BARBIE (2023) dir. Greta Gerwig
mfw this man who is capable of unimaginable violence and anger and destruction fulfils his life's purpose as some teenage girl's lame dad
I'm very disgruntled that there's ZERO gay fanart for this ship. The series started in 2016, I am DISAPPOINTED in the internet for not providing me any sort of visual spank bank material 😤
Anyways enjoy Pedro Pascal being hot with a gringo🔥
i found a Creature in my kitchen today
this is my child now
(free pattern below the readmore!)
saw first 7 episodes of sandman today. this is my takeaway so far.
Writing Tips
Punctuating Dialogue
✧
➸ “This is a sentence.”
➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.
➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”
➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”
➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”
➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”
➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.
“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.
“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”
➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”
➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”
However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!
➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.
If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)
➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“
“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.
➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.
➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”
➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.
“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”
➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.
“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”
I knew about half of this when I started writing. It’s amazing the stuff they don’t teach you in school that you have to work out on your own. And look, all beautifully laid out for you.
Debatable. Go support me on twitter or leave tips!
Gotta give Our Flag Means Death some real credit because “started crossdressing to avoid getting caught after I murdered a guy, but then that made me realize that gender is fake so I’m nonbinary now” is one of the best trans self-discovery plotlines I’ve ever heard.
Fun OFMD rewatch activity: replacing the word 'captain' with any variation of 'dad' or 'father'
An ongoing list of the recent “Tumblr Men”:
- the legendary pirate Blackbeard (1680-1718)
- the first man to ever have to come out as straight
- Jonathan Harker from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula
Next I predict we’ll be obsessing over Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine.
OFMD Fic Recs
Here, have some of my favorite stories! Heavy emphasis on soft pining and humor. I am what I am. I left off some super popular stories that I also enjoyed because I especially wanted to give some love to stories that I think more people should know about.
During Season 1
Grand Pianos Clash Together by audenrain (4.3K, E) Stede has never really known why other people are so interested in sex. When Ed realizes this, he sets out to show Stede what he’s been missing.
What Lies in the Subtext by badgerette (3.3K, T) Ed takes Stede out on a hike, and nature does its best to intervene.
Good Game by captainbonny (3.4K, E) Ed has a sleepover in Stede’s cabin. Truth or Dare ensues.
Miracle Cure by dollsome (>1K, Gen) Ed and Stede soothe each other’s (minor) injuries sustained in a bar brawl.
Evening Light by entanglednow (1.9K, M) Stede wears a rather revealing nightgown. Ed comes to his rescue.
The Finer Things by Lady_Ganesh (>1K, Gen) Stede gets Ed ready for the fancy party. I’m fascinated by Ed exploring the side of himself that enjoys fine fabrics, and this is an insightful peek into his thoughts while Stede is dressing him up.
Davy Jones’ Auxiliary Locker by Mapes (3.3K, T) In which Ed actually did kill Stede during episode 6, then immediately regrets it, and sets out to get him back.
Thou Makes My Heart a Bloody Mark by tillysaysfuck (1.6K, T) Stede reads to Ed, who discovers he might like poetry more than he thought. Romantic and perfectly in character.
Post-Season 1
Binding by Nestra (>1K, T) A tiny perfect jewel of a story about Ed and Stede finding a way to fit together again.
Sincerely, Captain Thomas by stitchy (4.1K, T) Ed and Stede become accidental pen pals and work some things out.
Two Graves by trinityofone (1.3K, M) Whew. Listen, I mostly stay away from the super-angsty post-canon fics, but this one is actually incredible. Possibly my favorite story in this fandom so far.
AUs
Of All the Ways to Eat a Cake by attheborder (3.8K, E) Ed is a highwayman. Stede is running away.
Is This What They Call a Derby Crush (Knock Seven Bells Out of Me) by badgerette (14.6K, T) Newly divorced Stede starts a roller derby team, and Ed plays for the opposition.
The Love of a Pet by captainbonny (8.8K, E) Stede (a dog person) meets Ed (a cat person) in the vet’s office. I particularly love Ed in this story, who has done a lot more work on himself and is pretty happy with his life.
How Our Histories Interweave by idiopathicsmile (5.5K, T) Ed is a rock star bored of fame and the touring life; Stede leads an amateur band of chaos muppets. The rest is history.
Crossover
The Other Boy by zmayhem (12.4K, Gen) Stede is sent off to boarding school as a boy. Hundreds of years later, and thousands of miles away, Ned is sent off to boarding school as a boy. The OFMD/Pushing Daisies crossover you didn’t know you needed in your life, but you do!
I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.
I saw this post about an hour after I saw a post that said, essentially, “There should be a word for that thing where [exactly describes ‘squeeing’].”
I feel like the time has come to produce something like this:
Squee: The noise you make when something is so good that all you can really do is squeak or squeal. A high pitched sound of delight, often accomanied by hugging yourself or others.
