I'm a fangirl you expect me to be normal??

types of magical ailments & curses !!

⤷ affliction .✦ ݁˖ ongoing and worsening over time, and it usually needs active intervention to stop it from getting worse. this creates a natural ticking clock for your plot, bc doing nothing is never actually neutral, every day your character delays looking for a cure is a day the affliction gets stronger.

⤷ blight .✦ ݁˖ affects land, crops, or the general health of a place rather than targeting a person directly. this one's great for raising stakes beyond just your protagonist, a whole village or region suffering makes the consequences of a curse feel bigger than one character's personal problem.

⤷ mark .✦ ݁˖ a visible sign of a curse or bargain, and it can't be hidden by normal means. this is genuinely great for tension in social scenes, a character can't just quietly deal with their curse in private, everyone around them can see something is wrong, which forces conversations the character would rather avoid.

⤷ bind-curse  .✦ ݁˖ restricts action or speech, often tied to a specific condition, like "cannot lie" or "cannot leave this house." this one's a fantastic constraint to write dialogue around, bc the character has to find creative, technically-true ways to say what they mean without triggering the curse's actual restriction.

⤷ wasting hex .✦ ݁˖ slow-draining, saps strength or magic gradually over time rather than all at once. great for a character who's visibly weakening across the whole book, bc it forces them to make harder and harder choices about what they can still afford to do with the power or strength they have left.

⤷ echo curse .✦ ݁˖ repeats an event or emotion on a cycle, an anniversary, a moon phase, some recurring trigger. this is such a good device for a character who has to relive something painful on a schedule, bc it turns a single trauma into a structural element of the plot itself, something the reader can anticipate dread alongside the character.

⤷ soul debt .✦ ݁˖ a cost owed for magic already used, and it comes due eventually regardless of the caster's original intent. this one's great for a character who cast something desperate and good-intentioned long ago and is now facing consequences that have nothing to do with whether the original spell was justified.

protective → reacting with excessive violence to small provocations and retaliating disproportionately

curious → disregard for safety and boundaries

determined → dooming self and even others when refusing to let a lost cause be lost

vigilant → paranoid control and distrust

independent → isolated and unable to ask for or accept help

decisive → coldblooded, reckless, and taking extreme measures without considering less lethal methods

forgiving → inability to hold people accountable and never learning from past mistakes

easygoing → unserious and not taken seriously by others even when warranted

optimistic → denial of real danger and damage

disciplined → rigid expectations of perfectionism from self and others

heroic → meddles even when told not to and ignoring people’s autonomy

generous and helpful → inability to say ‘no’ and stretching self thin trying to help everyone

shattering a glass and cutting hand while trying to clean it up

getting disoriented and lost

a heavy storm forces them to seek shelter in an unexpected place

quite literally bumping into an old friend

requiring a change of clothes after spilling a drink

a blackout plunges the city into darkness

infected with a mystery illness that refuses to go away

a night out goes off the rails

finding and following a curious animal/creature

finding a mystery object

getting mugged or an important item stolen by a random pickpocket

an animal companion chooses them as their human friend

Word prompts to use for doodling or writing

sunglasses

underwater

backpack

shade

pavilion

sentimental

tent

garden party

swimming pool

coconut

popsicle

island

spicy food

airplane

bubbles

watermelon

palm tree

seashells

ocean

parasol

snorkel

Wanderlust

vintage

bugs

string lights

homemade lemonade

surfboard

polaroid photos

childhood friends

summer reading

Here are some plant names you can choose for your characters. Some of them have already appeared in earlier parts, because this is a more common name edition. Lmk if you know some more!

Jasmine

Lily

Poppy

Magnolia

Daisy

Rosemary

Hazel

Fern

Aspen

Petunia

Holly

Iris

Marigold

Sylvia

Rose

Erica

Laurel

Daphne

Clover

Victoria

Melissa

Rye

Viola

Phyllis

Flora

Dahlia

Sage

Felicia

Alder

Veronica

Juniper

Willow

Rowan

Aster

Violet

Al companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of Al-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."

My Take

This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an Al can learn to write a better marketing email.

ISBNdb's website literally says "Al company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."

I've covered Al companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.

