I'm sorry @lyss-sketchbox 's Wrio design made me a bit feral for a moment oops

ANYWAYS THATS FIRE.

more xiao scribbles ive been having fun with

Shipping is fun and all but I swear every single time someone makes a comment, whether as a joke or in a legitimate analysis, about there being "no other explanation" for a pair's interactions, I lose just a bit more of my sanity

Like, no, you guys don't get it. Romance is not about the Amount of devotion, it's about the COLOR. the FLAVOR of it all. a character can be just as devoted to their platonic friend as they are to their romantic partner, and they don't love either of them more, just differently.

But because the majority of people still have it stuck in their minds that romance exists on the highest tier of love, I'm stuck seeing endless takes that boil down to "these two care about each other too much for it to NOT be romantic" as if that's the core determining factor to how literally any of this works

In conclusion: stop telling me that I don't understand the story if I don't interpret the leads as romantic, I am TIRED

“People are inherently terrible” no!!! Have you ever seen a child wait for their friend while they tie their shoelaces? Have you ever known someone who would bring hurt squirrels and rabbits and mice to the nearest vet just so it doesn’t suffer? Have you seen someone grieve? Have you ever read something that hit your heart like a freight train? Have you looked at the stars and felt an unexplainable joy? Have you ever baked bread? Have you shared a meal with a friend? Have you not seen it? All the love? All the good? I know it’s hard to see sometimes, I know there’s pain everywhere. But look, there’s a child helping another up after a hard fall. Look, there’s someone giving their umbrella to a stranger. Look, there’s someone admiring the spring flowers. Look, there’s good, there’s good, there’s good. Look!!!!

"We took in a kitten that was starving, injured, and shot with a pellet gun."

"Oh my god, people are awful!"

"They're not. A person rescued her, other people who are trained in helping animals treated her injuries to make her healthy again, and so so so many people contributed to pay her medical costs, I don't even know how many. That she was hurt by...what, one person? Three? Certainly not many. Is honestly maybe the least important and least meaningful part of her story."

"...Oh."

I am holding a triumph of human kindness in my lap right now and her name is Fancy.

I’ll never forget I once had to break the news to two women that their dog had cancer, and as they cried and hugged and asked me questions I said something about how I was grateful this pup had such a loving family to support her- only for these ladies to inform me one of them wasn’t actually an owner at all, she was just the other woman’s Uber driver…

So this driver tells me she’s literally never met the other lady in her life, but when this passenger started crying in the car with her dog because she was worried, this angel in the form of an Uber driver went off the clock, came inside the building, and waited over an hour in a busy emergency room with a complete stranger just so she would have someone there by her side in a scary situation. This woman even took notes about everything I said so the owner wouldn’t have to try and remember it all later.

I see plenty of stuff at my job that makes me tempted to lose my faith in humanity but all I do is remember that Uber driver and it comes roaring back to me just like that. Humans are so unbelievably good, man.

#weirdly it ended up being a uterine tumor (not super common) and the dog was cured with an OVH#a rare feel good story from the ER 🥹#Uber driver came for the dog’s follow up appointment as well!!!

drawing jing yuan every day until he reruns and i can get his light cone

something they don’t tell you about being autistic is that every character you write WILL end up autistic/autistic-coded whether you like it or not

same goes for being aromantic/asexual. every character WILL come out at least a little aspec

if you reblog this and purposefully remove the second addition i Will block you.

current fan creation landscape is kinda like if you went to a party with a homemade cake and everyone takes a slice and silently thumbs up at you with no attempt to start a conversation except for occasionally some guy sits in the corner with a tape recorder critiquing the cake as though he was a restaurant critic and another guy is handing the cake to an uber driver like "yeah i need you to find a restaurant that makes cake like this so i can have more of it" and the only person that's talked to you in 30 minutes is a very sweet little guy who was like "hey i liked your cake" and then ran away apologizing for bothering you the moment you said thank you.

someone brought a cake analysis robot to feed the cake into to determine the exact ingredients and supposedly it can spit out the exact same cake. and if you're like dude. what. then they're like well if it bothers you you should have made more cake. i'm hungry and i deserve cake. and you're like dude we're at a party.

Three months later you find out that fifty people locked themselves in a room to discuss how much they loved your cake and how they wished you made more. None of them ever told you.

The Dragon Dance

Mama’s handsome boy

The art of creation ✨️

This.

I don’t know about others but the only reason I put both is so that whichever someone clicks on, they will find my fic. So if there is supposed to be rules, I guarantee you that no writer knows these ones. We can barely get people to comment, you think we’re going to specifically choose & or / ? Hell no.

I’ve been in fandom for twenty years, and “/” means romance and “&” means no romance was literally one of the first things I learned. It dates back to Star Trek fanfiction of the 70s. I’m boggled by the fact that anyone who’s been reading fic on AO3 for more than like five minutes wouldn’t know that, and I’m curious as to what fanfic community you come out of.