Squick: A fic/art/concept/topic that is repellent to you, so you reject association with it and instead retreat to your personal comfortable spaces- all the while remembering that someone else’s comfort is not your own.
YKINMKATO: Also called “kink tomato.” Abbreviation meaning “your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.” Used to explain why you are rejecting art or fic brought to you by someone else. A solid mantra to recall instead of sending flames in people’s comments
Flames: The comment equivalent of anon hate.
AMV: “animated music video” or “anime music video.” Often, this is stylized to fit a specific fandom, such as a “PMV” (pony music video) in my little pony. May also be referred to as a lyricstuck.
Filk: Combination of the words “film” and “folk,” this is a music genre, to which “fan songs” and “fan parody covers” belong. If you don’t really understand what this means, take a quick listen to American Pie, then compare Weird Al Yankovic’s Saga Begins
BNF: Big name fan. You know that one person who is just so fuckign popular in your fandom? Their art is always on your dash, everyone knows their fics? Being spoken to directly by them is basically being noticed by everyone ever’s senpai? That’s what these people are called.
DL:DR; Not unliked the teal deer (tl;dr, or “too long, didn’t read”), DLDR means “don’t like? Don’t read!” It’s a reminder that you are under no obligation, ever, to expose yourself to uncomfortable (or, squicky), or potentially harmful (or, triggering), material. Not ever. If you don’t actively like something? It’s not worth your time. Skip it.
Gen: or “genfic” “genart” etc. Fan works which contain no or very little romantic content. Often these are styled after the canon material, and may be called “episodic” ro “slice of life” in addition.
Lemon: Work containing strong pornographic elements
Lime, or Citrus: Work containing mild or implicit pornographic elements
Sockpuppeting: The surprisingly common scenario of someone making a bunch of fake accounts/sideblogs to send themselves reviews or hate, to try to increase views or drama surrounding a work. The accounts they make are called Sockpuppets.
WAFF: Warm and fluffy feelings. A genre of fic that exists just to be therapeutically sweet. Nowadays, usually just called “fluffy.”
Schmoop: Take WAFF and somehow make it even more syrupy. You’ll know it when you see it.
Whump: Imagine if you will, a hurt-comfort fic. The comfort might be considered WAFF. The hurt? That’s the whump.
Wapanese: When white autors pepper their anime fanfic with random, tonally inappropriate japanese words.
Anthropomorfic: Nowadays we just call these “humanstuck” or “humanized AU.”
Wank: Wildly disproportionate drama that crops up because someone wrote/drew/did something that someone else didn’t like. Seriously, I cannot begin to express the fiascos that have come about from all this. Just… Just go look at this.
Plot bunny: Story ideas that you probably won’t ever actually deal with, but that multiply entirely out of control, creating huge worlds in your head that you’re probably not going to write. But hey! You might! And until then they make great sideblogs/askblogs/tumblr posts.
Casefic: Fanfics that try to create an episode-like feel for procedural and crime dramas, moster of the week shows, etc.
Jossed: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a series, and whoops, turns out we were all very, very wrong.
Kripked: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a show and, hot damn, we fucking called it.
Secret Masters: The people who run the websites/ communities/etc that we all do our fanning on. Less relevant now that we have things like tumblr, but when everyone had to run their own archival and social sites for each fandom, it was more important to pay our respects to the strange and powerful beings that brought us all together and gave us our fannish homes. Think the staff of AO3, for example.
Bashing: When a writer purposefully writes a specific character as a horrible, horrible person so that they can throw them out of the storyline, usually to allow their OTP to get together without trouble. Distinct from fridging in that it doesn’t require the character to die, but rather to be such a screaming harpy that they get rightfully removed from the main characters’ lives for being an abusive hell beast. Generally, a type of character hate. Be wary of people who bash women, queer people, and POC with consistency: they are not safe to be around.
‘Squick’ also has an alternate horrible meaning for Harry Potter fans who were in fandom a while back. Dear god.
Drabble: A fic that is EXACTLY 100 words. Often used as a creative exercise in telling a story in a very small constraint.
Ficlet: Fic that clocks in somewhere between 100 to 2.5K words.
Crossover: A piece of media in which two or more source materials are treated as the same universe. Characters from Fandom A can meet characters from Fandom B. (The Doctor Goes To Hogwarts And Meet Harry Potter!)
Fusion: A fusion takes the characters of one source material and *surplants* them into another universe entirely. Characters from Fandom A cannot meet characters from Fandom B. (Dave Strider is part of an Inception team!)
TPTB: The Powers That Be. Almost always redundantly referred to as “the TPTB.” A collective term for showrunners, actors, producers, writers, et al, anyone who is part of the team that creates the source material.
YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary. A shorthand way of saying “this is how I see it/have experienced it though I realize others might have a different perspective.”
Tinhatting: Often used in RPF fandoms, the situation where some fans are convinced two celebrities are in a relationship but its being kept a secret.