"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate busine model in 2026. What a timeline.

tweet by Ole Lehmann @/itsolelehmann:

btw anthropic's internal document on this literally said "we don't want it to be known that we are working on this."

it was called project panama.

here's exactly what happened:

1: anthropic concluded that books were the cheapest way to build a world-class model because they gave claude curated facts, structured arguments, compelling stories, and writing "an editor would approve of."

2: once anthropic decided it needed books at enormous scale, its first solution was piracy.

it downloaded 7m+ books from online libraries including libgen. the judge later wrote that although anthropic had legal ways to buy them, it chose piracy to avoid what dario amodei called the "legal/practice/business slog."

3: that piracy created a massive legal risk.

so in february 2024, anthropic hired tom turvey, the former head of partnerships for google books, to find a legally safer way of obtaining "all the books in the world."

4: turvey first contacted major publishers about licensing their catalogs.

those attempts didn't produce agreements, so anthropic chose a route that required no publisher permission: buying millions of physical books through distributors and used-book retailers.

5: within about a year, anthropic spent tens of millions acquiring and scanning millions of books, including many rare and 1/1 titles. one vendor proposal targeted 500,000 to 2 million books in six months.

6: to scan that many books within months, the vendors physically dismantled them.

a hydraulic cutter removed each spine. the pages were trimmed to size, fed as loose sheets through high-speed industrial scanners, and converted into searchable PDFs. the paper remains were then sent for recycling.

7: these PDFs were fed into claude as training data.

the complete collection became a private, searchable anthropic library that the company planned to "store forever." the scans aren't available to the public and were never open-sourced.

Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @/iwriteok.bsky.social repost:

if elected president, i will dissolve the Department of the Navy and hand their funding, and nuclear fleet over to the Internet Archive.

They'll know what to do.

original post: Jason Scott @/textfiles.com screenshot of official Internet Archive tweet:

At the Internet Archive, this is how we digitize a book.

We never destroy a book by cutting off its binding. Instead, we digitize it the hard way--one page at a time.

#digitalbooks

attached to the same post are images of people scanning books, spines intact.

SETTINGS.

[01.] finding privacy in a cramped dressing room.

[02.] cramming into the backseat of a car together.

[03.] slipping into the lonesome alleyway behind the bar for "time alone".

[04.] pulling them away from a party after hours of relentless teasing.

[05.] getting handsy under the table at a fancy dining establishment.

[06.] taking the long way home and pulling over on a dark stretch of road.

[07.] staying behind at the venue after everyone else has left.

[08.] the hotel room door barely clicks shut before hands are on them.

[09.] a tent in the middle of nowhere where no one can hear anything.

NEW TERRITORY.

[10.] finding yourself staring at their mouth and getting caught.

[11.] pulling back from a kiss to look at them, then immediately going back in.

[12.] memorizing the shape of them for the first time with your palms.

[13.] that exploratory first kiss, reserved and shy.

[14.] a gentle first kiss that morphs into intense want.

[15.] feeling the shape of their body through their clothes.

[16.] asking for permission to remove one of their garments.

[17.] finally succumbing to the thick tension & colliding feverishly.

[18.] fumbling with buttons or zippers because your hands won't stop shaking.

[19.] admitting out loud that you've been thinking about this for a while.

HEATING UP.

[20.] pulling them into your lap in the midst of a heated kiss.

[21.] discovering that they're wearing [ GEAR / LINGERIE ] under their clothes.

[22.] kissing away from their lips, down the length of their neck.

[23.] desperately grinding on them through layers of clothing.

[24.] dirty talking directly into their ear to turn them on even further.

[25.] pushing them onto a piece of furniture before straddling them.

[26.] lifting them onto the countertop while making out.

[27.] tugging their hair to expose more of their throat to your mouth.

[28.] the wrecked way they say your name for the first time.

[29.] fabric tearing because neither of you has the patience for buttons.

[30.] removing an obstacle of clothing with your teeth.

UNRAVELING.

[31.] biting down on their shoulder to muffle how good it feels.

[32.] the sound they make when you find the spot that undoes them.

[33.] begging without any trace of pride left and meaning every word.

[34.] their composure cracking for the first time, they finally stop holding back.

[35.] repeating "don't stop" like it's the only language left in their mouth.

[36.] leaving possessive marks in places only they'll see.

[37.] whispering "look at me" right before you take them apart.

