Chapters

Prologue|A Dynamic Duo

Chapter 01|Never Again

Chapter 02|Toxic Talks

Chapter 03|Show Me A Good Time

Chapter 04|What Now

Chapter 05|Elevator

Chapter 06|Mama Knows Best

Chapter 07|Talk A Good Game

Chapter 08|Girl Talk

Chapter 09|Simply Amazing

Chapter 10|Green Eyes

Chapter 11|Quality Time

Chapter 12|Complicated

Chapter 13|No Love Allowed

Chapter 14|Heartbreak Hotel

Chapter 15|Take Care

Chapter 16|Love’s Silent Storm

Chapter 17|Guilty White Lies

Chapter 18 Part 1|Dirty Laundry

Chapter 18 Part 2|Dirty Laundry

Chapter 19|Brand New

Chapter 20|Jealousy VS. Envy

Chapter 21|Not For Long

Chapter 22|Red Lipstick

Chapter 23|Keep It Between Us

Chapter 24|Playing By The Rules

Chapter 25|Trust Issues

Chapter 26|Lie To Me

Chapter 27|Something To Prove

Chapter 28 Part 1|Smartphones

Chapter 28 Part 2|Smartphones

Chapter 29|What’s Best For You

Epilogue|A Dynamic Duo… Take Two

The Show Goes On|A FLH & FHMD Mesh Up

Not For Long|Alternate Short

I have … a tip.

If you’re writing something that involves an aspect of life that you have not experienced, you obviously have to do research on it. You have to find other examples of it in order to accurately incorporate it into your story realistically.

But don’t just look at professional write ups. Don’t stop at wikepedia or webMD. Look up first person accounts.

I wrote a fic once where a character has frequent seizures. Naturally, I was all over the wikipedia page for seizures, the related pages, other medical websites, etc.

But I also looked at Yahoo asks where people where asking more obscure questions, sometimes asked by people who were experiencing seizures, sometimes answered by people who have had seizures.

I looked to YouTube. Found a few individual videos of people detailing how their seizures usually played out. So found a few channels that were mostly dedicated to displaying the daily habits of someone who was epileptic.

I looked at blogs and articles written by people who have had seizures regularly for as long as they can remember. But I also read the frantic posts from people who were newly diagnosed or had only had one and were worried about another.

When I wrote that fic, I got a comment from someone saying that I had touched upon aspects of movement disorders that they had never seen portrayed in media and that they had found representation in my art that they just never had before. And I think it’s because of the details. The little things.

The wiki page for seizures tells you the technicalities of it all, the terminology. It tells you what can cause them and what the symptoms are. It tells you how to deal with them, how to prevent them.

But it doesn’t tell you how some people with seizures are wary of holding sharp objects or hot liquids. It doesn’t tell you how epileptics feel when they’ve just found out that they’re prone to fits. It doesn’t tell you how their friends and family react to the news.

This applies to any and all writing. And any and all subjects. Disabilities. Sexualities. Ethnicities. Cultures. Professions. Hobbies. Traumas. If you haven’t experienced something first hand, talk to people that have. Listen to people that have. Don’t stop at the scholarly sources. They don’t always have all that you need.

Getting inspired to write is actually really easy! All you need to do is be the busiest you've ever been in your entire life and as far away from a computer as humanly possible. Hope this helps 🥰

Just wanted to make sure I ain’t miss it 😂😂

Showing vs. Telling

– At long last, it is finally here; The long awaited guide to showing instead of telling. This is obviously a very divisive subject in the writing community, so if there’s something you disagree with, that’s totally fine. These are simply my tips based on my own experience and you can take or leave whatever is useful to you. I hope this is helpful. Happy writing!

Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress || Request

Don’t Be Ambiguous

It is important to note that showing is mainly about conveying exactly what you mean to your reader. Telling is so dangerous in writing because it’s very easy for readers to interpret information that is told to them in a way that throws off any one of the elements of your scene. The best way to catch these instances of telling is to identify moments in which a reader could ask “what do they mean?”

Take those moments, for instance, if you were to write, “the woman was pretty”, and clarify what pretty is in the context of your story, or your perspective as the author. People have different definitions and associations to words, and your job, when it comes to showing, is to make your definitions and associations as clear as possible.