I’m…I’m home
Useful beyond all reason. I’ve learnt so much!!
how long has drabble meant exactly 100 words i always used it to describe anything super short
That was it’s original form, the limerick of prose.
[image: the yellow, green, and white cover of Merriam-Webster’s Old Fandom–New Fandom Dictionary. it is “Completely revised and updated” with “More than 40,000 entries, including verb conjugation and all citrus categories”. the New York Times calls it “An indispensable resource”; the Onion calls it “a flawless translation guide too good for this world, too pure”; LJ user bofq1138 says “I can’t believe we’re still having this conversation.”]
There have been wars over the word “drabble” since the first time I ever saw the word. People who write proper drabbles insisting that the word means exactly 100-word stories (not including title and/or summary), and lots of people going “doesn’t it just mean any short story?” and the people who write the 100-word fics retorting that there are many, many words for “a short fic” (vignette, ficlet, one-shot, etc), but drabble is the only one that tells you exact word count. However, these days it may be a losing battle; in Ye Olden Days back on LJ and DW, part of what kept the “100-words” meaning as the primary meaning was that there were whole communities of nothing but drabbles in the strict sense. My favorite was tth100 (https://tth100.livejournal.com/), a community for people to write Buffyverse crossover drabbles. Let me tell you, it’s tough enough to write a story in 100 words. Writing a crossover in 100 words is much harder.
Ed, texting Stede: ordering italian for dinner wdyw
Stede's text response: 🍆🧀 please
Ed, to himself: ...d...dick cheese?? That can't be right. Where's Lucius?
-5 minutes later-
Ed, shoving phone at Lucius: the fuck does he mean by that?
Lucius, no hesitancy: Eggplant parmesan
Ed: Oh. Right. Of course. Totally knew that was a thing
Lucius:
Ed:
Ed: It's not just me, though, right--
Lucius: I'd think that man was completely ignorant about sex if he didn't have kids
Ed: Wait he has kids?? Is he--god, he's not straight, is he???
Lucius: Oh God no
Lucius: Though the jury's out on whether he realizes that or not
Lucius: My condolences
i'm just thinking about the moonlight scene and the Jenkins interview yesterday about Stede being an unwitting seducer and it just makes the scene so much more enjoyable to rewatch. From Ed's perspective this guy is pulling the smoothest moves of all time, like the most forward, i'm about to sweep you off your fuckin feet lines, looks him right in the eyes and tells him straight up "i'm gonna make you fall in love with me rn." And it COMPLETELY works on Ed like he can't even breath he's being so actively seduced. And even though Stede isn't doing that on purpose at ALL it's almost even MORE effective because he's being so authentically genuine and truthful that he is just exuding pure kindness and love and insight into Ed's soul. It's just so funny to me thinking about how Stede has absolutely no idea what he's doing to this man in that moment.
And it paints all future interactions with them with a completely different brush because one of them is consciously aware of the VIBEZ and one of them is only subconsciously aware. Ed thinks Stede knows what's up so he is purposefully flirting in all their little moments but hesitates to do anything outright because he's getting mixed signals from Stede, he just doesn't know the mixed signals are because Stede doesn't know that Ed knows that he's feeling a vibe and Stede himself doesn't even know what the vibe even means for himself.
It just really subverts the power dynamic that you would expect from this naive sunshine man meeting his broody hero. Stede holds all the power here and he has NO idea that he has Ed wrapped around his finger. Ed wants to leave bc he's afraid of the intensity of his feelings and the mixed signals from Stede and Stede is like "no <3" and puts on a cute outfit and takes him on a walk and makes Ed stay. Stede says he doesn't like Ed's personality around CJ and Ed is so gutted he leaves FOR STEDE not for himself but to spare Stede from himself. While they're being arrested Stede literally just SMILES at ed and ed signs his entire life away for him.
I just think keeping all of this in mind is so important to understanding why their break up is SO melodramatic. Stede has unknowingly taken Ed on this emotional rollercoaster and he's been at following around Stede at his feet like a puppy dog just WAITING for a sign that this is real and Stede isn't toying with him so on the beach everything finally falls into place for the first time and Ed can finally just RELAX he isn't crazy and the power dynamic has shifted so that they are finally on the same page, he doesn't have to feel like he's just pining anymore, they are equally in love and that is so reassuring and validating. AND THEN HE LEAVES. That is such insane emotional whiplash and he was wrong the whole time and he feels like a fucking idiot and he must be SO FUCKING CONFUSED. Because the moonlight scene it seems like Stede is being so fucking crystal clear about his intentions and how could he have possibly got all of this wrong, and he ws right the whole time because Stede kisses him back and agrees to run away but actually no he was WRONG the whole time but how??? and yet it also goes back to that exact same scene where Ed tries to kiss him and Stede doesnt return the energy where this dynamic becomes so unbalanced and murky
no one touch me, alexa play motion sickness
Writing is not about 'telling an epic story' or 'making something that will outlive you'. Writing is about going "You know what would be fucking awesome?" and then committing word crimes