Naruto actor AU, chunin exams version because yes

Naruto actor AU: Sasuke’s recovery mission

Honestly I wanted to do a lot more for this arc but my hand was like nope, fuck off, idk how to draw anymore

Hope you like it!

nejiten fanfic binging guide

My recommended Nejiten fics. All stories are complete and are good enough to be reread again and again:)

Narutoverse

Exceptions by IncessantOblivion — The first Nejiten fic I have ever read, also one of the closest to my hearts. Though the author admits it, it does have themes of sexism and homophobia, but not strong. It portrays Tenten as extremely inexperienced and though I’m not a fan of authors who write her that way, I’m glad she is shown as independent otherwise. Despite the criticism and obvious flaws, the romantic scenes are written perfectly and I get a huge wave of feels every time I reread it. Besides the slight hints of sexism, this story is the most favourited Nejiten story on FFn for a reason: you’re so emotionally connected to it. My chest literally constricts every time I read it, it’s so good. 

Land of Pretend + Reality by trilliumgt — The first story, (Land of Pretend), despite being without a super solid storyline, is just so heart-wrenching. I’m pretty sure I cried the first time I read this and the sequel but even if it didn’t trigger as much as an emotional reaction, it was surprisingly not boring. Though “Reality” wasn’t as “feel-triggering”, it was very well thought out. 

Keep reading

thank you so much for the recs!!!!!

also, i’m copy/pasting one of my recs lists:

Four Conversations on the Subject of Flight by wildcatt

Flying is not as perfect as you imagine it to be, you know. Flying is just falling up.

Why you should read it: There are very subtle, very sharp emotions woven through this fic. It’s about the disintegration of a relationship, and how one puts up with all the crap in life until you realize that the one thing you treasure most is at stake.

It’s not easy to make me cry with a story.. but this does it every time.

The Only Alliance by notesonlife

A black leather bound sketchbook binds her to him, and breaks her against him.

Why you should read it: This is a high-school AU done entirely without dialogue. There is no teenager-ish voice in here (which already puts it way up there in my books), and it’s heartbreaking when you realize just what’s happened to that sketchbook.

Syndicate by Tanya Lilac

Tenten, an intelligence operative of Konoha, is sent on an undercover assignment after a brief reunion with her former lover and cell member, Hyuuga Neji. Despite having a new identity and a case to crack, she begins to realise, spy or otherwise, she will never be able to leave her past behind.

Why you should read it: This has one of the most intricate storylines I’ve ever read, probably. The relationships between the characters are very real, and there are many character connections and symbolisms handled so well.

Kunoichi and Guardian by Giada Luna

Devastated by Neji’s death, Tenten tries to navigate life in a world without him with one goal in mind: to protect those precious to her and to rejoin him in death.

Why you should read it: There are two sides to the story here: Tenten’s, and Neji’s. I love the relationships Giada has woven between the characters, and the motivations she’s given them. Not for kids.

All My Stars Aligned by Yahboobeh

“So,” she began, “Is it true? "Is what true?” “Does Neji Hyūga fall in love so easily?”

Why you should read it: A very interesting, harsh take on the Hyuuga clan, and just what Hiashi can be capable of. Very real. Yahboobeh doesn’t pull any punches here.

Q&A: No

I’ll be honest, the people you’re talking about in the comments are misogynistic pricks who aren’t worth my time. They’re not worth yours either. You can tell they’re either chauvinists or misogynists because their worldview doesn’t allow for the existence of tall women, or a woman who is six feet tall. If you point out that the woman might be taller of the two in the scenario, you can watch them combust as they try to move the goal posts. (That happened about four months ago, or so.)

On the professional side, “How to Fight Write” now has 40,000 followers and we lend them more legitimacy by responding to them directly than we do just letting them stew in the comments. Besides, we’ve talked about the realities of size and its (rather negligible) effects on combat before and at length. They read this blog. Their complaints aren’t an honest attempt at discussion, they’re just bait to stir the pot.