I don’t think that tagging with both is actually going to get your fic in front of more readers. People looking for romance often exclude the “&” tag if there are too many gen fics tagged with both. People looking for gen often exclude the “/” tag if there are too many fics with both. So rather than putting your fic in front of twice the people, you are in fact more likely to get your target audience ignoring your fic because it has a tag they don’t want.

Also, by overtagging you are more likely to annoy potential readers away from your fic than entice them. A fic tagged both & and / better have both romance and a ton of platonic interaction between the two characters, like a slow burn romance friends-to-lovers arc. If it isn’t, I’m going to be very unhappy because the author lied to me with the tags to try and trick me into reading a fic with deceptive advertising.

When I’m in a fandom and see tagging where some of the tags don’t really apply and are just there to get it in front of more eyes, I’m going to assume one of two things. Either the author is a newb who doesn’t know anything, or the author is purposefully spamming the tags because they don’t care about lying to their potential audience and think that “spray and pray” is an effective tactic. In the first case, their writing probably will not be very good, so why bother reading their fic. In the second case, the fact that I can’t trust the tags to be accurate means I’m not going to read it to see if it’s interesting even if it has a tag I like. Chances are, that tag isn’t actually in the fic anyway, and even if it is, by spam-tagging the author is making the archive harder to use for everybody. Why would I reward bad behavior with attention? No. Far better to mute the author and move on.

The best ship dynamic is actually just. "I love you and it terrifies me. I'm terrified how much I need you and how much I want you to need me. I'm terrified I'm no good for you and I'm going to hurt you and ruin you and I'm terrified of how I feel when you're around me but I can't bear to push you away completely because I'm terrified to be without you so now we're stuck in limbo and that's terrifying too. I'm terrified that if I lost you now it'd destroy me and I'm terrified that it's too late to do anything about it. I love you. And it's terrifying."

okay i have spent an embarrassing amount of my week cramming on sporcle until i could get 100% on this thing. now it's your turn but i'm only giving you one attempt because i don't play fair here 😈

take this quiz 🌍

guys the numbers in the poll are ACTUAL NUMBERS OF COUNTRIES and NOT percentages please actually read the poll options before voting and stop selling yourself short bc you clicked 75 when actually you got 75% or something 😭

people often use snow’s experiences with lucy gray as an explanation for how he engages with katniss, but i think that the true story of his downfall lies not in how lucy gray and katniss are similar, but rather in how they are different.

snow knew that it was never him that made the games what they are. it was lucy gray, with her scrappy, passionate artistry, that put on the show that kept people watching. more importantly, it was lucy gray that put on the show that kept HIM watching. all he ever did was give her the stage.

ergo, snow recognizes that the person with the power to usurp him is his natural counterpart, someone like lucy gray, who possessed both the charisma and humanity that he sorely lacks. however, in his mind, those traits are not real; they’re performed in order to obtain power. how could he know better, when he’s never experienced them himself, and the only person he ever truly believed possessed them betrayed him?

so snow keeps his eye out for performers, people with gravitas who could capture the heart of the nation, and squashes their spark as soon as he can. people like haymitch. people like finnick.

and that’s where snow goes wrong. he doesn’t see katniss’ similarities to lucy gray from the start, because while they both demonstrate astonishing, intriguing bravery at their reapings, their actions and motivations are completely different. lucy gray is motivated to perform by anger for herself, and katniss is motivated to sacrifice herself by fear for her sister.

but then katniss starts to put on a show for the audience, kissing peeta and being willing to die with the berries at the end of the 74th games. snow starts to see an entirely different side of katniss that resembles lucy gray to a concerning degree. he sees how, with peeta at her side, she could beguile the nation the same way lucy gray had. and, even worse, she was using the poor, helpless boy who had the misfortune of falling in love with her to survive. the moment katniss started performing, he finally sees lucy gray within her. but it’s already too late.

by catching fire, katniss is the spark fanning the flames of the resistance, but snow fails to understand why. as far as he’s concerned, katniss’ star power comes from her connection to peeta. he tries to weaponize their “love” for his own gain, but it doesn’t work, not because people don’t believe that she loves peeta, but because, for the first time, a victor offers their winnings to the family of a fallen tribute.

snow is caught in a catch 22 of seneca crane’s making—if he kills katniss, she becomes a martyr. but if he lets her live, she’ll be a revolutionary icon. either way, she’s the spark. so he has no choice but to allow the spark to flicker, just for a little while. enter the 75th games. snow knows he needs katniss to die a tragic death in the games. more specifically, he needs it to be a brutal death at the hands of a tribute, not the gamemakers, because he understands that as long as the districts see the capitol as the one who ended the life of katniss everdeen, she’ll still be a martyr.

