gossamercherryx

[gossamercherryx]

Robot vs Woman

Sometimes I feel like a robot. All I do is work, study, run errands, watch TV. I hang out with my girlfriends, that’s fun! But I don’t feel like a woman often. It feels nice to be looked at by men, to be admired, complimented. I like to feel precious, treasured, special, like a woman.

That’s stupid, right? That’s a stereotype. Maybe I fall into it. I love it when a cute guy hesitates to talk to me. I love it when he mutters “Hey” and I feel like I didn’t hear it and he doesn’t try again because he’s too scared to make a fool of himself. I like it when guys smile back when I direct them to check-in. I like it when they tilt their head forward like men back in the day used to do with their hats. I love feeling like a woman.

I love it when a guy I met in high school 4 years ago likes my story for no reason, maybe bcz he remembered that conversation we had a long time ago about movies and life. I love it when guys move out of the way for me to pass, or when they hold the door. I love it when the construction guys catch a glimpse of me through my apartment window, or when I’m walking down the street and they take a look.

How dirty. I’m so dirty. I’m saying things I shouldn’t even be thinking. Anyways, who do I think I am? I have no reason to believe I’m so beautiful, effervescent, irresistible. I love myself a lot, that will never change. But who’s to say society does? Yeah I’ve been complimented once or twice. Maybe once by a man, indirectly (remember Children’s Day?). But man, I’ve never been asked out. Never been complimented directly by a man. Never had anyone slide into my dms (except for Bhuvaneshwar haha). But maybe I don’t deserve it. I sit up in my little ivory tower of sacred femininity and robust robotic efficiency. I keep all men at arms length like a good girl, both in the eyes of tradition and professionalism. I don’t go to places where I would be exposed to situations like that. Wouldn’t any man be AFRAID of me? Scrawny male legs shaking and all…

WHO CARES!!!

I like it when I join the Zoom meeting and a guy I admire for his intelligence tells me he likes what I wrote down for my part of the group project, and asks me how my semester is going. I like it whennnn…I just like it a lot.

I’m so dirty. But iiii … just like it. Can’t a girl want to feel like a woman sometimes? Can’t she take pleasure in her innate desires when this cold world marches on ruthlessly everyday? I am both a robot and a woman, one by necessity and one through fantasy. Whatever.

[gossamercherryx]

- @gossamercherryx

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his whoreish tendencies and huge nose have captivated me

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she mountain on my goat til i hope we both die

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㋡🥀

Seascape...

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When my daughter asks me why I named her Rhony I’ll just show her this video

[gossamercherryx]

The Boys Cast Reveals The Insane Influences For Season 3

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crying @ the way he tried to smile for the cameras then immediately visibly hated himself for it

[gossamercherryx]

“I don’t care what happens to me.”

Robert Pattinson in The Batman (2022) dir. Matt Reeves

[gossamercherryx]

yearning for that sapphic cottagecore fantasy

@alternativesappphic // pinterest // donovan - lady of flowers // hayley kiyoko and alexandra shipp for chance music video, taken by trevor flores // tom petty - wildflowers // mitski - strawberry blond // pinterest // ruth b. - dandelions // @ultradisintegration // edward sharpe - home // laivi pöder on instagram // the beach boys - wouldn’t it be nice // james baldwin - if beale street could talk // hayley kiyoko and alexandra shipp for chance music video, taken by trevor flores // @madame-mushroom // rocketgardens.co.uk

happy spotify playlist for this theme

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Writing advice #?: Have your characters wash the dishes while they talk.

This is one of my favorite tricks, picked up from E.M. Forester and filtered through my own domestic-homebody lens.  Forester says that you should never ever tell us how a character feels; instead, show us what those emotions are doing to a character’s posture and tone and expression.  This makes “I felt sadness” into “my shoulders hunched and I sighed heavily, staring at the ground as my eyes filled with tears.”  Those emotions-as-motions are called objective correlatives.  Honestly, fic writers have gotten the memo on objective correlatives, but sometimes struggle with how to use them.