The issue of size is one that will come up again and again because it’s culturally enshrined as “common sense” wisdom. The theory supports a broad narrative based in what “everybody knows” and is used to de legitimize those wanting to break with the status quo. This concept has no basis in reality and there’s plenty of evidence everywhere that will tell you human beings come in all shapes and sizes, and learning to deal with that is just a fact of life.

The real conversation happening here is not about size. Size is just the verbage used to keep themselves from being called out as misogynistic pricks. They’re talking about women, and about men being better than women because their worldview, their self-image, and need to be relevant demand it. We could go over what we’ve gone over already, but I don’t feel like it.

Instead, I’m going to talk to you about size from the perspective of someone who has done martial arts since they were five years old.

I’ve told the story in the past about how when I was eleven a girl in my class tried to physically intimidate me. We were in sixth grade, and she was class bully. She had a little tag along friend who stuck close to her side, whom she was the protector of. She reached her growth faster than the rest of us, and she felt much larger and taller than me then than Starke (who is a very large, broad, and physically intimidating 6″) ever has. Having spent most of her young life being taller (and more filled out) than everyone else, including the boys, she was used to using her size for intimidation. I got cross ways of her over a class role-play we did on the Greek Gods. We had a debate. I won. So, after it was over, she came up to me, leaned down over me, with her arms crossed over her chest, and told me to never do that again or else. I think she may also have told me to meet her behind the gym. And I… didn’t notice.

I was confused by her behavior. It took a couple days of contemplation to realize she’d been threatening me with physical violence if I didn’t acquiesce to her demands, and expected me to back down because she was five to six inches taller. However, I’d been doing martial arts for about five years by that point, and if there’s one thing about being a kid in a martial arts program it’s that you get used to working with people of all shapes and sizes. I trained with people who were taller than me all the time and because I grew up in the company of friendly giants, I’ve never found large people intimidating.

So, that day I biked home like always did instead of meeting her behind the gym (because why?) and a few days later she wrote “bitch” in pencil on my desk.

This girl was used to getting her way not because of her size, but because of the intimidation factor her size gave her. It probably worked on both girls and boys who got in her way, and she expected size intimidation to work on me because I was small, mousey, and wore glasses.

As most self-defense experts will tell you, the battle is played out in the mind rather than the body. If you decide you’ve lost, you will. That’s why the advantage game is worthless. If you treat this someone’s physical attributes as a definitive sign that they’re better than you, then you will lose because how can you beat someone who is better than you? There’s a lot more that goes into combat than a few yes or no check boxes, and all the DnD stats in the world won’t translate over. Someone being large doesn’t mean they’re strong, big doesn’t equal slow, and tall doesn’t translate to an automatic advantage outside of it giving the tall person a false sense of confidence like the girl who tried to bully me.

Trust me, all it takes is seeing the biggest guy in the class struggle with a technique which came incredibly easy to the smallest person for the myth about size to be dispelled right quick.

When I was five and a little white belt I did my first “sparring” with Alan, a second degree black belt who was a young, very leggy African-American man in his early twenties. The reality was a bunch of little five and six year olds tumbling at him like excitable puppies while he lightly tapped (our fully protected/fully geared) little chests lightly with a roundhouse kick as we tried to get close. Talk about impossible odds… I definitely couldn’t win against him, my head couldn’t reach his waist!

And, yes, that’s small children.

With adults, you’re not dealing with such a monumental size difference and women, despite what some people in the comments might think, aren’t children. A man’s arm is not double or triple the length of theirs. At most, it’s a few centimeters, maybe a few inches, and you reach full extension on impact so you drive the force into your opponent rather than just stretching your arm out full length. Size in people is not the first thing I look for when I’m sizing them up. Stance, foot and shoulder placement, hand placement, eyes, and their ability to project their presence are what I pay attention to. Someone who can project their presence and who knows how to stand will always be intimidating, no matter how large or small they are.

My brother is five inches taller than me and, honestly, when it comes down to sparring I feel like we’re the same height.