[38.] trying to be quiet and failing, so they clamp a hand over your mouth.

[39.] flipping positions so fast neither of you remembers who initiated it.

[40.] their nails dragging down your back hard enough to sting later.

[41.] being told to open your mouth and doing it before the sentence is finished.

[42.] having your hands pinned above your head.

[43.] the desperate scramble to get closer when there is no closer to get.

COMING DOWN.

[44.] fingers lazily tracing the marks they just left on your skin.

[45.] pulling the blanket over both of you without being asked.

[46.] that silent, dazed smile when they catch your eye across the pillow.

[47.] the shaky laugh when neither of you can remember where your shirt is.

[48.] going to get water and bringing a glass back for them without asking.

[49.] lying chest to chest, feeling their heartbeat slow back down against yours.

[50.] the quiet "hey" that means something completely different now.

[51.] "come here" said softly — not urgently. just wanting them close again.

• Simple dialogue “I’m leaving.”

• Dialogue with a tag after “I’m leaving,” she said.

• Dialogue with a tag before She said, “I’m leaving.”

• Dialogue with an action beat after “I’m leaving.” She grabbed her jacket.

• Dialogue with an action beat before She grabbed her jacket. “I’m leaving.”

• Dialogue split by a tag “I’m leaving,” she said, “and I’m not coming back.”

• Dialogue split by action “I’m leaving.” She hesitated. “Don’t try to stop me.”

• Dialogue followed by description “I’m leaving,” she said, staring at the door.

• Dialogue with interruption “I thought you said—” “I changed my mind.”

• Dialogue trailing off “I just thought maybe…”

• Dialogue with a question “Where are you going?”

• Dialogue with multiple sentences “I’m leaving. Don’t follow me.”

• Dialogue with a question tag “You’re coming with me, right?”

• Dialogue followed by internal thought “I’m fine,” he said. I’m definitely not fine.

• Dialogue embedded in action She leaned closer. “You didn’t tell them, did you?”

• Dialogue that continues after narration “I told you,” she said. “This was a bad idea.”

• Dialogue that begins mid-action Opening the door, she said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

• Dialogue with an em dash interruption “I was going to tell you but—” “But you didn’t.”

• Dialogue with ellipses inside “I thought… maybe you knew.”

• Dialogue across multiple paragraphs (same speaker) “I tried to warn you.

“But you never listen.”

• Dialogue with emphasis “I said leave.”

• Dialogue with a beat replacing a tag “I’m not scared.” He folded his arms.

• Dialogue embedded within narration He looked at her and said, “We’re out of time.”

Organized by emotions!

ANGRY/ANNOYED:

Insulted, goaded, jeered, argued, bickered, raged, scolded, complained, nagged, quipped, chided, snarled, ridiculed, snapped, retorted, protested, grumbled, whined, accused, badgered, threatened, lashed, ranted, scoffed, retaliated, stormed, sneered, boomed, roared, yelled, shouted, barked, grilled, fumed, heaved, insisted, bellowed, taunted, sassed

HAPPY:

Beamed, cheered, gushed, bubbled, chirped, resounded, praised, sang, trilled, chorused, tittered, complimented, effused, jabbered, rejoiced, approved, chimed, chatted, exclaimed

SAD:

Bawled, cried, blubbered, sobbed, wept, sniffled, wailed, agonized, grieved, mumbled, groaned, sniveled, apologized, lamented, fretted, gurgled, croaked

CALM/NEUTRAL:

Added, began, addressed, agreed, called, announced, confirmed, described, continued, disclosed, echoed, greeted, emphasized, informed, mentioned, implied, mused, observed, prompted, offered, recited, started, recalled, uttered, reckoned, ventured, went on, pronounced, voiced, noted, remarked, commented, interjected, shared

SCARED:

Cautioned, gulped, swallowed, keened, panted, gasped, shrieked, trembled, shuddered, yelped, warned, hesitated, stammered, stuttered, pleaded, murmured, sputtered,

CURIOUS:

Hummed, questioned, inquired, quizzed, queried, wondered

We’ve done lip biting to death... Let’s evolve.

Happy Juneteenth 2026

For Juneteenth this year, I'd like to share some information about a woman who few may have heard of. Her name is Dr. Opal Lee and she is considered the Grandmother of Juneteenth. She is still alive today as of June 19th 2026 at 99 years old!

