics or watching movies or looking at art!!! you will start wanting to create art yourself. or god forbid. writing.

[cambriancrew]

[quietwingsinthesky]

trans princess whose parents arrange her to be married to a foreign prince both to humiliate him and to punish her for refusing to hide and misgender herself for the rest of her life, so she’s sent away, terrified of what kind of rage and abuse she’ll be subjected to by her new husband once he sees her and realizes what’s happened.

but when she arrives and is presented before him, it turns out he’s thrilled. trans people are adored in this kingdom. her parents have accidentally done him an incredible honor in betrothing her to him, and suddenly, she goes from surviving in protest in her home to being showered in gifts and affection from her new husband-to-be.

[quietwingsinthesky]

she’s spends the night before she arrives so scared that she can’t eat or sleep and she’s contemplating if she should run (she’ll be caught) or if she’d at least die with some dignity and as herself if she does it by her own hand now. and the next night, she finds herself seated at the head of a banquet while her husband plays out a wedding ritual where he brings her grander and grander gifts, each time refusing that they’re enough to win her heart and leaving her with more treasures to fetch another. one of them is a wedding dress—she was not even given her own to bring—but he places it in her lap and says, “No, no, I’ll find one better now that I’ve seen your face and know what colors will bring out your beauty.”

and then he panics a little because she starts crying. only it’s just relief. it’s a relief that’s been withheld for her entire life. she’s safe. someone wants to prove he’s worthy of loving her. she’s safe.

[faderifter]

for your story to have themes of empowerment and anti-bigotry it has to contain bigotry, btw. feminist and anti-racist themes can’t exist without misogyny and racism, explicit or metaphorical. your desire to scrub depictions of prejudice from fiction is regressive.

[cadriona]

So, a funny thing happened on trigun twitter

(amazon link where its 50% off as of May 8th: https://www.amazon.com/This-How-You-Lose-Time/dp/1534430997/)

[cadriona]

Update, “this is how you lose the time war” is now #21 on Amazon’s bestseller’s list

(semi-related note but I too have now ordered the book)

[cadriona]

another update: Amal El -Mohtar wrote a small article on her blog (https://amalelmohtar.com/i-tried-to-title-this-post-for-twenty-minutes-and-failed/), one which contains the words “[…] and the upshot of it all is that corporate marketing people at Simon & Schuster now know the name Bigolas Dickolas.”

[cadriona]

Further update!

Time war has reached #7 on the amazon bestseller’s list and is still discounted!

(thread found here: https://twitter.com/tithenai/status/1655613629604016151?s=20)

In addition:

[leebrontide]

I know it made it up to #6 at one point. Being a pre-existing fan of both Trigun and This is How You Loose the Time War made this especially enjoyable.

[kittydesade]

I’m just going to add some more Twitter screencaps I pasted into the groupchat.

The producer of Trigun Stampede. (No word from Nightow yet, I checked.)

A literary agent. To be precise, the agent of at least one of the authors of Time War.

Slate, posting their article about the whole thing.

A frenzy of mutual adoration and signed hardcover offers.

Other authors want in on the Bigolas Dickolas goodness.

Dongwon again.

Saw this on Twitter and HAH.

Bigolas Dickolas is now Alexander the Great.

And finally, the forecast is good for a livestream of Max and Amal watching Trigun.

[exsequar]

This is apparently still unfolding! Tumblr “news” is sometimes 5 years old so I wasn’t sure 😂 The latest - it’s up to #3!!

[cadriona]

LMFAOO YEAH I JUST SAW IT HIT #3 been trying to keep this post updated but didn’t want to spam, and the speed at which these things have been happening is beautifully astounding so:

trigun, following bigolas dickolas, has also become a trending topic in business and finance

Interview with Bun (or Mr. Bigolas)

Crossover art (https://twitter.com/xxrat__punkxx/status/1656446745088278529?s=20)

thread of semi-current placements on the book

memes

and the situation very much escaping online confinement xD

[cadriona]

A significant number of hours later (and too much to summarize):

Time War summary: reached #3 on Amazon overall, #1 (and 2, And 3) in science fiction romance, #3 in lit and fiction, social media presence overseas, and- 

printing with a bigolas dickolas sleeve and so much more

Bridging the two: so many articles

slate article

techcrunch article

insider article

kotaku article

Gizmodo article

tor.com

polygon

and etc

And then on the bigolas dickolas trigun side-

And then after tweeting @ dark horse for a potential trigun maximum (trimax) reprint due to the eng verison being out of print for several years by this point:

so everything can now basically be summed by by this tweet!

(I don’t know if i’ll keep updating this thread considering how many branches there are and idk how much more this can escalate, but I’m keeping an eye on the situation so we’ll see!!)

For those asking what time war is about, per Mr. Bigolas’s post: DO NOT look up anything about it. Just read it.