Starke told me when we first met that people were usually intimidated by him, and my response was, “why?”

The answer is because he’s big, broad and tall, usually wears black jeans, biker boots, a black leather jacket, has a mile long stare, and long hair.

That’s it. That’s the only reason.

I, however, have broken bricks with my palm. Two in a single strike. I’ve also broken a brick with my elbow. I did that at eighteen which is about the same age or younger than most of you reading this blog. (I know the truth, I see your Google Analytics.)

Now, the same ninnies in the comments will tell you that it doesn’t count unless you’ve been in a real fight. You can hear the “but, but, but, but” from here, that is their only means of invalidating opinions they don’t like, or experiences which disagree with their worldview.

And I never said brick breaking was, but if you had to pick let me ask you, if all you knew about me and Starke was that Starke was an imposing 6″ who liked to wear black leather and that I can project enough force through my fist into a single target to break multiple bricks in a single shot, which would you think was more dangerous?

Obviously, the taller human.

You can always tell someone doesn’t respect violence when they talk about real fights as the barometer for valid experience, and that lack of a respect is the sign you’re dealing with an amateur. The irony here is that the more training you have the less likely you are to engage in violence. You have a better understanding of the dangers, the cost, and consequences.

-Michi

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Q&A: No was originally published on How to Fight Write.

Polished Malachite Stalactite - Copper Crescent, Congo

*looks around*

Is

Is anyone gonna say it

malachite is a poisonous mineral. please do not fuck the malachite stalactite

@lizaleigh do you know any rock people that can confirm/deny because I am very curious and really don’t feel like getting into a conversation with my geophysicist brother that MAY somehow get back to the fact I saw a malachite that looked like a weird dildo.

…sadly, I am not on good enough terms with any of our partner geologists to just attach this to an email with the subject line: “EXPLAIN.” Although I think @mollisaurus is a mineral person. Thoughts?

oh geeze, i’m kinda rusty on minerals but malachite is just copper carbonate and is really common in both antique and modern jewelry so i think like if you were really gun-ho about it you could go ahead and put it wherever you want?

It’s really only a problem if you’re polishing or cutting it. The particles would be bad to breathe. It’s rather porous too, so I would worry about bacteria growing. Well, being literal anyway… Better to leave the poor thing alone. ._.

I mean it kinda depends on where you stick it because malachite does not like acidic environments very much and the malachite will degrade and also might dye your bits blue-green as the copper dissolves out.

So use a condom when fucking rocks is the takeaway here.

Oh my god guys it’s poisonous

It is super poisonous

There is a reason we do not use it in make up any more

Not even with a condom, do not fuck the rock

Try this one instead. 

malachite literally explodes in water does it not?

I… no… I think you’re thinking of pure sodium?

Malachite is however water soluble, which really just means it will poison you quicker

This is both hilarious and cool as fuck because you’re getting all this information on minerals and rocks. You’re also watching people argue over wether or not you can fuck this rock

I go on hiatus for a week and come back to find tumblr molesting my post, but hey, at least we all learned something so yay tumblr, you just keep on  being you.

I’m still not sure if I can fuck this rock.

I’m looking into it.

UPDATE:

Today in “I’m so sorry, coworkers, it’s for Tumblr,” I brought this post to the attention the science reporters at BuzzFeed. Dan Vergano did a some research and weighed in on the question “Can you use malachite as a dildo or is it toxic?”

The answer is “It’s probably fine, just wash it first and maybe use a bunch of lube.”

