@the-ship-maker-2 / the-ship-maker-2.tumblr.com
Pinned
Every Rose Has its Thorns AU and Story will be moved to my other blog @project-rosewood-476
Everything Every Rose Has Its Thorns will be centered on that blog.
any questions, comments, concerns and suggestions about the AU will be answered on that blog.
I will still be using my main blog for everything else tho don't worry 😁
BPD stands for Beautiful Princess Disorder because I will split if I'm not treated like a beautiful princess
𝓈𝓎𝓃𝑜𝓅𝓈𝒾𝓈: It all started at a frat party [ 𝓅𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝑜𝓃𝑒 ], where a guy with a cigarette dangling from his lips decided to make the balcony a little more interesting. What was supposed to be a one-time encounter—just another hazy college memory—ended up being anything but forgettable.
You were never supposed to see him again, let alone get caught up in his world, but fate—or maybe something much darker—had other plans. Now, you're stuck in a twisted game. The secrets pile up faster than the lies, and the college town you thought you knew becomes a never-ending game.
And you? You never sleep. Because when you chase a monster, you better pray it doesn't decide you’re worth keeping. But hey, if you’re playing in a game,
…you better be prepared for the hit-and-run.
𝓇𝑒𝓆𝓊𝑒𝓈𝓉: Bruh, my roommate hit me with this request right in the middle of midterms. It’s been sitting in my drafts for a minute because I was trying to figure out the decent ending. Finally got around to finishing it because midterms ended (spring break baby), so here you go.
Art by shatteredankles (above) on Instagram
Hope it doesn’t come off too corny—y’all let me know.
𝓉𝒶𝑔𝓈: toby x afab!reader, OC! Mention, proxies gang (Kate, Tim, and Brian mentioned), enemies to lovers, smut, toxic relationship, stalking on both sides, cat and mouse dynamics, obsession & possession, dubious morality, crime duo (??), found family (sort of), power play, manipulation & mind games, blood & gore, criminal activity, femme fatale vibes and unhinged ass characters.
ticci toby nsfw headcanons
warnings : 18+ mdni, dark content / themes, possessive behavior
Rough around the edges, rougher in bed. Yeah. He’s got that unhinged, jittery energy that screams feral while fucking you. He’s not polished or suave—more like he acts on instinct. Expect messy kisses, bruising grips, and the kind of intensity that feels like you’re the only thing grounding him.
He lives for reactions. Toby’s a watcher. He stares—blatantly. He likes to see you squirm, fluster, gasp, beg. He’s not the type to look away shyly. Nah, he wants to memorize every expression you make when he touches you, every sound you let slip. He’s obsessed. Pain kink? …Yeah. Given his CIPA (can’t feel pain), there’s this twisted curiosity about watching others feel. He doesn’t want to hurt you in a cruel way, but he might test limits—scratches, bites, grabbing too hard just to see the red marks. It’s part fascination, part fixation.
Likes control… but not in a "do as I say" way. He doesn’t order you around so much as he corners you. Pins you. Grins while he takes his time. He’s chaotic, unpredictable. He’ll tease until you’re begging, just because he wants to hear you crack.
His aftercare is surprisingly sweet. Post-intensity Toby softens. He gets quiet. His hands, once gripping too tight, now trace slow circles on your skin. He doesn’t say much, but he stays close—almost clingy. Like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he lets go.
Hates feeling exposed—but loves exposing you. Toby’s not about the lights-on, stripped-down vulnerability for himself. He keeps his hoodie on, bites his gloves off, and keeps that layered look unless you really earn his trust. But getting you flustered? Undressed? Sprawled? He thrives off it.
Likes it desperate. Not just yours—his too. He gets obsessive. Once he's into someone, it consumes him. Expect urgent kisses like he’s starving, touches like he’s afraid you’ll slip away, muttered curses under his breath while he grips you tighter.
He struggles to say it, but his touch tells you everything—mine. Every bite, every bruise, every lingering stare says it louder than words ever could. With Toby, it’s never casual. It’s all-consuming. Expect to be wanted. Expect to be marked. And don’t expect to leave his bed without a souvenir or twenty.
by Elijah J Mears
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an unpublished writer in possession of a good manuscript would rather peel off their own skin than market that manuscript. But alas, no matter how you plan to publish—whether you’re going for the long slog in the querying trenches or the lonely shout into the void of self-pub—if a book falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, it does not, in fact, make a sale.