For those asking about trigun, it is an amazing manga, anime adaptation, and new reboot anime.

[cadriona]

its been over a year since all this first occurred, but felt it was necessary to tack on that bigolas dickolas declined the Hugo that the infamous tweet was nominated for 😂

[dduane]

…It’s an amazing world. :)

[noah-wyles]

she's the best of us

[melhyan-writes]

𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐔𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 (𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐖𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐓𝐨 𝐌𝐞)

Bring back illustrations in books.

I want full page art that makes me pause mid-sentence and go “oh.”

Bring back little drawings at the start of chapters. Bring back weird decorative headers. Bring back maps that are slightly confusing but I will stare at them like I’m planning a military campaign anyway.

Where is my glossary. Where is my pronunciation guide. I am tired of guessing. I want to know if I’ve been saying a name wrong for 300 pages so I can feel betrayed properly.

Give me marginalia. Give me fake documents. Letters. Diagrams that look important but are emotionally suspicious. Let the book look like it’s been handled.

Why did we decide everything had to be Just Text. Who voted for this. Show yourself-

I want footnotes that feel like the author is whispering additional lore directly into my ear. I want diagrams that explain nothing and somehow make everything worse.

Give me endpapers with art. Give me symbols that repeat until I start connecting dots like a conspiracy theorist. Give me one illustration halfway through that alters my brain chemistry permanently.

Books used to come with bonus content like they were slightly haunted objects and now we’re just… behaving? No.

If I am committing to 300 pages, I deserve enrichment.

Let the text do things. Let it shift. Let it breathe. Give me a page that’s just one line in the center so I can sit there like I’ve been personally attacked.

We have the technology. We have the printing capabilities. Why are we acting like books have to behave.

Also imagine the DRAMA. A character dies and suddenly the chapter header symbol changes. A map detail you ignored becomes relevant. A little drawing you thought was decorative is actually foreshadowing. Hello???

Anyway this is my formal petition to make books a little more unhinged again. Add the art. Add the maps. Add the weird glossary entries.

This is not a want. This is a need. Publishers, please let books be weird again- I AM BEGGING

[synesindri]

sometimes people reviewing books with uncomfortable subject matter will assume that the only reason someone wouldn't enjoy the book is because they can't handle the uncomfortable subject matter. not so!

[worldwright]

tragically project hail mary was grown in a test tube for me specifically like. woman who fucking did all that and history will call her a villain but there will be history books to do so and that is her victory. scruffiest man alive who cries constantly and can't keep his glasses on to save his life and who is so so scared. the alien who is on its species' very first space exploration mission and who is so so alone and reaching out to the completely unknown life just for any chance that it won't be, anymore. and everything is ending but we still stop and gaze in awe at these beautiful, terrible things that are killing us. and we never call them evil.

[sickficbay]

when a character is so badly hurt/sick that their demeanour switches up entirely

chatty characters pale-faced and silent

quiet and reserved characters rambling deliriously

character who always resorts to humour clearly trying to think of a quip but coming up empty

no-nonsense character so loopy that they can’t stop giggling

a stoic character’s hands trembling in panic

an easily frightened character so far out of it that they aren’t aware of what’s happening to them, much less afraid

intelligent characters who can’t think straight

protective (self-sacrificial) characters letting someone else take the fall for them because they’re too weak to object

patient characters snapping at whoever comes near

affectionate character who wants to be alone

lone wolf who begs you to stay a minute longer.

[nudityandnerdery]

"[Y]our Harry Potter games are Cybertrucks" is such a good way to put it.

[goldcrescent]

atp the only way we’re going to get out of this ai shit while people’s brains are still semi intact is to start bribing influencers and tiktokers into saying chatgpt is cringe and it emits a frequency that blocks your divine energy which can only be channeled back by reading a book and talking to your friends

[goldcrescent]

mama bears listen up: human traffickers are using chatgpt to pick out their next victims!!! Every time you use it they create a profile of you and bubs and the more you use it the easier they can track you. If you’ve ever found a brightly colored wrapper just under your car at target or walmart it means they are signaling accomplices in the area to get ready to ambush you!!!!! Mamas help me spread the word!!!!!!!!!

[goldcrescent]

different audience no problem: what kind of beta shit are you talking about brother your ancestors were in the trenches fighting wolves barehanded and shit and you need a fucking computer to tell you what to do? You’re so fucking cucked dude you gotta do shit the PRIMAL way, you let a computer think for you you might as well let it chew your food get your gains and fuck your wife get this sissy shit out of my face bro it literally lowers your sperm count

[cosmogyros]

I've gotta add my favorite variations from the notes so I can have them all in one place ❤️

[inthefallofasparrow]

g = 7, p = 16, t = 20

Chat gpt = Matt. 7:16-20

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

AI is the tree that brings forth evil fruit. It must be cut down and thrown into the fire.