Use Strong Verbs

Showing does not mean telling in a more roundabout way. It means taking a bland description without any imagery and rewriting it in a way that paints a picture in your reader’s mind. You do this by using strong verbs and powerful words. For instance, instead of saying “hit, looked, walked”, you’d say “struck, peered, trudged”. See what I mean?

Balance

As a writer, you need to understand that there are no hard rules. There must be balance to everything, and despite how universal this “rule” may seem, you should know that it’s not that black and white. Here are two tips to help you keep balance between showing and telling.

Showing Through Dialogue

Dialogue is a really great way to show a reader character traits that showing through description never could. The way a person speaks, the words they choose, the manner in which they respond to things, are all great ways to give your reader information about that character. Use this to your advantage so that you don’t have to spend extra time describing it later.

When You Should “Tell”

Support Wordsnstuff!

So You Need To Buy A Computer But You Don't Know What Specs Are Good These Days

Hi.

This is literally my job.

Lots of people are buying computers for school right now or are replacing computers as their five-year-old college laptop craps out so here's the standard specs you should be looking for in a (windows) computer purchase in August 2023.

PROCESSOR

You can get away with a Ryzen 5 but an intel i3 should be an absolute last resort. You want at least an intel i5 or a Ryzen 7 processor. The current generation of intel processors is 13, but anything 10 or newer is perfectly fine. DO NOT get a higher performance line with an older generation; a 13th gen i5 is better than an 8th gen i7. (Unfortunately I don't know enough about ryzens to tell you which generation is the earliest you should get, but staying within 3 generations is a good rule of thumb)

RAM

If you don't have at least 8GB RAM on a modern computer it's going to be very, very slow. Ideally you want a computer with at least 16GB, and it's a good idea to get a computer that will let you add or swap RAM down the line (nearly all desktops will let you do this, for laptops you need to check the specs for Memory and see how many slots there are and how many slots are available; laptops with soldered RAM cannot have the memory upgraded - this is common in very slim laptops)

STORAGE

Computers mostly come with SSDs these days; SSDs are faster than HDDs but typically have lower storage for the same price. That being said: SSDs are coming down in price and if you're installing your own drive you can easily upgrade the size for a low cost. Unfortunately that doesn't do anything for you for the initial purchase.

A lot of cheaper laptops will have a 128GB SSD and, because a lot of stuff is stored in the cloud these days, that can be functional. I still recommend getting a bit more storage than that because it's nice if you can store your music and documents and photos on your device instead of on the cloud. You want to be able to access your files even if you don't have internet access.

But don't get a computer with a big HDD instead of getting a computer with a small SSD. The difference in speed is noticeable.

SCREEN (laptop specific)

Personally I find that touchscreens have a negative impact on battery life and are easier to fuck up than standard screens. They are also harder to replace if they get broken. I do not recommend getting a touch screen unless you absolutely have to.

A lot of college students especially tend to look for the biggest laptop screen possible; don't do that. It's a pain in the ass to carry a 17" laptop around campus and with the way that everything is so thin these days it's easier to damage a 17" screen than a 14" screen.

On the other end of that: laptops with 13" screens tend to be very slim devices that are glued shut and impossible to work on or upgrade.

Your best bet (for both functionality and price) is either a 14" or a 15.6" screen. If you absolutely positively need to have a 10-key keyboard on your laptop, get the 15.6". If you need something portable more than you need 10-key, get a 14"

FORM FACTOR (desktop specific)

If you purchase an all-in-one desktop computer I will begin manifesting in your house physically. All-in-ones take away every advantage desktops have in terms of upgradeability and maintenance; they are expensive and difficult to repair and usually not worth the cost of disassembling to upgrade.

There are about four standard sizes of desktop PC: All-in-One (the size of a monitor with no other footprint), Tower (Big! probably at least two feet long in two directions), Small Form Factor Tower (Very moderate - about the size of a large shoebox), and Mini/Micro/Tiny (Small! about the size of a small hardcover book).

If you are concerned about space you are much better off getting a MicroPC and a bracket to put it on your monitor than you are getting an all-in-one. This will be about a million percent easier to work on than an all-in-one and this way if your monitor dies your computer is still functional.

Small form factor towers and towers are the easiest to work on and upgrade; if you need a burly graphics card you need to get a full size tower, but for everything else a small form factor tower will be fine. Most of our business sales are SFF towers and MicroPCs, the only time we get something larger is if we have to put a $700 graphics card in it. SFF towers will accept small graphics cards and can handle upgrades to the power supply; MicroPCs can only have the RAM and SSD upgraded and don't have room for any other components or their own internal power supply.

