ooh, how fun - I hope you enjoy! I have never been to the scottish countryside but I love edinburgh, it's so beautiful while also feeling so real and lived in.

I personally love london but I think I love living in it more than touristing in it, and if you've seen the main tourist spots already I'm not sure coming to london is the best use of your time. especially with how expensive london hotel prices are! but if you do find yourself coming to london let me know, and I can give you tips on seeing it more from a local's pov, especially the areas around the heath. (I'm glad you felt like I described it with warmth because I do love the heath so much!) there are also smaller towns that might be worth a day trip from london, but probably not a trip especially (rye, whitstable, margate, come to mind).

as for other places, it depends on what you want or like! for nature/beautiful scenery, the lake or peak districts are both great options, but a bit difficult to get to unless you are able to rent a car and drive. an alternative is devon/cornwall, but that's basically about as far as you can get from scotland. st. ives is kinda touristy but it is truly so cute.

for more beautiful old picturebook cities, I love york - and it's not too far from edinburgh. also cambridge and oxford (I personally prefer cambridge - it's just a town and so has much more of that pretty old-timey vibe because the roads are smaller, all the old buildings are closer together, etc. but I may be biased.) I've never been to durham but it also has a collegiate style university so it might have similar vibes? it's definitely a proper city, much more so than oxbridge though. I also love bath a lot (went there to celebrate getting engaged! jane austen hated it but she was wrong), but if you've been to stonehenge you might have already seen bath.

I hope that helps as a jumping off point! let me know what you end up deciding on and how the trip goes!

ahh great question! for me it's usually one of two things, depending on what kind of writer's block I'm in, but they both involve some form of "not writing":

the first type of writer's block is when I want to write, and I have a lot of ideas and excitement for my project, but I'm struggling to get words on the page or the words that I do write feel very boring and gloopy (technical term). usually this happens because I've somehow lost my way with the story. so instead of blindly pushing myself to just keep getting more words on the page, I try to take a step back and look at the overall plot structure and character arcs, to figure out where I've taken a wrong turn. more often than not this involves going back a few steps, cutting the last few scenes I've written, and going in a slightly different direction. (this works because I write in a purely linear way from point A to point B; if you write in a more 'jumping between scenes' type of way, it may involve more thinking about which parts of your outline don't feel right to you.) usually once I work out where the problem is, and get myself back on a track that makes sense to me, the words start to flow again.

the second type of writer's block is when I feel disillusioned, demoralised, like I have no fresh ideas, like I'm creatively wrung dry. this involves take a BIG step back from writing to absorb inspiration - I see it as refilling my creative well, but that doesn't really make sense because you don't refill wells. anyway. where I go to to seek this inspiration depends partly on my mood, but I also try to inject a bit of intention into the process - seeking the kind of inspiration that I feel like I'm lacking. so I might pick up a science-fiction novel, or litfic, or an indie film, or a romcom, or a poetry collection. or even going to an art gallery, spending time in nature, seeing friends, etc etc. I'm not picky about genre, style, or medium! I strongly believe that inspiration can be found all around us, and that a big part of being a writer is being able to observe and absorb details from the world, and synthesise that into writing. so I try to blend "doing things that I enjoy" with "doing things that creatively excite me" - it's not about prioritising one over the other, but finding that sweet spot to revitalise me.

neither of this is a quick life hack, unfortunately! but both involve something that is very important to me, and that is listening to your gut and being kind to yourself. for me at least, writer's block is often a sign that I am creatively blocked, and so I don't try to push past that block - it's not a matter of willpower or grit. instead I treat the feeling as my intuition telling me that something is off, and that I need to approach things a slightly different way. these two methods are the things that have worked for me; you may have others. but the most important thing I think is to treat writer's block as your creative 'pain sensors', and to understand what it's telling you rather than forcing yourself to fight against it. hope that helps! sending you lots of creative good vibes~

favourite f1 rivalry of all time, current past and forever, is sebmark :) the combination of the young talented upstart on a meteoric rise versus the reliable older driver who's losing daylight and watching the gap for them to win a wdc slowly close... so emotionally wrought and deeply compelling. and multi-21 broke something in my brain, no team orders drama will ever live up to it