but snow still doesn’t get it. in the quarter quell, the prey does not become predator. katniss’ allies protect her, ensuring she survives until district 13 rescues her. why would they protect this girl, assuming such a steep personal risk? why would they put everything on the line for a revolution they personally stand to benefit little from? he doesn’t know. but he does know that lucy gray katniss is at the center of it all, so he tries to eliminate what makes her look best: peeta.

and that is snow’s fatal mistake. what he, coin, and everyone but haymitch fail to understand is that it was never peeta that made katniss look good—it was katniss, who befriended and put faith in rue. katniss, who recruited mags, wiress, and beetee as allies. she is the source of revolutionary inspiration. it isn’t her charisma or even her compassion, and it certainly isn’t how well she performed those virtues.

katniss becomes the mockingjay because of her solidarity.

lucy gray was charismatic, like peeta, and compassionate, like both peeta and katniss, but she did not demonstrate solidarity. she was never truly “district” in the way katniss is. she showed kindness to jessup, not because he was from 12, but because he showed kindness to her. lucy gray left behind everything and everyone she loved when she left coriolanus, because she was first and foremost a survivor.

katniss was a survivor her whole life, but she survives exclusively to ensure the people she loves are protected. she always does what she can for people more vulnerable than herself. lucy gray couldn’t have sparked a revolution on her own because she lacked the solidarity that makes a hope for a better future authentic to others. katniss is the human manifestation of solidarity, and to a people divided by a common enemy, that’s the most inspiring thing a person can be.

only in the end, when katniss shoots coin, does snow realize none of it was a performance. choking on the blood of his countless adversaries, snow’s final moments are consumed by what he got wrong. what made lucy gray and katniss different ends his reign, but ironically, the final nail in his coffin is an act that both lucy gray and katniss share in their last moments with snow. they both prove, unequivocally, that he is not the center of their worlds like they are his. lucy gray put her own survival before her love for him, and katniss puts the future of her nation before her hate for him. in the end, he simply doesn’t matter. and that’s greater justice than could have ever been achieved if katniss had fired her arrow into his heart.

the greatest enemy to coriolanus snow could only be the person who reignited the embers of a dying revolutionary fire, who demonstrated to a broken people that while one spark alone might not be enough, thousands of sparks uniting in solidarity is an unbeatable force.

and really, he should have known better. after all, even when snow lands on top, fire melts snow.

Yeah Katniss Is Lucy Gray’s greatest revenge on snow

But Peeta is how she haunts him. 

Katniss is Lucy’s anger. She’s the retribution. 

Katniss is fire. Katniss used her songs as a warcry. As a call to arms. 

Katniss is the fight. 

Katniss is the revenge. 

Peeta is Lucy’s kindness.  He’s the reminder. 

A boy in love with a songbird. A boy obsessed with with a victor from twelve. 

Peeta is the good that Lucy was. Peeta believes in that fundamental kindness Lucy gray did. Peeta is her memory. The reminder that Snow crossed that line into evil. 

Even after being high jacked, peeta warns people. He tells them to flee the danger. Run like Lucy did. 

Peeta knows how to hide. He can disappear in the woods. 

Just like Lucy did. 

Peeta is charismatic, someone the capitol fell in love with, like they did with Lucy. 

Peeta is the memory. 

Katniss was there to end Snow, to stop him to make sure everything he built was burned. 

Peeta was there to torment him. Be the ghost of Lucy. Make sure Snow was in pain over the woman he lost. 

thinking about how the hunger games were designed to prove that without society, order, government, someone to rule, we devolve into little more than animals, and how the games themselves prove over and over again that this is not true. We see it in every single game we witness.

Katniss placing flowers around Rue's body in the arena. Thresh sparing Katniss because she was kind to Rue, even though he was making it that much harder for himself to win.

Haymitch going back for Maysilee after hearing her scream even though their alliance had been broken. Haymitch holding her as she dies the same way Katniss did Rue.

Coral's "I can't have killed them all for nothing" when she realizes she's not going home. Lamina cutting down Marcus at great personal risk. And, my favorite moment in tbosas, Reaper collecting the bodies of his fellow tributes, his peers, even the ones who tried to kill him, into a pile. Taking the weapons from their hands. Closing their eyes and crossing their arms in the best approximation of a proper burial he can manage, covering them with the Capitol flag as a makeshift shroud.

The Games bring out the worst in people, yes. But despite the extreme circumstances, despite the exterior pressure of the Capitol, despite the fact that it could mean pain and heartbreak and death, it also shows that people have an enormous capacity for goodness. That even in a situation purposefully designed to make empathy impossible, people can't help but have it anyway.

Snow looks at the Games and all he can see is what's inside himself-- this pure animalistic drive to conquer and defeat. He kills and it feels good and he thinks that everyone else must feel that way too. He doesn't realize (maybe can't realize) that he is the exception, not the rule. He cannot see outside himself, outside his own warped perspective, to realize that the fact that people do show humanity in the games proves his entire worldview wrong.