If posting fic online has taught me anything, it’s that I have no idea how the reader will react to anything. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not the faintest clue.

Fics that I think I scribbled off just to get them out there get the kindest, most rapturous feedback. Fics I slaved over, agonized over, bled my soul into get a couple tepid replies. Fics I thought were me revealing the darkness and weird kink that lives in my brain, scared to even post it for fear of judgement, get, “Aaaw that’s so sweet!” replies. Baffling.

My conclusion? You just never know. You really just can’t know. When I did a workshop with 20 other writers I would try to guess what their critique of my story would be and I was right maybe 1 in 20 times. Only one other writer would have the same critique for my story that I had. And it wasn’t even always the same person.

The encouraging part about this is, if self recrimination, the fear that you know what people won’t like about your story, is holding you back, just say fuck it! You’re almost certainly wrong! All you can do is make it the best story you can for the energy you have. And yeah, sometimes that means scribbling it out in an evening and kicking it out to the void of the internet before you can change your mind or worry about editing it more than once because then you’ll never post it.

It’s all chaos, man. You don’t get to decide what the audience thinks. All you can do is create it and put it out there for them to decide.

leoreturns:

Will it hit a million notes today?

Will it hit 2 million notes today?

as an autistic jew, passover is objectively the best holiday because it’s a dinner party with a script that everyone has to follow

as another autistic jew, passover is objectively the worst holiday because i can’t eat any of my normal foods and that’s horrible

As a 3rd autistic jew, I agree with both, but *Also* passover is the best holiday because as long as I can reapply a special interest to the pesach story I can talk about it whenever

But its the Worst holiday because there is mandatory cleaning with a deadline before

As a 4th autistic jew I think there are merits to many of these points but wanted to bring up that the food is basically the same every year, which is really nice and predictable

But passover also sucks because you’re expected to read with people watching you

4 Jews, 6 opinions. You did it, y’all! You brought that old Jewish joke to life! <3

I do want all of my readers to note that this is pretty much exactly what reading Talmud looks like.

Nothing gives the same kind of random ego boost like managing to finally clean up your home and making it nice. Like ooh look at me, I'm living like people do, I made myself iced tea and I am eating my snack from a real plate. I got floors and shit.

people misunderstand what ‘gifted kid’ actually means but it’s ok it’s fine it’s cool it’s good

it’s not about actually being gifted, it’s about an initial higher scoring on standardized testing that means little to nothing or being good at learning in the way elementary and middle school wants you to, so you get marked as ‘advanced’. in reality, maybe you had faster development in certain areas, but the issue with being a gifted kid isn’t that “everyone told me I was so cool and special for reading and then I actually wasn’t :(” it’s “I wasn’t properly taught to handle things not coming easily to me, but the adults around me were counting on me not being a ‘difficult’ child in school.”

people who use it as some weird bragging method or interpret it that way are ignoring the way a lot of school systems force certain roles on students to simplify the learning process. If your kid doesn’t need to take notes to understand a science concept bc they get it naturally, well that’s good, but now you’re not teaching them how to take notes and they’re not learning that important soft skill. but because ‘gifted’ kids are easy and don’t show that they’re falling behind in learning in other categories that are harder to quantify, they eventually fall behind after that catches up to them. It’s about the failures of a one size fits all school system trying to compensate in the worst way possible.

And also the thing where ‘gifted’ kids are super likely to also be neuroatypical, which they don’t get screened for because they appear to be doing well in school. Or “You can’t be ADHD/autistic/etc, because you’re doing so well in school!”. Or being shamed for developing mental health issues/generally not being able to keep up with school work later, because you USED TO BE able to do it just fine.

Or the assumption that just because you can read well or you like math class, you’re somehow more EMOTIONALLY mature than your little kid brain is actually capable of being.

Or gifted kids whose parents and teachers put immense pressure on them to Do Great Things and Save The World and you’re like. “I’m 10 and I have no idea how to do that, but everyone is saying that’s my job?”.

This is the best “gifted kid” post out there. I never took notes until college because I didn’t have to, snd when it got challenging I had to literally teach myself note taking at age 18. It also fucks with your perception of asking for help - you’re advanced, you’re competent, you should be able to understand every topic easily. Asking for help/going to office hours/asking for a tutor feels like failing when you were praised in your early years for not needing to do that.

One thing DC has gone wrong with batfamily comics is the fact that basically everyone has died. It makes it so when the person dies, there's no more shock or sadness because we all know that they're going to be resurrected.

When Jason died, it was a BIG DEAL. Because nobody thought that ROBIN would die. And die so violently. And he was a kid. It shook the comic world and changed Bruce. And then he stayed dead for like idk 10-15 years. Nobody thought he was coming back. And his death was something special. He was batmans biggest failure. That was the vibe and the reason for his resurrection.