We’ve all been there. I’m there right now. As I wrap up what I hope will be one of the final pre-querying drafts of my own first novel, I’m also staring down the barrel of (gulp) submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
For a long time, I hemmed and hawed over just how I wanted to go. I’ve got a lot of friends in the indie publishing space who’ve tempted my inner perfectionist with the promise of total control and freedom from the whims of agents and publishing houses. On the other hand, even though traditional publishing has changed a lot in the last few decades, it can still be hard to beat having the muscle of a Big Five imprint behind your book, assuming you can get it.
(And I mean, what speculative fiction novelist doesn’t fall asleep at night dreaming of a big fat publishing deal at Tor?)
No matter what path you choose for your novel, your best ally on the path to success is knowledge. But learning things once, frankly, isn’t enough in our industry. Publishing is constantly in flux—what worked well five years ago could be disastrous today. Any wisdom I could give you in this blog post might be dangerously out of date a month from now.
So instead, I want to share some of my teachers with you. These are voices I’ve come to trust during my own writing journey. Even if the specific resources I’m linking to end up going out of date, I know I can count on these fine folks to think fast, adapt, and steer me in the right direction.
These are the people I know you can trust to teach you about the most critical piece of copy you’ll need in your marketing arsenal, no matter which route you take.
That’s right. I’m talking about your book blurb. I mean pitch. Or, uh, your hook. Premise?
Maybe we should start by defining some terms.
If you’ve ever looked up how to write a back cover blurb or how to write a query letter, you’ve probably encountered a myriad of terms for what is fundamentally the same concept.
On the indie side of the table, I almost always see these three paragraphs called your “book blurb.” Although occasionally I see the less ceremonious moniker of “back cover copy.” This can still get confusing because traditional publishing often uses the word “blurb” to mean something else entirely. But my friends pretty universally use that word for these three paragraphs. If you self-publish, you’ll use this pitch on your back cover, your sales page on Amazon or Kobo or Itch or wherever else you sell, and basically anywhere you’re trying to convince someone to exchange money for a copy of your book.
For traditional publishing, we get a little messier. I like the word “pitch” for this piece of copy, mostly because it’s the word I first saw someone else use for it, and I’m sentimental like that. Nostalgia aside, there’s really no standard here—I’ve seen it called a hook, a story premise, a book description, and probably a few other things. But all these words mean the same thing: the three-ish paragraphs of your query letter where you try to get an agent to jump up and shout, “That sounds amazing! I simply must read it and sell it to a publishing house for a bajillion dollars.”
And while back cover blurbs and query pitches might appear in slightly different places, what I’ve come to realize as I’ve researched how to write them is… they’re basically the same thing.
What all these terms boil down to is this: if you’re going to get someone sufficiently invested in your book to either buy a copy or offer you representation, publishing as an industry has decided that the best way to do this is to condense your story down to a 200-300 word pitch that sets the scene, introduces your protagonist, their stakes and the conflict they’ll face, and leaves your audience with an understanding of why your novel is going to rock their world. Generally, this shakes out over three-ish paragraphs. Although, especially with your back cover copy for self-published books, you have some wiggle room.
Crucially, your blurb or pitch is not your synopsis, which covers the whole book. The key here, whether you’re putting your ebook together yourself in Vellum or tearing your hair out combing through QueryTracker, is that these three paragraphs really only cover the first 25% or so of your book. Their job isn’t to explain your entire plot. It’s just to convince an agent or prospective reader that yes, if they put in the time to read your novel, this is the way it’ll make them care and suck them in.
That said, there are some differences between the pitch and the synopsis. That’s where it’s really useful to have trusted resources you can rely on to teach you the basics and then keep going. So, without further adieu, let me introduce you to some of my trusted mentors on the hero’s journey of publishing.
If there’s one person I can think of who knows a thing or two about writing indie book blurbs, it’s Jessie Cuniffe over at Book Blurb Magic. She’s written literally hundreds of blurbs and has boiled back cover copy down to an art and a science. What I love about Jessie’s resources is that, while she’s definitely running a business over at BBM and isn’t afraid to make a sales pitch for her services, she’s still very invested in teaching and empowering people to write blurbs on their own.
I happen to have taken her course on the subject (and can absolutely recommend it). But frankly, I’ve learned nearly as much just by paying attention to her social media and her newsletter. She emails more or less daily, and while there may be a sales pitch at the end, each one also contains valuable knowledge about the art of the blurb.