Known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” Dr. Opal Lee was present on June 17, 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act bill that established June 19 or “Juneteenth” a federal holiday. Ms. Lee said on that day, “Now we can celebrate freedom from the 19th of June to the 4th of July!” Opal Lee was born in Marshal, Texas, in 1926 and moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1937. At the age of 12, her family’s home was destroyed on June 19, 1939, but she nor her family allowed that to deter them from making an impact in the community.

Keep reading: National Women's History Museum: Dr. Opal Lee

More resources:

Ted Ed VIDEO: What is Juneteenth, and why is it important?

Learn more about Juneteenth (Post by CreatingBlackCharacters, with WWC reblogged commentary)

An incomplete list of powers that can be used for good and evil.

amalgamation – ability to merge existing creations

attack powers – blasting, shock waves, object projection, fire breath, laser vision, etc.

creation – ability to create out of nothing

dream manipulation – ability to change dreams

echolocation – ability to determine locations through reflected sound waves

elasticity – ability to stretch their body in any way

element control - ability to control the elements

emotions manipulation – ability to manipulate the emotions of others and themselves

empathy – ability to feel and replicate the emotions, moods, and temperaments of others

energy absorption – ability to absorb energy from people and objects and use it

enhanced physical skills – like senses, stamina, strength, accuracy, intelligence, speed, etc.

fear inducement – ability to evoke extreme fear and horror in others

flight – ability to fly

hypnosis – ability to hypnotise and manipulate others

immortality – not being able to die

immutability – not being able to get altered by outside forces

invisibility – impossible to see

invulnerability – being immune to all forms of physical harm

knowledge replication – ability to replicate the knowledge and skills of others

levitation – ability to levitate in the air

magic – conjuring things

mind control – having control over another’s mind

omnilingualism – ability to speak and understand every language

portal creation – ability to create portals for transport

psychokinesis – ability to move energy and matter

reality warping – ability to manipulate reality

regeneration – ability to rapidly heal

replication – ability to replicate people (including themselves) and objects

self-detonation – ability to self-explode

shapeshifting – ability to change their appearance

telekinesis – ability to move objects with their mind

telepathy – ability to communicate through their minds

teleportation – ability to instantaneously travel

temperature resistance – ability to survive extreme temperatures

vocal mind control – ability to control people with their voice

x-ray vision – ability to see x-rays

More: Hero & Villain Masterpost

disassemble vs. dissemble disassemble means to take something apart: “We disassembled the cabinet together.” dissemble means to hide one’s beliefs or feelings: “She knew she had to dissemble her feelings to avoid a lecture.”

imply vs. infer imply means to hint at something: “He implied he was having an affair.” infer means to make an aducated guess and acts as the opposite to imply: “She inferred that he had been disloyal.”

disinterested vs. uninterested disinterested means being unbiased about something: “I asked an impartial third-party to get a disinterested take.” uninterested means being indifferent and having no interest at all: “I tried to show him, but he was uninterested.”

empathy vs. sympathy empathy describes feeling what someone else feels: “His natural empathy meant that he was always feeling bad for someone.” sympathy is a feeling of compassion or feeling bad for someone: “She showed no sympathy for her victims.”

grisly vs. grizzly grisly means something disgusting, horrible, or repulsive: “The killer left a grisly sight behind.” grizzly is a large species of brown bears: “No, you cannot cuddle the grizzly!”

✯ “How many times have I told you not to take hits like that?”        “I don't exactly have control over that.”

✯ “It’s just a scratch.”        “It’s a deep scratch. Sit down.”

✯ “I don’t want to make a mistake.”        “You will eventually. The important thing is not to let it break you when it happens.”

✯ “Leave me alone! I have patients-”        “No you don't. They are now my patients and you are one of them. Sit.”

✯ “You're still here?”        “I had a patient dying. Their family wasn't here, I couldn't leave them alone. Even if they weren't conscious…”      “Come here. It's okay.”

✯ “Why didn’t you tell me?”        “I didn’t want you to worry.”      “I always worry. That's part of my job, and your job is to tell me when you need help!”

✯ “If you complain one more time, I’ll make this hurt.”        “You wouldn’t.”      “Try me.”

✯ “Hey! No need to be this rough!”        “Yes, actually. I need you conscious.”