Objective correlatives can quickly become a) repetitive or b) melodramatic.  On the repetitive end, long scenes of dialogue can quickly turn into “he sighed” and “she nodded” so many times that he starts to feel like a window fan and she like a bobblehead.  On the melodramatic end, a debate about where to eat dinner can start to feel like an episode of Jerry Springer because “he shrieked” while “she clenched her fists” and they both “ground their teeth.”  If you leave the objective correlatives out entirely, then you have what’s known as “floating” dialogue — we get the words themselves but no idea how they’re being said, and feel completely disconnected from the scene.  If you try to get meaning across by telling us the characters’ thoughts instead, this quickly drifts into purple prose.

Instead, have them wash the dishes while they talk.

To be clear: it doesn’t have to be dishes.  They could be folding laundry or sweeping the floor or cooking a meal or making a bed or changing a lightbulb.  The point is to engage your characters in some meaningless, everyday household task that does not directly relate to the subject of the conversation.

This trick gives you a whole wealth of objective correlatives.  If your character is angry, then the way they scrub a bowl will be very different from how they’ll be scrubbing while happy.  If your character is taking a moment to think, then they might splash suds around for a few seconds.  A character who is not that invested in the conversation will be looking at the sink not paying much attention.  A character moderately invested will be looking at the speaker while continuing to scrub a pot.  If the character is suddenly very invested in the conversation, you can convey this by having them set the pot down entirely and give their full attention to the speaker.

A demonstration:

1

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

“What?”  Drizella continued dropping forks into the dishwasher.

2

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

Drizella paused midway through slotting a fork into the dishwasher.  “What?”

3

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

Drizella laughed, not looking up from where she was arranging forks in the dishwasher.  “What?”

4

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

The forks slipped out of Drizella’s hand and clattered onto the floor of the dishwasher.  “What?”

5

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

“What?”  Drizella shoved several forks into the dishwasher with unnecessary force, not seeming to notice when several bounced back out of the silverware rack.

See how cheaply and easily we can get across Drizella’s five different emotions about Anastasia leaving, all by telling the reader how she’s doing the dishes?  And all the while no heads were nodded, no teeth were clenched.

The reason I recommend having it be one of these boring domestic chores instead of, say, scaling a building or picking a lock, is that chores add a sense of realism and are low-stakes enough not to be distracting.  If you add a concurrent task that’s high-stakes, then potentially your readers are going to be so focused on the question of whether your characters will pick the lock in time that they don’t catch the dialogue.  But no one’s going to be on the edge of their seat wondering whether Drizella’s going to have enough clean forks for tomorrow.

And chores are a cheap-n-easy way to add a lot of realism to your story.  So much of the appeal of contemporary superhero stories comes from Spider-Man having to wash his costume in a Queens laundromat or Green Arrow cheating at darts, because those details are fun and interesting and make a story feel “real.”  Actually ask the question of what dishes or clothing or furniture your character owns and how often that stuff gets washed.  That’s how you avoid reality-breaking continuity errors like stating in Chapter 3 that all of your character’s worldly possessions fit in a single backpack and in Chapter 7 having your character find a pair of pants he forgot he owns.  You don’t have to tell the reader what dishes your character owns (please don’t; it’s already bad enough when Tolkien does it) but you should ideally know for yourself.

Anyway: objective correlatives are your friends.  They get emotion across, but for low-energy scenes can become repetitive and for high-energy scenes can become melodramatic.  The solution is to give your characters something relatively mundane to do while the conversation is going on, and domestic chores are not a bad starting place.

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Flowers

sonnet 98 - william shakespeare // a young girl in a garden - evert pieters // untitled - mine // in the flower garden - robert reid // where have all the flowers gone? - pete seeger // snail - the smashing pumpkins