The other thing that’s really valuable about Jessie is that, because Jessie writes back cover copy for a living, she stays well on top of the pulse of an ever changing industry. In addition to general advice on blurb-writing, I can always count on her newsletter and socials to keep me apprised of what’s current and upcoming, like the rise of first person blurbs in the romance genre, or the trend toward shorter, more efficient blurbs as people’s attention spans shrink and our time becomes more precious.
You can find Jessie dispensing knowledge and hot takes over on her Threads account. I can also recommend signing up for her newsletter, which includes a free “Anatomy of a Book Blurb” cheat sheet.
So, a very short story: when I first decided I wanted to get serious about finally writing a novel like I’d always said I wanted to (this was the middle of COVID, everyone was doing it), Lewis’ blog over at The Novel Smithy was the first resource I stumbled across when I asked Google, “Ok, how do I do that?” Honestly, his blog is full of lots of advice on the entire writing process, but for our purposes, I want to especially highlight his excellent post on how to write a back cover blurb.
The reason I like this resource so much—and, frankly, all of Lewis’ resources— is because it’s so darn simple. Lewis is an excellent teacher who is great at explaining difficult concepts in ways that make my brain go, “Oh, of course! Why didn’t I realize it was that simple?” Plus, he always provides strong real-world examples of the concepts he’s explaining so that it’s easy to see how craft concepts apply to reality.
Let’s dive headfirst into our first resource focused more on the querying side of things than on back cover copy. Alyssa Matesic is a publishing industry professional and developmental editor who has handled hundreds of queries during her time in the publishing industry. I’m a huge fan of her free forty-minute query letter course on YouTube (as well as her other videos), which I watched and then immediately ran to strengthen my own draft query of my work-in-progress novel. While the video is meant to cover the entire query, it focuses mainly on the pitch section because the pitch takes up so much of any query’s word count.
Something I thought was really strong about this video course was that a significant chunk of its runtime is spent walking through several different versions of a query for the same book. I thought this was really helpful for looking at my own pitch and identifying possible areas of weakness because Alyssa’s video didn’t just show several examples of weak pitches. It also shows how you can improve on the weaknesses in your pitch over successive drafts.
This is the odd one out of my resources because, unfortunately, Janet Reid (may her memory be a blessing) passed away last year. Unlike the other teachers on this list, as publishing continues to change, her website won’t be able to keep up with the times. That said, over the years, Query Shark published and evaluated hundreds of query letters. And it’s still hands down the best resource I know for getting the gist of how queries work, including the pitch section.
Janet spent more than twenty years as a literary agent in New York, and Query Shark was one of many ways she gave back to the publishing community. Combing through her archives, you’ll find hundreds and hundreds of query letters with Janet’s editorial feedback on what is or isn’t working. Even as publishing changes, I suspect the fundamentals of what makes a good query letter will remain mostly the same, and many of Janet’s query critiques focused on helping authors get their story onto the page.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll lose hours reading through Janet’s archives. But you’ll come out the other side with a much clearer sense of what it is that really makes a standout query, especially how to write a pitch that can sell your book.
Last but absolutely not least, is Jane Friedman. The former President and CEO of HarperCollins has basically made her name synonymous with keeping up with what’s happening in the publishing industry. Best practices for pitches, queries, back cover copy, and everything else is absolutely included with that. I could probably write several articles just about the different resources she has available. But thankfully, she’s compiled her best stuff into one friendly resource hub that you should absolutely check out.
The most useful things here for those of us who are learning about pitches (Jane uses “story premise” and “hook” for these—as I said, this industry is terrible about consistent terminology) are the story premise and hook problems pages. She also has an entire category on her blog for queries and synopses that is well worth a read. There are ample resources on self-publishing as well, including a guest post on back cover copy that—even if it never quite says it explicitly—does a good job of showcasing that your query pitch and your back cover blurb are very, very similar things.
These teachers have done wonders for me. As I get ready to start querying my own novel, I know that my pitch will be stronger because of having their advice and wisdom. If things change down the road, and I decide that self-publishing is ultimately the right path… I’ll be able to take that leap knowing that one of my most important pieces of marketing copy is basically already written. So I hope that, whatever publishing path you choose to take, these resources will help you to feel empowered and ready to take on the next step in your writing journey with confidence.
