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Non-practicing intellectual.

@xiaq / xiaq.tumblr.com

Xiaq on A03. EL Massey for published work.

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FAQ

Hi! I’m Xiaq or E.L. Massey IRL.

You can find me on:

Instagram Here

AO3 Here

Substack Here

elmasseywrites@gmail.com

My published works are Like Real People Do (2022), Like You’ve Nothing Left to Prove (2023), All Hail the Underdogs (2023) and Free from Falling (2024) which started nearly a decade ago as OMGCP fic. The latter two are standalone books, the first two must be read together.

I’m currently working on an adult fantasy original fiction series (TBD) as well as Breakaway Book Five (2027) and a new YA hockey romance called Playing Aces (2027). I recently completed a Star Trek fanfic on AO3. For more on my writing you can check the tags: #authorthings and #mywriting.

If you’re looking for downloaded fic versions of LRPD and AHTU, I can’t send them to you for contract reasons, but I CAN direct you here and here where you may find folks who are willing to assist :)

5% of royalties from my first book, LRPD, goes to a queer charity each month. If you want to suggest a charity for future donations, you can do so via chat or any of the above listed ways to contact me.

Deacon is my 13 yr old, retired, service dog. He's a Belgian Mal and I do not recommend Mals, as a breed, for service work. He's a special boy. Feel free to message me if you want to talk about SD stuff.

If you're looking for student stories/tales from my time in academia, the tags are #shitmystudentssay or #shitmystudentswrite.

If you’re looking for DIY/renovation content, the tag is #DIY

For posts about my partner, the tag is #B

If you’re looking for paramotor/flying content the tag is #paramotor or #x learns to fly.

I will not share or donate to any fundraisers unless I know the beneficiary, or someone I know can confirm they know the beneficiary.

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Reblogged

It was only after purchasing and installing the daybed in my office that I realized it blocked the only floor air vent in the room.

This wasn’t a huge issue last summer, but it’s been a serious problem this summer, as temps have been in the high 90s/low100s for weeks now, and my office is essentially non-air conditioned. So! I decided I’d hunt for a new daybed with more floor clearance and get a vent redirector to make my office livable again. Except I found one immediately and have only just posted the old one for sale. So now I’ve got random bed parts scattered about the downstairs for the uncertain future and I’m being deeply impatient about it.

Ok I sold the old daybed. But now I’m looking at this empty room thinking…now would be the perfect time to pull up this gross old carpet and replace it…(can you tell I’m supposed to be editing a manuscript?).

I did it. New carpet!! Clean, flat, lovely carpet!! And look at the clearance on that new day bed. So much room for activities (airflow).

New carpet is dog approved✅ and the new bed clearance lets both air and my LED lights through. Nice. I guess I should get back to editing now.

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Reblogged draskireis

The tailors at Colonial Williamsburg made a suit for their cat

Source: facebook.com

The best part is that they were inspired by a diary entry from 1775, written by a 12 year old tailor’s apprentice who had been left unsupervised all day and decided to make a suit for a cat. Here’s a link to the blog post about it, but I’ll just paste the whole diary entry here:

“I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends…while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit. 

“Unfortunately for me there was a hole through the floor close to the fireplace, just large enough for the cat to pass down; after making some efforts to get rid of the clothes, and failing, pussy descended through the hole and disappeared; the floor was tight and the house underpinned with brick, so there was no chance of pursuit. I consoled myself with a hope that the cat would extricate itself from its incumbrance, but not so; night came and I had made on a good fire and seated myself for some two or three hours after dark, when who should make their appearance but my master and mistress and two young men, all in good humor, with two or three bottles of rum. After all were seated around the fire, who should appear amongst us but the cat in his uniform. I was struck speechless, the secret was out and had no chance of concealing; the cat was caught, the whole work inspected and the question asked, is this your day’s work? I was obliged to answer in the affirmative; I would then have been willing to take a good whipping, and let it stop there, but no, to complete my mortification the clothes were carefully taken off the cat and hung up in the shop for the inspection of all customers that came in.”

“I was hoping they’d beat me and forget about it but to my horror they stuck my work up on the fridge”

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zackbuildit

Not just any fridge-

The public fridge

Pro tip. If you pay some guys to move your enormous bed and pull up the old carpet in your bedroom, make sure that you first remember to put away all the shibari rope hidden in secret anchors behind said bed.

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Reblogged lovebird17

making up characters is so fun because you can be like “this is johnson he came from my mind” and all your friends will go “yippe!!! horray!!! we love johnson!!!”

very unfortunate but hilarious side effect of calling the example oc johnson in this post is now people are saying this in the tags

Ah, yes. You, wanting to talk about your OC:

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Reblogged sleepanon

Brevity is the soul of wit & this was so damn creative

[ID: a woman stands in front of a hell landscape cgi. she's talking to someone out of view; "... Not supposed to be here, I'm Hindu, I'm supposed to be reincarnated, I told you this bef-"

She's cut off my a section of Lil Nas X's song Montero, specifically the line "... Me in the the mornin', i'll be on...". As the line plays, she looks to the side down, as if something nearby is falling. The music fades in, gets louder, and fades back out. She pauses after it fades all the way out.