WARRANTY

Most desktops come with either a 1 or 3 year warranty; either of these is fine and if you want to upgrade a 1 year to a 3 year that is also fine. I've generally found that if something is going to do a warranty failure on desktop it's going to do it the first year, so you don't get a hell of a lot of added mileage out of an extended warranty but it doesn't hurt and sometimes pays off to do a 3-year.

Laptops are a different story. Laptops mostly come with a 1-year warranty and what I recommend everyone does for every laptop that will allow it is to upgrade that to the longest warranty you can get with added drop/damage protection. The most common question our customers have about laptops is if we can replace a screen and the answer is usually "yes, but it's going to be expensive." If you're purchasing a low-end laptop, the parts and labor for replacing a screen can easily cost more than half the price of a new laptop. HOWEVER, the way that most screens get broken is by getting dropped. So if you have a warranty with drop protection, you just send that sucker back to the factory and they fix it for you.

So, if it is at all possible, check if the manufacturer of a laptop you're looking at has a warranty option with drop protection. Then, within 30 days (though ideally on the first day you get it) of owning your laptop, go to the manufacturer site, register your serial number, and upgrade the warranty. If you can't afford a 3-year upgrade at once set a reminder for yourself to annually renew. But get that drop protection, especially if you are a college student or if you've got kids.

And never, ever put pens or pencils on your laptop keyboard. I've seen people ruin thousand dollar, brand-new laptops that they can't afford to fix because they closed the screen on a ten cent pencil. Keep liquids away from them too.

LIFESPAN

There's a reasonable chance that any computer you buy today will still be able to turn on and run a program or two in ten years. That does not mean that it is "functional."

At my office we estimate that the functional lifespan of desktops is 5-7 years and the functional lifespan of laptops is 3-5 years. Laptops get more wear and tear than desktops and desktops are easier to upgrade to keep them running. At 5 years for desktops and 3 years for laptops you should look at upgrading the RAM in the device and possibly consider replacing the SSD with a new (possibly larger) model, because SSDs and HDDs don't last forever.

COST

This means that you should think of your computers as an annual investment rather than as a one-time purchase. It is more worthwhile to pay $700 for a laptop that will work well for five years than it is to pay $300 for a laptop that will be outdated and slow in one year (which is what will happen if you get an 8th gen i3 with 8GB RAM). If you are going to get a $300 laptop try to get specs as close as possible to the minimums I've laid out here.

If you have to compromise on these specs, the one that is least fixable is the processor. If you get a laptop with an i3 processor you aren't going to be able to upgrade it even if you can add more RAM or a bigger SSD. If you have to get lower specs in order to afford the device put your money into the processor and make sure that the computer has available slots for upgrade and that neither the RAM nor the SSD is soldered to the motherboard. (one easy way to check this is to search "[computer model] RAM upgrade" on youtube and see if anyone has made a video showing what the inside of the laptop looks like and how much effort it takes to replace parts)

Computers are expensive right now. This is frustrating, because historically consumer computer prices have been on a downward trend but since 2020 that trend has been all over the place. Desktop computers are quite expensive at the moment (August 2023) and decent laptops are extremely variably priced.

If you are looking for a decent, upgradeable laptop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

If you are looking for a decent, affordable desktop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

If I were going to buy any of these I'd probably get the HP laptop or the Dell Tower. The HP Laptop is actually a really good price for what it is.

Anyway happy computering.

Also:

If your computer is over 5-7 years old but is still working for you that is fine! You don't have to replace your computer because of an arbitrary age. "Functioning" as we define it at my job means that a computer will run the latest standard operating system and the latest versions of various types of business software because that is what is required for a computer to work for an office; a home computer doesn't have to have the same specs to stay functional for a user who is just doing email and internet, which is what most home users use their computers for.