Made a new post because the chain was quite long, tagged by @kyouka-supremacy tysm for the tag<3 this was fun ♫
rules: put your "on repeat" playlist on shuffle, share ten songs, then tag 10 people (if you don't have spotify feel free to just drop your ten fave songs atm):
1- Easier - SIAMÉS ft. Barbie Williams
2- Daybreak (새벽) - Dreamcatcher
3- I'M YOUR DEVIL - Tommy heavenly6
4- In the Middle of it All - Citizen
5- Holiday - Turnstile
6- PERFECTLY-IMPERFECT - UNDEAD, 紅月
7- Dulcería - AFI
8- 夢見るアーキテクチャ- 影片みか
9- Risk - Deftones
10- Hallucinate - Declan McKenna
No pressure tags!!: @afaintheart @dickggansey @knightzp @seri-tonin @gyagu @bienamados @volatilize @leoizus @angered-box @prettyjellyfish & anyone else who wants to!
thank you for the tag lazu!!!!! <33
1. heart collector - knights
2. deep cover - kotoko
3. dive back in time - baishaJAWS
4. undercover - es
5. cherry happy stream - trickstar
6. backdraft - fuuta
7. runnin' - cozmez
8. sugar spice equation - 2wink
9. i love you - mahiru
10. 青へ - lipxlip
tagging: @mutsuowo / @heatwa-ves / @insidesilsworld / @raeygina-george / @gxlexii + anyone else who wants !!!
tysm for the tag! :D
1. Kingdom Of Predators from Hunter x Hunter
2. Copacabana by Barry Manilow
3. First Death from Chainsaw Man (by TK)
4. Helena by My Chemical Romance
5. Ginpatsu No Shounen from Hunter x Hunter
6. Water Fountain by Tune-Yards (but it's a choral cover because im a choir kid at heart)
7. Denial Is A River by Doechii
8. Nobody's Soldier by Hozier
9. Hunting For Your Dream from Hunter x Hunter (by Galneryus)
10. Black Sorrow from Alien Stage (mizi cover)
tagging @hquntinghunter @lord-shitbox @zelunderthemoon @mexican-levi-ackermann @whimsified-govnah & anyone else who wants to do it :)
heyg
open tag :3 also @winterwhisperz-blog @maliciouswhiteboy
TYYYY FOR THE TAG !! <33 (love the song choices btw!!)
1. Ma Meilleure Ennemie (English ver. By Wonder. I prefer the French one but this one also slays !! I’m in love with the song’s vibe)
2. LA Devotee
3. Curció, Kiltro (one of my favorite songs)
4. Devil’s Backbone, The Civil wars
5. Lovers To Enemies, Chase Noteworthy and Annapantsu
6. Hold Them Down, Epic The Musical
7. Persephone In The Garden, Aidoneus
8. Mi Capitán, Kiltro
9. The Tower, TE/MO
10. HUNTER-The cacophony, Paris Paloma
Some non-pressure tags !! (Lemme know if you prefer not to be tagged!!)
1. Come Over - Le Sserafim
2. Busy Woman - Sabrina Carpenter
3. Shadow of a Man - Lady Gaga
4. Touched by an Angel - Boys World
5. Somebody to Love - Queen
6. さよならひとり-Sayonara Hitori - Taemin
7. Famous Last Words - My Chemical Romance
8. SUMMIT OF DIVISIONS - HYPNOSISMIC -D.R.B- (Division All Stars)
9. 月光陰-Moonlight Shadow - HYPNOSISMIC -D.R.B- (Jyushi Aimono)
10. Not Like Us - Kendrick Lamar
Tagging @staryariarts @assmaster-8000 @todayis-snowy and anyone who wants to do it🥰
oh word ty for tagging me!!
tagging @hrhowling, @grimm-the-6th, @naoirse, and @sweet-milky-tea705!!!
Oooh ty for the tag :>
1. My Demons - Starset
2. Loved you a little - the Maine
3. Darkness at the Heart of My Love - Ghost
4. Odds Are - Barenaked Ladies
5. Animals (orchestral) - Architects
6. The Death of Peace of Mind - Bad Omens
7. Drown in You - Daughtry
8. Carnival of Rust - poets of the fall
9. The War We Made - Red
10. Spirit of forgetfulness - Blackbriar
No particular order, just songs that I'm constantly circling back to
I have been chosen—
Okay let’s do this!
1. Last Summer — Julia Wolf
2. In My Room — Julia Wolf
3. Bottom — McCafferty
4. Watermelon — John + Jane Q. Public
5. Barbie And Ken — Set It Off And Scene Queen
6. Morally Incompetent — The Haunt
7. Hogtied Whore — Jiinzo
8. Shadows (I’m Breaking Down) — Destroy Boys
9. Rebel Heart — Djerv
10. Ma Meilleure Enemie — Stromae and Pomme (plus the one with Coldplay)
Tagging @nathantheauthor @skullbowz @crushedsweets @the-ship-maker-2 and anyone else who wants to join in!