But now, basically everyone has died and come back to life. It's no big deal and if I was in the comic universe and I heard a robin died, i would probably brush it off since they'll probably be alive again in like 3 weeks. It no longer provides the utter shock and suspense that Death in the Family did.

Anyway, DC has been too loose and repetitive with death and resurrection and that has basically made them lose edge and shock value in that arena

I was in grade school when they killed Jason and I remember hearing about it. I grew up in a family of rednecks, most of them didn't know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek and nobody was reading the current comics but Robin dying actually made it into some adult conversations. It was vague, "do you remember that TV character" or "remember when you used to read comics growing up?" but it did come up, usually with vague confusion or disbelief because how could they kill Batman's sidekick? (No, they had no idea there was had been more than one Robin so they thought it was Dick Grayson that died. If they knew Robin's name at all.)

And he STAYED DEAD. Things had already changed by the time I tried to get into comics as a teen (LOL comics aren't for GIRLS!!!). By then there was a saying, "nobody stays dead except Uncle Ben, Bucky Barnes and Jason Todd". Now nobody stays dead in comics and everyone knows it.

Every time AO3 makes an update, there’s a chorus of ‘and can we please please please be able to leave kudos on each chapter pleeeeease?!?!’

In theory, this is a nice idea. We’ve all smashed the kudos button on our favourite fics, bemoaning the fact we can’t give them all the love.

But ya’ll, kudos per chapter would absolutely fucking suck.

For readers, it would suck because it would compound the existing problem of making it hard to find fics that are good and not just long - not that a fic can’t be both! But there are plenty of Pulitzer-worthy one-shots out there that are buried way way down the list when ranked by number of kudos, because they’re beneath a bunch of 50/? fics where the author lost sight of where the hell the story was going 30 chapters ago, but their fic has had 50x the chances to be viewed so has more kudos. It would encourage authors to release their fics in lots of little chapters instead of a few longer ones/one-shots as they might otherwise have done (and as might otherwise suit the story).

And for authors it would especially suck, as it would compound the existing problem of people not commenting. Kudos are very much appreciated, but comments make an author’s day; but so few people bother, and frankly, it’s disheartening. Let people just click a button to show their appreciation for each new chapter? The hits:kudos:comments ratio would get even worse than it already is.

You can already ‘give kudos’ for each chapter of a fic on AO3 - by commenting. Hell you can literally write ‘kudos!’ It will make the author smile, I promise.

I actually never thought about it like this. If you are a fic writer or reader you should definitely read this 👆

cats would be so fucking upset if they understood they were missing out on the ability to lie verbally

underrated part of petting a cat is when you reach over their head to scratch their back and they bonk their head on ur arm

that’s the stuff………………

This to me is the cats equivalent of when I kisses the forehead

padme body horror is supreme bc when you think about it, her very existence requires constant agony. in real life that red invasion gown took several weeks to build. and the costumes were so uncomfortable that kiera knightly, who was sabe for like 2 seconds, cried every night while filming. the main way natalie portman describes her prequels costumes is “painful” . and sure “beautiful” usually follows but dude. imagine being 14 and in constant pain bc your job requires you be pretty as possible while defending your planet from fucking invasion. i can’t imagine how estranged i’d feel from my own body and sense of self in that moment. you can take that (already extreme) rigor over the body to all kinds of violent ends. possession. some sort of creature. self-mutilation. fic writes itself tbh!

#i really want to do a fic about padme + deception#the extent to which being successful as a queen and senator requires her to become something other than padme

Way too funny not to share

REBLOG if you are old enough to remember what a VCR is.

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

you're falling in the trap!! it will be read by many people, many times, and it will live on in their memories. and maybe no single other human will match you in time spent dedicated to your story, but as a collective we will outlast you. acts of creation only grow when they are shared

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Ned Stark & Sansa Stark Characters: Sansa Stark, Ned Stark Additional Tags: Grief/Mourning, Ghosts, False Identity, Loss of Identity, Time Travel Summary:

Alayne finds a strange boy crying along in the heart of the the Eyrie’s garden. There are no gods in the godswood. Just Ned.

Watterson pulled no punches

So Fox News ran a story about how they think libraries are turning into drug-infested sex dens and I am shocked, shocked that I was never offered any drugs during my 15+ years working in libraries.

Where do they think the sex is happening?? Every single aisle is lit in that horrible LED lighting. The teens don't even make out here anymore.

As a state certified librarian I can assure you that you just have to go into your local library and ask if they're participating in the new Fox News Hysteria program smh. If they're not, you'll just have to renew your library card and use the fun and valuable resources they're offering right now, such as wifi hotspots, museum passes, dvd lending, mid level adult erotica, ebook lending, and printing! 😔