Oh man this got so much better than the last time I saw this post

This is my favourite. Science side of tumblr: asking the REAL questions

*biologist crashes through the underbrush* Ok so here’s the thing though Malachite is not poisonous to YOU. BUT fucking this stalactite will probably wreck your vaginal flora and leave you with a gruesome infection within a couple days. Want details? SO GLAD YOU ASKED, ‘CAUSE HERE THEY ARE. • Malachite is not copper oxide. It’s Cu2CO3(OH)2. Like most carbonates it’s water soluble– that’s how it became a stalactite in the first place! And technically any given chunk of “malachite” isn’t just malachite– it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. This will become important later.  • When malachite dissolves it makes a bunch of copper (Cu++) ions. Cu++ is GREAT at killing bacteria and fungi– so good at it that sprays with Cu++ get used a lot as a spray in agriculture to stop plant disease. It takes such a large dose to harm larger organisms that copper sprays are used a lot in organic agriculture (like Bordeaux mixture).  So bottom line, yes malachite is technically nontoxic to humans. But it kills bacteria when it dissolves and releases Cu++. • Malachite dissolves somewhat slowly in water– but vaginal secretions aren’t just any water. A healthy human vagina has a pH of 3.8-4.5 and a salinity of about 0.9%. It’s also warmer than your average underground cave at 37°C (or 98.5°F in American meat units). As luck would have it, acidity, salinity, and warmth all make malachite dissolve faster.  • In other words, the human vagina dissolves malachite.  • I have no deeper explanation for why human females can dissolve rocks with our genitals. It simply is.  • Gonna to take a quick moment to point out that sex toys that dissolve when you use them are maybe not the best investment.  • Anyway the key question now is “how fast does the human vagina dissolve malachite?” Are we talking geological timescale, a Nazis-in-Indiana-Jones situation, or something in between? If the reaction kinetics of dissolution are very slow, then there’s nothing to worry about. An encounter with a stalactite would have to last years for enough Cu++ to leach out to cause problems. If it’s quick then we’re in trouble.  • Unfortunately it looks like nobody really knows. One of the best sources on how malachite dissolves & precipitates in water– an EPA document on how to avoid too much Cu++ in municipal drinking water systems– helpfully says “The kinetic constraints on the formation of these solids in water systems are largely unexplored” (p. 42) because end equilibrium points is all you need to run a city water system safely. In other words, the experiments that would tell us how fast malachite dissolves in various types of water just don’t exist because nobody’s ever needed to know before. So we’d better assume it’s going to happen reasonably quickly, #for safety. • So in best scientific fashion, we’re just going to bullshit our way ahead using what facts we DO have on hand: endpoint equlibria.  • Is there any info out there telling us what equilibrium concentration of Cu++ we get in salty acidic water at body temperature? Almost! One J.F. Scaife published some great data on this back in 1957. TAKE IT AWAY, SCAIFE. 

That orange box is how many moles of dissolved Cu++ Scaife got from sticking malachite in some water that had 0.171 moles NaCl/L (body salinity is about 0.154 moles NaCl/L so this is slightly less salty than people) at 30°C. He’s got no acidity in there, and again the salinity and temperature are slightly lower than people. But this is probably the closest we’re going to get to data on how malachite behaves in vaginas anytime soon, folks. From this we can take away that if you leave malachite alone in a vagina you’ll get AT LEAST 9.12 x 10^-4 moles/L, or 5.8 ppm, of Cu++ at equilibrium.  • Recall from above that most “malachite” isn’t actually pure malachite, it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. The EPA document elaborates: “[T]raditional ‘eyeball’ identification of malachite by its blue-green color is extremely unreliable, because almost all cupric hydroxysulfates, hydroxycarbonates, hydroxychlorides, and even fresh cupric hydroxide can be some shade of blue-green. … Thus, the uncertainty in the computed copper concentration in equilibrium with malachite is at least about a factor of 2 … until further experimental data focusing on this problem is generated.” In other words, “do your math and then double how much Cu++ you think is going to be in the water, just in case.” So that gives us 11.6ppm Cu++, at equilibrium, with malachite in a (til now!) healthy vagina.  • Next step: do we have any idea what happens to bacteria in acid conditions with copper? OH MY GOD WE TOTALLY DO. Gyawali et al 2011 checked this out in the context of “so what if we rinsed tomatoes with a solution of lactic acid and copper, because that would be a safe & organic way to get rid of E. coli?” So now this post has officially ruined stalactites, vaginas, and tomatoes.