1) bitch- ayesha erotica
2) nirvana- PTV
3) even if I'm not with you-PTV
4) hell above-PTV
5) props and mayhem-PTV
6) stained glass eyes and colorful tears-PTV
7)I'm low on gas and you need a jacket-PTV
8) if it means a lot to you- ADTR
9) Bones- sail north
10) Leave her Johnny- sail north
⭐ My commissions are now open! DMs are open for further inquiries
I am mostly active on Twitter so feel free to message me over there as well!
Imagine riding Toby into the mattress, bouncing on his cock like he’s a toy. Being so mean and degrading him. His moans are so fucking loud and sweet, those beautiful brown eyes looking up at you like you hung the stars.
Then, you let a little praise slip out and suddenly he’s nutting into you, moans increasing in pitch as his eyes roll into the back of his skull.
Toby loves getting degraded, sure, but don’t praise him unless you want him to nut right then and there.
I haven’t written smut in like a year so its not very good lol
!!!
also, its sister tweet:
How could you forget:
Had to add this gem
Pouring one out for Poison Junior.
Billie Joe Armstrong literally wrote a song about coming out as bisexual as a teenager, and then like two years later wrote one that was pretty much all about dressing up in drag and getting fucked by/fucking guys, and y'all STILL say he’s a “straight ally” because he married a woman??
The same goes for Freddy Mercury and David Bowie. Both were openly bi. Both wrote (multiple) songs about their queerness. Both are pigeonholed as either “gay” or “straight”. They were both neither of those things.
hey remember when freddy mercury wrote a literal song about wanting to be allowed to be bisexual without it being a big deal and was incredibly obvious about it and then straighties went “oh lol look at how quirky queen is writing a song all about bicycles!”
This also happened to p!nk, she’s openly bisexual but since she’s married to a man and has had two babies with him, people say that she’s straight.
Like, yeah she does a lot and shows a lot of support for the LGBT+ community but she isn’t just an ally, she’s part of that community.
Biphobia is completely real and so many Bi wlw and mlm are assigned the “straight” role when they just ARENT.
Also let’s add Lady Gaga to the mix. She’s repeatedly shit on for Born this Way for not being part of the community when she is, in fact, openly bisexual and writes song about being LGBT
[Image 1: the “It’s free real estate” guy with the altered caption “It’s Biphobia”
Image 2: a picture of Chris Fleming with the altered caption “Okay, was anybody going to tell me that ‘Bicycle Race’ was about being bi or was I just supposed to learn that from a post about Billie Joe Armstrong myself?” End ID.]
its baffling that bisexuality is considered ‘invisible’ when theres a whole pantheon of the most loud rhinestone bedazled spectacles of entertainment being openly vocal that theyre bi its like a simpsons bit where everyone ignores the blinking neon sign
We need to have a nomination for “Stupidest thing Tumblr.com has ever believed” and just move into an official Top 10 List.
For my nominations, I’m putting up:
or
I can’t decide which is more beautiful. It’s why we need a vote.
this is a picture of the human brain at the moment of death. tragic and beautiful
Fuck. That is a damn good nomination.
if you close your eyes when the train hits your brain will assume you are dead. Some find this comforting.
We’re getting into the good ones now. This is some classic Tumblr.
Two old favourites:
“Bitch, That’s the Tubby Custard Machine” (http://imgur.com/gallery/IObQF)
and the horse dildo that was passed off as someone’s arm. (http://abakkus.tumblr.com/post/48958415162)
This is rapidly becoming a master post of ignorances and I could not possibly be happier.
Rare blue watermelon
That disease where you get purple eyes, no period, and no body hair
How have we gone this far without anyone mentioning the bird in the chocolate fountain
soap makes water molecules smaller
I nominate the “we are killing the earth” picture of the earth in comparison from 1978 to 2012
the dog with the slice of ham on its face that everyone thought was a gigantic burn scar
“Tequila is the only alcohol thats not a depressant so you can drink as much of it as you like”
that post with the picture of the joker without makeup and people thinking it was a real person and defending him
that photo of voldemort being passed off as an aborted fetus
The two way mirror
“listen here, cumslut.”
I can’t believe you guys forgot someone trying to pass off a picture of the inside of a fig as a microscopic view of the inside of a vagina.
I can’t believe I was on Tumblr for every single one of these posts.
all the links on this post are broken and some arent given so heres a compilation of links for the stupidest things tumblr has believed (i tried to find the og post for most of these but some of them are posts/articles about said posts)