(in a different world I might have been more into brocedes, the childhood friends angle to it is so powerful. sadly that era coincided with seb's decline and out of spite I was never properly able to give my attention to mercedes or lewis. that said, I think the lewis/massa rivalry deserves more attention. as always, when one driver walks away without a championship I find this painfully compelling... and massa coming back over a decade to bring a legal challenge, bruh)

of the current rivalries - I like norstappen! even before they started really having a go at each other this season. their silly goofy twitch stream-based friendship was sweet to me, and I felt like lando had the capability to challenge max - I thought that if he managed to do that the on-track rivalry mixed with the off-track friendship would be really interesting. and it has been, even though recent events have shown that the rivalry is not as even (yet?) as I might like it to be

I could also really see myself getting into landoscar. there was some pretty ropey team orders drama this season which obviously doesn't reach mutli-21 heights but there were shades of it. lando being so emotional versus oscar being so stoic would make for some fiery clashes if they both start properly challenging for the title! maybe next year :)

somewhat embarrassingly, via my university boyfriend. I had kind of a vague awareness of f1 because this was around the time that the singapore gp was put back on the calendar (and I'm from singapore) but he was properly into it and so I used to sit down and watch races with him most weekends. (I had also gone to uni in the uk so this meant that the races were at sensible times!) having someone sit down next to you and explain the strategy and what was going on was SO helpful. now the boyfriend is gone but my love for f1 remains :)

in the absence of a personal live-explainer, I know that a lot of people have gotten into f1 via drive to survive, which might be a helpful route into why people find the sport exciting, though imo it doesn't do a great job of explaining the actual strategy. but the commentary on races, the on-screen graphics, and the tv direction, has improved hugely in the last decade - so with DTS to provide context you might be able to get by with just watching the races and paying attention.

I also used to listen to a couple of f1 podcasts - less so now because I feel like they all kinda say the same thing - but that could be useful for a beginner. chequered flag is the one I listened to the most, but I know some friends really like shift+f1 too. I've also listened to choosing sides, which was a limited series structured around the concept of helping a newbie pick a team to support, and I think they've done a second season about different types of fans - which is a framing device to explain different aspects of the sport. it's a fun introducer!

a word of warning though - while I personally find f1 very exciting and dramatic, at its heart it is still a sport, and being an f1 fan is very much like following any sport. it's not formed of endless Big Moments, but of little ones that build up into a narrative over time. and that's a big part of the fun of it for me, being involved in that progression and watching how things play out - but if you go in expecting the kind of endless High Drama that is shown in DTS or in f1 aus, you are likely to be disappointed. I still think it's worth exploring if you're interested - and lots of people who wouldn't have thought of themselves as "sports fans" have found a love for f1 - but do keep a realistic expectation about what following it is going to be like! and there's no shame as well in having a passing interest without wanting to be super diehard, watching every single race and getting involved in all the discourse - there's no right or wrong way to be a fan :) if you have any other questions please ask me, I'm always so happy to introduce more ppl to the sport!

tsukki + tsukkikage, but that answer is a slight cop-out because that is what I am currently working on! I have wanted to write this char+ship for a long time, and I've just been waiting for the right idea to hit me. that said, my current wip (dark academia au) is not really a traditional "shippy" fic so I would also like to write something more shippy and fun for them too.

in terms of other ships/characters... I am very interested in kenhina and it really scratches something in my brain, but I don't know (yet) what I have to say about them. I think kenma would be an interesting pov to write from though! semishira is another ship I like, but I'm not sure I like them in a "I want to write about them" kind of way. I also sometimes think about trying to get into sakusa's head, see what all the hype is about, but I'm struggling to find the right ship or angle for it - omihina or omigiri are so far looking like the most likely options!

I love exploring new characters and dynamics though, so definitely let me know if there's any you think might tickle my fancy

hello!!! how are you~

omg thank you for reminding me anon! I also love it teehee. I will do it tomorrow... I hope I don't forget... if it feels like it hasn't happened feel free to remind me 🫠

omg hewwwoooooooo <3