*However* the reliable lifespan of hard drives and ssds is a lot firmer and it isn't planned obsolescence or an attempt to degrade lifespans of consumer devices, it is simply due to the limitations of the hardware. After about five years of use, HDDs and SSDs are more likely to fail. HDDs will give you some warning about this (reporting bad sectors, clicking noises, if they fail data can likely be recovered for a fee), but when SSDs fail they fail catastrophically (they just don't turn on and the data is gone). That is not to say that your drives will automatically fail at the five year mark, it just means that they are much more LIKELY to fail at the five year mark. So now that you know this, you should take steps to prevent a failing drive from ruining your life. Get a large external hard drive and save regular image and file backups from your computer, and if your backup drive is five or more years old buy a new one and copy any important data to the new drive then use the new drive for new backups. You should also get a thumb drive and create a windows recovery disk if you haven't already done so. And you should keep in mind that thumb drives also have an expected lifespan of about five years, depending on frequency of use. And you can also just proactively replace your storage drives on a schedule before they fail to extend the lifespan of the device. If you plan on upgrading the hardware in your computer at five year intervals (a good plan if you don't want to or can't replace an older computer! I support this plan! This is what most people should do!) then you will likely never experience a drive failure on your device.

ALSO here are things that my customers frequently don't consider that can get a lot of life or functionality out of an older/broken computer:

Those things seem pretty obvious, I'm sure, but they just don't occur to a lot of people. Also like at least three of those tips are "if your computer didn't come with hardware it should have then store-bought is fine" and I recognize that that is bullshit but at least if you have your own ethernet port, usb ports, and optical drive it immediately becomes less of a concern if your computer has those things AND you'll be able to use those external components with multiple devices if you want to.

Also I know nothing about gaming specs or video cards but Paul's Hardware on Youtube has a 75-video playlist about video cards that I suspect will have answers to many of the questions people have about graphics cards.

|The Ritual| Part 2

[Willow]

“Are you going to pout the whole time again?”

|The Ritual| Part 1

Shit.

I cursed as I realized what today was, eyeing the reminder on my phone with nothing but discontempt. Even though I knew this day was coming all year it still felt like a surprise. It was my turn to make sure our coven remained imbued in power and protection. As one of the last in North America it was a pretty big deal. Too bad I detested it to my very core. Footsteps began to race up the stairs and I knew it was only a matter of time before they reached my bedroom in the attic. Sitting up from the bed, I sighed ready for the process of the ritual to begin. 

5…4…3…2…1

Someone who’ll talk you through it 🥲

The trauma or the orgasm?

This is as tumblr as it gets

Btw, if you're new to tumblr, or even if you're not new to tumblr but don't know, if there's any little features that annoy you or QOL things you want, chances are you should download Xkit to more fine-tune customize your experience. Not sure if this is still common knowledge as it used to be, but it's a great help.

For the unfamiliar: there are three extensions called XKit, for historical reasons. The one you want is called "XKit Rewritten". It is a browser extended which can do many things to improve your Tumblr experience. One of my favourites is called "panorama", which simply makes your dash actually use whatever horizontal space you give it, rather than occupying no more than the middle third of your screen and filling the rest with empty space for no good reason.

Since it is a browser extension, XKit is only useful for the browser version of the site, but it improves things so much that you may find you never want to use Tumblr Mobile ever again.

To add onto this even more, I actually use a combination of both "Newxkit" (which no longer updates, but still has some features I find too good to do without, like mouseover reblogs and other QOL tweaks) and "Xkit Rewritten", which is a browser extension that allows you to, as said above, disable tumblr live. For reference on how great xkit is though, I didn't even know tumblr had changed its layout to try and look like The Devil's Web because it's like this

To anyone new, "XKit" (the original tm) has been discontinued since 2016 or sth, meaning the original coder no longer updates it. "XKit Rewritten" is made by completely different people who continue the good work the original xkit guy started.

Idk anything about "Newxkit" but if it no longer updating, then "Xkit Rewritten" is the most up-to-date one among the three of them.

Victoria Monét - On My Mama (2023)

I cannot stress this enough, write it poorly. Write the shittiest draft you possibly can, stick 'ah fuck something happens here and now they're fighting' to get over

Write the worst fucking version you possibly can and stick it in a folder and forget it for a month or two before you look at it again. You know what you have now?

A first draft. And with enough time to think some new thoughts about it, you'll soon end up with a better, second draft! And eventually, you'll end up with something you'd be perfectly okay with letting other people read!

You'll never believe this process works no matter how many times you do it, but it totally does. You just have to drag your brain kicking and screaming to that blank page and get the bones down first.

Write the shit out of that shit.