^This would happen. These are the counts of 4 E. coli strains exposed to various levels of lactic acid & Cu++ for 8 hours. This table only shows the end counts but it represents the death of 99.7% of bacteria*. • Losing 99.7% of your vaginal flora is seriously bad news. You’re looking at really good odds of a yeast infection, bacterial vaginosis, and/or other infection issues. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to not be in the 4% of the population or so that’s sensitive to skin contact with copper.  • The good news? Biochemically speaking, you’re probably ok to put it in your butt. It’s not as acidic or salty in there, plus there’s a huuuuuge stockpile of gut microbes right upstream that can quickly repopulate the colon after spelunking is complete. However this stalactite is not flared at the base so it is the wrong shape for putting in your butt. Do not put this stalactite in your butt.  • This all looks like fun and games, but I think it’s really interesting that the internet’s mistake in concluding that this stalactite is fuckable is very similar to the mistake made by the Flint water management system. Hear me out.  • Central to the Flint lead poisoning crisis is that authorities only looked at & tested Flint’s water in its central treatment plant before it went out through the pipes. Not after it went through the pipes. They did not consider what would happen biochemically as it went through the pipes and metals started dissolving.  • Similarly, in concluding that the stalactite is fuckable, the internet only considered the stalactite itself. Not the biochemical processes that would happen to it as it, welp, went through the pipes.  • Media frequently reports that the Flint River’s water is “corrosive,” leading many to believe the river is full of industrial waste. This ain’t the case. You’d need industry to fill a river with industrial waste, and industry left decades ago. That’s why Flint’s so poor. So what IS in the water? Road salt. Plain old stupid road salt. The old Detroit-based source didn’t have salt because it came from Lake Huron which has a large, mostly rural watershed. Meanwhile the Flint River runs through a lot of towns, making it slightly salty as everything melts down in spring. And as we recall from the stalactite experience, a little salt is all it takes to get metals to dissolve.  • Information on this engineering problem was not coming through clearly from the engineering or chemistry sides. It took a biologist, pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, to document the real-time results and provide the data to kick-start a high-level investigation.  • Morals of the story: when dealing with a biological system pls consider asking a biologist, your vagina and/or city could depend on this • Pls use a condom when fucking any water-soluble material • Still don’t put the stalactite in your butt -3/10 do not recommend

OK, I haven’t reblogged this before now but the final post takes it to a whole new level and I can no longer resist. 

... aha

uhHHHH I don’t mean to be dramatic or anything but I literally wrote 50k words in two weeks without fuckening trying, like won NaNoWriMo in 2 weeks, TWO WEEKS, after joining 4thewords.com and I’m like

w h a t

basically, wow I have never been this productive in my LIFE and I can’t wait for their July mini nanowrimo event (they’re doing a pride month one right now so you can get a rainbow shirt and fight rainbow beasties it’s freakin adorable)

and if this sounds like something you would enjoy, go for it, try to catch me, just do it, come at me friends let’s write some good shit together

Well

My free trial runs out today.

And I’d say it’s worth it to continue with $4 a month. Cause.

IN A MONTH. A MONTH. 30 DAYS.

What freaking ancient eldritch power have I unleashed? If I can keep this up… holy crap. My writing life might actually change and. Take me places. I hope so, anyway. And I hope it helps someone else too. 

<3 Go make cool things.

for those who need to write, for those struggling to write.

I love 4tw. 

Quick And Dirty Tips For Creating Subplots

– Not everyone should love the hero.

– The more antagonists you have the more conflicts you create.

– Real life should happen to the characters, even if they are saving the world they have jobs and responsibilities.

– Give the character interests and friends outside of work.

– Multiple point of views aren’t a bad thing if you know how to juggle them.

– It all needs to come together at the end.

– Not every antagonist needs to be vanquished at the end.

– – Give us more than one character to love– (from Diantha)

— Make each and every character count — (from Diantha)

Stories need subplots. Make sure yours has one.

Andrea Gibson (via dearlaurablog)