"Who the fuck was that??" End ID]

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nebulasreblogs

“I told you this before” implying she has died and gone to Hell more than once, either in this life or a past

Okay but teacher Grace on Erid having very little say in which kids get filtered into his class, though he is aware that the selection process is super specific and that most of the kids he gets are high performers with star academics and some even with influential parents. He isn't quite comfortable enough with Eridian culture yet to object to the selection process and make it more inclusive, however. That is, until he learns about the special needs kids.

Obviously, there are Eridian kids with special needs, and a few of them even filter into his classes. But one specific type of special needs kid has never shown up in his classes, and the only reason he even learned of the condition is because Rocky and Adrien's first pebble has the condition.

It's initially quite a struggle for them to deal with, and Grace sympathizes of course, because the child will apparently have huge learning and academic struggles and will likely never be able to live on their own. That is, until he learns the details of the disability.

Basically, it's a condition where the part of the Eridian brain that gives them their eidetic memory isn't fully developed, and so these kids just... can't remember things the way most eridians do. And in a culture where an eidetic memory is the norm, all things cater to that, so not having that is actually a massive disability.

But Grace is like, so... this kid just learns the same way a human does, or something like. Which is nothing new to him, though he is somewhat boggled at how much Rocky and Adrian struggle with their infant and their "slow" learning curve, even as far as initial developmental stages. Grace, on the other hand, simply treats the kid the same way he would a human infant, and Rocky and Adrien are impressed with his patience.

But, through this, it occurs to Grace that there must be other kids out there with this disability who likely aren't getting the attention and chances in life that they deserve, because Eridian culture is particularly hostile toward this disability, and actively views those with it as unable to function in regular society.

So Grace demands that a special course be put together where he teaches kids with this disability specifically. Rocky is hesitant, as most kids with this disability are home schooled and kind of... kept shut away. But Grace insists and as one of Erid's saviors, he gets what he wants eventually.

His first class is super small, maybe only three kids because so few parents were willing to advertise that their children have this disability. And because of the stigma around it, even those who agreed to it are super unsure and want to be present during the lessons, perhaps paranoid about the impression it will leave on Savior Grace, who is so accustomed to only teaching the most gifted students.

But Grace knows exactly how to deal with these kids. Some of them have varying degrees of function when it comes to their memory banks, which isn't so unlike teaching kids on earth. And so Grace is able to introduce all these tools and teaching techniques that were previously unheard of on Erid (though very normal on Earth) like having textbooks for reference with you at all times and having strategies that are less focused on memorization for understanding, and providing these kids with tools like calculators and teaching them the art of taking notes to look back on, etc etc.

Suddenly, with all these tools that most Eridians don't need, these kids are learning at a much faster rate, and succeeding with the help of all their little tools. And because so many normal eridians are ignorant of Grace's actual biology, it's shocking to them that Savior Grace doesn't have an eidetic memory either (shocking to everyone but Rocky anyway)--that his brain functions quite similarly in capacity to these "disabled" children.

Once this news gets around, suddenly there's more kids in his special classes, and there's all kinds of discourse being inflamed because the real reason these kids can't live on their own or function is lack of support from Eridian society.

If Savior Grace, who is well respected as a genius in his own right amongst the Eridians, can function so successfully, they why can't these kids?

I dunno, I just think it's an interesting premise.

Okay, but, the little Eridians that attend Grace's special courses will have to bring way more supplies with them than would be usual.

Little baby Eridians with little baby backpacks, is what I'm getting at here.

It's the Royal Academy of Art Young Artist's Summer Show. One of my favourite exhibitions of the year. Like. Not only are the older kids insanely talented, the younger ones' artist statements will just punch you right in the face.

Jeffrey is my cat and he feels like my heart

Click [here] for the full online exhibition

The number of arts and crafts projects I can complete while procrastinating doing manuscript edits is truly inspiring.

It was only after purchasing and installing the daybed in my office that I realized it blocked the only floor air vent in the room.

This wasn’t a huge issue last summer, but it’s been a serious problem this summer, as temps have been in the high 90s/low100s for weeks now, and my office is essentially non-air conditioned. So! I decided I’d hunt for a new daybed with more floor clearance and get a vent redirector to make my office livable again. Except I found one immediately and have only just posted the old one for sale. So now I’ve got random bed parts scattered about the downstairs for the uncertain future and I’m being deeply impatient about it.

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Reblogged lovebird17

When people argue that food from Chinese and Mexican restaurants in the US are not 'real' representations of that culture's cuisine ignore the historical reality that these dishes were developed by diasporic communities striving to recreate the flavors of home with available resources. Such criticism frames adaptation as a loss of authenticity, rather than recognizing it as a sincere and evolving expression of culture by people separated from their homeland.

Too good to leave in the tags